Thank god for breakers. After a long search for a suitable 125 I finally settled on a stolen/recovered Honda CB125T. She was in a bit of a state, which explained the £100 price tag. A 1986 example needing new petrol tank, forks, front wheel and set of clocks. I was not sure if the frame was bent, the breaker was not willing to comment, which came as no great surprise, so I took my chances.
After stripping her down to the frame and engine, I was relieved to find that there were no signs of cracked paint or bent tubes. I did find that the exhaust had been flattened on one side and that both silencers turned out to be more rust than metal. So, a newish exhaust was added to the shopping list.
Several breakers were visited in the search for bits. Whilst this was going on I set the engine up and tidied up the rest of the machine. Nothing of a very expensive nature was revealed, even the rear shocks appeared sound. The front wheel proved the hardest part to find secondhand. I had to give up on that and have it straightened out professionally. I was a bit dubious about this, but the chap reckoned that it was as strong as new. Never had one fail, he assured me. Apart from a few corroded nuts, the bike was a cinch to work on.
I went to the great expense of buying a proper Honda manual, which undoubtedly helped. By the time I finished buying a new set of tyres, the total cost was £260. Not bad, I must admit, for a machine than ran perfectly (it had done 12456 miles) and looked lovely (after I'd resprayed the whole thing British racing green).
The first week was great fun, exploring the limits of performance and handling. It soon became obvious that the engine needed a strong dose of revs to bring out all of its twelve horsepower. For such a lowly powered unit, the OHC twin was ridiculously reliant on revs. The engine had started out in more powerful de-restricted form and had obviously been throttled back in some obscure way that robbed as much power from the lower end as the top of the rev scale.
The only good thing that could be said for this de-restriction was that having started out with a chassis designed to take 80mph speeds, in 12hp form the 310lbs could do little to perturb the running gear. Even when hauled over so far that the centrestand prong buried itself in the tarmac the bike did not display any suicidal tendencies. True, a bit of effort needed to be applied to the narrow bars for flicking through closely spaced curves, but I was more than willing to put up with that in return for the flat out stability.
The two stroke-like need to be revved was matched by a consumption of spark plugs that would have put a Kawasaki triple to shame. I could offer no explanation for the 500 mile failure rate, but forewarned was forearmed. I might have offered the opinion that the bike was running rich, the plugs certainly looked black enough, but fuel was averaging an exceptional 90mpg even though I was caning the device with no thought for anything other than extracting maximum speed. It was the only way to stay up with general road traffic out of town.
The front disc brake was one of those on-off devices that are the bane of many a motorcyclist's life. The bits for mine came off a 1984 bike, so were probably on their last legs to begin with. I had not invested in Goodridge hose, so perhaps the sponginess and lack of feel was down to that. The result was that for several seconds absolutely nothing seemed to happen, then the front wheel howled and screamed as the calipers finally persuaded the pads to lock on to the disc, accompanied by much shuddering of the front forks. This was kind of OK in the dry but pretty horrendous in the wet.
I had fitted some decent Michelin tyres so the skids were easy enough to control by backing off on the brake, but there were circumstances where I had no room to back off which resulted in the front tyre sliding away from under me. The time it really hurt was when the hot engine landed on my leg! It was easy to see how the CB ended up in the breakers, although in the few crashes I managed the bike was easier to kick straight than for the body pains to fade away.
There had to be a better way, thought I. There was. I bought a CB250K4 front end from someone who was breaking a whole bike. The forks had been renovated with stronger springs and new seals - in fact, they were in much better shape than the much newer CB125's! The most positive feature of the K4's front end was its large TLS drum brake. As this was originally designed for the 100mph K1 I had no qualms about fitting it to my much slower machine.
The drum brake was a revelation after the disc, both powerful and sensitive it instilled confidence even in the worst of road conditions. However, the K4 forks were longer than stock, having a curious effect on handling, making it want to flop into bends, especially at low speeds. Stability was still fine, so I decided I could live with the handling deficiencies in favour of the brilliant front brake.
What I had not noticed, alas, was that there were hairline cracks in the drum. This only came to light about 3500 miles later when the front end suddenly felt like it was falling apart. I was only doing 15mph at the time, even so it took a two feet down, handlebar wrestling approach to come to a safe halt. There was a large crack running through the drum and loads of other tiny broken seams waiting to join in. After 18 years of abuse the aluminium had finally fatigued. It was back to the old forks and discs after that experience.
To most bikers 70mph is dead slow, but the revvy nature of the engine made the Honda fun to ride on anything other than motorways (where you need at least 90mph to avoid instant death). I soon found that in narrow, twisty lanes I could buzz much larger machines. Annoyed owners would whack open their throttles in horror, running wide around the bends. I would sneak inside them and dodge forward until on the slightest straight I would be left eating their exhausts. I found all this hilarious and longed to tell them how little I had spent on the Honda just to depress them even further.
OK, I will admit that as well as eating spark plugs, the chains and sprockets were consumed with remarkable rapidity given that it was a mere 12hp plaything - I couldn’t believe the amount of adjustments I had to make and mere 6000 mile life. Maybe something was slightly out of alignment, but everything certainly looked and felt OK. Tyres were much better, doing at least twice that mileage until they needed replacement.
After two years of use I had added over 27000 miles to the mileometer. The engine whirred and clattered away just as it had when I'd acquired the bike. It needed valve adjustments every 2000 miles and oil changes at half that mileage, but otherwise could be rigorously neglected.
The bike ended up where it began its life with me - in the breakers. On one of my few brief forays on to the motorway, I became trapped between a coach and artic which were having fun trying to overtake each other. So much fun that when the bus tried to cut up the lorry he failed to notice this struggling little Honda under its bumper. The back end was knocked sideways, the machine and I flipped over. The Honda bounced off the crash barrier back into the slow lane where the artic finished off the wrecking job by running over my pride and joy. I was luckier, I just rolled and rolled along the hard shoulder, out of harm’s way, until my momentum was absorbed by the crash barrier. This turned out to be an extremely painful way of coming to a stop. I was rushed to hospital in a blaring ambulance, semi-conscious. Broken arm and leg, a massive dose of gravel rash and a neck sprained so badly it was only a fraction away from taking my spine out and turning me into a vegetable.
The hospital staff treated me with utter contempt. If I was stupid enough to ride a motorcycle I could expect little more than to write myself off! I was amazed and profoundly shocked at their attitude but it has not put me off motorcycles.
P Browning