50 http://www.racerxonline.com
O
n the drive back from the High
Point National, I always stop
to visit some relatives who
live about 30 minutes south
of the track in Fairmont, West Virginia.
My kids get to visit Great Grandma,
and I get to visit my uncle David’s ga-
rage. There’s always something going
on in there, from rebuilt 1960s musclecars to a full-on recording studio. Un-
cle Dave might also be America’s fore-
most restorer of bikes using Honda’s
laid-down single-cylinder four-stroke
engine, like the one used in today’s
CRF110F. The local Honda shop in
Morgantown even asked Dave to re-
store an old SL70 to hang from the
third-floor display. His favorite piece
is his 1969 Honda MotorSport SL90. It
looks brand freaking new.Uncle Dave had a Suzuki TS400.
After dinner, he would fire it up, ride to
the bottom of the biggest hill behind
the house, lay his chest on the han-
dlebars, dump the clutch, and hang
on. The bike was good for climbing
hills—that was about it. Once he had
a kid, he realized this was maybe not
the safest bike, so in 1991, he traded
it for a beat-up old Honda 90. He got
it running and tooled around the yard
for years, often with some of the neigh-
borhood kids on the handlebars.One day, Dave went to the local Honda
shop to get some ignition points. “I
told the guy, ‘I have a Honda SL90—
I don’t know what year it is, probably
mid-1970s,’” Dave explains. “The guy
says to me, ‘It’s a 1969.’ So I say,
‘How can you tell that?’ And he says,
‘Because that’s the only year they
made that bike.’ So I said, ‘And you
still have parts in the computer?’ So
I walked behind the counter and sawevery part they had available—and I
bought all of it.”
He started scouring eBay in its early
days, as well as a huge recycling place
in Medina, Ohio, called Cycles R Us.
“The battery cover was unobtain-
able,” he says. “It came from Kansas.
The kick stand came from Utah. The
tail light assembly came from Wash-
ington state. But the last thing was the
paint—you couldn’t find the Candy Red
paint; it was a four-part paint system.
I ended up taking it to a guy named
Gerd in Darmstadt, Germany, the only
place on the planet where you could
get Candy Ruby Red paint. You can’t
get a new tank. When I got the bike,
the tank was dented clear back to the
emblems, so I had to work it over by
hand. I found the guy who sewed these
seats for Honda over in Japan. He had
moved to Canada, and somehow he
absconded with the Honda patents
and set up an eBay store. It’s exact to
spec of a brand new seat cover.
“The frame is a work of art—it
was all hand welded. In 1970, they
had gone to robots, and it’s the worst
welding I’ve ever seen in my life. But
everyone had the 1970 100. The 1969
90 is the prize—this is the only one
I’ve ever seen.”
This SL90 isn’t a motocross bike,
sport bike, enduro bike, or cruiser. It’s
just a motorcycle. You can ride it off-
road or on-road, you can have fun,
but you most likely won’t get hurt. I
challenge any teenager not to think
that something like this isn’t at least
as fun as having a smartphone. These
days, that’s the magic the manufac-
turers are looking for. I found it in Un-
cle Dave’s garage.VOICE BOX
BY JASON WEIGANDT @JASONWEIGANDT“I ended up tak-
ing it to a guy
named Gerd
in Darmstadt,
Germany—
the only place
on the planet
where you could
get Candy Ruby
Red paint.”WEIGANDT