Blimey, somebody underpriced these....

I am known for being quite stupid so maybe I (or my ISP) have missed
something but as I understand it:
He offers CB400F carbs unbelievably cheap
You bite his hand off and offer to buy all of them for even less
He then claims they are for a different Honda 400
You don't buy them

Leaving the way clear for an enlightened seller to slowly offload sets of
CB400F carbs at a vastly increased rate over that previously offered.

Steve

 

Ah! Yes, I see. My bad.

No, he sent me photos of the carbs to double-check they weren't 400F
ones. Nice blocks of four CV carbs, they were....

And he's refunding my money for the set I did buy.

 

Steve () gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

You forgot a small detail, Steve...

"and shout about how much you'll make on the whole deal on a public forum
before the carbs are actually in your hand"...

 

but there's also the minor detail that they're not the carbs everyone
thought they were, and are thus only horse poo and not rocking-horse poo.

Which doesn't mean they not worth summat. When it emerged that there were
several sets, I was a bit puzzled myself as to where they'd suddenly all
appeared from. Although I don't doubt there are still new 400-four parts
stashed around the country in odd places, the chances of anyone having 8
brand-new OE carb sets is a tad unlikely.

Mind you, you'd say that about people claiming to have about 10 petrol
tanks...

 

They're worth sod all. They're for the water-cooled Super Four. There
are quite a few of those around, as grey imports, but how many do you
think need carbs?

The thing about old 400 Four (in fact any SOB carbs) is that if the
bloody thing has been stashed in the back of a garage or in a barn for
years, the carbs are utterly fucked. Ultrasonic cleaning is the only
way. And then you have to reassemble them and completely set them up
from scratch. Jets, float heights, needles (all of which may be worn
anyway) ec etc.

A brand new set of carbs for any collectable Jap four is worth heavy
money for just this reason, and that's without considering the cosmetic
aspect, which is equally important, really, esecially if you're
planning to show the bike..


When it emerged that there were

It happens. A few years ago, I was offered six brand new 400 Four
cylinder heads, c/w valves and springs.

I hummed and hahhed and didn't take them - I think they were being
offered at maybe £100 each - because it's not the sort of thing that
you can sell quickly, even at (say) £200 each, which is what I sold a
completely refurbished head for, when I had that set of carbs. Heads
can always be reclaimed anyway. I figured I'd have them hanging around
for years.

It's odd, but stuff does turn up in the most unlikely places. I
remember in the late 1980s that Honda found a dozen brand new CX500s in
a corner of one of their warehouses. You'd think it hard to mislay one
CX, never mind a dozen. And in the 1990s, five brand new Yamaha XS1100s
turned up in similar circumstances in Italy. Gambier Reeks bought
those, IIRC.

More recently still, I believe that Rick Brett, the Kawasaki triples
bloke, found an H2 still crated up, in the US.

Fekkorf. I sometimes have nightmares about those bloody things.

 

And there was the warehouse full of WW2 Hardlys discovered in Russia.
The joys of a centralised economy, eh?
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a
Every post contains Nutri-Ceramide-R and Pre-Biotics
for your reading pleasure.
Folding@Home Team UKRM
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=47957

 

Must be fields full of unused Urals too

 

Is that real or just an urban miff? Never heard of it.

 

UM -- stories kept circulating in Oz in the 70s about a great
stash of WLAs being found somewhere, but they never trickled down into
the supply chain so half the Hells Angels had to ride CB/CL350 Hondas.
And they _still_ couldn't catch my Suzuki 100 on a twisty highway...

--
Ivan Reid, Electronic & Computer Engineering, ___ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

One of my old flying instructors[1] was obsessed with the tale of how the US
forces based at St Angelo at the end of the war had been told they could go
home once they'd got shot of the aircraft. So they scuttled a couple of
dozen Catalinas in Lough Erne...

[1]I've just remembered his name: John Barkel.

 

Supposedly real. Afair, it happened about 91 or so. Might not have been
an entire warehouse full, but a few dozen. Apparently they got stashed
and forgotten by the system.
--
Dave
GS850x2 XS650 SE6a
Every post contains Nutri-Ceramide-R and Pre-Biotics
for your reading pleasure.
Folding@Home Team UKRM
http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=teampage&teamnum=47957

 

AIUI, it's still in the crate because the moment it's taken out of the
crate, its value drops by xxx quid. Or something.

 

AIUI, it's still in the crate because the moment it's taken out of the
crate, its value drops by xxx quid. Or something.[/QUOTE]

The story was, he got *two*, and a whole container full of bits, for
around $20k.

Problem? The two crated H2s wouldn't fit in the space left in the
container.

Solution? Sell the least well preserved H2 for >$20k, resulting ina
"free" H2, and a container full of "free" Kawasaki triple bits and
bobs.

Not a bad day at the office.
--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GL1500SEV/CBR1100XXX/CBX1000Z
|_\_____/_| ..79553../..21469.../..31308.
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 WG*
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 PM#5
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17 IbB#4 YTC#4 two#11
'^' RBR'06 Points: 75 Miles: 317