Four-Closure

FOUR-CLOSURE

RESURRECTION OF A ROUTE 66 SURVIVOR

WHEN CYCLE WORLD READERS LAST SAW THIS 1970 HONDA CB750 KO, IT WAS limping its way across the Mojave Desert, gulping a quart of oil every 100 miles courtesy of a badly cracked crankcase. A year-and-a-half later, it’s been restored to better-than-showroom condition.

For “West by CB750” (CW, May, 1993) then-Managing Editor Mitch Boehm and I flew to Illinois, bought a pair of CBs and rode back to California on the remnants of fabled old Route 66. Fifteen hundred miles into the trip, my turquoise Four tossed its chain-a common vice in early CBs-which promptly wadded up around the countershaft sprocket and took out a chunk of the lower crankcase. A whacking great dollop of metal epoxy stemmed most of the resultant oil flow, allowing us to complete the expedition, albeit in an oil-stained state.

In the hierarchy of collectible CB750s, KO models—sold in 1969 and early 1970-are the Holy Grail. Especially sought after are the so-called “sand-cast” KOs of early ’69, rushed into production with sand-cast aluminum engine cases. After 7400 Fours had been built, the production line switched to die-cast cases. Today, a good original sand-cast CB750 can go for as much as $7000. Mine, a die-cast 1970 KO built in late ’69, would be worth about $5000 restored.

Through the CB750 Preservation Society, I was put in touch with Kurt Winter, owner of Valley Cycles (7242 Reseda Blvd., Reseda, CA 91335; 818/343-6073). Winter, who runs a 90,000-mile CB750, works on all manner of bikes but specializes in Honda Fours. He pulled the engine out of the frame, unbolted the lower case and sent it off to an aluminum welder. The frame was stripped, bead-blasted, then powder-coated black. Because my Four’s original plastic airbox and sidecovers were cracked, its mufflers scratched and marred by battery fluid, its fuel tank faded, its spokes and rims corroded, we decided to replace these with new components. A relatively easy task, it turns out, as Winter merely sauntered down to the local Honda dealer, bellied up to the parts counter and ordered the parts, along with shocks, hand levers, various nuts and bolts, control cables, etc. Try that with your Velocette GTP. One item not available from Honda is the K0 seat. Jeff Lloyd of Dream Merchant (P.O. Box 4912, Thousand Oaks, CA 91359; 805/493-0773) came to the rescue with a high-quality repro.

Winter expertly bolted everything back together, applied elbow grease and Simichrome and capped off the project with hard-to-fmd NOS tank and sidecover emblems graciously supplied by the CB750 club’s Barry Sommer. The top end went untouched-at 12,000 miles, Winter declared it “barely broken-in.”

The result is a brand-new, 25-year-old CB750, a bike that starts at the touch of a button, looks great, sounds fabulous and easily outruns everyday traffic, the same traits that made the CB750 such a resounding success a quarter of a century ago.

What of my KO’s partner

in the Route 66 crossing? Well, first its owner quit Cycle World to work for Motorcyclist, worse, he sold his candy-red CB750, a genuine, low-mileage 1969 model. Obviously a man of dubious decision-making abilities. -David Edwards