Back in 2022, after owning my BSA A7 Shooting Star for nearly 10 years I decided I wanted to try something different. The BSA had started puffing out a bit of blue smoke every so often, so it was a choice of keeping the bike and undertaking some major spannering, or sell it and try something new. I decided on the latter and with the rise in popularity of classic Japanese bikes I thought it would be great to try one. I really fancied the Honda 500/4 type bikes but they were getting really expensive here in NZ.
Then I started noticing a couple of Honda CB 450’s, the famous ‘black bomber’ although the ones advertised weren’t black and didn’t look anything like bombers? Then I found a 1969 Honda CB 450 K1 for sale, wow, I thought it looked really cool with it’s sparkly blue paint, lots of chrome and styling very much like a classic British bike. I did some research and found out some quite amazing facts about the CB 450, it was very innovative in its time with double OHC, torsion bar valve springs and an engine producing 45hp, quite something from a 450cc engine.
I called the seller and arranged to view the bike, when I got there I found the bike within a large shed which contained about twelve Japanese bikes, mostly old seventies ones with a few moderns. It looked very much like a professional garage with several bike lifts, a reception desk and half a dozen pinball machines! The bike looked fantastic, it was in great condition, apparently it had a lot of new paint and chrome in the USA before being imported to NZ. The seller fired it up on the starter button which was a bit of an education, it sounded like someone coughing while rattling a can of bolts – is it supposed to sound like that? The engine fired up readily and he immediately set the engine at about 3,000 rpm for 30 seconds or so – wow, you don’t do that with your BSA. As I’d found in my research, these bikes run a bit rough until you warm them up.
I then thought about taking it for a test ride, he lived on a very busy street, it was like a 2-lane motorway right outside his house and of course the gear lever and brake were on opposite sides to what I’d ridden for the last 30 years – hmmm, I decided against it. After a couple of weeks of pondering the bike and trying to sell my BSA I agreed with Jen that if I sold the BSA I could buy the Honda. On the last day of my auction someone made a bid on my BSA, it was sold, so I phoned the Honda owner and struck a deal – woohoo.
A few days later I trailered the Honda home and the next day took it for my first ride. I was very conscious of the different gear change/brake set up, so used the foot brake a lot descending my steep driveway before heading up my quiet rural road. I thought I was managing the gears/brakes quite well until I approached a T-junction, I tried to brake with the wrong foot, then was trying to change down a gear and nothing was working – and the junction was approaching fast! In some desperation I pulled in the clutch and grabbed a handful of brake, the engine revved it’s head off, but I managed to come to a stop. That was probably the most out-of-control I’ve been on a bike for a long time.
It took me a few careful rides before I started getting used to the bike, I had issues changing gears, but these were partly resolved by changing the oil to one that contained ‘full zinc’ would you believe. Once I did get used to it, I really enjoyed the free-revving engine – which redlines at 9,500 rpm – I could accelerate quite quickly no matter what gear I was in and it handled pretty nicely too. We have a steep hill near where I live which is a great bike test and the Honda passed easily, changing down into second around the tight bend half-way up, I wrapped the throttle on and it continued to accelerate right to the top – fantastic. I was also enjoying such mod-cons as an electric starter, indicators and a 5-speed gearbox! One downside was that the bike got quite vibey at around 6,000 rpm which equates to 55-60mph which is my cruising speed and going faster just made more vibes.
On a charity ride I met up with a guy on a BSA 500cc single, my usual type of machine, and starting from the back of the pack (for safety reasons) I inevitably caught up with him and got there just in time to watch his side stand depart from his bike! Luckily I was able to collect it and he seemed most surprised to get it back again.
After owning the bike for a year or so, I started to get a bit annoyed with it, the electric starter was giving me issues and it was very difficult to kick over, I’m not sure if there was something wrong with my bike or it was just typical. A lot of guys told me the early electric starters were troublesome and renovating the starter clutch didn’t make any difference. I also found that with this bike I was always revving it up or down, changing gears, accelerating or braking all the time, it wasn’t a relaxing experience. This along with the vibey nature led me to put it up for sale, although I wasn’t in any hurry to sell. The K1 model is very rare and it attracted a lot of interest, but no-one was serious about it, until suddenly, I had 2 guys who were wildly mad about it. One guy wanted to swap his ’59 Matchless G12 CSR which seemed like a great bike, I was keen, but then he cooled right off. The other guy was still really keen so I sold it to him quite easily, he had owned one in the eighties and appropriately was the service manager for a local Honda dealership.
So that was the end of my Japanese diversion, a few months after selling it I brought the BSA A10 Golden Flash featured on these pages. I think this avoided me having any regrets about selling the Honda, I also do not regret owning it for a time, it was great fun.