Dad's Motorcycle

[McHeath]

It's nothing real fancy, just an old Honda.  A CB175, twin cylinder, dual carbs, 20 horsepower and top speed of around 70-75.  Made in 1971 in Japan.  Dad bought it for his Shriner parade bike and for years and years in the 1970's and early 80's we spent many a weekend at various little town parades, Potato Festival This and Onion Festival That, where he and his unit did parade ground style maneuvers.

In the first picture, taken in 1976, it is set up for the Shriner parades with a windscreen, CB radio and whip, and flag holders. 

[McHeath]

In the late 80's he gave it to me, this is my son on it when he was 3.

[McHeath]

I rode it off and on during the late 80's and into the year 2001.  This picture is from 1998, with the windscreen back on.

[McHeath]

Then for some odd reason, who knows, I parked it in 2001 and left it to sit in the shed.  Been thinking about it a lot this past few months, so a couple of weeks ago I pulled it, washed it, added gas and with very little tinkering it started right up.

So I got it insured and am getting the tags renewed, my motorcycle license is still valid.  Took it out and puttered about in a parking lot nearby, it's still a nice sweet machine, smooth, easy to ride, light weight with good handling, starts on the first kick. 

It's 39 years old last month.

Here we are last weekend with it. 

[JorgeAmely]

Cool bike McHeath. I learned to ride bikes in one like that.

[AE_Collector]

I had a 1976 Honda 250 On/Off road bike. It was lots of fun. Eventually sold it to my brother in law and he may still have it but if so, it hasn't seen a road OR a trail in many many years. Should check and see if it's still around I guess. It's just a youngster (at 34 years old) compared to yours.

Terry

[Dennis Markham]

Very nice story and photos Heath.  The bike looks like new after all these years.  I see you have the wind screen off again.  It's really nice that you have your Dad's bike and perhaps someday your son will have it.  Be careful out there, it's a dangerous world on a motorcycle these days.

My younger brother and I had a Honda CT70H trail bike in 1970.  Later I bought my first road bike, one of the new four cylinders, a 1973 Honda 500.  Two years later I upgraded to the 750.  They were very nice bikes.

Terry, was your 250 one of those newfangled two-strokes? (Honda got into the two stroke market with their 250 Elsinore) about that time.

[McHeath]

Terry, it sounds like your on/off road Honda 250 was a CL Scrambler model.  Those were very nice bikes and command a healthy price if in good shape.  My dad had a 1967 Scrambler 305, no idea what eventually happened to it.

Dennis those Honda's 4 cylinders, the 500 and then the 750, were great rides.  The Honda 750 is something of a classic now.  Some of my all time favorite bikes were the Honda CT 90s and 110s which are really just off road versions of the old Supercub.  We'd go up in the mountains with them and trail ride all over creation, you could pretty much get anywhere on one, even ride them through pretty deep water. 

My son will end up with the 175 someday as I won't ever sell, so barring a disaster it will be around for a long time.  He's not a rider though, never has ridden a motorcycle, and his one loop I let him do around the parking lot was not confidence inspiring!  It' a nice family heirloom in that it does not take up huge amounts of space and you can actually use it for practical things like getting about town. 

And yeah it certainly is a scary road situation for a biker today compared to when I was young, far more traffic than ever before on roads that were not built to handle these levels of crowding.  We finally got a new bridge across the freeway this year, it's the main artery in town and the old bridge was a two lane job built in 58', back when the town had 2,500 people.  Now we have 60,000 people and the traffic jams at the bridge would back up a mile into town in all directions.