My previous vintage CB350F history

Hi all,
Today I want to share with you guys about my previous vintage CB350F history.

CB350F (F = four) is the 1st vintage bike that I have ever owned. I bought the bike back in the year 2004.
When I 1st saw the bike, it was at Singapore bikes forum and the bike was put up on sale at SGD5000. The bike came with a very nice dark brown color (some peoples call that vintage brown).

I met up with the seller at his house car park… The 1st impression of the bike was everything looked stock to me and no aftermarket parts on it (CB350four shock pipes are so hard to find worldwide). He sold it to me at a good price and I agreed to buy it since I was still able to afford the price.

After I took over the bike, I was so shocked because the fuel consumption was so high… No joke, rode 10 KM already burn 1 liter of fuel and for a moment I thought I was riding a CBX1000. So I started wondering what was wrong with the bike and that was just the beginning. The cylinder and cylinder head started to leak engine oil and the carb started to leak petrol too. The worst part was riding on the highway and the bike suddenly died (power cut off), this is so dangerous that it scared the hell out of me.

Okay…. I am new to vintage motorcycle during that time and wasn’t knowledgeable that the bikes parts are so hard to find locally. I spent nearly 2 year to source all the parts for the engine overhaul. The parts were mainly ordered from USA and Japan.

Another shocking part was that there is no work shop here willing to do vintage bikes in Singapore. The reason they gave was “vintage bikes need to spend too much time to rebuild or fix”. The reason sound lame but true. Just for buying/collecting parts already cost me $4000-5000SGD and 2 year of my time, hard work and lots of money. The bike runs wonderfully and perfectly… Because of this bike, I start to understand how a motorcycle engine work and of cause the patience for restoring vintage bikes.

The Singapore Vintage Motorbike community is very small. Many do not want to ride vintage bikes because they think it’s too troublesome and hard to maintain, but if the biker puts in some time and does the maintenance correctly and regularly, the bike will run smoothly without any failures and issues for a long time. I know of owners of some vintage bikes, who have owned their bikes for more than 10-years, and they still enjoy riding their bikes today. The reason the community is so small is because bikers cannot find parts and thus they scrap the bike (export overseas). To me the effort of finding parts is not an issue because the time and effort put into fixing up the bike and riding it is so “cannot say it in words”. I hope you guys can understand my feelings, why I enjoy riding vintage bikes.

Let’s keep the vintage bike scene alive!