From the sunny UK

[hondapartsman]

It is today, honest, although I'm not riding right now being at the end of a long recovery from cancer surgery, won't be long now though. Anyway, just a quick hi from an Ascot owner (VT500FT) here in sunny Suffolk, UK ( yes sun again, well we have to make the most of it over here) . My own bike is a Canadian market bike, which got to the UK via the Netherlands and has been under my care for about three years now. I also happen to be a parts guy at a Honda dealers, which makes it no easier to get parts for something like this. But as it's my sunny days only shiny bike with others to take the load other days hopefully I'll not need much in the way of parts beyond the small selection I got with it.  So hi, we did of course get the FT500 over here, but being Brits they thought we'd not cope with the Ascot name so here it was just a FT500C. One of those I never had, although tempted, I just didn't trust the starter gears.

[J6G1Z]

Welcome hondapartsman,

Glad to hear that you're having a Sun day. I'm located in the Pacific Northwest & understand about having good sun days. I hope that your recovery is quick & sound. Please feel free to post up some pics of your Ascot & your other bikes for that matter.

Please explain about the Ascot name being a problem. To the best of my knowledge, the bike is named after a well known Flat Track race track at Ascot Park or Ascot Raceway.

Good luck
J.

[J6G1Z]

Hey there hondapartsman,

Check out this post from one of your neighbors: http://ascot500.com/index.php?topic=25.0

He couldn't locate an Ascot to buy, so he built his own! It turned out real nice.

Thanks
J.

[hondapartsman]

Thank you for your welcome.  That guy who made is own is how I got here in the first place, the link was posted on the yahoo Ascot site.  I was impressed, I guess I was lucky to find mine which was in very good order for a close to 30 year old bike, that's why it remains my sunny days only bike. Even if these days it has to live outside under covers. The thing about names was a sort of in joke, it often seems we get bikes over here which have names in other countries, but for some reason we just have model names. I.E the CBR600 and CBR1000, elsewhere they were called Hurricanes, not here, VF and VFR750F models, called interceptor elsewhere but not here. It often seems that Honda, and maybe other manufacturers, seem to think Brits can't cope with names. I'll see about those pics when I get around to it, sometimes I take a while to work out how to add these things.

[J6G1Z]

When it comes to posting pics on this site, there are a couple of ways to go about it. There is a "Testing" board down at the bottom of the forum for members to practice & experiment with. Here is a post on how to post pics using the forums built in feature: http://ascot500.com/index.php?topic=2.0

Good luck
J.

[hondapartsman]

Thank you for that, I'll have an experiment when I get in the mood, meanwhile there are some pics on my website if anyone's passing that way. I'm pleased to report we have yet another sunny day here in sunny Suffolk, unusually mild for February too and I expect to be riding again the end of next week, when I take one of my 250's for it's annual roadworthyness test. Just 3 miles there and 3 miles back, but it'll be a good few miles, I'm sure, as it'll be my first on the road since the end of June last year.

[J6G1Z]

Thank you for that, I'll have an experiment when I get in the mood, meanwhile there are some pics on my website if anyone's passing that way....

Please list your website address & I'll check it out.

I have an old 250cc 2-stroke in my shed that needs some finishing. It is a 1974 Honda MT250 Elsinore. I have stripped it down to the bare essentials, mounted a pair of Avon RoadRider tires on it & swapped the cylinder, head & piston to a CR250 top end. I had the cylinder cut down to improve the squish distance, but now need to have the combustion chamber opened up a bit to bring the compression down. Right now it tests at 220lbs of compression. It's a fun little canyon carver & fairly lightweight. It has an aluminum CR fuel tank & a few other CR parts here & there. Here are a few pictures of it back when it still had the original MT top end on it. Check out the mileage on the odometer when I took the pictures. It just happened to match the year of the bike. LOL!

Thanks
J.

[hondapartsman]

I've added the website to my signature.
That's not a bike we had over here, officially, we had 125's but not 250's until 1978 or 1979 as I recall and even then only CR's, very few road going to strokes of any kind, except mopeds and other learner bikes. No doubt a few have found their way here since,  I'm sure I've been asked to try to find parts at least once, although mail order is a worldwide business and I don't always remember the countries people come from. Anyway, thanks for sharing that, nice to see although I'm not a 2 stroke guy myself. 

[J6G1Z]

Very nice collection!

I hope you don't mind but I thought to copy some of it below.

  This is the toy, not what you'd call concourse as such but shiny and just about bog standard. An unusual bike for the UK being a model intended only for the  Us and Canadian Market, a VT500FT ( flat track style allegedly) version of the VT500ED we had here and in Europe, the US also had a Shadow custom model and I think that was used in some European countries too. This is Canadian spec, 1984 model, lived for a while in Holland as far apparently and then for a while in Essex and came to me in 2011. I had some money, not much, and have fancied one of these since I saw one in the late 198o's or early 1990's . I forgot all about it though until, as i said with a little money to spare this one happened to come up. It came to me through work, another strange coincidence as bikes this old normally do not come into a modern dealership.  I like V twins, although this is rather different to my little 250. I also prefer air cooled bikes but would always make an exception for a v twin, or a triple ( like an early Hinckley Trident, Thunderbird or the like) . This is not a practical bike, carrying stuff is a big pain, I'd hate to go to far in case it rained but I like to ride it when I can. Not much this year, the weather was good but I had no money for tax and now it's taxed the weather is not good. I'll get some KM's on it sometime though, being Canadian it has a mainly KMH speedo with MPH inner ring,. which takes a little getting used to but is not so bad. All I've added is gaiters on the forks, I'm a believer in forks legs needed protection and gaiters making for a chunkier looking front end too, which I prefer.

[hondapartsman]

No problem, the website such as it is is for public consumption, as it were. Thank you for your compliments, just keeping the old beasties going as best I can, and whittering on about that and various other things.
Talking about your MT250, I was a bit bored yesterday so had a scan around e-bay, just under 250's in the bike section, and there was a MT250 someone's selling, I think it had recently come over from the states. Talk about coincidence, before you ask though, no, I'll not be trying for it. If I got anymore bikes, as we're set up here now anyway, I think my wife would be looking at jail time because I'm sure she'd kill me. She's not even that happy when I talk about bringing my other 250 over from my parent house, she 'suggests' that I should just move it to our lock up garage a few miles down the road from there, close to where we used to live.

[J6G1Z]

Hmm... Sounds like you need to teach her how to ride. Once she gets hooked, you'll be just fine.

Good luck
J.

[hondapartsman]

She does ride, well, was going to. She has one of those things MP3 things with two wheels at the front but only got it last year and one way and another only got about 20 miles in. This year she is determined to do more, she'll be a sunny days only rider though, she likes the comfort of her car to much to be otherwise I think. I did, yes, try to persuade her to get her proper bike license so she could ride some of my bikes, it would have been cheaper I'm sure, but she didn't want to have to go through all that, and it can get a little complex here in the UK. Her car license covers her for the MP as it's an LT version, I think she's reassured by the extra wheel at front too. I'm hoping to be back on the road myself sometime next week, if only for short trips to the nearest towns. The first of those this Friday though, to get my old 250 tested. It is sunny here today again, we're being spoiled, the forecast for Friday not so good though but matters not.
 

[Dougie]

Very nice Ascot from a fellow UKer.

Don't know where you get the sunny from, must be your disposition.

Welcome

[hondapartsman]

No, it's sunny Suffolk. Always sunny here, or maybe it's just my disposition, you can't let the weather get you down to much, there's nothing you can do about it so you just have make the best of what comes. Yesterday was fairly sunny though, I even saw a pack ( small as it would have to be around here, five or so) of scooter boys. Not that many bikes on the road though but a few. Not bad outside right now, fairly bright but I doubt it'll last, work on the bikes might have to wait a few days, I have to wait for some parts to come anyway.  Hopefully by Wednesday as I'm at hospital for a few hours Thursday and that puts a bit of hole in the day, just a couple of scans is all but that's a t least a couples of hours and there's the getting there and back, which can be tiring. We'll see.