That was a shame

High and only bidder on this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260469047578

And the seller told me that he'd take £8700 for it, so I toddled off
with cash in my pocket.

First thing: the paint on the entire right-hand side of the bike (tank,
panel, fairing) was scored by a myriad tiny scratches. Like someone had
rubbed it with wire wool or a sponge impregnated by sand. You looked at
it from one angle and it looked OK, and then from another and it looked
utterly gash. Strange.

The guy who'd just serviced it hadn't bothered to put gasket goo on the
rubber cam end caps so two of them were leaking.

And there was a brake fluid leak from the anti-dive unit that someone
had tried to stop with gasket goo. Eek.

And the head races were shot.

Overall, a really, really nice genuine bike. Amazingly clean, started
and ran beautifully, all original. The head races would cost about £100,
doing the cam caps would require £20 for a new gasket, and I daresay the
anti-dive would just need a stripdown and new seals. I still shudder at
the thought of trying to stop a brake fluid leak with gasket goo, mind.

Anyay, I left it. At that money, I'm getting into GPZ900R territory, and
I'm still looking for the right 900R.

And after I pointed out the faults, the seller was digging out his
helmet to take it back to the bloke who'd serviced it, to have a few
words....

 

I wish I'd known - I'd have followed you with a cosh.

 

And I would have been behind you with a baseball bat

 

Heh. £800, then.

 

How much?

 

Sir hasn't read all the thread, has Sir?

 

Sir sent a cancel in very short order, but _some_ folk just have to
use servers that don't honour cancel requests.

 

<G>

 

do any, these days?

besides, it's one of the laws of usenet, a bad post can get 6 times around
the world before the cancel request has got its boots on.

 

TFFT, I hadn't seen your post and started to worry there.