'65 Superhawk restoration: part 1
In early August I bought a 1965 Honda CB77 Superhawk on Ebay. It had been sitting in a fellow's garage for over 30 years. A few weeks later, on the train back from Washington DC, where I picked the bike up, I wrote this piece.
October 11, 2003
NEW YORK —The thing I miss most about living in Austin (besides friends) is riding motorcycles. Though I theoretically could pay for a parking space in Manhattan, I can’t make myself do it. Something about spending more per month for parking than for bike payments. Plus, I couldn’t use it to commute. Etc. Etc.
I have subscriptions to Cycle World, Motor Cyclist, the Motorcycle Online website, plus a membership in the American Motorcycle Association (which sends me its own monthly magazine).
Recently, I was checking out the going rates on eBay for two new, somewhat hard to find, Honda models (the Rune and the CBR 600RR). That got me looking at classic Hondas from the 60’s and early 70’s. One in particular, a 1965 Honda CB77 "SuperHawk", captured my attention. I’ve been a fan of classic Japanese bikes, especially Hondas for a while. A couple of years ago, Cycle World did a feature on the old SuperHawk. That and Honda’s listing of the SuperHawk as one of its "milestone" models sold me. Over the next few days I kept an eye on the bidding and mulled over whether to buy the thing.
The seller was in the DC area, and as I have in-laws and friends living there, I thought a pick-up would be feasible. My pal Anton, who I work with and who is from Belarus and whose accent has a slightly suspicious, Peter Lorre quality, advised me on how to finesse the eBay bidding process. "You’ve got to wait until the last second, man. Keep two windows open, one of them set to update every second, and the other one for bidding. When there’s like 2 seconds left, -- psheww! -- you fire."
As the final hours of the auction came, the bidding picked up. Most of the week, the high bid had been around $800. Now it was arching up through $1000, $1200, $1275, $1300. There were three active bidders,plus at least one lurker, me. To take my mind off the approaching battle, I played a quick game of Quake III Arena (single player). I set the difficulty level to "Bring it on" and won the match handily. Heart pumping, adrenaline surging, mind fully alert and cleansed by hyper violence, I could return to eBay.
With 10 minutes left, I thought it would be a good idea to enter a test bid (should have thought of this sooner), since it had been years since I last bid on eBay. I put in a bid of $1531, with the maximum also set to $1531. (Experienced eBay’ers can skip the rest of this paragraph.) When you enter a bid, you can also specify a higher "maximum" bid. If anyone tops your bid while you’re not looking, the server will automatically enter bids on your behalf up to the lesser of the amount necessary for you to be the top bidder or the maximum bid you specified.
My test bid made me the highest bidder. Going once... going twice... The problem was, someone could come in at the last second and easily top my bid (since I didn’t give it any headroom). I fretted over what to do. I didn’t know if I could enter another bid above my own bid (and if I could, did I have to actually outbid myself?). In my handy second window I prepared a new bid, with a modestly higher maximum. The act of fretting must screw with the space-time continuum, because when I next refreshed my first window there were 7 seconds left to go and (!!!) someone had topped my bid by 10 measly bucks!
Instinctively, (as when a single round from my Westley Richards .425 brought down the maneater of Njoma) I clicked "Send" on window 2, "Refresh" on window 1. Auction over (the voice of Quake in my head saying "You win!", "Excellent", "Impressive"). EBay’s log showed that my winning bid came in 2 seconds before the close.
Although I didn’t intend on "sniping" the auction away from any of my fellow bike enthusiasts, I was happy to have smoked the joker that tried to snipe me.
Coming next: the trek to retrieve the bike.
Next in news:Blackout!I have subscriptions to Cycle World, Motor Cyclist, the Motorcycle Online website, plus a membership in the American Motorcycle Association (which sends me its own monthly magazine).
Recently, I was checking out the going rates on eBay for two new, somewhat hard to find, Honda models (the Rune and the CBR 600RR). That got me looking at classic Hondas from the 60’s and early 70’s. One in particular, a 1965 Honda CB77 "SuperHawk", captured my attention. I’ve been a fan of classic Japanese bikes, especially Hondas for a while. A couple of years ago, Cycle World did a feature on the old SuperHawk. That and Honda’s listing of the SuperHawk as one of its "milestone" models sold me. Over the next few days I kept an eye on the bidding and mulled over whether to buy the thing.
The seller was in the DC area, and as I have in-laws and friends living there, I thought a pick-up would be feasible. My pal Anton, who I work with and who is from Belarus and whose accent has a slightly suspicious, Peter Lorre quality, advised me on how to finesse the eBay bidding process. "You’ve got to wait until the last second, man. Keep two windows open, one of them set to update every second, and the other one for bidding. When there’s like 2 seconds left, -- psheww! -- you fire."
As the final hours of the auction came, the bidding picked up. Most of the week, the high bid had been around $800. Now it was arching up through $1000, $1200, $1275, $1300. There were three active bidders,plus at least one lurker, me. To take my mind off the approaching battle, I played a quick game of Quake III Arena (single player). I set the difficulty level to "Bring it on" and won the match handily. Heart pumping, adrenaline surging, mind fully alert and cleansed by hyper violence, I could return to eBay.
With 10 minutes left, I thought it would be a good idea to enter a test bid (should have thought of this sooner), since it had been years since I last bid on eBay. I put in a bid of $1531, with the maximum also set to $1531. (Experienced eBay’ers can skip the rest of this paragraph.) When you enter a bid, you can also specify a higher "maximum" bid. If anyone tops your bid while you’re not looking, the server will automatically enter bids on your behalf up to the lesser of the amount necessary for you to be the top bidder or the maximum bid you specified.
My test bid made me the highest bidder. Going once... going twice... The problem was, someone could come in at the last second and easily top my bid (since I didn’t give it any headroom). I fretted over what to do. I didn’t know if I could enter another bid above my own bid (and if I could, did I have to actually outbid myself?). In my handy second window I prepared a new bid, with a modestly higher maximum. The act of fretting must screw with the space-time continuum, because when I next refreshed my first window there were 7 seconds left to go and (!!!) someone had topped my bid by 10 measly bucks!
Instinctively, (as when a single round from my Westley Richards .425 brought down the maneater of Njoma) I clicked "Send" on window 2, "Refresh" on window 1. Auction over (the voice of Quake in my head saying "You win!", "Excellent", "Impressive"). EBay’s log showed that my winning bid came in 2 seconds before the close.
Although I didn’t intend on "sniping" the auction away from any of my fellow bike enthusiasts, I was happy to have smoked the joker that tried to snipe me.
Coming next: the trek to retrieve the bike.
Comments