Hello. My name's Ron, and I am a SOHC addict.
I am 55, live in a small town in northern Colorado, and have been riding Hondas since 1972, when a friend of mine abandoned his '69 CL350 twin with me. I rode it for years until I eventually rode it into the ground; what a great little machine it was! Over the years there were hard times when that little bike was my only means of transportation; in fact, you haven't lived until you've ridden a CL350 down out of the mountains in the middle of a Colorado blizzard! I'm still thawing out from that one! When it quit running, I had big plans to restore it, and I even disassembled it in preparation for the job, but one thing after the other happened and, like many other things in life, I let it slip away. I moved to California and left the bike in a friend's warehouse in Boulder, figuring I could retrieve it when I came back... but I stayed away a lot longer than I'd planned, and when I returned to Colorado years later, the warehouse had become a mattress factory, and the bike was long gone. Too bad. I miss the little guy; we sure went through some rough times together...
My next bike came just a couple of years ago when I discovered a '74 CB550-4 amidst the dust and clutter in another friend's garage, and was once again bitten by the two-wheeled bug. He sold it to me for something like $150. It's in pretty dodgey shape, but the parts are all there (though someone stuck a '500 engine in it at some point), and I've decided to restore it in memory of my old buddy CL. With no plans at this point to return to California, I have completely disassembled the bike, had the frame parts sandblasted and re-painted, and found a nice, low milage '550 engine to stick in it. I'm using as many of the original parts as I can, and have purchased new ones as needed. My intention is to make it look better than it did when it left the factory. Wish me luck...
I plan to post my progress in the forums; please feel free to tell me what I am doing wrong and (hopefully) what I've done right. This is a new area for me, about which I know very little. As a shadetree mechanic, I have worked on my share of automobiles (mainly VW Bugs and Corvairs, though that's another story), but haven't done much with bikes. So as I stumble my way through this restoration, I hope y'all will be available to answer my questions... some of which will, I reckon, seem obvious and/or stupid to you experts out there. But my sights are set high, I am serious and full of sh ambition, and I aim to see it through to the finish.
'Nuff said. Thanks in advance for your help and commentaries.
SohRon
