It's the day Bob Brookland has been waiting six years for.
As the painter of the late Christchurch designer John Britten's revolutionary V1000 motorcycles, visiting Te Papa and seeing the faded pink fairings, which cover the bike's frame, was tough.
"I was disappointed to see a bike in that state so I offered to paint it… free of charge so that we could get it looking good for not only for the public, but the overseas people that come and visit it."
The fairings were removed from the bike last year and taken to Brookland's Christchurch workshop, where he once more had the opportunity to repaint a bike recognised around the world for its innovative design and speed.
Today, the freshly painted fairings were reassembled, restoring Te Papa's piece of Kiwi history to its former glory.
"All of them need to be cherished because they're an iconic New Zealand motorcycle and something of great value, so they need to be treated with respect," said Brookland. "I just feel I'm here to do that for John."
Te Papa curator Katie Cooper said she felt the pink faded bodywork didn't represent Britten's clear vision for how the bike should look.
"It has been a conversation for a long time but obviously because it's a museum object it's a tricky decision about whether or not you're going to repaint," she said.
"It's not normally what we would do with collection objects, but we felt that in this case, because we had the blessing of the family and the Britten team right there from day one, this is what they usually do with the Britten bikes, this is a part of their process, we decided it was appropriate in this case."
The refurbishment was delayed due to Covid-19.
During the extended time the bike was on display at Te Papa in its 'naked' state without the fairings, it became an attraction for enthusiasts, both local and international, to catch a glimpse of the features usually hidden.
Craig Roberts has also been involved in maintaining Britten's bikes over the decades, and helped with the project.
"It's having met John many years ago you know, he was an infectious guy and it's great to be able to carry on his dream and play a part looking after the bikes and making sure that you know they are preserved for history."
Brookland told 1News how Britten chose the striking blue and pink colours of the bike.
"He bought this beautiful glass starfish to me after being on a holiday overseas and said to me, 'I want my bike to be painted in this sort of blue.'"
Britten saw the fluorescent pink on another motorcycle at Daytona raceway in the United States.
"He said, 'They're so easy to see when they were racing,' so he said, 'I want blue like the starfish that I've given you and I want to have pink guards on it because that way the bike will be seen easily.'"
Unfortunately once the colours were made up by Brookland, they didn't match well together.
"Pink sort of looked wrong and flat alongside the blue, so I then reflected the pink onto the blue… you get a darker, purpley blue… so I took that colour there, mixed that and I used that under all of the under areas of the bike body to give it a better dimension and a more sort of flow and impact using those colours."
But that match still wasn't there.
"What I did from there was introduce some of this violet that's in the starfish and put that in a clear to go over top so it had violet pearl clear over the blue and over the pink, and that's why they fit together so well and have always looked so good as a bike colour."
When Brookland originally asked Britten how he could make a blue paint colour to match the starfish, he was told "that's your job".
"He was like that very much through the whole project, 'This is your job, you can sort that out,' and personally I tried never to disappoint him… we succeeded and he was rapt and we went through all the bikes with that system."
Painting Britten's bikes remains a highlight for him.
"Sometimes he would drop a bike off at 10 o'clock at night and say that he needed it for the weekend, so it was like, sometimes working till 2.30 in the morning - you couldn't say no because it was John's dream, and I was along for the ride and I've enjoyed every minute of it."
He said the now-pristine Britten motorcycle is something every New Zealander can look at and know it's a part of our country's history and that it belongs in our national museum.
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