Alan Seeley
2005 Honda Fireblade
Tucked away for way too long, Alan finally gets his late brother’s Blade on the road
The story so far... Alan’s been looking after his late brother Gordon’s Blade for six years. Now it’s time to take it for a ride. A poignant trip.
Less On Our Bench and more on our roads this month. In keeping with the 30th anniversary of the Honda FireBlade theme of this issue, I’m taking my 2005 CBR1000RR for a Sunday blast around some of middle England’s finest riding roads. Sometimes you don’t have to go too far from home to find what you need.
It’s taken me a long time to get here. I inherited my Blade from my late brother Gordon, back in 2016. In all honesty haven’t had the heart to ride it, and neither have I been able to bring myself to sell it. The few miles it has done in the last few years contributing to the lowly 14,700-mile total from new have been on magazine tests.
A waste of a fine motorcycle, especially one in this condition. It’s a perfect time capsule and looks like it could have come straight from a Honda showroom 17 years ago. There can be few sportsbikes of this era to have escaped this unmolested.
There is no aftermarket exhaust system and the attendant hardware that usually accompanies them; the Power Commander, the K&N filter. No aftermarket rearsets or clip-ons. Not even so much as brightly coloured anodised fastener. At some point someone has stuck on a tank pad and an HRC-branded carbon-look tank fuel cap cover. Probably one of the bike’s two previous owners prior to my brother. I could see him opting for the essential practicality of a tank pad; the fuel cap bling, not so much.
The bike also had an iridium screen while in Gordon’s possession, which I replaced with a rather classier MRA screen gifted to me by Giles Harwood at BikeHPS.
There’s a little bit of paint damage on the tail unit that had been hidden under some carbon-effect tape and a tiny patch has been scrubbed from the clutch cover. But otherwise this Blade is immaculate, and testament to Gordon’s exactitude with everything in his short life.
Perhaps that explains my reluctance to use the bike, every mark I put on it would feel like an injury to his memory. I’m utterly shambolic in character next to him, certainly far less fastidious when it comes to cleaning and polishing bikes. Given 12 months or so I would have this Blade looking all of its 17 years and then some.
Still, a Sunday morning ride-out can’t do any harm. I haven’t been there for a while, but I recall the roads around Oakham and Melton Mowbray are a huge draw for motorcyclists. There’s bound to be some other old blokes on sportsbikes out the
