Honda 550 F1 550

This was the first real motorcycle I have owned after taking my test in 1980. My Honda had a wild cam and a piper power pipe, which was so loud that I got pulled in five times in one week. I changed the Piper to a standard pipe and found that the bike would go ten miles per hour faster than it did with the power pipe, it sounded faster before but it wasnt it was just loud. The bike had 115 MPH max on the speedo but with the wild cam I found that the speedo would go right off the scale, in all the bikes ive owned since then that was the only one I had off the speedo.

It was a great bike, a nice low centre of gravity which on bends seemed like it was on rails, I was very young then so was a bit crazy and I would push the bike to the max, and it always performed well. I know people from these days would call this a slow bike but I can assure them that this is not so. The bike nearly killed me on several occasions through my own recklessness, you know "itll never happen to me". I think that a bike from the seventies may ONLY be able to do about 125 MPH but when you go to insure it the price is so low, as its a classic now. I now own a GPZ 750 Turbo and it only costs just over 100 pounds to insure, and will stomp all over most modern bikes ive raced, well all so far. It makes sense to buy an older machine because of the costs including free road tax. I really get off on restoring bikes to their former glory and bikes that have lots of chrome, kickstarts engine showing etc looks like a bike not a plastic cover up. Im sure people will disagree with me but I dont care, I like bikes that look like real bikes and not with everything hidden.