There and Back Again

Drove up to Sonoma today to pick up a 1974 CB450 and a 70' CL100 for my buddy. Got the 450 for 350 bucks from a guy I know. Nice guy. He went to pickup a cb500 from an old timer out in the valley, got there and went to load it and the man told him he was going to take the cb500, he would also have to take the cb450. The CB500 itself wasn't frozen, it had compression. But it had 500 dollars in backfees at the DMV. The 450 is completely out of the system. Lucky me. I called and checked just to make sure. I'm cynical. Anyways, Ron put it up on craigslist for 400, got a bunch of offers, I was second. First guy flaked and I ended up getting it. The engine is frozen, going to need a rebuild. Parts are cheap as hell. I plan on starting it once the CB125 is off of the bench.

CB450 all loaded up.

Picked up the CL100 a bit after getting the 450. That was up 20 miles in Santa Rosa. Guy we bought it from was a total hipster. Lived in an old-style victorian home that a hippie rented out to him. Huge property. He led us into the backyard where he had about 25 old school mopeds and scooters. Looks like he too had an obsession. Anyways, he gave us the CL100 with an extra seized up engine, new chain, two extra speedos and a variety of other parts for 125 dollars. The CL100 had good compression but needed a carb rebuild and a new gas tank, it had cheesed through on the bottom. Good thing there is only one carburetor!

The 450 and 100 all loaded in

What would happen next is by far the best part of the trip. Up 10 miles north from Santa Rosa is Windsor, where this old guy was selling a pristine 71' scrambler gas tank, side panels and seat cover. Talked to him on the phone, nice guy. He was asking 175 for all the parts but I got him down to 150. We pulled up to his garage. Dude had a 3 car garage full of fucking honda parts. About 35 mufflers hanging from the ceiling, carberutors, engines and tires everywhere. Man he had it all. We got there at 11:30 and ended up leaving at 2:30. He was a talker. He said he had restored over 1,000 motorcycles in his lifetime. Mostly Honda bikes. He had about 8 bikes in his garage, from dirt bikes to little monkey bikes. He was a nice fucking guy. He just started throwing extra parts at us. Gave me an entire front fork assembly for the 125! Also gave my buddy a new carberutor, throttle cable, headlight assembly with a new bulb, petcock, and a bunch of other shit.

No pitting on the tubes. Looks like I don't need to order ones off ebay!

When we got back, we decided it would be cool to throw on the new gas tank and other goodies onto the bike to see what it would look like. Man that CL100 looked sweet.

Clean.

CL100 Goodies

All in all it was a pretty damned good trip. I got the CB450 for a good price and my buddy scored. Not to mention I got the front fork assembly for my 125. The lower legs on it were pretty dirty but nothing that a little brake cleaner and polish wouldn't fix. That guy definitely made the trip up there completely worth it.

74' CB450