Motorcycles were my real passion in my younger days. From the age of seventeen to the time I went abroad at the age of thirty or so, I continually had a bike to ride. As in my approach to cars, my philosophy was always to ride as cheaply as possible; this meant changing bikes regularly so they didn’t need a lot of maintenance to keep them running.
Anyone who thinks a motorcycle is cheap to run has never owned one over 125 cc. Fact is, bikes cost more than cars to run, especially big bikes. They go through tires at an alarming rate, they need chains and sprockets, they need those four carbs synced. It all adds up to a fair amount of coin to do so if you don’t have a shop to do it yourself. It was fairly easy on older stuff, but as the bikes started to get more complex, it became impossible. In fact, ownership costs were the main reason I didn’t keep riding after I returned from overseas. However, without further adieu, let’s start with Bikes of A Lifetime, Vol.1.
1975 Honda 550 SuperSport:
Looking back, I think my parents had a deep feeling of guilt depositing me in a small logging town on the east coast of Vancouver Island. I was a city kid and I did all kinds of things that country kids found strange, like read books. Anyway, there wasn’t a lot to do in my town of 1982 except smoke dope, drink beer and break into houses. I wasn’t too interested in any of those things, so I started working on my mom and dad to allow me to have a motorcycle to ride. It took about a year until they finally gave in, and I started looking in the paper. After a couple of weeks, saw a 1975 Honda 550 SuperSport for $700. A quick look showed 35,000 miles on it; the cosmetics were not great but the mechanical side was really good. I bought the bike and took it home in my truck.
Really, my dad should not have let me have the thing as it was way too powerful for a new rider. The first time I opened it up I nearly had a heart attack; even the 50 hp or so it had made it very fast for a new rider. With the Kerker header it had and the K&N air intake it was probably closer to 60 hp, and the bike was less than 450 lbs wet. It went like stink for a seventeen year old, and I was in nirvana!
I got my learner’s license and passed my test in no time, like six weeks. One sunny afternoon, I was screaming down a country road with a 60 km/h limit at more than double that when I came to a curve which led to a dip and a bridge. There was also a gravel road entering at the curve and there was gravel all over the road. When I saw it, I panicked and grabbed the front brake, which promptly locked. I lost control and laid down the bike, which I had learned to do in motocross. I jumped off and when I opened my eyes, I was careening through the air. I landed on my right shoulder (and I still feel it today, all those years later) and started to skid on the gravel. Then something caused my new launch in the air; I then landed on my back in the swampy bank of the creek. The bike was next to me, relatively upright. A guy in a Honda 750 came and got me up. Miraculously, I only had some road rash on my right arm, as I had been wearing full leathers. We dug the dirt out of the cooling fins and it started right up. Other than the aforementioned road rash, all I had was a bell-ringer headache. I was lucky and learned a lesson: SLOW DOWN!
I kept that bike for two years and developed a lot of respect for it. Not matter how hard I flogged it (and it was maxi-flog almost the whole time) it never failed. It ran flawlessly and was impeccably well built. It started a life long love of all things Honda for me. The bike was full good engineering. For example, I broke the oil pan when I over-tightened the drain plug (a real kid thing to do!). The entire pan could be replaced without taking the engine out. The oil filter housing was finned, negating the need for an oil cooler and external oil lines, something Honda has always avoided, quite correctly so. I kept it for two seasons and got the itch for something else, so I sold it to a friend, who proceeded to flog it even harder than I did for another two years. Last I saw, it was at a used bike shop waiting for the next youngster to wail the living tar out of it. Exceptional engineering on that bike, and I will always respect that a lot.
1979 Suzuki GS850G:
One of my major complaints about the CB550 was constantly replacing chains. The chains of those days were not of the O-ring variety and didn’t last long. Master links are downright dangerous in my opinion, so changing a chain required swing-arm removal, a major pain in the butt. At the time, 1984, the bike magazines were raving how good a bike the Suzuki GS850G was as an all around motorcycle. There were loads of leftovers around so used ones were dirt cheap. A 1979 model with 25,000 km on it was soon located, complete with new tires and a tune up. I paid all of $600 for it and rode it away.
For those not in the know, these Suzuki motors were absolutely bullet-proof. This is because the crank ran in five, get this, roller bearings. The oil pressure on these things was only like 20 PSI and even with poor maintenance these things would run for years. The two valve per cylinder heads had shims-under-buckets, and regular oil changes meant the valves practically never had to be adjusted. The shaft-drive system was strong like bull but manageable if you knew how to deal with it; i.e. never chop the throttle in a corner! The saddle was long and well padded and the bike was tall, making for excellent leg room. A low bar went on, saddle bags added and with a big tank bag, you could go anywhere on it. Looking back, if I were to find a clean example, I would snap it up, it was such a good, overall bike.
That’s just what we did. My girlfriend and went all over on that bike. It went to Banff, California and many other places I can’t recall. This was not a light weight bike; full of gas it weighed in at over 600 lbs. This meant that changing directions was a rather slow affair, especially with the 19” front wheel. With 8o hp it was actually slower than the CB550F but it made up for it in straight line stability. The bike ate up miles and was very comfortable because it had plenty of legroom and torque. The fact that there was no chain also made it easy to life with. I kept the bike for a year but I never really liked it; it was just so darned large and heavy and the controls were real he-man stuff. Besides, I was making some real money by this point so I wanted a small, light little bike to roar around with. I sold the 850 to my buddy, who learned to ride on it. We took a trip to California on it and he sold it to a friend of his, who rode it for several years. These bikes were exceptionally well built and tough bikes, but as I have said before, I cannot stand success!
My only ever new bike is the subject of next week’s BOAL, so anyone who is actually reading this at the height of summer will have to wait!
Keep ’em coming, Len.
I had a Honda 550 of my own: an ’83 Nighthawk. Actually my dad had it, but I put close to 20k miles on it. The ‘hawk had a twin cam 16v engine. Finned oil filter cover, but also a factory external oil cooler. Honda got over the external oil line thing by ’83!
I’ve read that the ‘hawk and the Euro market CBX550 had an appetite for cam chain tensioners, but by the time my dad got rid of it with 40k miles, no problems there. 2000 mile oil changes might have helped. What the oil changes didn’t help was an increasingly finicky gear box: toward the end, it was getting easy to miss the shift into 2nd or 3rd, sometimes it would even pop out of gear at high rpm. Not good.
It was a pretty good bike overall, though w/ the 19 in front wheel, it steered slowly and heavily. The brakes were only so-so. But the engine was great, never burning oil, always started easily, and hydraulic valve lifters were a great feature. It really came on the pipe above 6k and ran hard and loud, but very smoothly, right up to the 10k redline.
Aside from the gearbox problem I mentioned, it had one significant quirk: a lot of extended highway riding would literally boil the water right out of the battery. Keep an eye on the water level once a month or so and you’d be OK. Must’ve been a bad voltage regulator, but not so bad that my cheap dad would bother replacing it.
The biggest weakness wasn’t mechanical but rather the small fuel tank (3.4gal). The bike’s mpg wasn’t helped by the big Fulmer clear fairing I ran most of the time. 100 miles on a tank was about all the farther you’d dare run it. One time I rode about 535 miles from Burlington, ND to Sioux Falls, SD in one day. Due to my choice of deserted 2 lanes (plenty of those in the Dakotas) and not wanting to run out of gas in the middle of the prairie, I stopped a lot. Like 8 or 10 times that day. This was before pay at the pump. Long day, and half deaf courtesy of a Mac 4-into-1 pipe.
Those bikes look like a ton of fun. My favorite bike was a shaft-driven 700cc Honda Shadow that used a similar drivetrain to the Goldwing. My previous experience until then was a Kawasaki 440 and a 250cc Honda dirtbike. I had a second-generation CB750 but it was stolen before I got to register it… I bought a Datsun 280ZX with the insurance money. Unfortunately, I had to stop riding after I lost the sight in my left eye a few years ago.
I miss it. Enjoy it while you can.
The Shadow was a V-Twin and the Gold Wing a flat-four. Other than both having shaft drive, I don’t see many similarities between the two.
I had a CBX500F2, with a rattly cam-chain. Reasonable enough bike, but mine would never rev out properly. Couldn’t find the issue, and eventually sold it. At least I sold it before I needed to get into the inboard ventilated front discs, which had the reputation of being a bit of a headache.
Friend had a GS850, and I can confirm everything you say here. Big, heavy, bulletproof and a real easy ride. At the time I lived in Swindon, the roundabout capital of the world, and it was a great bike to just flop into roundabouts and flop out again. Sadly he got t-boned and his tibia got jammed into those engine fins. The bike was mendable, but he went to four wheels after that.
WTG good story and well written as usual. I also had an 850 and echo all you had to say. Mine wound up being the major part of the trike that we built in the classroom EV story. I know there are folks who swear by those big heavy bikes but I am not one of them.
I had a 1975 honda cb550 as my first bike in 2001. Only had 15k miles on it. Turned out to be the most fun bike I ever owned (it was followed by R6s, R1s, etc.). I loved the sounds it made and the fact that you could run it out on the street without losing your license.
I have never seen the need for a bike that can do 10 second quarter miles. They are just so heavy and hard to ride they are no fun at all. Besides, such antics just cost you a pile of money in tickets, insurance and points on your licence. The lightweight bikes I have had have been by far the most fun.
I agree. Light weight and low center of gravity made for a fun ride. My Triumph Daytona 500 fit that description. I think that it was capable of mid 14-sec quarter miles. Although it wasn’t a rice rocket, it wanted to rip the bars out of your hands on a full-throttle run. And the sound, even with stock exhaust, was an aural orgasm. My two riding buddies had a 750 Honda and a Kawasaki Z1. We all had Magura cafe racer bars. My bike was manageable in Washington, DC traffic, but theirs were a real real chore to ride. I’d give up sex for a ’69 Bonneville. Hey, wait a minute, I’ve already done that! Do I have a Bonneville? Nooo.
I think you’ll have to give up a whole lot more than sex for a ’69 Bonnie, Kevin.