This 1976 Honda XL175 was being stored by a buddy in his shop gathering dust, with no compression and a carburetor full of sludge. A deal was made and the bike came home with me. The goal was to build a small displacement bobber. I wanted the bike to be low, lean and slow…. Mission accomplished!
After rebuilding the top end of the engine and carburetor I stripped the frame of everything and started cutting it apart. I assembled a homemade tube bender using scrap steel, a pulley and a bottle jack and bent the tubing for the back of the frame. I lengthened the bike by ten inches and dropped the front suspension by two. After that it was a game of finding ways to repurpose scrap metal I had to fabricate parts. The seat is hand carved from old growth fir. Is it comfortable? No… but who gives a shit, it looks cool. I used old wrenches, weedwacker parts and repurposed hardware to make the seat brackets and the original piston became the taillight. The muffler is actually the business end of a mag light with a bicycle wheel hub cut in half and a baffle from a pitbike muffler sandwiched in between. It works perfectly. The headlight came off a Yamaha tt500 and handlebars from a Schwinn bicycle. This year the motorcycle got invited to the 1 moto show in Portland and we had an epic weekend with friends at the event. Photo courtesy of @cphotobellingham
