If you’re the type of person who derives secondhand satisfaction from watching someone successfully restore sad motorcycles of years gone by, then chances are good that you already know about RRC Restoration on YouTube. If you haven’t previously been acquainted, well, you’ve got a whole lot of catch-up videos to enjoy in your spare time.
This video marks the start of a whole new project, and this time, it’s an extremely worse-for-wear Honda VFR400R NC30. We don’t know the story behind this bike, but from what RRC finds as he begins to tear it down for restoration, it’s clear that someone took it out and rode it, at the very least.
The original body panels are all there, which is nice—but there’s so much filler and paint on them that they’re going to need a whole lot of work to restore. Someone in this bike’s past apparently also tried to paint the fork legs to look as though they were anodized, but the end result probably didn’t even look very nice when it was freshly completed.
Also, it seems like someone gradually lost the original hardware that held this bike together over time—and that just about every replacement screw was just whatever they happened to have handy. Most of them don’t match, either in size or in head style, so Mr. RRC needs a whole slew of drivers to take it all apart.
One good thing about this VFR400R is that the fuel tank is in surprisingly good shape on all sides. It’s not rusted out, it doesn’t have any gnarly dents in it, and honestly seems to be in some of the best shape of any individual component on this bike. That’s kind of impressive, in its way.
The brakes (at least up front) are seized, so that’s going to be fun for future-RRC to deal with. It’s not clear if he knew that when he started this project, but he does mention it in voiceover toward the beginning of the video (although he could of course have added that revelation further along in the editing process).
By the end of the video, the bike is successfully apart. RRC hasn’t tackled any of the individual systems yet—the engine is out of the frame, but the forks haven’t been taken apart yet (or even removed from the front wheel). The whole bike is basically deconstructed into a pile of parts, organized neatly on shelves in a corner of the workshop.
We don’t know where RRC plans to start next, but it seems likely there will be plenty of workshop ASMR to come. If this kind of thing is your cup of tea, we’d suggest that you stay tuned.
