VintageCB750 Customer Rides

Hello,

My 1970 Honda CB750 Trike Build History Like a lot of us I’ve been riding/modifying mini bikes and motorcycles since I was 13. My first street bike was a 1970 Honda SL350 — which, of course, ended up getting chopped because I wanted something cool in 1971. When I turned 18, I had my eye on the brand-new, just-released superbike: the Kawasaki 900. Only problem? I needed a co-signer… and my parents gave that a hard “nope.” So I figured, fine — I’ll build something myself. But what?

One day I was walking through town and spotted a CB750 engine, fully chromed, sitting in an auto parts store window — and that’s when the idea hit. A trike. Nobody had one. And I’d instantly be the coolest kid on Long Island (at least in my mind). I found a company called Corbin Gentry that made frames to fit whatever engine you had, and I even got to choose the rake. So I ordered the frame, the fiberglass body for the CB750, and picked out a Harley Servi-Car rear end from Ted’s Cycle Shed in upstate New York. (Fun fact: years later, American Chopper bought parts from Ted’s too.) And the build was officially on.

 I started the project in my parents’ basement in Smithtown, Long Island, buying parts as fast as my paycheck allowed. About a year later, the trike finally came together. I tore it back apart, hauled everything upstairs to the garage, added the finishing touches, and mailed a mountain of paperwork to the Albany DMV to register it as a custom build. Months of back-and-forth later, I finally got the registration — and off I went.

Naturally, it needed a few tweaks (don’t they all?), but I rode the life out of that thing. At 19, bar-hopping on a custom-built trike, I thought I was the man — LOL. I’d get pulled over now and then, but mostly because the cops just wanted a closer look. I got married at 26, and my wife and I rode all over the Island together. Eventually, though, the bike — not my wife! — started getting tired. When we moved to Connecticut in 1981, the state wouldn’t accept my New York registration, so I had to go through the whole painful DMV dance all over again. That included trailering the trike to the Wethersfield DMV for inspection. They issued me a new VIN, and she was back on the road.

 I rode her a few more years before putting her to bed in 1998. I disassembled everything, bagged and labeled each part, boxed it all up, and hung the frame on the wall. In 2004, I decided to rebuild her. This time I had a little extra money, a few more brain cells, and a shop at work with actual machine tools — bingo! I converted the Servi-Car rear end to disc brakes, bored the engine to 836cc, gave her fresh paint, and added a bunch of custom touches. I built a stainless-steel oil tank, fabbed up custom SS handlebars, and replaced anything chrome with polished stainless. Sweet.

In 2015, coming home from a 9/11 ride, the rear final drive bearings decided they’d had enough and blew themselves all over the road. “F.” I got her trailered home — thankfully the outer race stayed in the case and the shaft just bounced around doing no damage. Holy crap, what luck. Still, I was frustrated, and she sat again.

In 2017, I pulled the motor and had a motor genes good friend rebuilt it… and there it sat all rebuilt in my garage. We moved to New Hampshire in 2020, and once again, the trike sat untouched in pieces in the garage. Now it’s 2025 — I’m 72 — and I’m finally putting her back together with a few new mods. Nothing major this time. Registration in NH was a breeze, and as of today, I’m getting ready to oil-prime and… To be continued.