1992 Honda NR 750 RC40 For Sale!
Full transparency- This one was tossed around the RSBFS.com headquarters as to whether or not it was a legit ad. When all was said and done, Mike and Donn took a step back and William . . . well, William was too busy looking for the Desitin to really get involved so, they threw the new guy to the wolves.
Is it Live or Memorex? I know some of you are too young to know what that is, but the majority of you will get it. Why am I asking that silly question?
Here is the info from the eBay listing:
From the seller:
For sale is HONDA NR 750 IN REDYEAR 1992
For serious interest only.
Listing will be on for 7 days : if you are interested Please send messages.
A touch vague for a super rare motorcycle don’t you think? But wait there’s more . . . The seller has zero transactions on eBay. No worries- we all started at 0 on eBay. Right? Okay, maybe not 0 and selling Honda’s Holy Grail. The other interesting thing to note is normally these types of machines attract huge “watched” numbers, but this one is currently flying under the radar because (we assume) of the way it was listed/categorized on eBay.
Nonetheless! Let’s get this show on the road-
In 1992 Honda decided to flex it’s engineering muscle and finally produce a motorcycle with their long researched oval piston design. Obviously, such a task isn’t for the weak of heart or weak pocket books. It’s my understanding that Honda had been working on the oval piston design since the mid-seventies, but for whatever reason, never really pushed it for a production unit. That is of course until 1992 when they released the NR750 RC40 powered by the oval piston V4. Honda went all out with the NR750. Not only did it have oval pistons, it had titanium valves, and 2 titanium connecting rods per cylinder. If I’m not mistaken, the NR750 was also the first Honda equipped with “upside down” forks on a production unit. All of that wizardry didn’t make the NR750 the fastest or the lightest at almost 500#’s. However, that Honda wizardry did assemble one of “THE” most sought after motorcycles in the world. All of my exhaustive searches placed it in the number 2 spot of most desirable and collectable motorcycles- only being eclipsed by Martin’s beloved Britten V1000.
It is literally “Once in a blue moon” when these pop up for sale, but yet, here it is.
Did any of you all notice it’s missing the mirrors? I’m guessing those aren’t easy to locate so, I’m hoping the seller removed them as a precautionary measure.
This machine is the reason RSBFS.com exists.
Check out the unobtainable here!
Cheers!
Double D
Take note Ducati lovers… THIS actually qualifies as rare! Now stop using rare to describe every bike that came out of spaghettiland
Ebay listing says… Rebuilt/ reconstructed title?
we need to add laugh emojis as an option. Ducati formula = just add FE/ S/ R/ SP to the title and its a collectible classic.
That may be why the mirrors are missing?
I was at school in Nagoya and Honda engineers brought an NR to the engineering class to show it off. From cold they revved it for maybe a minute before pinning the throttle and hitting the rev limiter on it many times. It was already blowing a little oil. Get a video of any of these engines being run to assure there is decent ring-sealing, because that’s their weakness, and who in the world is really competent and has experience fixing them? Brilliant bike, but when you’re on the bleeding edge of technology, a “competitive” bike from 10 years later will outperform it in every conceivable measurement. Sexy and more of a museum piece than a rider. I’ve also seen a video in Japan of a guy who let an inexperienced woman ride it who promptly crashed it and hurt the bodywork. That might have been a $15K crash when it happened 10+ years ago. Now I’m sure the bodywork is absolutely unavailable. I glued a poster of an NR to my garage ceiling, next to WSBK 1999 swimsuit posters and a GTS1000 diagram, among others.
No doubt one of the rarest of the rare. Instigator of the single-sided swing arm and the under seat pipes – beat the 916 to that punch – as well as production side-mounted radiators. Great stuff!
– Mike
So the new guy got thrown to the wolf’s… what?!?
Truth!
Now, now . . If we didn’t have all of those LE Ducati’s running around you all wouldn’t get a steady stream of bikes and wouldn’t have anything to poke fun at.
Corrected.
Instigator of the single sided swingarm? The RC30 predates this bike by a few years and even the 88 Hawk had one.
C’mon Honda! 30 years later. Gimme a v-twin oval piston, honda grom. Build it simple but with revolutionary sophistication. We would all benefit from a few million simple units than a handful of unobtainium museum pieces. Refinement is borne from repetition.
>> Instigator of the single-sided swing arm
I know some Hawk GT folks who might want to have a word with you.