Ebay Beezer
eBay Beezer
UP FRONT
David Edwards
JUDGING BY THE SPAM ON MY COMputer, we are a nation fixated on refinancing our mortgages, enlarging our penises, losing weight while we sleep, purchasing discount golf balls and seeing Christina Aguilera in the nude.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Unsolicited e-mails notwithstanding, my Hewlett Packard has a higher calling these days-namely to take me to www.ebaymotors.com so that I might turn hard-earned (hah!) cash into rolling stock like the time-capsule BSA chopper pictured here.
If you’re among the 25 percent or so of CW readers not yet up to speed on the ol’ Infobahn, eBay Motors may be just the nudge you need. A subset of the giant online auction house (on any given day, eBay has 12 million items for sale, and facilitated $15 billion in transactions last year), the site is a gearhead’s nirvana, the Mother of all Want-Ads. If it leaks oil, gas or water and makes noise, there’s a place for it on eBay Motors.
Sellers pay a $25 fee to list their machine, set the opening bid and an unpublished “reserve” price (the lowest amount they’ll take), write a brief description and attach photos of the bike. Anybody can browse the ads, but to bid you need to be a registered eBay member-there’s no charge and it only takes minutes. Membership also allows you to e-mail the seller questions about his bike. Think of it as interactive classifieds.
Typically, there are between 3500 and 4000 motorcycles for sale each day, though a search feature allows you to narrow the field. Type in “GSXR,” for example, and 80 Suzukis pop up; over in the Honda section, “Goldwing” returns 50 luxo-tourers in need of good homes.
Not in the market for another bike right now, but need something to fix up the old nail? Click on over to the “Parts & Accessories” section, where you’ll find some 55,000 lots on the block. Maybe the CB750 Four needs a little touch-up? Last I checked, there were 378 items up for sale, 13 screens’ worth, everything from an NOS starter-bay gasket (opening bid $5) to a nice unbent frame ($40) to a rare 1969 K0 “patent-type” mirror hovering at $51 (!) but not yet making its reserve.
Anyway, a good place to spend a few hours, especially after the wife has revolted against the Speed Channel, taken control of the remote and is settling in for yet another rerun of When Harry Met Sally, popcorn and kleenex at the ready.
Which, more or less, is how I came to own the BSA.
Actually, I’ve been looking for an original, unmolested 1970s-style chopper-preferably CB750-poweredfor some time, figuring it would join my 1940s Indian Scout bob-job, 1950s BSA Gold Star hot-rod and 1960s Norton Atlas café-racer to complete a strange kind of Custom Quartet. But for something that was once so prevalent, with magazines devoted to the breed and a thriving aftermarket, very few old-school choppers seem to have survived intact. Not too surpris ing, given the accute scarcity of suspension, lack of front brakes and the freewheelin’ lifestyle of young riders facing a Vietnam draft (or just back from the war) and quite rightly partaking in numerous adult beverages-or something a little more herbal.
Backyard kluge jobs of suspect buildquality turn up-back then, anybody with a stick-welder was churning out extended springer front ends, many of which folded in half at the first railroad crossing-but where are all the pro-built choppers, the ones that made the magazine centerspreads as props for models yet to discover the wonders of modern silicone augmentation? (Ah yes, the ’70s, when reality was altered and breasts were real.)
Well, at least one such machinebased on a 1956 BSA Super Rocketturned up on eBay, where I bumped the bidding by $100 and won the auction. Last registered in Washington state in 1976, the bike had been pickled after an engine blow-up, a catastrophe that turned out to be its savior. The seller rebuilt the 650cc Twin, fabbed up some less-than-lovely pipes to replace the long-gone originals and then-judging by my first ride aboard the widowmaker-promptly scared himself Beezerless. Putting aside its deathtrap status, this really is an amazing piece, a masterwork of molding that flows from steering stem to fuel tank to frame tubes to rear fender, covered in a swirl of psychedelic blues, purples and blacks.
As I’ve found out since purchase, the front end is ultra-rare, a Harmon fork with internal springs and integral handlebars, worth about $1000 on the open market. Not that I’m selling.
In fact, I’m buying-or trying to.
There’s this CB750 dragbike listed in the Honda section, see. Blackanodized RC Engineering aluminum frame, full-house motor, ARD mag, snowflake cast
wheels, etc. So far, it's only beenbidupto $771...
