Selling my 1988 FJ1200 3cv which has been my faithful daily driver for just over two years. 62,000 miles young and a long MOT (Jan 2025). It starts and runs like a clock in any weather. Changes in my job mean that I now have to cover more miles to different sites so I decided to buy something more modern instead.
Not that there’s anything wrong with the FJ of course, it’s been an amazing bike and last year took me all around the twisties of the Ardennes on a tour with my
mates without embarrassing itself one bit.
Basically, what you see is what you get. It comes with luggage, a long MOT and pretty much all the right mods that make those essential improvements. As I was washing it for the photos today, I remembered all the things that I’ve added to this bike during my ownership so I thought I’d write them down:
Refreshed fork oil and re-set forks – I took them to pieces to clean them out
Blue spot brake callipers, (far superior to the standard ones) Fazer master cylinder and braided hoses.
New belly pan (man was that expensive – but it looks great!)
Welded collector box and silencers.
Anti sweaty-bum seat cover thing (the seat underneath is fine)
Headlamps are now on relays with decent bulbs so that 12 volts actually gets to the bulb and I can actually see where I’m going at night.
Also has a pair of daytime lights independently switched
New rear YSS shock from Brook Suspension
New – higher ratio – sprockets and a DID chain for better fuel economy
Serviced approximately 1500 miles ago
Carbs stripped for new needle valves after using dreadful fuel quality on the French tour (lesson learned that I should only put E5 in it)
Don’t get me wrong, it’s by no means mint and I'm not expecting a huge amount for it. It has the usual fairing cracks and glued bits but nothing is hanging off. The lock on the top box is broken but you can use a pannier as a top box instead and they’re fine (they’re bigger too). The front springs could do with replacing but it rides fine and doesn’t use any oil. I’ll throw in the Haynes manual too.
And now for the inevitable bad bits:
The rear tyre is only just legal – it was an advisory on the last MOT and I never got round to changing it.
The rev counter has a mind of its own. It’s behaving itself right now but expect it to read double the revs at random intervals – I have no idea what the cause is.
The kill switch is disconnected – my bad, I thought it was faulty one day.
So in all it’s not a bad bike at all. We’ve had a lot of fun and I’ll be sorry to see it go.
Happy bidding, buyer to pay and collect within a reasonable time and no silly offers please.
Based in Surrey – near Gatwick