Motorcycle Repair: Correct Seat Strap Buckles, correct seat, variations on a theme

Question
Bill:
    I keep seeing seat strap buckles for cl72's They are always the wrong ones. I have a lovely original red cl72 with correct fenders, chain guard,
and all. But nobody seems to know that the buckles out there for sale are wrong! One only need look at the old adds, even the one with the beach boys sitting on a red 250. Where are the correct buckles? Do you have some?  Tom Stockstill assembled my 250.........Ted Kierscey

Answer
Ted, there seems to be a lot of confusion over seat strap buckles, for sure. There are small ones for the Cubs, larger ones for the CB/CL 72-77 models, then you have CB450K0 and then later on CB400F, CB750s, GL1000 and other variations on a theme. I'm not sure that anyone is making "correct" buckles at this time, which allowed the strap to be slipped off the head of the mounting screws, instead of having to remove the screw to unhook the strap. The tooling and stamping is probably a little complex and expensive to make and produce, then you have the added cost of plating on top of that.

All the replacement seats have straps ending under the seat pan, as you well know.

I had a correct seat with the buckles on my 1964 CB77, but sold it off last year to a guy in Norway.

Sorry, Ted... I don't have any new info for you on this subject.

Bill Silver