Full Circle
FULL CIRCLE
From these pages, and back again
INSPIRATION IS A WONderful thing. Just ask Larry Pearson, a rock-radio DJ in Spokane, Washing-ton, who relates the story of his super-trick 1976 Honda CB550F Super Sport café special.
“The machinist I bought the bike from, Tom Rasp, started to build this 550 as a vintage racer using a couple of Cycle World issues he had from the late Seventies for inspiration. That’s where he got the idea to lay down the Boge-Mulholland shocks 2 inches and turn the fork legs around to put the calipers at the rear,” says Pearson.
A roadracer himself in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Pearson was really on the hunt for a CB400F like he once campaigned.
“I wasn’t interested in a 550 until I saw this one,” says the 48-year-old. “It was so beautiful, I just fell in love-and he only wanted $400 for it!”
Previous owner Rasp started work on the bike 12 years ago but never got around to finishing it. Being a machinist, Rasp had fabricated many of the one-off parts, including the fork brace, rearsets, vented rear brake hub, muffler hanger, rear brake rod and trick, one-piece aluminum chainguard. He also made the engine sidecovers from scratch, and even reshaped the original countershaft sprocket cover into the shape of Italy, for a little Continental flair!
Pearson’s handiwork, too, is all over the bike—literally—in that he modified the fenders and fabbed the tailsection from scratch in fiberglass (using the rear of the tank as a mold!), then laid on the paint, a part-time moneymaker when he isn’t spinning tunes at the station.
Pearson did most of the work at his friend Ernie Buckler’s shop. Buckler is also a machinist and told Pearson about the bike in the first place.
“Together over the course of five winter months we finished it,” relates Pearson.
The engine is run on a total-loss electrical system (no e-start) but is otherwise stock, with rejetted carbs and a period Kerker 4-into-1 exhaust.
“I thought of putting a big-bore kit in it, but it just ran too good. I didn’t mess with it,” Pearson says.
The basic premise in finishing the build that Rasp so ably started?
“This is the bike I would have built back when I was production racing, but could never afford to,” he says.
“The only downside was that it turned out too nice to race.”
Some downside.
-Mark Hoyer
