Had my little MC18 for a couple of weeks now. Been through what is wrong with it and what needs to be sorted for me to be happy to use it. Well sort of still undecided about what to do about the tyres. The tyres on it are Pirelli Diablo's and a few years old now. (2011 manufactured date) so for serious use they are not really ideal. But over winter on a dry crisp day I could still go out for a bit of a ride out. The other option is get some nice sticky rubber and not worry about the hundred or so miles on them until it gets out to a trackday next year. First world problem...

So it does have Chinese bodywork but it fits well and the bike looks nice so no worries here and if it gets crashed again not worried. The bike has had 17 inch MC21 wheels fitted to it so rubber choices are improved and I can fit some seriously sticky tyres if I want, the wheels are off to powder coat later today to be made white as the black wheels look nice but just dont look right. The bike has been unrestricted but I dont think it has been jetted to suit but from the quick ride the jetting does feel a little on the safe side anyway so will see about a bit of dyno time when I take my little RG250 over to be set up too. Ideally would like to get some HRC needles to allow the needles to be fine tuned too but will work with what I have. The front brake master cylinder had broken so that has been swapped now and all I want to do over winter is sort out the suspension. Will look at stiffer front spring and change the fork oil and set the air gap over a couple of rides. I just need to look into what to do with the rear shock as I have some F3 linkage plates being made at the moment and need to see what the change does to the way it works.

Overall I am happy with my first NSR purchase and I am looking for either an MC18 mk2 or a MC21 to add to the little collection next year.






Most of the work on it over the next couple of weeks will be cleaning the bike under the bodywork and just making it fresh again.
So I bought a little soda blasting gun and 25 kg of soda to get stuck in...




Here are the first things I had a go at cleaning...