You would think with all the development that goes into designing the bike and constructing the machinery and factories that manufacture it that by only making 20,000 bikes, Honda would probably lose money eh.

Is it possible to tell from our chassis/engine numbers how many bikes were made prior? With that we could probably get a good estimate.

If we were to take the frame numbers for each of the models then by finding out who had the highest frame numer that would give us a good idea of numbers. The one draw back with this is getting people to provide there frame numbers and of course getting every NC30 owner to do so!!!!

Year Model/Code Initial frame number
1989 NC30 /K NC30-1000001
1990/91 NC30 /L NC30-1050001
1990/91 UK NC30 /L NC30-2000006
1991-93 UK NC30 /M NC30-2100001
1992-on NC30 /N NC30-1100001

unless we can trust a site mod/admin then we can anonymously send in the highest frame number you own and let them take a wild guess ?

i doubtt they would have only made 20,000 bike because does that not work out at around 12 bikes a day for 5 years ? and did anyone see the "twist the throttle " program on motorsTV a few weeks back where the did the history of f the 4 main jap builders ? in the honda show they said it takes 3600 seconds to build a honda fireblade 1000RR so i guess they could churn out more than just 12 a day.

The annual expected build numbers are on the press releases of the time, although this could be significantly different from the actual number built.

If we were to take the frame numbers for each of the models then by finding out who had the highest frame numer that would give us a good idea of numbers. The one draw back with this is getting people to provide there frame numbers and of course getting every NC30 owner to do so!!!!

How do you read those frame numbers?

Also what is wrong with posting up your own frame number? I don't understand the trouble. I doubt it can really be used to track down a bike to steal and we are all in different countries so who cares.

My 89 model frame number is 101 3471... does that mean it's the 3,471 bike ever made?

Would appreciate it if everyone could post up their number (or just a number close to that if do not wish to disclose) !

trademe900 wrote:

If we were to take the frame numbers for each of the models then by finding out who had the highest frame numer that would give us a good idea of numbers. The one draw back with this is getting people to provide there frame numbers and of course getting every NC30 owner to do so!!!!

How do you read those frame numbers?

Also what is wrong with posting up your own frame number? I don't understand the trouble. I doubt it can really be used to track down a bike to steal and we are all in different countries so who cares.

My 89 model frame number is 101 3471... does that mean it's the 3,471 bike ever made?

Would appreciate it if everyone could post up their number (or just a number close to that if do not wish to disclose) !

i think it's more to do with people wanting to change there frame numbers to another bikes so they can steal someones bike and flog it as anothers, it's called "ringing" is it not.

and yeah i guess the frame numbers work the way you descride so if my bike came off after yours it would be 1013472 then 3473 and 3474 etc etc then when the change years the start of the frame number changes and the process starts again

1989 model NC30-1013471

1991 model NC30-1058599

1990 model NC30-1012696

1991 model NC30-1054722

So the first 3 numbers change with every year but the last 4 numbers start again from 0 and don't just carry on into the next years?

I guess that shows there were at least 9000 bikes made in 1991 then? I don't have any higher numbers for the other years of my bikes.

Also I just found on an old Honda press release in Japanese that projected sales are 10,000 a year. don't know if that means bikes made though.

It gets even more complicated, depending on which country your bike comes from!

If you check out the different NC30 parts catalogues, it gives you the model and frame numbers associated with the country that the bike was destined for. For example if you have a UK bike, that is given an Area Code by Honda as E . What this meant was that when you ordered parts for your UK bike it may have had a part number with this area code next to it and that meant that the part was only for UK bikes. If a part didn't have an area code next to it, it was for common use. The same with Japanese bikes etc. UK bikes had oil coolers fitted as standard for example.

What this means is that bikes that were destined for the European market also had these area codes as follows:

Country Area Code
Austria AR
England E
France F
Germany G

The frames numbers for these bikes were different again as follows:

Model Country Area Code Frame Number
NC30 /L Austria AR NC30-2000009
NC30 /M Austria AR NC30-2100006

I don't know what the German and French frame numbers start with?

So to try and work out how many bikes and models produced is not going to be that straight forward. I wish it was as I'm really interested to know some numbers of bikes/models produced for my R3N as this was the last model produced.

I think just japanese bikes will do since they are pretty much counted as all of them.

FWIW, this week I came across an NC30 frame, number "NC30-1006660".