If you’ve ever wanted to ride a Café to the Café for your Café au Lait, then today’s Nice Price or Crack Pipe CB750 might be just your cup of full-caff tea. That is, unless its price makes it something you wouldn’t want to order to go.
So, I want to start out by saying that I love you guys. And I mean that in a totally platonic, bro/sis kind of way. This was reinforced to me after I noted that yesterday’s 1968 Centaur was available right around the corner from me and that I was giving half-serious meditation on its purchase.
With that information in hand, half of you offered encouragement in the way one does to a bar mate offering to down a flaming cocktail. The other half of you emphatically warned against the act, noting the threat it posed to life, limb, and liberty. I think I’ll heed the naysayers in this instance, although at $6,500, fully 60 percent of you felt it wouldn’t have been a monetary catastrophe to have followed through.
Another thing I’m considering is the purchase of a classic motorcycle. I love the bikes from the ‘70s and earlier, and while many are well out of my price range, a few are still below the wife-will-kill-me threshold. One of those might well be this 1976 Honda CB750F Café bike.
Now, it goes without saying that the CB750F is one of the greatest motorcycles of all time. There have been OHC inline fours before, and many bigger displacement bikes since, but the 750 is and always will be, da’bomb. You can look it up!
There’s something about the simplicity of its central cam drive air-cooled design that makes the engine out as some kind of museum quality piece of art. I’ve seen them in stock bikes, in choppers, and café racers like this, as well as bare bones on the garage floor, and I’m always blown away by the clean and cool look.
I also happen to love Café style bikes. Perhaps it was my hours of misspent youth watching Mad Max over and over, or maybe it was just my hard kink for clip-on bars that did it. Whatever the impetus, I find bikes like this to be living room centerpiece-worthy in style.
This one carries what looks to be a stock frame and era-appropriate—meaning Billy Joel tie skinny—wheels and tires. The 736cc SOHC inline four breathes through a quartet of Keihin side-draught carbs, as they should. These use the pair of lifting arms for throttle actuation. Other models used a four-into-one cable arrangement. The airbox has been given the heave-ho, with air-cleaning duties now handled by a set of individual cone filters.
On the other side of all that there is a four-into-one exhaust that swoops elegantly across the front downtubes and out next to the massive rear disc brake on the right. By the way, both the front and rear brakes are hydraulic here.
In stock form the 750 made about 67 horsepower. That was enough to move the Honda’s 513 pound weight to over 125 miles per hour at full chat. That was impressive back then, but honestly, I don’t think I’d want to do anything more than 80 on a frame or suspension geometry such as this.
A five-speed gearbox share’s the engine’s casing and is generally considered to be as rock-solid reliable as the little mill.
The bodywork here is by Benjie’s Café and looks super sweet. An elongated gas tank with minimized knee tuck-ins tops the motor and describes an arc on top that’s completed by the cap on the back of the tail, just ahead of the single-place saddle. This is definitely monoposto, not even offering rear pegs any more. Paint looks to be exceptionally clean and formal event-elegant in its black and white coating. Chrome is clean and shiny across the board.
The ad says that the wiring is newish, having been installed by a California Honda dealer. The tires and other ancillaries are also recent adoptions, and while bike only carries a single retro-style speedo at the moment, the seller notes that the original two-gauge cluster does come along with the sale.
What we’re going to need to decide is whether or not, at $4,995, you might go along with it as well.
What do you think, is this cool as Kombucha Café CB750 worth that much cash? Or, does that price have you sticking to your own home brew?
You decide!
San Francisco Bay Area, CA Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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