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Showing posts from June 19, 2010

Vintage Thing No. 68 - Honda-BSA 550

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This bike caught my eye at the Tavistock Steam fair. It's a BSA pre-unit twin frame fitted with a Honda CB550 engine. And to my eye it looks like the Honda engine fits very well although there is a bit of space above it under the tank. The frame isn't quite bursting with engine so I'm wondering if a CB750 engine would fit. But if it did have a 750 engine there wouldn't be all that space for ease of servicing. The handlebar fairing shows this bike has been built to ride. That's the beauty with specials - you feel more in touch with the creator's mind even more than you do with a mass-produced machine. It's the sort of bike I think more people should have made already - including BSA themselves - and it's giving me ideas, ideas of a cafe racer with similar lumpy bits. I once admired a mate's cafe racer and said how much I liked it, to which he got in a strop and said "It's not a cafe racer! It's an endurance racer!" There follo...