Honda cb750
December 24, 2013
A photographer friend and fellow Bonneville owner, Doug McGoldrick, sent me a photo of a 2nd motorcycle he recently purchased. It’s a Honda cb750 that has been obviously modified into a cafe racer. I love the old-school paint and graphics obviously inspired by Gulf auto racing car graphics.
This reminded me of the Honda cb750 that I owned for a year or so before I traded it in on my 2008 Bonneville. It was a 1981 model that a friend and co-worker had sitting in his garage. It didn’t run when I got it from him, and I had to put in a new battery, stator, and a few other things to get it running. Once it was running, I used it to go get my license, and run around town on. It wasn’t very reliable, and wasn’t what I really wanted, so I traded it in on the new Bonneville Black in June of 2008, at Motor Cycle Center, Villa Park, IL.
Nice Honda. It was my 1980 Honda 650CB that led me to purchase my Bonneville. The Triumph was really the only bike that had a similar styling (I know that thinking is backwards) and I wanted a bike that had at least the same performance. I love my Bonnie way more than the Honda I drove while in college, but I still think fondly of the Honda. Mine had spoke wheels (just like my ’07 Bonnie) and it was reliable as could be mechanically, excepting electrical issues. I think mine sat outside for too many years with a cracked fuse panel cover (it sits on the behind the instrument cluster) before I bought it. It was the electrical problems that made me let it go after 6 years of use.