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| Welcome. Who says you can't make a bobber or chopper out of a Honda? Since birth, I've loved motorcyles and everything about them, especially '60s & '70s choppers. Since I don't have the budget for a period perfect early chopper or bobber, in 2002, I bought a 1973 Honda CB750 and started chopping it. This site documents that progress, along with links to a few sites that have either inspired me, or I've bought parts from. Along with project750bobber, there are photos of my 1968 cb360 and other reader's rides in the photos section. If you've been out there slaving away in the garage, and have a bike you would like to show off here at Home Made Honda, send me an email with photos and a description of what you've done. The only rules are:
So, sit back with your beverage of choice, browse around, and feel free to send me email. |
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LATEST UPDATES
1.24.07 - A new beginning... ...and a resolution to update this site more often. I finally got a new computer, so I have access to all my website files again. Also, I have a new email address. armuss750@comcast.net. If you've used the old email in the past, well it don't work any more. If you've emailed me in the last few months, and I haven't replied, I sincerely apologize. Please email me again at the new address. I lost all of your addresses too, so if you want to send me your info again, that would be cool. I still have some reader's rides to post that I never got to a couple of months ago. Also, the site is going to get a complete overhaul this winter. I'm bored with this look, and it's time for something new. 9.28.06 - York Bike Nite and more bike photos This weekend is the HD open house in York, PA. So, I'll be going down there again on Friday night for Bike Nite and the parade through town. That's always a good time. The bike is running great. I seem to have gotten all the bugs worked out of it. The only thing wrong now is that my petcock is leaking. I guess I'll be sending that back to Pingel to get rebuilt after the riding season. There's a new reader's ride to check out. 7.21.06 - More reader's rides... finally It's been a while since I've updated the site - I seem to say that everytime I post something. I've been too busy around the house and all that other crap. Anyway, much has happened since May. I got my a fender on the bike, repainted it, and rode it down to Salisbury, NC with some local Honda Chopper dudes to attend The Horse Backstreet Choppers annaul Smokeout. Needless to say, we had a killer time. I took over 100 photos, and will be posting them at some point. Until then, there are new reader's rides posted on the photos page. Two dudes, Duane and Bill have been emailing me off and on with project status photos. I've been telling them for months, I would get there pics up on the site, and finally have. Click here to see Duane's killer Shadow and Magna Bobbers and Click here to see Bill's sweet CM450E Bobber 5.1.06 - New riding season It's been a while since I've updated the site. That doesn't mean I haven't been busy though. I moved into a new house, and everything is disorganized, including my computer. That thing is a piece of crap. I finally got my WCC rear fender. It only took about 9 months. Actually due to some sort of shipping mix up I got two. One was dented though, so I have to send it back anyway. I've been making some other improvements to the bike as well. I replaced the coils with '77 Honda Goldwing coils. They are a bit better quality and make a hotter spark than the stock cb750 coils. They've made a noticable improvement in performance. Also, over the winter I received quite a few emails from other builders out there with photos of their projects. I'll be posting them online soon. 11.21.05 - HighCaliber's project I've been following the status of this dude's chopper project from start to finish for about a year. We've been swapping ideas and advice, and it's cool to see the finished project. Click here to see... and read about his homemade Honda from start to finish in his own words. 11.18.05 - New photos added, and wanted Since creating this site, I've got tons of email from people asking me questions about my bike or theirs. I try to answer them as best I can. There's lot of other folks out there chopping stock bikes, similar to mine, and it's been fun to watch the progress. So, I'm posting some of these pics on the apropriately titled photo page. If you have a homemade bike, feel free to send me some good photos of it, along with a description of what you've done, and I'll consider them for the site. When I say good photos, I mean well exposed photos of a bike without a lot of junk in the background. And yes, I want the homemade bikes. No cookie cutter choppers you bought off a show room floor. In the meantime, head over to the photo page and check out erickvonzipper and HighCaliber's choppers. 11.08.05 - Are you ready for some football? It's football season, and the Steelers are looking good again. So, in honor of my favorite team, I gave the bike a little makeover.
9.25.05 - York Bike Night It's been a while since I've posted anything here. I've been to busy riding! The bike is running great. I worked out some of my carb issues. I made a shield to cover up the pod filters. They were getting too much air, leaning the bike out at cruisin speeds. So I covered them up, and jetted down. The bike runs much better. I rode down to Bike Night in York, PA with Badger and a few friends on Friday night. It was pretty cool. We rode in the parade through town with thousands of other bikes. Then parked and walked around for a few hours. So many people came up to us asking about the Hondas. It was fun to see so much love for 2 old jap bikes in a sea of Harleys. 8.16.05 - Riding around town Finally I rode the bike home from my Dad's garage to my apartment. It's about a 50 mile ride. It was awesome. The roads were a little wet because it had recently rained. I was soaked, but didn't care. I got the carbs running better. I have power in the mid-range now... I had to move the needles up one slot. I adjusted the valves, and set the timing. I think I have to check my timing again. The bike isn't running quite as smooth as it should. At idle, it pulses, or stutters, and when riding, it pops on deceleration. it may be a little rich in the high throttle range . I think my main jets are a size too big. I need to do some plug chopping and some fine tuning in the carbs, but I've been riding it around as is. I rode to work yesterday. That was cool. 7.25.05 - Carlisle Bike Fest Dad & I went to the Carlisle Bike Fest this weekend. As usual, there were tons of bikes there, mostly all Harley stuff or sportbikes. There were several cool builders there with some sweet customs... Like Eddie Trotta, Ron Simms and others. They had a judged bike show, and for $15, you could enter your bike. No trailer queens allowed, you had to ride in. Much to my surprise, there were two Honda Choppers in the show. Badger from the HondaChopper board had his new bike in there, and there was another cool Honda 750 bobber. Check out the photos page for pics of Badger's bike In other news, I rode my bike for the first time on Saturday! I didn't get to ride it into Carlisle, but I did take a couple of short shakedown runs around some backroads. There's still some bugs to work out, but it was an incredible experience... riding that bike for the first time in almost 3 years. It idled well, and handled great. It just doesn't have any power in the mid-upper range. It looks like I'll be digging into the carbs as well as adjusting valves, points, timing and other fun stuff. 7.19.05 - Preparing for the weekend I can't wait for this weekend. I got a "new" set of coils in the mail from bigdan at HondaChopper.com. These babys should be all I need to get in the wind. I'm heading to the Carlisle BikeFest this weekend. They don't have much in the way of jap choppers, but there's a bunch of cool v-twin stuff there. I wanted to ride the bobber in this year, but I probably won't have time to get the new coils on, cam chain & valves adjusted and carbs tuned before then. I picked up some some bronze busings to space out the rear fender. It's about 1" skinnier than the fender rails on the rear of the bike. The bronze bushings will match the crappy brazing on the fender. Speaking of fenders, my new one from West Coast Choppers still hasn't arrived. What gives Jessee?!?! It's been 11 weeks since I ordered it. If it ever arrives, I don't think I'll use it... just out of spite. Maybe I'll make a coffee table out of it... or a lampshade. I added a new link to the links page. It's Nash Motorcycle Co. Check 'em out. 7.9.05 - Triumph... then heartbreak This weekend I put the bike together. Finally, the final assembly. I was able to get everything in place and do all the wiring. It was so cool to think that this is the last time I'll be putting this stuff on the bike. I put new brake pads on the front brakes, and got them bled... got the chain tension set, finished wiring all the lights & horn. They all work. It looked like everything was going my way, and I was set for the first ride on this baby in almost 3 years. Then I tried starting the bike. I cranked it over time and time again. I tried kickstarting it. I could not get it started. Gas was pouring out of the 2 & 3 cylinders, so I shut the petcock off, and started investigating. I took the bowls off the 1 & 4 carbs. They were bone dry. So, I decided to take the carbs off and check out what was going on. As soon as I got them off, I found the problem. It's embarrasing to admit, but I had the gas coming from the petcock going into those little vent tubes on the carbs instead of the actual fuel intake tubes. That's one of the stupidist things I've done in a while. So, I fixed that, wrestled the carbs back on and tried starting the bike again. It started almost immediately. No gas leaking this time. The bike ran for a bit and sounded pretty good considering the carbs haven't been tuned yet. I noticed that the #2 exhuast pipe was cold compared to the rest. I shut the bike off, and started looking into things, and found that the spark plug wire was broken at the coil. My hopes of riding the bike this weekend were trashed. Instead of riding, I pushed it into the yard and had a photoshoot. To see those photos, Visit page 10 of project750bobber. 6.6.05 - It's Alive! The first weekend in June was my deadline for getting the bike finished.... and I didn't meet it. I was close though. After painting the frame, and assembling everything, I became aware of a design flaw with my frame modifications. A dude on the HondaChopper.com site, Roadrat, has a bike altered very similar to mine. After 2 years of riding, his frame was starting to crack in the tubing where the shocks mount. So, I stripped paint off the rear of the bike, made some gussets and welded them in. It's a couple of steps backwards, but better safe now, than sorry later. On another note, I wired the bike up just enough to start, and was successful! After filling the oil tank and kicking the bike over about 25 times to pump some oil throught the engine, I filled the gas tank for the first time. No leaks. So, I cranked and cranked until I was able to get the engine started. I even had it idling for a while. It sounded great. Drag pipes on a SOHC Honda are a beautiful sound. I still have carb tuning to do, but it looks like this bike is going to run pretty strong. No new pics for now, but more coming soon! 5.26.05 - We're back! After a couple of days being offline, I've finally got the site back up and running. I was doing some housecleaning and reorganized all the pages and images to make things easier on myself when I upload new info. If anyone had any of the pages bookmarked or saved in favorites, you may have to re-save them since I've shuffled things around. Sorry for any inconvenience. 5.18.05  I spent another long weekend in the garage. I took off work friday to try to get more done on the bike. I'm glad I did. Check out page 8 of project750bobber to see some pics from the final assembly process. 5.5.05 I had a very productive weekend. I spent 26 hours out in the garage, and got the frame, gas tank and oil tank prepped and painted. Check out page 8 of project750bobber. You can see pics of the finished pieces. I also purchased a new fender this week. The old piece of junk I've been using for mock-ups is just not going to work. It is so full of holes, dents & welding that it would take a ton of body putty to smooth it out and make it look nice. I was going to shoot some clear on it, and leave it unpainted for a ratty look, but West Coast Choppers had all their fenders on sale for $99. I couldn't pass that up. The only thing better than the fender price, will be cutting up Jesse's fender to put on my Honda! Wanna see the shop?  4.8.05 I've been busy painting in the attic. Pretty much everything on the bike gets painted satin black. There will be some gloss red scallops on the tank and fender, but I haven't got that far yet. I sewed a new seat cover and stretched it over the old seat pan. It looks real good. I wanted an old hotrod tuck and roll feeling, and I think I got it. Check it on on page 7 of project750bobber. 3.14.05 So, it's only been 4 months since I last updated my site. In the meantime, I bought the domain name www.homemadehonda.com. Some of you may have figured that out by now. I've also done some work on the bike. I now have the seat mounted and my rear tail light mounted. I did some of the wiring. After a slight mishap resulting in a smoky melted switch and a shower of sparks, things seem to be working. I've done some more stuff that I haven't yet posted online, but I'll get to that someday. Currently the bike is in pieces(again). I'm starting to paint some of the little bits for final assembly! Projected completion date June 4th, 2005 11.17.04 The project750bobber pages finally have been updated. All of my progress is current as of today. There are new mockup photos and 20 other photos of the process. If you want to skip all the construction stuff, and go right to the latest photos, Click here. I also finally put some photos up of my '68 CB350. Visit the photos page to see those. Photos of my dearly departed '83 Datsun 200SX are coming soon. And last, I've added links to a few more sites that I find interesting. Go to the links page to see what builders I've been inspired by, and where I've found parts. |
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