I'd like to say a massive thanks to Stephen for giving me the honour of twisting the throttle of his NSR500V in anger on the superb Donington circuit.
I must say that the bike was not as 'unrideable' as they are made out to be. In fact, once we'd sorted the jetting it was as smooth as you'd expect a 500cc twin to be. No massive peaky powerband, just a smooth surge of power all the way through to 12 grand.
That was another thing. I was sort of expecting the thing to hit a wall at about 11k, but no....just seamless power up to 12k. Lovely.
Handling wise it's difficult to say, as it's not my bike, and the pre-ride brief was "Don't you dare crash it!". But you can tell the old iron has potential. The brakes are awesome, really stable, and those massive 50mm WP forks up front keep it well planted at every corner.
I had the rear end light up a couple of times, once out of Redgate and once out of Coppice, but in the interests of keeping it shiny side up didn't push it. As it is, the street tyres fitted to it now are probably better than the old wooden things the bike would have had back in it's day.
If you want a bike for trackdays that would give you no trouble, start everytime and never need a rebuild then buy a big boiler, but if you want stinky two stroke fun fun fun by the bucket load then get an NSR500V.......Fan-dabidozi-tastic!!
Another big thanks goes to Watfordhorn, who let me have a couple of laps on his NX5 in the final session. Up until riding the 500 the NX5 has always been my favourite bike, and I have to say that i hadn't even got halfway down the pitlane and felt totally at home on it. Just like slipping into your favourite slippers. It was a breeze to ride, lovely lightening fast handling and great brakes. The only problem I had with it was the road shift gear setup. I always run race shift on the track, but heyho, I can do it either way as long as I know, but I did mess up the first gear change as I came out of the pits....ooops.
Also good to meet some of you guys and putting faces to names. It's difficult being out in the far east and never actually knowing who your customers are. And great to see the NSR's with our bits on. Makes you feel like the hard work is work it. Thanks.
If there's more chances of blagging free rides at trackdays then I'll come back to the UK more often