Wednesday, April 7, 2021

Newbold's House of Honda Refuge

It has not been all race car around here. Though the four wheel bug has bit me bad. Over the last year I built this black and white beauty. Can you identifie it? It is the bike Honda should have but never made. - It has electric start and a kick starter. Ok so it is just a 2006 CRF450 X model but without X model plastics it really makes a sleeper. Or a sheep in Wolfe's clothing. A sheep with the heart of a mad rabid savage Ram! She started out as a Baja 1000 race bike, all tricked to the gills with the nice bits wealthy  Baja racers bolt on their machines. It was brought back from Mexico and put into storage, still coated in dust, caked silt, and Ensenada ditch mud. It must have sat a long time and then it ended up in my shop by way of my customer having a bike stolen and having it replacing his stolen bike via some facebook conection of charity or some shit like that. I hosed it off, changed the oil, filters, fork seals and my customer had a bike to ride again. Mighty fine. Until winter came and it was again put into storage until spring time when my cutomer started it up... He told me it was very hard to start, when it did start it sounded awful but, he blasted it up and down the street anyway until it locked up tighter than a clam shell. He brought it into me to tear down and diagnoise. This is when I found out it had water, not antifreez. Doh! the cylinder was windowed with what looked like a great two stroke transfer port. The piston was balled up like some carmel pop corn ball aunt Edna makes for the hollidays that keep the dentist driving then fancy cars. Any way, Customer did not want to rebuild, he would part it out on ebay. I have parted out only one bike before and I still have nightmares. I made a deal with him to keep the frame and what was left of the engine to make another happy Honda with. A smart business man I am not. Everyone keeps telling me I need a new race bike. Ol Molly is a 2009 and overalled a couple off road races over the last few years and whenever I price out a new bike I think bull shit. I'll show them I'll build a new bike a 2006 new bike. I had a near brand new set of 2008 R model suspension I traded a supermoto rider that wanted the suspension off of my Pikes peak bike. It had some shit valving in it but I re-worked it. I built some wheels. I had a brand new rim set in the box from my Baja racing days (2006-08). I built a R model top end with all my experience and trickery. Mule sold me a new SDG seat. I rebuild some old R tripple trees and linkage I had around. I got lucky and found some Christini (the 2WD bike) plastics on ebay along with a new style crf front fender and number plate giving it a one off look. Mona Gary welded me up a SS header pipe. Bam- new bike.