Having been in the “game” for over 50 years, I have bought and sold a lot of bikes and parts, done a lot of repair work and answered thousands of tech questions. This all gets your name out in front of a lot of people world-wide. Your name also circulates around a wide group of vintage Honda enthusiasts and friends that are made through the years of doing deals, helping others find bikes and parts and just the greater group of “Nicest People” Honda friends.
At 77, I am trying to wind down a lot of work and parts/bikes wrangling, but often a friend or two will refer a friend of theirs to you for an opportunity to possibly cash in on an old parts stash left behind by retired dealers and collectors. Recently, my long-time buddy, Ed Moore, down in TX suggested to a friend of ours. that I would be a good home for some NLA vintage Honda primary chains. Ed has stopped rebuilding engines after more than 30 years, so some of the spare parts are not needed into the future. Our mutual friend Bob Kelly, contacted me on Ed’s suggestion and offered a batch of NOS primary chains for a REALLY good price. It’s been quite a while since I was able to offer a new chain to my 250-305 Honda engine customers, so it will be a real treat to do that for a few more customers.
The stash of primary chains came from an old Honda Dealer in CO who passed away recently and left his estate to his 80 year old sister, who lives in the Mid-West somewhere. The estate went into probate and there were a lot of approvals to be completed before she could sell the house and empty out the place, the garage and then 2 storage units that she didn’t know existed until Bob stepped up and hunted them down for her.
Looking back at some old messages, I noticed that Bob had asked me about any spare CB77 engines being available because he had a line on a new, unsold CB77 which had its engine removed and installed in the son’s Go-Kart! The mostly mint rolling chassis deal fell through, but it was expected that it might well be in the inventory of the storage units, which haven’t been opened for many years and the contents are unknown. It was thought that there was a supply of NOS Honda parts buried in the boxes and bins in storage, but there was no inventory sheet or list of what was in either unit.
Bob gave me a heads-up about some auction items that the sister had dug out of the house and put up for sale on an online auction site. It was not widely publicized and few people, apart from the locals knew about it or were interested in the listings. They all had generic descriptions placed by the auction people who had no idea of what any of them were for and any values. I bid on about 8 items and won 4 of them, including a used $22 CB77 seat, a NOS CYB72 racing seat, a used, bare, steel CB92 early fuel tank with the screw-on cap and a batch of fenders, which included an early CB77 front fender, and one for perhaps a C200/CM91 in black. With an 18% buyer fee, the whole batch came to $500. The auction site offered shipping from some unnamed third party, so I opted to have Bob pick them up, along with his auction successes and then I had to make a decision about how to A. Transport the auction items back to San Diego or B. Drive 2400 miles out to Denver and pick them up, along with some unknown other bikes and parts from the storage units or C. Fly in and stay with Bob, while we both sifted through the storage units and divvied up any good parts and bikes, then rent a U-Haul truck and drive them back 1200 miles to San Diego again. Option C became the prime option.
If the haul is big, I will have to rent a storage unit of my own to hold them temporarily until they are sorted and determinations made about where they might all go in the future. So, as of 9/29/25, the jury is out as to just what is in the units and what if any of it I might want to purchase out of the collection. Yes, I am faced with a big, expensive adventure ahead of me, hopefully before winter sets in the middle of Colorado.
Next step
Oct. 13th was the day of the “auction” and it turns out that Bob outbid one other party and wound up owning them both. I had already tried to make a reservation on SW airlines at $169, but the day before it was $199 for a 7am basic flight. When I called their agency, I was told if I waited until after midnight, I could call in and get the 8:45 am flight if seats were open at an extra $28. Going early meant I had to be at the airport at 5:30 am. My brother, Jim, volunteered to take me down to the airport, but he had to leave his house at an hour before the time I needed to leave my house, which put him out at 4am to leave his house. The 8:45 flight gave him more time to get down to me and for us to get to the new airport terminal at 6:30-7am. Fortunately, it all worked out successfully.
My midnight call to SW airlines paid off with a seat at 8:45am, as we hoped. Jim came down by 6:15 and we were down to the airport by about 7am, in plenty of time to get the luggage tagged and checked in to the flight. Unfortunately for a guy with a fused ankle, extended walking is not pleasant and SW airlines located ALL of their terminal gates at the FAR END of the building. I would guess that it was more than a ¼ mile away from the entrance. I dragged my little roller carry-on bag slowly down the concourse until I reached the 102 gate. I sat and waited and waited, I was given a ticket that said C46, which I thought was the seat number. I haven’t flown on SWA before, so I didn’t know that they were still doing open seating. I was one of the last people boarded and was trying to get back to the back of the plane, only to have a few people say that there were no more seats available at the back. So, it turned out that there was a middle seat open in row 6, which I grabbed and settled in for a flight that is about 1 hour and 45 minutes. They served little Graham Crackers and drinks in cups made of bamboo! The flight went smoothly but then I had to walk the length of the terminal again, just to get out to where the luggage carousels were located. The bag got there about the time I did, then I had to find Bob who was just arriving at the airport. We finally met up and he drove me back to his house in his black Chevy pickup.
Bob had already taken a quick look inside the units and his long-held myth about the “new” CB77 with the engine removed for a go-cart was dispelled, when he found a black CB77 less the engine in a chassis that showed 14k miles on the odometer. There was a red CB77 that was intact, but needed a lot of TLC, plus a CB550 race bike, another CB550 street bike and a chopper looking bike. Surrounding the bikes in the middle were dozens of cardboard boxes containing hundreds of NOS Honda parts that the owner had purchased from the first Honda dealership in Co in 1990 and packed away in the storage units, paying rent regularly for 35 years.
Just opening the door, a tattered cardboard box fell to the floor, spilling the contents of obviously brand new genuine Honda parts. It was a mind-boggling experience. I already had a taste of the ancient treasures that came from the estate when a NIB CE71 racing tachometer turned up in the house, before it was sold. That dated to 1959, so confirms that the dealership was the first in Colorado. I saw that Bob had listed it on FB forums, just a few minutes previously to it being posted. It was definitely not cheap, but I had never had a chance to buy even a used one. The tachometer fits into the headlight shell, similar to how the CB92 racing tach fits the headlight shell in place of the speedometer. The tachometer read to a maximum of 18k rpms! Apparently, Honda had brief thoughts of taking the CE71 road racing, but apart from some designated exhaust pipes in a catalog, there were no other “racing” parts offered for a street bike with a probable rev limit of about 8,500 rpms. It is just so BEAUTIFUL that I had to have it. Bob set it on the pile of parts that I already purchased at the previous auction and I was excited to see it in person, when I arrive at his house in Erie, Co shared with his wife, Mary.
We dropped off my bags at the house and headed into the mysterious Honda treasure trove that awaited our inspection. I brought a little air compressor to help air up some bike tires, as the bikes were all in the center of the room, blocking access to the boxes of parts. Once a few bikes were backed out, we could start opening some boxes along the left corner, sorting them into “Bill boxes” and “Bob boxes” that we had brought along. A majority of the parts were in those little slender bin boxes with part numbers marked on the ends. My knowledge of parts and applications for the part numbers helped me sort out the 250-277 code items, which I was interested in purchasing. We worked until dark and then returned home for a rest. The next day was a visit to a favorite breakfast place, not far from the storage units, for a recharging meal before we went to work again. It was a good 6+ hours on the next day of wading through countless parts with product codes from 001 (Honda Cub 50) all the way to some 422 CBX parts, in limited quantities. Each new cardboard box revealed new bins full of both exciting and other parts that didn’t hold much interest, but you could tell that much of it was ordered in the early 1960s for 250-305 twins, CB92s, CB350s, CB450K0-K1 bikes, and a fair amount of 300-code CB750 parts which were all melded together in the seemingly unending supply of surprises.
A third day of long hours of work, yielded more goodies and odd surprises of unusual quantities of some parts that you would never use in a lifetime, like brake pedal return springs for a CA95 Benly… 8 of them. We found NOS CB450K1 carburetors, but not a lot of other carburetors. Very few pistons and ring sets, as well, apart from the awesome CY110 racing piston, which was alone in the bin. There were some 250-305 transmission parts, including gears that never usually wear out and a couple of output shafts. The CL72s were represented with a gathering of model-specific items, but again when would you wear out the rear sprocket bolts in a 250 Scrambler enough to warrant ordering two sets? There was a good selection of 268 code CB72-77 parts, including the front fender that I had purchased earlier. A lot of parts with 250-259 code parts are Dream-based, but used on the other models. I was disappointed to find only ONE of the clutch retainer wires, where they are used in sets of 3 or 4 on various models.
Along with the CB92 bits, there were other generic 200-207 code Benly parts, which fit the CA95 Benly 150 models. Again, there were really no pistons or ring sets for the Benly bikes, as was the case for the 250-305 models. Not a lot of hard parts for CB750s, either. The owner had an interest in the 500-550 Fours, so a lot of those parts came to rise in the boxes of all sizes and shapes. I was pleased to see some new lower fork housings for the Type 2 alloy forks, but they were both for the same side instead of being a pair. There was a lot of single-sided parts for many models. After three days of sifting through the myriad of parts, three large bins of “Bills parts” were transported back to Bob’s house for evaluation of prices and applications for various models.
After we sifted back through the “Bill box” and made a determination of value, they were all sorted into six 12x12” U-Haul boxes and made ready for the return trip to San Diego. Bob arranged a nice dinner meet-up with Roger Burns and his wife, along with Lyle Penner, who is wrangling something over 100 motorcycles in his collection. After dinner, we all parted ways and returned back to Bob’s home for the last night of rest before the send-off on Friday morning.
We had our third breakfast meal at the nice cafe and then headed for the U-haul in Bolder to pick up the 10’x10’ truck. I initially wanted the truck as I was somewhat expecting to buy the two CB77s that were stashed away, but the quantity of parts put a dent in the budget and I had other projects in the works at home. My attempts to just rent a car/van from Avis and Budget were foiled as they claimed that they had no cars to rent out on a one-way rental back to CA. After I confirmed the U-haul truck, I received a text message from U-haul asking if I wanted to be part of their load-sharing program. In this case I would have to drive to Aurora, CO and pickup a small trailer and storage unit box for a return to CA. One of the three CA return options was National City, CA about 8 miles from home. The reward for hauling the trailer was $500! I opted in and picked up the trailer in Aurora, then headed west on the I-70 looking for the I-15 South to San Diego.
I left Aurora at 9:30am my CA time and just put my foot down and drove, drove, drove all the way out of Colorado, then across Utah and a corner of AZ before diving into Nevada, passing through Las Vegas at 2am. I had cat-napped once in St. George, UT for a half hour but was running low on energy about half way between Baker and Barstow, CA. I pulled into a Truck rest stop and planned on another power nap for a half hour or so, but it turned into a couple of hours, as I woke up a 5am! From there, WAZE had me arriving in National City at 8:30. Cal-Trans had other ideas, as the ramp from the 215 to 60 to 215 was closed with no alternate route offered. I pulled off the freeway and reset the GPS to Corona, where the I-15 was accessible after a lateral move across the 91. Once on the I-15 again, the drive was mostly uneventful, but WAZE was trying to take me off route to the National City exit in ways that were not helpful. I knew exactly where I was headed and arrived in time to drop off the trailer at 9:30am… 24 hours of driving a bouncy, noisy U-haul trailer covering just under 1200 miles.
I came home, unloaded the truck and took a shower and a rest. My neighbor Smitty, followed me down to the local U-haul depot to drop off the truck and bring me home, once again. I finally got a good night’s sleep on Saturday night, but then woke up with a sore throat and stuffy nose. It got progressively worse and I finally went to the VA ER for evaluation and treatment. The diagnosis was Bronchitis, which I have never had before. Causes could have been from the airplane trip, the lack of sleep coupled with 3 days of sifting through dusty bin boxes that sat in storage for some 35 years or some combination of the three. I was tested for Covid, flu and RSV, but none of those swabs showed positive results. The VA sent me home with 4 different meds and my recovery continues.
I was able to post some of the interesting parts on Facebook Forums and sold 5 items quickly. It looks like I will be spending a lot of time photographing and listing NOS Honda parts for sale for the next few weeks. It was a crazy, wild and expensive week from San Diego to Denver to Aurora and back home again. Thanks to Bob Kelly and his wife for their hospitality and the adventure of a lifetime, especially now. These opportunities are few and far between in the 21st century.
Bill Silver aka MrHonda
10/2025
www.vintagehonda.com
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