MCN Fleet: 954 Fireblade modifications. The results are in...

Published: 10 May 2017

Last month I asked for advice on which upgrades I should fit to our 2002 Honda Fireblade, and you didn’t disappoint. With over a hundred responses on email and social media the suggestions ranged from “nothing at all” to fitting a manual cam chain tensioner. Some mods were understandably more popular than others…

As you can see from the chart, the most popular suggested mod was a steering damper with a whopping 20.8% of owners recommending one. I have to confess that in the limited time I’ve owned the bike it’s not a mod I’d thought of as an essential upgrade. I might have only covered a few hundred miles on the bike but I’ve yet to suffer any kind of tank slapper, perhaps I’m not riding it hard enough. After a few more miles and a track day at Brands maybe I’ll change my opinion. The second most popular mod suggested by owners is ‘nothing’. A suggestion that’s music to my ears as it’s not only cheap, it’s also requires minimal time and no specialist tools.

TOP STORIES

Here’s a selection of the great advice sent in and pics of the owners bikes. Thanks to everyone who contributed:

Cosmetically it should stay stock, even the screen. Why not just refresh the front fork, install a K-tech piston kit, and refresh the shock?
GC

Michelin 2ct tyres’s. Great bike. Love it. Shame to rack up miles on it. Definitely future classic.
Ian Kiff

Öhlins steering damper, power commander, braided brake lines, gear indicator, rear seat cowl on bikes colour, tank grip, double bubble smoked screen Nice bike thats is very rider friendly and quite comfy even for me who is 186 cm tall.
Jonas Nilton

Steel braided brake lines at the front and 1 tooth sprocket smaller at the front (before I had additional 2 teeth more at the rear, I did like that even more).
Mike Greez

Best mod I did was fit the Honda seat cowl.
Eyan Clements

I have to highly recommend a Gillies gear support bracket , these are for sure the best mod for £70 to protect the Honda fragile gear box. The front brakes are very good , but just to more braking power, I’ve gone for an ACCOSSATO. 19×20 front brake master cylinder, with EBC sintered pads with braided hoses.
A must is a steering damper, as this blade is very light front ended and does shake its head on full throttle speeds. Power commander 3 with custom map – with Healtech IQSE -1 quickshifter huge difference in riding with having the options to adjust settings on an app on your IPhone.
Raise the rear end by 25mm for a big improvement in turn in. 43 Tooth rear sprocket for quicker acceleration.
Miguel pimenta

Get a steering damper, decent brake pads and a gear shaft support, then come up to the NC500
George Macdonald

Get it standard as possible, Honda know more about bike design than aftermarket accessory companies.
Scott Gaunt

The best Mod I’ve done has to be the K-Tech 20SSK Fork internals. Wish I’d got the whole forks done gold though.
Steve Wiles

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By Ped Baker

Former MCN Managing Editor (Digital & Events)