My buddy Rick had a red 750, just like this one. Photo from the web.
After the debacle of the re-assembled Honda 750 engine and pieced-together chassis and running gear, I decided to get another 750. But this time it would be a factory assembled running bike. It would be the complete opposite of my FrankenHonda.
I found a stock ’74 CB750 with a low mileage of approx. 4,000 miles. It was only one year old; purple with a black panel on the tank. Being a Honda it was well detailed, and the assembly quality was great. Every Honda that I ever had was clearly a quality machine.
The Honda CB750 had been a groundbreaker when it first debuted, but by the later ’70s, other Japanese manufacturers had released four cylinder Superbikes of their own. Honda had pursued a path of refinement with the CB750, making it smoother, quieter, and more reliable. The old chain breaking models were a thing of the past, and Honda had many fans who were very loyal and satisfied with the new 750’s personality.
These Hondas were great bikes for touring, the engine was so smooth and quiet. They were heavy enough to be stable when buffeted by crosswinds and also tracked well, reducing rider fatigue. The four cylinder motors were much smoother than Honda’s previous twin cylinder models. The bikes were reliable and long lived.
It was important to lube the chain a couple of times a day when on a long trip. Hondas still had center stands that made it easy to get the rear wheel in the air and spray the entire chain. It kept the chain healthy, but it did get messy.
The 750 was pretty hard on rear tires. These bikes were heavy, around 500 lbs. full of gas, and they were ridden at high speeds. I know that I did! Hours of cruising at 75-80 mph.
Even though I was now busy with a full time job, as well as part time school, in my free time I would ride anywhere at the drop of a hat. Things got even better as my Buddy Rick traded up from his Yamaha 350 to a CB750 of his own.
Rick and I before he traded the 350 for a 750. Photo by author.
Having a riding partner on a similar motorcycle adds a lot of fun to the experience. It took a while, but we became familiar with each other’s riding styles and we developed the discipline needed to ride alongside each other. We made an impressive pair as we rode down the highway.
No desire to chop this one! I just cleaned up the looks a bit. Photo by author.
I didn’t have any plans to try and chop this bike, though I did some mild customizing. First, I removed the large turn signals and replaced the two large mirrors with a single smaller type. I modified the handlebars into pullbacks like I had done on my Kawasaki, by bending them until the grips pointed back at forty five degrees. This allowed me to sit more upright but they were still comfortable enough for touring. I also removed the rubber gaiters on the forks as well as the large amber reflectors. My goal was just to clean up the styling a bit and make the bike look a little sleeker.
Pretty sleek for a stock bike. Photo by author.
I replaced the bulky tail light with a lower, smaller, aluminum Lucas unit. I kept the comfortable stock seat but added a low sissy bar that could also be used to tie down luggage. The motor sounded good, but it was just a bit too quiet. So I drilled a series of holes in the baffles, which added a bit more melody to the exhaust note.
Northern California is blessed with varied topography. Close to our East Bay homes, there was The Pacific Coast Highway, the Central Valley and the Middle Coast. The Sierras and Lake Tahoe were readily accessible. US101 made a path to the middle of the Coast. Highway 5 led to Los Angeles. I was already familiar with the local back roads from my days of riding my old Honda 160.
A lot of my riding was done solo. I’d head down to Monterey, Paso Robles, or San Luis Obispo. I’d ride up to Lake Tahoe, cruise around the lake and return home that night. I once rode out to Yosemite, then turned around and headed back home.
Almost Heaven, California! Apologies to John Denver. Photo from the web.
Most of the trips were day long trips, there wasn’t any point in spending the night. One of my favorites was riding up the Pacific Coast Highway. I’d read about this road in motorcycling magazines for years. Cycle magazine had run a great story: “Scenes of desolate beauty, riding the Pacific Coast Highway.” Man, did I want to ride the entire length of that road!
It wasn’t too far from my home. I’d gotten a little taste of it in my sophomore year riding my chopped Honda 305 up as far as Marshall. It wasn’t until my Senior year that I rode my Kawasaki 500 all the way to Mendocino. It was like I had finally reached the Promised Land.
The road hugged the rugged Coast and would curve inland through forests and farmlands. But it always returned to the shore. Miles and miles of continuous curves, through varied landscapes. A perfect motorcycling road. Banking the bike through the curves was like flying just above the surface of the road!
Mendocino. One of my favorite destinations. Photo from the web.
The town of Mendocino had been a former lumber center but in the early ’70s it was pretty abandoned. There were only a few businesses open. I found a restaurant called the Sea Gull Inn, where I would have a good meal in preparation for the long ride home. A ride to Mendocino became an annual pilgrimage, a baptism that I would bestow on each new machine.
It could be a very cold ride up the coast, it could be cloudy, overcast, and even foggy. Though once inland it would heat up appreciably.
I still had my Marlon Brando-style fake leather jacket. Sturdy harness strap boots, heavy winter gloves, sweatshirts, thermal underwear, scarf, and of course a helmet with a face shield. In the chopper magazines that I read, Harley guys rode without a helmet. In a few years, I would also ride that way. But for now I wisely chose the helmet.
It looked something like this. Photo from the web.
One long weekend I took a spur of the moment trip to San Diego. I spent a couple of nights there and rode back in time to go to work at GM on Monday! I left on Friday evening and rode through the night maintaining a steady 80 mph. On the newly opened Interstate 5, it was pretty easy to maintain that speed and there weren’t many cops around. I vividly recall the lines of big rigs heading north coming down the Grapevine. Their headlights were a steady stream. It was very early in the morning when I reached that spot. It was a memorable sight.
I was now an accomplished rider and had a pretty good safety record and attitude. Well, at least most of the time. I did drop the bike once. One night I was coming home quite late, and I took a familiar corner in my usual peg-dragging manner. Unfortunately, that corner had a gas station on it. A vehicle must spilled some fuel in the street as it left. My rear wheel slipped from under me and the bike spun me off. I rolled across the street behind my bike which ended up against the opposite curb. It ended up with a bent set of handlebars, and a broken speedo and tach. Luckily I got away with only a scuffed boot, torn up jeans, and a scraped up hand. I was especially lucky since I was in my non helmet wearing period.
I had worn helmets since I got my first real motorcycle, my old CB160. Besides being an important addition to safety, it added to comfort. As I progressed through my motorcycling career I began to identify with the “Biker” faction which was vehemently anti-helmet. There was not a helmet law in California at the time, so I often didn’t wear one. This was not a smart decision, as it relegates your chances of injury or even survival up to chance. Like many young people, I thought that I was indestructible. I was so lucky that I never had to test my hypothesis.
Like all the Hondas that I’d owned before, it was a trouble free motorcycle. Unlike some of my later bikes. It was always ready to go at a moment’s notice. This provided me with a lot of freedom, and I made the most of it. I can equate the feeling as being comparable to the feeling someone gets when they buy a new car. So many possibilities!
During the year and half that I owned this 750, I added another 20,000 miles to the odometer. These were amazing bikes that were so easy to live with.
Buying a new or nearly new machine, meant that it still had a lot of its original service life ahead of it. There wasn’t any need to fix this, or to rebuild that. It wasn’t worn out yet! Reflecting on those times, I can understand why many people only buy new vehicles. It was also during this time that I finally made the move up to Harley-Davidson ownership. My Honda provided me with reliable transportation during the time of my extensive rebuild of my tired, beat up, old Sportster. When the Sportster was ready I sold the 750 to one of my young co-workers.
From now on, it would only be Harley-Davidsons for the next twenty five years.
Good story, I never got the chance to ride one of the early models but they seemed like great bikes.
When I was selling a CX500 I had a guy come to look at it and he said “Well this looks good, but I’m thinking of holding out for a CB750”. Being overly honest I said “You should hold out for a CB750”
Later I had a CB750SC and that was a great machine 🙂
Fantastic vintage pictures ! .
Brings back so many 1970’s memories, back then the PCH wasn’t always jammed with tourist traffic as it seems to be these days .
Oddly enough in the 1990’s & early 2000’s no one wanted CB750 4’s .
I was gifted a few dry sumpers in amazingly good original condition with perfect paint and chrome etc., one was that glorious turquoise and I couldn’t _GIVE_ any of them away, all were scrapped after languishing in my back yard for over a decade =8-( .
These certainly were superb Motocycles .
-Nate
This is a vivid writeup of the machines, the time, and the place. My brief motorcycling was only a few years before this, and everything about the freedom, reliability of a new machine, etc. gives me a smile. In the Midwest I could only dream about a PCH ride, so thanks for taking me along!
So great that you have the old pictures. I don’t have nearly enough 🙁
The Bay Area was a great place to be a rider, despite the traffic which was pretty bad even back then, with what are now 3 or 4 or 6 lane freeways then often just two lanes each way and a lot of trucks. And no HOV lanes then, which allow motorcycles. Of course “rush hour” was just an hour (or two) at each need of the day, not the near-24 hour ordeal it is now. When I was living in the East Bay and working further south, I’d often commute home on what we called “racer” roads, through the canyons of Palomares, Redwood Rd, Skyline and Grizzly Peak, etc. I left a lot of rubber on those roads, from tires and footpegs. And I would forget about my workday within minutes of entering the first canyon.
Your post made me realize that I’m not sure I’ve ever ridden a single-cam 750. I owned SOHC 350 and 400 Fours, plus a DOHC 900F and a V4 750F. And I rode friends’ single cam 500’s and 550’s and DOHC 750’s, and VFR’s. But never the most iconic Honda 4 of all. And I’ve never ridden any Harley except a friend’s Italian-made 65cc HD-branded Aermacchi in high school, and a Sportster powered Buell sometime around 2000. I’m looking forward to those COAL segments.
Allow me to be a bit of a nitpicker here: California’s State Highway 1 is only called the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) in Southern California. On the Central Coast it’s officially called the Cabrillo Highway and north of SF it’s the Shoreline Highway. But most people on the coast here just call it Highway One. Never never “The One”. That definite article is also a SoCal thing :>)
The Honda 750 4 changed motorcycling forever: disc brake, ohc engine, electric start, those 4 pipes…it had it all, a true groundbreaker. It also demonstrated Honda’s engineering prowess and in some ways it laid the ground for Honda’s soon-to-come reputation in design and manufacturing of automobiles as well. It was the Golden Age of motorcycling and all those folks who were aware of how good the bikes were no doubt were prospects for their upcoming cars, the Civic and Accord. We knew they would be good.
In 1974 I too was ready for my first new bike, having had 2 Suzukis and a Harley since 1969. I was all about sport riding, and looked at the Honda, Ducati 750, and the T150 TR. The Duke was pricey, the Honda a bit heavy and not particularly known for handling, so I ended up buying a new leftover ’73 Triumph Trident 750, the last 4 stroke bike (along with the essentially identical BSA Rocket III) that was competitive in unlimited class road racing. It was beautiful, fast, and did have amazingly good handling. I tended to ride it way too fast at times. Kept it for 4 years until the kids came along, but sure wish I still had it!
I love Harleys but my first experience was based on the looks and cool factor, not the on-road performance. Choppers were the thing so I bought a ’58 Duo-Glide dresser, and stripped it down to convert to look like a ’72 Super Glide that a friend had. It was a tank, cool-looking and dependable, but it handled like a pig. A Sportster would have been a better choice for sure. Here’s a “before” and “after”. I shortly got tired of its ’55 Buick handling and a year later bought the Trident, which was an amazing performance machine. The girlfriend later wife and I rode it everywhere: smooth for touring and a corner carver for sport.
I’m still jonesin’ for a vintage Harley, particularly a pre-war model and I still have a few years left, so who knows?
The “after” pic. I left the front-end alone as extending the front forks does nothing good for handling, which was not it’s strong suit to begin with.
One can’t deny that Harleys are among the coolest looking bikes ever, an instant antique not all that much changed since the 19 teens.
Wonderful recollections, thanks for sharing! I started my riding in 1984 with a 75 CB125S that I traded a friend a pair of bucket seats for. A great bike to learn the basics on. Quickly moved up to a 75 CB550 that had been customized with a burnt orange metallic paint scheme on the tank, side covers and frame plus a deep red king and queen seat. For $300 it was a sweet deal. I rebuilt the carbs (all chrome) and was good to go. Rode many happy miles until I came across a 71 Suzuki T500R that my neighbor bought new. Teddy Ramos taught me how to ride and the bike had languished in another neighbor’s garage. Cleaned up with new tires, it was a beast. Many more bike followed including a 79 CB650, a 67 Aermacchi 350SS basket case and finally my Norton Commando 850 that I’ve owned /ridden for 27 years. Clearly, the Hondas were the most reliable.I ended up selling the CB125s to a friend who preferred it to his Sportster!
Everyone who owned one, or knew someone who did, has a story to go with them. I was still too young to ride on the street when these came out, but the family friend of a friend’s parents bought one brand new. He must have known someone at the RMV, because he got a low number plate for it.
If the CB750 was too much bike for you, the CB500 was the next step down in the Honda lineup, and it was almost as popular as the CB750, especially when Honda bumped up the displacement to make the CB550. The next step down was the CB350/4, which was less successful, mostly because riders in that class of bike couldn’t afford or wouldn’t pay the premium the four-cylinder version of the 350 commanded, opting for the CB350 parallel twin instead. IIRC, the CB350/4 only lasted for two (2) years before it was discontinued due to slow sales. They are quite rare today, and clean used examples command premium prices as collectibles.
I think I paid $600 for my 1973 350/4 in 1975. Sold it a year later for $500 or $550, replaced by a 400/4 which I had for 5 years.
I envy you the smooth pavement and mostly clement weather. I rode in New York and New England contending with rain cold and frost blasted blacktop. This was probably why I immediately hankered after an R100RT since the cafe racer fairing was more about looks than protection. There were still a lot of Honda 750s around in the 90s, plus a goodly number of the then new 750 Nighthawk. Oddly the only Honda 750 I recall riding was a VFR750 which a completely different ball game.
I also never liked pull back bars, highway pegs or forward set controls. I like low narrow bars and neutral or rearset pegs so I’m leaning forward, I feel more in control and leaning into the wind feelsmore comfortable.
Probably horses for courses.
Way back then, a CB750 with pullbacks and the PCH must’ve been some sort of Nirvana…
I briefly lived in LA in ’68 and CA seemed like paradise. But I was way too young to ride a pushbike with stabiliser wheels up the PCH.
The CB 750 was a game changer. Honda had been building reliable, oil tight, bikes for a decade, incorporating things like electric starting. The CB750 had all the features that Honda was known for, as well as extreme smoothness and a front disc brake. Plus they were pretty quick.
What’s funny is that I experienced the evolution of the motorcycle during this period in reverse. I went from riding Hondas and a high powered Kawasaki to HDs. I had a 650 Kawasaki twin, a non unit construction BSA clone, that wasn’t really any better than the old 450. Then I went with two Sportsters, which were machines that were objectively inferior to a 750, and the Big twin was even inferior to a Sportster. Wow, did those things vibrate!
My move to HD was because of mystique and romanticism, which had been the marque’s strongest attraction to me. My HDs were okay bikes, you put up with a lot of faults to ride Harleys back then. I don’t regret my time riding Harleys, but I don’t blame anyone for the different choices that they made.
I bought my first bike in 1980….a 73 CL450, very reliable loved it after I replaced the clutch release worm drive. BUT 1 year later I took a 77 honda 750four for a ride, Stock exhaust and rode like a caddy with a 454. In 83 I bought a. 77 KZ 1000 put 48,000 miles on it then got married and sold it.
Wow. A great article on a bike that I actually owned. I was in college, and bought it brand new in 1974. Paid $1800 cash from a small dealer in Nephi, Ut. (Nielsen’s Supply). Even the same color…more of a metallic maroon, not purple. She was my first big bike. Had a Honda Super 90, then a CB 350 before. Man, that was the perfect bike for me at the time. I lived in Las Vegas, and loved traveling to the California coast. I put a bat-wing fairing on the front, and a “horseshoe saddle bag” on the rear. (That saddle bag is pretty damn rare, completely wrapped around the rear of the back end). Perfect for long road trips. I’ve since owned Kawasakis (KZ650,900LTD,&1000LTD), and 5 different Harleys. Still have a custom 08′ Road Glide trike in the garage. But I’m here to tell you, that 74′ CB750 will always have a special place in my heart.❤️
During the oil embargo bikes were hard to find I lucked out at Honda dealer just putting out a 750 same color as the writers.If i remember correctly it was about $ 2,300.00.I hadn’t ridden anything but a 125 Yamaha prior.Put a set of headers on it,rejetted the carbs and off I went till 78′ when I got married and sold.Fast forward years later I see a ad for a 750 ,same bke ? Nope,original owner was selling it and I bought.,but after the birth of my soon the bike went bye.
I had a ’91 for about a year, bought for $500. Tires, bars, seat, fender, clutch, clutch cable, exhaust, and then every rubber piece in the upper part of the motor went bad, sold at a loss for $900. But it was black with drag bars and ran great before the leaks, so not a totally bad experience