1974 Honda CB550...
While I didn’t buy this bike new, I’ve owned it most of it’s life. I was planning to marry my high school sweetheart in 1976. I was also looking to sell my ’62 Chevy II drag car.
Long story short, the only person interested in my drag car wanted to trade a nearly new 1974 CB550 for it. The bike was in the Boss Maroon color, and after my history of riding beater Harleys, one ride on the bike showed it was as smooth as silk.
Since this bike has been in my garage since the mid 70's, I’ve got a lot of history with it. I mostly rode the bike solo, but on several occasions my wife and I took day trips on the bike. In 1980, shortly after buying the CBX, the 550 got a new life set up as a drag bike.
I don’t remember all the details, but one day at the Honda dealer, we were talking about what I would do with the 550 now that I had another bike. The factory rep suggested we drag race it. He said that Honda had used the 550’s as test bikes when designing the Turbo 500 and that it would easily spin up to 12000 rpm.
The rep got us the proper cam shaft, we punched the bike out to 605cc, and it got a new paint job and lettering. I was in the process of restoring a 1967 Chevelle and had some extra Aqua Marine paint.
While the bike wasn’t exceptionally quick compared to the 1200cc Kawasaki bikes we raced against, it was definitely a crowd pleaser, and we had lots of fun racing it for 2 or 3 years.
After that, I put it back to mostly stock, and my wife gave it a go learning to ride a motorbike. We soon had a couple of children, my wife developed some health problems, and in 1988 the bike went to live in my father’s 4 car garage.