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Bikes I’ve owned in approximate chronological order:

Honda SS50

This bike was really fun. It cost me £50 and was an early drum brake, 4-speed model. It was kind of nice after I removed the pedals, fitted an 80cc bore, hard tailed it and put a megaphone on the exhaust. You can learn a lot by working on a little machine like this and it’s rewarding to squeeze an extra mile an hour out of it after each modification.

Just got the beast home (check out my hair)

That’s the way - nice and early looking

Then it got silly - seat was really uncomfortable by the way

Honda MB5

I had two of these - what was I thinking? The funniest thing about this was that my friend had one and I adapted a Micron off an LC350 to fit. It was so loud we decided to damp the baffle with an old towel. On a short journey to Bitton the towel caught fire, releasing burning pieces on anything and everything behind us. It eventually burnt out completely leaving this the noisiest 40mph bike in the world. It went better with the 80CC barrel and racing reeds, but was always a piece of crap in most respects.

Honda MBX125

I fitted this with an NS125 engine in it after the tuned original blew up on me. This bike could do a genuine 90mph and I once managed to do an endo up to a stationary car, leaving the bike in a heap and me facing back down the road sat on the roof. Needless to say it wasn’t entirely intentional.

Nice TZR replica fairing in a subtle shade almost invisible to the Police

Honda CB400/4

I bought it as a box of bits, rebuilt the engine and hardtailed it. Once I got bored of bouncing an wobbling along I did it up again with springs. Some nice gentlemen (may have been women of course) nicked it from outside my house, not 10 feet from my head whilst I was asleep.

This is a foot overlength - it wobbled a bit - wish I had a finished pic

Made another frame just so it would be more desirable to steal

Honda CB900F2

I fell off this quite badly (I was ok - it wasn’t so ok) and sold it soon after. It was sobering to me at the time. It couldn’t keep up with my brother-in-law’s GPZ1100 even with my sister on the back.

Kawasaki Z650

This never ran right and I was still a bit nervous so I sold it back fairly quickly.

(Had a break from bikes for seven years)

Yamaha FZX750

I never really liked this bike, but it was cheap and reliable. I guess I don’t like the idea of factory customs and similar other ‘fashion’ ideas.

Kawasaki Z650

I got the Kwak back again and did a fair bit of work on it then sold it back again to my brother-in-law. I liked it best like this - it looked nice and chubby. It still had electrical issues that I never got to the bottom of.

After many incarnations this was how it ended up

Honda CB-1

This is a good fun little bike. You have to rev it too much for my liking, but it’s very nippy and good in traffic as it feels very light. They’re all grey imports from Japan, but spares can be got easily enough it seems. I made one good bike out of two for a friend on the condition I could use it for a year. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend one of these for new bikers or people who like screaming engines - It really can be fun.

Not a bad looking little thing

Bum shot

Honda VF1000FII (F2F) Bol D’or

This is my latest ebay purchase. It runs nicely and I’ve just done the fork seals and stopped the air damping from leaking. It rides really nicely and I could barely tell that the wife was on the back when we went for a little inaugural blast. Seems a little heavy on the fuel…

My new (big) baby