It's really not the sort of offer you turn down. The idea of watching a brand-new Honda CB750 take shape within 24 hours is enough to drag me out of bed--and photographer James Brown 500 miles from Los Angeles--to World's well-camouflaged Northern California industrial-park shop to see what's what.
Monday, 2:00 p.m. Once World has opened the shop's triple-security locks, we wander inside, looking for the six-foot-high toolboxes. Instead, World points out a Kennedy Jr. foldout box and two slim wallets of Snap-on wrenches. "They're always surprised not to see big toolboxes," he says. We're shocked and trying not to show it. To Mr. World, tool money is better spent on genuine CB750 parts, and he loves buying 1969 CB750 parts.
Honda's first production four-cylinder motorcycle absolutely stole the show in Tokyo when it was introduced in late '68. It was technologically and aesthetically stunning--the first mass-production motorcycle with four cylinders, five gears, an electric start, a disc brake and 68-horsepower/125-mph performance. It literally changed the motorcycle world overnight, and proceeded to set the sales charts on fire afterward. Known simply as the CB750, Honda sold more than 50,000 of its new phenomenon in '69 and '70 alone.
Unofficially, the first CB is called the K0--"K-zero"--to distinguish it from the '70 K1 model. Here's another distinction: The first 7000 engines came with crankcases cast in gravity molds. After that, those grainy "sand-cast" cases were superseded by smooth, pressure-cast pieces. Power was a problem on the early engines; there was too much of it. Those 68 horses ate relatively fragile late-'60s chains, tossing the remains through the crankcases and wreaking all manner of havoc. Many crankcases were replaced under warranty--with smooth, pressure die-cast items, of course. You're beginning to get the picture. All of which means a genuine, sand-cast '69-spec CB750 is rare enough to make any bike collector drool. And we're here to watch one man build a brand-new bike from real, honest-to-gosh Honda parts, almost exactly as it would have rolled off the assembly line at Honda's Hamamatsu factory in '69.
It's amazing enough that he's actually planning to do it (where does one get that many brand-new Honda parts?). But can he do it in a day? The man has few tools, but plenty of parts. Three walls of the shop are lined with deep metal shelves, all overflowing with individually and specifically labeled bins of parts. No reproductions, either. According to World, all are genuine. Honda used 2500 parts in each CB750, he says, and they're all here, many still in their original wrappers. Parts were gleaned from dealers' never-sold stock or refurbished. Larger assemblies--chainguards, cases, exhaust pipes, carburetors--fill every available storage space around the shop, plus a nearby warehouse.
World began collecting 750s in the early '80s. Then the bikes started getting scarce, parts stocks dropped and prices climbed. World says, "All the barns and garages are pretty well picked over by now. You won't see many more K0 discoveries. I bought a lot of parts from Honda before they stopped making them because it was obvious that, eventually, they would stop.
"Even so, many of the replacement parts were not quite the same as the originals. Look at the turn signals. The K0 had a colored tag at the end of the wire (orange for left, blue for right). Later models don't. And the lenses themselves were printed with the lettering, 'OEStanley, Japan.' Later ones have DOT numbers. It's obvious in a second if the bike has the right turn-signal lenses." World opens a box crammed full of original lenses. He then pulls out a container of tachometer assemblies, most still in the original wrappers. "The instruments were different the next year. These are all first-year examples, unobtainable now at any price."