The heap ran, but only just. £995 the advert had advised, plus a lot of stuff about its future as a classic. As a long time devotee of the UMG I thought fifty quid was about right. Especially as a test ride wasn't allowed. It needed new tyres and a chain! The MOT was eleven months old. The owner looked decent enough and his name was in the logbook. I wanted something from the sixties with a bit of style that I could mildly mod to suit my tastes.
The bigger twins were even more expensive and a touch too powerful for my liking - well, I had commuted to work on a Raleigh moped (the one with the engine on the back wheel). I didn’t buy it then because I needed to think about the deal and didn't think anyone was going to come along in a hurry with that kind of money for such an old dog.
Two weeks later I phoned up with a £200 offer. No! Three weeks later the owner phoned me and said I could have it for £600. No! A week later I offered £250. No! Finally we settled on £375. We both thought we'd been ripped off so it must’ve been about right. The truth of the matter, I later found out, was that the guy had bought an immaculate example plus my bike for spares. He'd sold the former for £1500 (at a loss) and tried to make up the money on my bike. Oh well!
There was lots to do on the cosmetic side. Patching, welding, cleaning, polishing... many a happy weekend and evening in my workshop followed. It was better than watching TV, chatting the same old stuff with the wife or playing with the brats. I did no-one else any harm and got a lot of joy out of renovating the hack.
The engine was left alone, save for new oil, spark plugs and cleaning up the points. The clock read 39000 miles and that sort of matched the condition of the machine, given that it'd been stored away for a while. The most difficult job was patching up the silencers, they were almost rotted all the way through. A couple of nights with the welding torch and a tin of heat resistant matt black paint sufficed.
Overall effect was of a four or five year old Jap - worn, sure, but a long way from a real rat. Total cost under 500 notes, so not that bad a deal - as long as the engine kept going for a few thousand miles. It was a reluctant starter, finicky on the choke, probably down to worn carbs, needed a good five minutes to warm up before taking off. Because the only alternative to a stalled engine was lots of rev, I began to worry that the oil wouldn't reach the cams and I'd have a shot engine in no time at all. An old Honda hassle.
Performance was as good as most learners. Acceleration was quite nippy, certainly annoyed the cagers who thought it was just some old vintage relic that you had to pedal. Nice to blow their egos! I didn't put more than 70mph on the clock, though the engine felt willing to keep going. There was quite a buzz in the foot-pegs by then and the engine screamed away merrily.
It felt like a real fight with the elements! Helped along by the usual weird riding position from that era. Flat bars that would've made a Vincent owner proud but foot pegs far enough forward for the mismatch to throw up some agonizing pains in my thighs after a mere five minutes at 70mph. The bike felt tiny compared to modern machines, cramped being an all too apt description.
Rather than spend money on rear-sets (if such things were still available) I fitted cow-horn handle bars and a new, nylon lined, set of cables. That was better, though the poor aerodynamics now meant that all the power disappeared with 70mph on the clock. Never mind, I didn't really want to go much above 60mph!
Handling didn't inspire greater speeds. It may, though I doubt it, have been an ace little handler when brand spanking new, but the worn, mushy, suspension was in no condition to take on the neglected surfaces of modern roads. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was actually dangerous - there was too little mass and power for that to happen. Disconcerting and annoying, a more pertinent description.
Perhaps the worst element was the lack of comfort. The failure of the suspension to absorb almost all the bumps meant that massive forces were fed through my arms and spine (the seat padding was almost non-existent). Bruised and battered after a couple of hours on the road, I began to wonder if classic bikes were such a great idea - they never mention this in the classic glossies!
The answer, of course, was to throw some more money at it. As with all easy solutions this wasn’t possible... the wife would've had a fit, already eyeing the vintage relic, attendant oil leaks, window rattling noise and dubious appearance with horror. So I suffered in the hope that some suitable suspension and a seat might turn up somewhere down the line. It wasn't just the wife, though, I also had my doubts about the potential longevity of the motor.
As it happens that wasn't a cause for concern. 6500 miles with nothing more than regular servicing - carbs every 750 miles, tappets every 500 miles and oil every 1000 miles, with points and plugs whenever it didn’t start (every fortnight on average).
The lights were dubious. The bulbs blew but sometimes I didn't even notice - they were that bad! The main fuse blew, and that I did notice because everything went rather dead. Stalled motorcycle in the middle of the usual heavy, going on crazy, traffic. Dead meat time, I would've been better off as a veggie in Texas. There was no apparent cause, I guessed at either the regulator or rectifier (or both, why not at this kind of age?) breaking down. Wiring rotting away could also have been the cause. The last time I touched a bike's electrics in a major way I ended up crying my eyes out. No, no, no...
It wasn't the electrics that finally did for me but a cage. Or maybe it was just the fade very quickly TLS front drum. A moot point. If I'd had triple discs and the ability to stop on a dime I wouldn't have hit the side of a car that zoomed out of a hidden driveway as if trying for a GP start. The cager was gobsmacked at the damage to the side of his Merc and not in the least concerned that I'd been thrown over the bars to land on my head. Hard enough to crack my cheap helmet. If I hadn't been wearing a lid I might've heard the car coming - maybe!
The damage wasn't as bad as you'd expect. Bent forks and front wheel. They were crap, anyway, so when it turned out the cager didn't have any insurance (he was a used car dealer of some sort) and he’d pay me £200 in used tenners to forget the incident I thought it was my lucky day.
£60 bought a CB175 front end that was persuaded on in the usual way - hammer and chisel, of course. This was also crap but not to the same degree. I could guess that it'd been real good when new, 50000 miles ago. Now it was just sloppy and vague, with a fading front brake.
I should’ve bought something newer, I know, but such an obvious lack of original equipment as a disc brake would’ve taken hundreds off the value of the bike. It’s a silly, modern world that we live in. The more I rode the bike the more I reflected on this fact...
The CB160 is a bit of Honda history, from a time when their OHC twins were leading edge machinery. Time hasn't been kind to them, just inflated their value to silly levels. A brand new one on today’s road would still be a bit lost; an aged, worn example is more of an accident waiting to happen than an enjoyable motorcycle experience. Do something sensible, like upgrade the suspension and brakes, all it does is take lots of money off its value.
The old Brits have suffered from this nonsense for a long time but at least they can be rebuilt to a decent spec and have excellent handling. The Honda was reliable and I could see how they took the market by storm back in the sixties. But today? It had to go before it killed me.
I started off at £995 and after six weeks accepted £475... old Japs are hard to sell, no doubt about it. There just ain't the same kind of market for them as the British twins. No street credibility. I still think fifty quid’s about right for a runner.
John Winsdor