QuestionI have restored lots of vintage Vespa scooters and a few cars from the muscle-car era. In both cases, there is a plentiful supply of well made replacement parts available to supply hobbists and professionals alike. That does not seem to be the case for vintage Honda motorcycles. Do you agree? I am just starting to get re-interested in early Honda's; particularly the small displacement street models from the mid 60s through the mid 70s - 250, 305, 350, 350F, 450, 450F... It seems that Honda has abandoned the older models. And, looking on the Internet, I find suprisingly few sources for aftermarket repair and replacement parts and components. Mostly I am finding NOS parts for sale that seem to be left over from now out-of-business dealers. What happens when these original Honda parts are used up and gone? Are there manufacturers making replacement parts for these models? Do you think the interest in these bikes is growing enough that aftermarket manufacturers will starting making parts again so theses models can continue to be rebuilt and restored once the supply of NOS parts is exhausted? Is there any chance Honda will start making parts for earlier models?
AnswerDon, Honda pretty much washes their hands of responsibility of supplying parts after about 10 years after end of production. They have made thousands of different models and dozens of variations of many of those, so the parts inventory and production considerations are staggering in any case.
Honda does have a vintage parts division, apparently in Japan who will make small quantities of some items that they still have tooling for, like exhaust systems for some of the fours.. CB750 primarily. CMS in Holland is tied to them, to a certain extent and almost had them remake the missing #2 pipe for the 350Fs but the cost got too high.
Companies like APEX CYCLE, RETROBIKES and a few others are having Asian companies remake some items. You won't be seeing any new crankshafts or engine cases coming from Honda or anyone else. Tooling and production of this stuff is way too expensive nowadays.
I have a source in Australia who makes new Dream and CB77 mufflers from stainless steel. It is a small company and he's willing to do the tooling in-house just to produce the parts, but he's getting near retiring and that source will dry up one day. A company in NZ made some beautiful new CB77 mufflers a few years back, but the supply is now gone, I believe and they don't seem interested in doing another run again.
If there is sufficient demand, someone usually steps up and takes a shot at having parts made, but there are so many parts in a bike and so many models, that it is impossible to expect that the supply line for 40+ year old motorcycles is going to continue indefinitely.
Brit bikes and scooters remained relatively unchanged for many years, so making parts for those is less of a stretch, than doing Honda camshafts for 250-305s... there were three versions of splines on just those parts.
Bill Silver
