400 Four Tank Stripes

[Piki]

Hello, I have one doubt about the colour of the tank stripes of F2 models.I think that stripes on the tank is black with red, but there is a lot of specialist sellers that offer it with blue stripes with red. I think that is wrong because the edge of the Honda tank decal is black and same that decals of the side covers. Anybody knows the correct colors of the stripes? Thank you in advance and sorry for my English.

[tom400f]

Ok so you mean the parakeet yellow colour... I've just had a look at mine and if they are not black they are very dark blue. Lobo (Simon) has had a paint job done on his bike and he was bemoaning the border colour of the side panel lettering because it was noticeably blue rather than (nearly) black.

So verdict is beware of poor reproductions

[Piki]

Thank you for your answer Tom, it is logical that it was the same colour that the edge of the Decals from tank, black, and the edge of the side covers decals. The problem is that most sellers Only sell the blue edge stripes...

[Lobo]

Hi Piki,
I'm sure I read somewhere that the Parakeet 400's (officially) had red / black stripings. And yet, on another pukka website I find this picture of a 'blue' striped 400F. Hmm, perhaps Honda had  different suppliers who weren't able to reproduce the same colourings constantly?

As Tom mentioned - I have experienced both black - and blue reproductions.

Sadly I can't find the address, but paid almost £80 for a complete set of decals, and forwarded them onto the chap who painted my tank / side panels. These turned out to be a matching set of very dark blue / almost black.

As I had a further spare set of side panels, I had these painted too, and then sourced a pair of side panel decals from a different supplier - and it was these that turned out to be 'blue'. Phew.. I'm thus ok, but now have a non-matching set of panels in storage.

How to ensure you 'get lucky' I don't know, although the £80 set was described as 'the best around, beware of poor replicas, blah blah. I guess try to buy a complete set.... rather than side panels from one supplier, and tank stripes from another.  As for 'original' colourings I'm still not sure, maybe European models were different to USA model...? don't know
Simon

I seem to be having trouble displaying the photos - one of an 'Official 400F2 Parakeet / blue-red stripes, and one of my sprayed up tank; with dark blue-red stripes. Maybe an iPad issue? - though always used this (successfully) before.