A year and a half later I decided it was time to buy my wife a bike. Found a little 71 cb500 inline four in need of some attention. IE a full resto. Not a gem, but certainly repairable.
Here is a pic I shot of that bike the day after we got it home.

The previous owner purchased it new in 71. The mileage was a very low 5k. I could tell it had fallen over several times. Not when moving thankfully. The steering lock was broken off and the forks had impacted the tank on both sides. The bars were bent, signals broken, pipes dented, speedo and tach DOA, cheesy paint job on the tank, etc… I immediately set about making it a sweet little café racer. Off came the side covers, air box, battery tray and electronics. The paint was stripped and the tank repaired, sort of. I eliminated the side covers and relocated all of the electronics to a hand built tray under the seat. The frame tabs were all cut off and ground flush with the frame tubes. The dead battery was scrapped in favor of a custom built assembly of remote control car batteries. 14.4 volts and 70 amps. Everything fits nicely under the seat now. The battery packs won’t run the starter, but this is a Honda. The slightest downward force on the kick starter and it fires right up. The modifications leave the rear frame triangle open and visible. It gives it that ultra-light racer look.

My wife has never ridden as anything other than a passenger. She was slightly intimidated by the size of the machine. We were going to take the motorcycle class together to get her up to speed the safest way possible. In the meantime I decided to get her a slightly smaller learner bike.
The most beautiful little cb350 you may ever see.

This little beauty was ridden around the block a couple of times over the next year. I kept it clean and ready to ride. I just never rode it.

Almost a year to the day later I got a phone call. My brother-in-law had a friend who was moving and needed to sell his 1978 BMW R100/7. The last year for the slash bikes. He called to see if I would list it on eBay for him. I told him I would rather just buy it. “Give me two weeks to come up with the cash.” The time had come to sell the cb350. I thought it was a great deal. The 350 and some junk I had laying around the garage for a 1000cc BMW.


It was almost two weeks later to the day that I took possession of the BMW. I started riding to work every day. Rain or shine. Hot or cold. As long as it wasn’t icy, I was on the bike. I was able to ride to work 125 of the next 130 days. The five missing days were due to extreme weather or illness. I added a few other modern conveniences to make her more suited to the daily commute. Vintage Krauser hard sided saddle bags,(not pictured), chrome tail rack, a new Slipstreamer wind shield, dual 55watt halogen lights on the front forks, Stebel Nautilus air horn mounted between the front down tubes. The air horn is scary loud. Exactly as it should be.

One morning on the way to work I met up with a cage pilot in a new Mini Cooper. We raced from light to light for the next 10 miles or so. It was exhilarating, the best way to wake up in the morning. At one light we both smashed on the gas and went screaming down the road. I was shifting hard and he was way behind. Once he began to catch me there was nothing I could do. He flew past me in a rush. As I rolled off the gas I heard a strange thack thack thack thack. I thought maybe the racing had removed some carbon and seated the valves a little deeper, causing my tappets to start clicking. It was not to be however. My neighbor Greg is an ace mechanic. Check out his website--Pontiacengines.net--I had him over to evaluate the problem. “Sounds like a rod bearing,” came the word from the master. I knew he was right. I just didn’t want to believe it. Greg builds race engines in his garage. Unreal assortments of machines greet you when the garage door comes up. Greg is able to build racing engines beyond NASCAR standards. His proficiency with his dynamic crank balancing machine brings tears to the eyes of many jealous racing competitors.

The next week or two were an education. It was nice to have a top notch mechanic providing the know-how. We pulled the heads, barrels, rods, pistons, etc… The rod bearings were indeed wasted. They had distributed loads of copper onto the crank and into the engine.

The BMW got a mild porting and polishing. Gregs specialty is full on bad ass race type engines. My needs were more moderate. We balanced connecting rods and pistons, honed barrels, new rings, fresh valve job and rod re-sizing, “custom” oil pressure gauge fed off of the original dummy light sender. The gauge is still held to the bars with a rubber band.

Flushed with our success on the BMW, it only made sense to tackle the Norton. It seems that history is repeating itself. I buy a BMW and then rebuild the Norton. Having that reliable daily rider makes the prospect of Norton restoration a reality.