Over the last few weeks a project has been rumbling away in the background at Chez Hall that came to fruition yesterday. My old CBX550 has come home. Am I a happy chappy? Heck, yes. Let me tell you the story.
In 1983 when we sold our house in Canberra we used some of the proceeds to buy a much newer car and also a newer bike. I was very happy with the 500/4 especially with the modifications I had made to it, but it was time to move on.
I wanted another middleweight bike and so I looked around at the current crop of 550’s available. Of them, the two most modern and attractive were the Kawasaki GPZ550 and the Honda CBX550. Both were good bikes and there were plenty of them available at reasonable prices. Truth be known, the Kawasaki was a better bike by some margin, but I was a Honda man and the many “trick” features of the Honda swayed me so I bought a nearly year-old CBX550FII from the late Lenny Willing’s shop in Wyong on the NSW central coast. Apart from having to replace the rusted-out mufflers almost straight away, I was very happy with the purchase. There followed 6 years of very enjoyable riding. I used it for commuting, touring and even did some travelling marshall work at local Club Days and C Grade days.
It started its life in Sydney, spent three years in Queensland and finished its time in my ownership in Canberra. By this time I was doing a lot of touring and I was starting to feel the limitations of touring on a small bike so logic said that I needed to buy a proper touring bike. Logic was good, execution and experience was bad. I bought a Suzuki GS850G. It was a great touring bike but it was big, ponderous and colourless. It was a bit like a motorcycle version of the XD Falcon.
So I looked for another CBX and found one in a dealer in Queanbeyan. It was the unfaired version and it was getting on a bit by this stage but it was cheap and, as the saying goes, when the goods were cheap, the goods they took. Sadly it had been fitted with a dreadful exhaust system that was so loud that it defied imagination. I tried all sorts of wheezes to quieten it down but nothing worked. And I did miss the fairing of the FII model so it was on-sold and I started looking again.
By this stage (early 90’s) CBX’s of any sort were getting very hard to find, as I was soon to find out. I fished out the local market, pored over copies of Unique Bikes and Just Bikes and sought out all the leads that I could explore. Nothing. Not to give up, however, we took a drive to Sydney one weekend (no internet, remember) and spent a day trolling through the bike shops. Everywhere we went we were told that, no they didn’t have one, and, even if I DID find one, it would be high mileage and not worth spending money on. Gus Liu at Sutherland had one but it was a shed so we moved on. We found ourselves back in the Hills District of Sydney and called in to Parry’s Motorcycles on Pennant Hills Road (funny how all these minute details are retained in memory, isn’t it?). No, they didn’t have one but, just as I was about to head to the door, the salesman said, “Hang on, I think my mechanic knows where there is one that might be for sale private sale. The owners are customers of ours and we service the thing.” The mechanic duly supplied the details and the salesman rang the owner, a gentleman by the name of John Howard (no, not THE John Howard) and yes, he was thinking of selling the bike.
Armed with said Mr Howard’s address and telephone number we skipped back down PHR a few hundred metres, turned right and found the address. After introductions and explanations John explained that the bike was his wife’s but that she wasn’t really riding it any more and they had been thinking of selling for some time. In the garage were THREE bikes, all under covers. Two of them were John’s, CBX1000’s, one set up for touring and the other brand new with about 13kms on the clock that had only ever been started just to keep the oil circulating. Astonishing.
Then John pulled the cover off the third bike. It was an almost-new looking CBX550. It was just like my first one, same colour scheme and all. After picking my jaw up off the floor I did the routine examination and was delighted at what I saw. I did note, though, that, while the bike was an FII model with the CB900 Bol d’Or type fairing it didn’t say FII on the sidecovers like it should. “Oh, that’s easy,” John explained. Apparently the bike WAS *just* an F model but, almost as soon as they bought it, Margaret found the wind buffeting of the naked bike annoying so John had gone to Parry’s, ordered all the bits required to convert it to FII specifications and changed it over in their garage.
Nevertheless, cash (a VERY reasonable amount considering the bike’s condition and provenance) was exchanged and the next weekend I drove up from Canberra with a trailer and brought the bike home.
It was everything that I could have wanted and more. Sadly, however, it also had the standard Honda exhaust system where the mufflers were nearly rusted out. I sourced a Tranzac system and fitted it and I rode the wheels off the thing for the next 11 years.
All good things come to an end, as they say, and by the turn of the Millennium, I was again getting itchy feet. Rick Miller, my local mechanic said to me once when I was picking the bike up from a service, “You know, Phil, this bike is nearly 20 years old now, have you thought about updating?” Strangely, I had been and it was propitious that Rick had a customer with a 1994 VFR750 that she wanted to sell. The price seemed outrageously cheap so I was suspicious (though Rick is a tip-top mechanic). “Would you like to have a ride on it?” he asked. The next night I took the VFR for a blast out through the forests of the Cotter. LONG before I turned for home, I was sold and so began my infatuation with VFR’s.
So the CBX was offered for sale. It was pretty hard to sell, actually, even though it was pretty low mileage, had been well serviced and had a set of Krauser panniers. In the end I decided that I needed to be a bit more proactive. I was still a voracious reader of magazines and I remembered that, not long before this, Guy Allen, the Editor of Motorcycle Trader magazine had been complaining that it was getting hard to find parts to keep his partner’s CBX550 going. I was stunned, mainly because I was amazed that it was going at ALL (and here you need to read the story of how I first met Margie and her decrepit CBX550 – Good Samaritan to understand why.)
The next issue of the magazine, Margie’s CBX came in for notice again as Guy humorously berated all the readers who were offering to SELL him a CBX when all he wanted was PARTS for one. I believe he called them “numbats”. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, however, I joined the queue and rang Guy offering MY CBX if he couldn’t get the parts he needed. Surprisingly he replied that he might just have to take me up on the offer as sourcing parts was looking very bleak. A couple of weeks later I got a call and a price was agreed upon. Margie flew up to Canberra from Melbourne with her riding gear as her luggage, cash was exchanged and she rode it home to Melbourne. However, before she left I did ask her that, should she ever decide to sell the bike, could they give me first opportunity to buy it back and she agreed.
So, since 2002, Bexie (that’s what I have decided to call her) has been living the life of Riley in the Allen household, being ridden regularly and lavished with care. When she turned 30 she was registered as an historic vehicle and, far from being pampered, she has been made to earn her keep. Every Christmas I have received a card and then, latterly, an email, wishing me all the best and assuring me that Bexie is still alive and well. This was usually accompanied by a photograph and a precis of where she had been in the last 12 months. Margie always refereed to Bexie as “my bike” 🙂
Regular maintenance had been performed including a top end overhaul about 10000 kms ago, replacement of the appalling rear shock absorber with one that actually works and, recently, the addition of a beautiful stainless steel MOTAD exhaust system all the way from England. The seat has been recovered and she has obviously been kept under cover.
A month or so ago I happened to message Guy and thank him for the mention in the article on Bexie that he had published in Motorcycle Trader (Dec 2019). I touched base about Bexie as I always do and he said that they *maybe* would be interested in selling her back to me soon. Whoohoo. Things moved quickly from there and bank deposits were done and transport arranged. Yesterday morning the excellent David Russell delivered her to my door, filthy dirty from a 3 day trip from Melbourne in the rain and this morning I gave her a good tubby and she came up sparkling. I mean she even has the original tool kit under the seat wrapped in the same piece of linen bed sheeting that they were wrapped in when I sold her 18 years ago.
Oh, and here we are together, with me wearing the Fred Gassit sweat shirt that Margie sent me in 1994 as a thank you present for helping her out on the road that night.
Now I have to arrange historic plating here and then it will be out on the road. Life is good.