Requiem For A Cheap Bike
Requiem for a Cheap Bike
UP FRONT
David Edwards
A TRUE CYCLE WORLD KIND OF GUY, KANsas City Pete. Into motorcycles since he was a teenager. Former AMA/CCS and WERA club roadracer. Track days and riding schools. One-time Buell M2 owner. Aspires to a Vincent Black Shadow someday. Current collection: Yamaha YSR50, Kawasaki ZX-6RR, AMF four-speed Shovelhead, Arlen Ness-framed Ironhead Sporty under restoration. Wife Danielle rides, too, and doesn’t mind a bike or two stored in the dining room.
It was Pete’s letter about his favorite motorcycle, though, that got our atten tion. Like hundreds of CW readers, he responded to our call for $ 1000 bikes (see “Tyrannosaurus Wrecks,” this issue). At a time when the average price of a new streetbike has climbed to $11,450, give or take, we wanted to see what was available for about $10K less in the used-bike market.
His nomination? A springer-forked, sissybarred relic from the Seventies, a backyard-built Honda CB750 sohc Four installed in an Amen Savior “mushtail” frame, so-named for the plunger rear suspension that at least gave the rider a half-chance of staving off spinal compression.
“It’s almost obscene it’s so long,” he says of the black chopper. “It’s cartoonish. The bike is so low I once got stuck on a speed bump!”
It was back in 1998 that Pete saw an ad for a “custom cho] per” at a backwater used-car lot about 100 miles from his Missouri home, asking price $1995. Intrigued, he called, found out it was a Honda, not a Harley as expected, and offered $1000 as long as the dealer had a clear title.
“The dealer kept repeating that it was ‘fast’ and ‘dependable,’” says Pete. “I told him, fine, I would have a friend drop me off so I could ride it home. He said I really should bring a trailer because the bike was a ‘hardcore chopper.’ When I told him I didn’t mind the two-hour ride, he broke down and told me that the bike would start but not run for very long, and one of the carbs was leaking-oh, and the gas cap got stolen yesterday.”
It turned out the bike was also a repo, had no title and no key. Not easily dissuaded, he offered the man $500. The car dealer, happy to have the outlaw machine off his lot, agreed. Pete knew a well-connected “Italian friend” who could, er, expedite a title.
"I brought my new baby home, cleaned the carbs, replaced the coils, points, condenser and plugs, and fit ted new throttle and clutch cables, new sprockets and chain, and new tires," Pete says.
What happened when he tried to start the renewed Honda? At the moment of truth, it burst into flames! The carbs’ breather tubes were routed right by the ends of the chopper’s abbreviated, flame-spitting drag pipes, withpredictable results.
“It would have been a really good time to have that fire extinguisher I’d been meaning to buy!” Pete laughs. “I rolled my flaming love out of the garage and ran into the house screaming, ‘The chopper s on fire! The chopper s on fire! ’ I found two cereal bowls in the sink that needed to be washed anyway, filled them with water and ran back outside to see the flames reaching up to the gas tank. I put out the fire, leaving my baby only slightly singed.”
Float bowls reset and overflow lines relocated, the bike was good to go, a true daily rider. “It carried me through a wicked divorce, more than one psycho girlfriend and an unexpected job change,” Pete says. “I rode the bike everywhere. It was my only transportation for two years in weather as cold as 18 degrees-while everyone else was scraping their windshields, I was scraping my seat! Of all the bikes I have ever owned, my Honda chopper gave me the biggest smiles, truly put me in touch with motorcycling. To me, it’s priceless.”
Not that there weren’t travails along the way. Riding it to his old job at the police department (!), for example.
“I was told a uniformed officer on a chopper with a flaming eyeball on the gas tank was not an image the department wanted to promote,” he says.
Then the unthinkable happened.
“About two years ago, I met the quintessential little old lady turning left in front of me and suffered a closed-head injury and a broken back,” Pete sadly relates. His chopper fared no better: “The bike that had kept me sane for so long now had a broken frame and mangled exhaust.”
He’s since fully recovered, but the bike remains a mess, maybe for a long time. See, Pete’s been a little too busy lately to tackle a rebuild. No longer a police officer, he’s still in harm’s way. When we talked to Pete, he was in Baghdad, Iraq, attached to the U.S. State Department as an independent contractor, though he was due to be “outprocessed” for 30 days of R&R back home. He has had a lot of time to ponder the bike’s fate, and one thing is clear. “I will keep the Honda chopper forever, whether or not it’s ever road-worthy again,” he says.
We’re betting the former. Watch the mailbox, Pete, for a $500 check, Cycle World's contribution to getting your old chopper back on the road. And, please, watch out for little old ladies.
