Vintage Honda Decals and a Deal!

So I mentioned earlier that I got these great decals from Lord Moon Pie. He has tons of high quality decal work for restoration as well as custom decal for your car/boat or bike.

If you order off his website direct and mention The Retread or my name you'll get a 10 percent discount! Check it out!

Link: Lord Moon Pie http://www.moonpie.co.uk

She likes it electric

Okay, so I've got the headlight on and most of the nest of wires fits in the headlight bucket, so it really cleans up pretty good. It is a really tight fit, and I have some wires that don't have a home yet, but I've successfully got the headlight and turn signals connected.

That said, two things are apparent:

1) The heavy turn signals have no place to go. They will fit on the headlight bucket, and they look kind of cool, but the stalks they came with ~barely~ fit. I've ordered a lightweight cheapo set from Hong Kong that I can attach to the faring directly. This will also solve another problem I have. I'm eliminating the chrome from this thing, since much of it is pitted and rusted. I'll cover all the chrome parts in a gloss black engine enamel. However, the retro turn signals are just too pretty to paint over. The cheapos will paint just fine and blend in instead of standing out.

2) Things aren't blinking. When I relocated my rear turn signals to the back of the bike, they wouldn't blink. Not sure if they did before, but I know they worked before teardown. So now the question is what has to be connected to get them working. When I hooked up the front turn signals, they lit up just right, but did not blink. So either I have a blinker unit that is shorted out, or all the connections need to be made to get it blinking. I'm not going to over pursue it at this point. My battery will need to be replaced for the new season and it may just be that I'm short of power to work the blinkers.

Meanwhile, the motorcycle is looking pretty good. I tried the faring out with the new bars and headlight and it's is going to look like a cool old BMW going down the road. Much work left to do however, and summer is coming.

Black on White? Some Simple, Beautiful Customs

I've been looking for inspiration for the paint job on my HONDA CB400A. The folks over at Death Spray Customs have a great White on Black simple design that I'm tempted to emulate. It's a 1970 Triumph TR25 and it is rugged and clean. I've already got the black frame and will likely end up with a white or black overpaint on my exhaust system.

I also like the white pipes and clean lines on the Much Much Go as profiled at BikeEXIF. This is a cheap but beautiful custom of a similar vintage machine that won the Deus Ex Machina comptetition. What do you think?

Putting things away for winter

Here's the CB400 without the Vetter

Well the endless parade of rain clouds stretching out into the horizon on the forecast convinced me it was time to put the bike up for winter. I'm planning to do a lot of work on it this winter so I knew I'd have to get it stored away and taken apart.

The first thing I did was removed the Vetter Windjammer fairing. It just doesn't seem to fit the bike right, and I don't think this model was ever meant for a 400cc bike. My guess is they took one off a CB750 and used the same mounts.

This rat's nest of wires makes no sense. Must Fix!

Anyway, getting Vetter off was a snap, but afterwards I had to look at the jumble of wires.

This poor bike has seen its share of ham-handed amature electricians over the years. It has wires that go nowhere, and some that have four or five joints in just a few inches. I've found a number of wires that don't go anywhere at all -- they were just taped together and folded under a panel.

One of my major tasks this winter is trying to return things to the original wiring diagram while replacing the front headlight and turn signals. Should be fun.

Here's how I drained the tank.

Next I drained off the gas out of the tank and removed the tank and seat, then put the bike down in the basement where it will be out of any flood waters and relatively climate controlled.

This winter, the bike will be a series of little restoration projects and if all goes well, it will run better next spring. The tank has a dent and a number of rust spots on the outside (no rust inside!). I'll try my hand a bondo and see about getting it painted up for next year. I have a bunch of ideas for colors, but Amy wants to keep it blue.

Full Circle

Twenty years ago I sold my old 1978 Honda Hawk CB400A motorcycle.

Lindsay and I with my new motorcycle

This week I bought a 1978 CB400A Honda motorcycle. It's Hondamatic!

I stumbled across it on Craigslist two weeks ago. It was for sale in a town 10 miles north of here as the crow flies. Of course, since the logging roads are closed with gates, actually driving there takes the better part of two hours.

Yet the price was right - about half what similar bikes were going for -- and it was running. I told Amy and she said yes.

It has cosmetic damage and a Vetter Windjammer faring. Not sure I'll keep the faring, but if I take it off I'll have to track down the parts to reconstruct the front light bucket and turn signals. We'll see how ambitious I get this winter. In the meantime, it sits in my garage. Sometimes, I go out and just look at it to make sure it's real. It's been a long time coming.

Lindsay has dibs on it .... someday

It's Hondamatic

Honda Hawk - Two Gears, 400 cc - FUN

It had been a hard year. I had quit college in 1988, hooked up with the Girlfriend From Hell and made bad decision after bad decision. By November I was in Tacoma, staying in a friend's apartment while I looked for work as a recording engineer. There were no jobs and no jobs that paid. Finally, I was at an interview at Ironwood Studios when the guy interviewing me set me straight.

"First," he said. "You'll never get a job as recording engineer that pays." There were tons of kids living in their basements willing to work for free just to be around the music. They'd push brooms and learn the business from the inside. My trade school knowledge was fine, but the kid who hung out night after night would eventually get the nod. "Second," he said. "Go back to college. Get a degree in anything, it doesn't matter. A four year college degree shows you can stick with something for four years. It will give you an advantage in every job interview and no one will ask you what your degree is in."

Back at my buddy John's apartment, I told him and his roommate about what the guy at Ironwood had said. His roommate Pete jumped in. "Go back to college," he said. "College is the only place where you can bee poor and still have fun."

That was it. I drove from Tacoma straight over to WSU and signed up for classes scheduled to start in January. I crashed on a friends couch for a few days and got a crappy apartment. I was back. WSU called it a "leave of absence" since I only missed only one semester.

Money was tight. I took a bunch of jobs to pay the bills and put tuition on my credit card hoping that financial aid would pay things back. Eventually, I got a check and paid my bills. I had about $500 leftover.

This bike is identical to mine - right down to the engine guard.

I had hung out at motorcycle shops for years. I would sit on bikes, ask questions.  I think I stopped into Laplante Cycle on the way to My Office bar. Inside was the new bikes -- A Transalp, Pacific Coast, GB500 -- cool stuff,  but way out of my price range. Out front stood a line of old bikes. It was orange, and as I threw a leg over, the dealer came out and said "It's an automatic."

An automatic motorcycle? I'd never heard of such a thing. He got the key and I took it for a ride. It was April, sunny and the road had a silver glare to it that I still remember. I had never ridden a real motorcycle and I was scared as hell, but this was a blast. This was a sign that 1989 was going to be a better year. That I had turned it around.

I wrote him a check and picked up a Nolan helmet and rode the thing home. It was Awesome!

I had buddies at the newspaper who were motorcycle riders. They made fun of my "scooter" but I had a blast on that thing. It had a crack in the front fender that rattled at speed and it leaked oil from some unknown place. Other than that it started and ran like a dream.

At the end of the school year, I borrowed my Step Father's truck and took it home. That summer I worked for Community Action Program in The Dalles. Rode it to work just about every day. The Gorge roads were perfect for motorcycles, but the winds buffeted the light bike around. I had a rubber goldfish keychain. I wore cowboy boots. I gave girls rides around town and through the hills above Lyle.

Best.
Summer.
Ever.

This orange bike looks exactly like my Honda Hawk

The next year at WSU I rode my bike until the now came, then stored it out back. At the end of the school year my big plan was to go up to Alaska and work in the Cannery. Make a bunch of money for school and for a new motorcycle. I had my sights set on a Harley 883 Hugger.

To get to Alaska, I had to pay my own airfare. That meant coming up with cash at the end of the school year. So I sold my Honda -- I still cringe just writing it -- sold it to a roommate who was graduating.

Alaska turned out to be a bust. I barely made enough to return to school. None was leftover for motorcycle payments. My first motorcycle, turned out to be my last.

That was 1990 - twenty years ago.

First Times

My first time with a motorcycle and I got my finger's burned.
It was back in Turnersville, NJ and I was about eight years old. Jimmy Davys was a friend of my dads who came by on his motorcycle. If I remember right, it was a White AMF Harley. It was cool. He was cool in a 1970s kind of way. He was back from Viet Nam, wearing a white wifebeater and no helmet. I was told to stay away from the bike, but touched the tailpipe and burned my fingers. Got blisters and everything.

I was a big Evel Knievel fan back then, and my man rode a Harley scrambler. (check out this cool inforgraphic about EK) I had the wind up stunt cycle of my own that I jumped over the dirt Grand Canyons in the back yard.

My dad stoked my motorcycle dreams by getting me a Roadmaster bike with shocks and motorcycle seat.
 I was cool. The bike weighed a ton and looked and rode like hell when the BMX bikes came out a few years later, but for awhile, I was the king of the neighborhood. We jumped the heck out of that thing on the mounds of dirt between the houses.

Bikes have been substitutes for motorcycles for generations. I know I wasn't the first to pretend that there was a motor powering my lead weight bike instead of my little legs.

My brother and sister's friends all had dirt bikes when we moved to Washington State. It was the late 70s and  the motocross dudes were the demigods of Klickitat county.

My first time on a motorized two-wheeler was on a scooter. A Honda Cub to be exact. The Cub and Supercub (and later the Passport) was the vehicle that made the Honda corperation. They are still making them and at 60 million and counting, it is the most mass-produced motorized vehicle in the world.

My stepfather - Lester - bought the Honda Passport in 1982 for my mom. We were living in The Dalles and Lester was a impulse buyer. He had just bought a CB900 for himself and he wanted to teach her to ride. She hated motorcycles.

On her first lesson, we took the Honda up to the parking lot of the nearby church. She went round and round on the scooter and was doing pretty good until he told her to shift into second. It's an auto transmission, so shifting is easy, but it gave her a little jolt. She tensed up and thereby squeezed the throttle. She started going round and round like a 78 record on 45, unable to stop until she finally went flying off and into the bushes.

That was the last time she ever rode it. My brother Chuck and I loved the thing and rode it all over town. It was a blast and I wish I still had it. Would love to get a used one, or even by a new Symba -- which is a brand new Cub built by a company in Taiwan that used to make them. (See TeamSymba for more. )

I'm still a sucker for Hondas and Harleys and all this lead to the foundation of the my motorcycle dreams.