The First Problem

Well, the first real problem is that I was a complete lunatic for agreeing to buy this bike. All’s well that ends well, and this chapter does end well, but there were so many things that could have gone wrong.

My worst case scenario would have been that the bike was stolen, and I would have lost my $1000 when the police carted it off to it’s rightful owner, so I wanted to get it registered to my name as soon as possible. This was easier said than done because the bike came with two bills of sale and no ownership.  One of the bills of sale was dated 4 March, 2017, and reflected my purchase from the previous owner in Toronto (5 hours away). The second was for the purchase of the bike by the guy from Toronto.  Two things struck me: I paid $400 less for the bike than the Toronto owner paid for it six months earlier, and the guy he bought it from lived 45 minutes away from me.  Toronto’s choice to sell at a loss made me nervous, as I wondered what he knew.  (The jury is still out on that one.)  I was happy, however, to discover that this bike was from my area and I hoped that this meant I would have an easier time getting what I needed to register it.

The motorcycle was sold to me in non-running condition and without a key.  Toronto told me that he forgot the key when he picked up the bike in September 2016, and that the previous owner was supposed to send it to him.  Any sane person would have run at this point, but it was only when I was picking it up, having paid for it and driven for five hours, that I discovered this little fact.  I don’t know if it was pride or plain recklessness, but I felt that I could trust this guy: and I was right, this actually was the truth.  When I contacted the former owner, in my area, he confirmed that he could not find the key and had thus not sent it.  He told me he would have another look, and he did find and send it to me three weeks later, but that is for another entry.

The reason that I contacted the local guy was because I needed to trace the ownership in order to get it registered in my name.  He may have had the key, but he did not have the ownership, nor did the guy he bought it from.  He claimed that he knew of at least seven different people who had owned it in the past 20 years and that none of them had ever registered it in either Ontario nor the neighboring province of Quebec.  I purchased an Ontario Used Vehicle Information Package which informed me that the last time this motorcycle was registered in Ontario was 1981.... 36 years ago.

To make a very long story short, I found that the last registered owner died in 2003 and that he had a son who lived in the same town as me.  I had a very nice telephone conversation with the son, who told me that his father purchased this motorcycle so that the two of them could ride together when the son was sixteen years old.  It was already an old bike then, but his father was always into old bikes. He talked a little about his father and the adventures that they had on their motorcycles.  I learned that the family did not have the ownership papers any more, but I felt that I came away from our conversation with something even better.

I had to write an affidavit and jump through several hoops, but as of March 24th, I became the registered owner of a 1968 Honda CL450 in non-road-worthy condition.  Now I can start fixing her up!

AN INTERESTING JOURNEY

When I was just getting back into motorcycling a few years ago, I considered a Triumph Scrambler as my main bike because it is beautiful.  I backed away from the Scrambler because I anticipated doing some road trips and those high pipes promised to get in the way of panniers, but man they speak to me!

I had been thinking about having a second motorcycle so that I had something to work on during the winter and on those long rainy days when riding just isn’t a pleasant entertainment option. I love the Scrambler style, so when a 1968 Honda CL450 Scrambler came to my attention, I acted fast and bought it, despite it being in very rough condition physically and not running.  Once I’m done with the Honda, I hope to return it as close to its original factory condition as I can:

But, of course, it does not look like that, it looks like this:

This is the beginning of the journey!