My trusty CB550, out on a summer day in the country.
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, was as smooth as silk.
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.
That’s where it stayed until 2017. In 2016 I lost my wife, and had my first cancer diagnosis. Thinking I might not have a whole lot of time left, I decided to get it back into running & riding condition.
Now when it went into the garage, I never expected it to sit for 29 years, and it was not put away well. So needless to say, the gas tank and the carbs were a mess when I started getting it back into road worth condition. I guess you could say it was just a typical “barn find” bike.
Initially I did the bare minimum to get the bike on the road. Cleaned and lined the gas tank, rebuilt the carbs, new battery, new tires, oil change & tune up.
It was a very stressful time in my life and the wind therapy I got by having the bike back on the road was very much needed. I couldn’t believe I had spent so much time away from riding!