Honda-SOHC
General => New Member Introductions => Topic started by: RickNC30 on March 17, 2026, 08:45:12 PM
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Good evening, all...
Rick here from rural Norfolk - geographically in the middle of the Broads but temporally still in the middle of the 1970s (that`s the village, not me).
Long term Honda loyalist, my first one was a secondhand CB72 in 1971, currently in possession of one car, four bikes and two lawnmowers wearing the badge - oh, and I also worked for them for 12 years before I retired.
I`ve been mostly messing about with V4s since I bought my first VFR750F in 1991 but I do have some inline four history.
There were the two CB400Fs whose incidental appearance on the forum has brought me here but I have one more stab at forum credibility which is that in 1983 I took a CB750F2 for a 6000 mile road trip across the States and Canada. I bought the bike in Nashua NH, rode up to see some far flung family in Ontario then back down the east coast and across Route 66 to end up in California, so I have SOHC`d to Niagara Falls, the Blue Ridge Mountains, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon and ridden the Pacific Coast Highway from San Francisco to San Diego to Seattle and back again - happy days, and more happily still the bike never missed a beat...
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Welcome to the sohc forum/community.
I'm trying to figure out your age based on your CB 72 ownership.
I'm thinking you are about 8 years younger than me ?
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Welcome Rick
Lots of good helpful people here, with expertise far wider than just sohc
Interesting name, I used to deal with a NC30 specialist in the rural East ,very good bloke he was
Welcome to the happy band
Sent from my SM-A546E using Tapatalk
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Funny that, I used to have a customer called John Webley - right pain in the ass he was... ;D
Keeping it cryptic for you, Ted - I was born the year Geoff Duke won his last world championship and I was 21 the year Barry Sheene won his first...
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Welcome to the forum Rick.
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Welcome to the forum Rick.
All these tales of sohc's and epic trips makes me think you need another sohc in the garage 😉.
If you live in Norfolk and you worked for 'The Big H' (as Bike magazine used to call them) did you therefore work at Lings Honda by any chance? My local dealer in Ruislip Manor, HGB used to get all their parts from Lings but things have changed now and most spares I order come from Belgium.
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Funny that, I used to have a customer called John Webley - right pain in the ass he was... ;D
Keeping it cryptic for you, Ted - I was born the year Geoff Duke won his last world championship and I was 21 the year Barry Sheene won his first...
I was 3 years out, you are 11 years younger than me.
Interesting that many members do not show their age on public profiles, I thought being coy about ones age was more of a female trait. (No slight intended NJ.)
I'm still only 77 for a about 7 weeks.😃
Impressive travel in your Bio, furthest I have ever travelled on my first Honda was Derby to Chester. I was a tad younger in 1967. It was during the winter months with no motorway route back then. Derby, Uttoxeter, Milwich, Stone, Nantwich etc.in Rain & Snow, mostly in the dark as part of my commute home every weekendd
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50432719296_c3dfe7ddf7.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2jQySp3)Ted's Honda 250 circa 1967 (https://flic.kr/p/2jQySp3) by Macabe Thiele (https://www.flickr.com/photos/187487200@N03/), on Flickr
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Funny that, I used to have a customer called John Webley - right pain in the ass he was... ;D
Keeping it cryptic for you, Ted - I was born the year Geoff Duke won his last world championship and I was 21 the year Barry Sheene won his first...
I was 3 years out, you are 11 years younger than me.
Interesting that many members do not show their age on public profiles, I thought being coy about ones age was more of a female trait. (No slight intended NJ.)
I'm still only 77 for a about 7 weeks.😃 And I'm only 78 for 7 weeks!!! (05-05-1947). Your turn fellow Taurus Tearaway.
Impressive travel in your Bio, furthest I have ever travelled on my first Honda was Derby to Chester. I was a tad younger in 1967. It was during the winter months with no motorway route back then. Derby, Uttoxeter, Milwich, Stone, Nantwich etc.in Rain & Snow, mostly in the dark as part of my commute home every weekendd
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50432719296_c3dfe7ddf7.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2jQySp3)Ted's Honda 250 circa 1967 (https://flic.kr/p/2jQySp3) by Macabe Thiele (https://www.flickr.com/photos/187487200@N03/), on Flickr
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I thought we were the generation who could do mental arithmetic, Ted...
Geoff Duke - 1955, Barry Sheene - 1976, therefore I`m 71.
Not Lings, Dave - it was C J Ball in Norwich.
I think one of my former colleagues told me recently that both the HGB and Lings Honda dealerships have closed down recently...?
As for getting another SOHC, my `currently in the garage` list is nearly as long as yours (4 VFRs and 3 Kawasaki triples plus two more recent classic strokers under construction) so I`ll have to sell something first...
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HGB (and Daytona just across the road from HGB) are both still going strong Rick although Mike Harrington the part owner sadly passed away a couple of years ago. He was so well liked we brought Ruislip Manor to a standstill on the day of his funeral with so many bikes escorting the hearse. I've been using HGB since I was 17, 47 years!
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Lings are still there but they have parted from Honda (after around 50 years) and now hold Triumph and KTM/Husqvarna/GasGas franchises...
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I thought we were the generation who could do mental arithmetic, Ted...
Geoff Duke - 1955, Barry Sheene - 1976, therefore I`m 71.
Not Lings, Dave - it was C J Ball in Norwich.
I think one of my former colleagues told me recently that both the HGB and Lings Honda dealerships have closed down recently...?
As for getting another SOHC, my `currently in the garage` list is nearly as long as yours (4 VFRs and 3 Kawasaki triples plus two more recent classic strokers under construction) so I`ll have to sell something first...
Duff information from AI on Google search, so my first guess was about right.😁
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Welcome to the forum Rick. Good to have you on board. 👍
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I don`t have much of a record left from those days before iphones and obsessive documentation but I found a snap of the trusty F2 in the middle of Death Valley -
(https://hosting.photobucket.com/f6ee2a77-2246-40f1-87d4-a27f31513588/a2bbb2d0-b292-4562-a283-d1018fca2dbd.jpg?width=960&height=720&fit=bounds) (https://hosting.photobucket.com/f6ee2a77-2246-40f1-87d4-a27f31513588/a2bbb2d0-b292-4562-a283-d1018fca2dbd.jpg?width=960&height=720&fit=bounds)
- on the side of the information point/emergency phone somebody had scratched `MUFC` into the concrete - don`t you just love the English abroad...!
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Welcome aboard Rick! We can always rely on Brits abroad to let the side down!😂
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Welcome here Rick, wow, you've had some adventures! ;D