Rose and Sam's Excellent Adventure

Well, today is a big day! I finally own my own Honda 67 as I dreamed of ever since I saw my first one in Saigon a few months ago.

The mighty motorcycle exported only to Saigon in 1967 makes a motorcycle that’s born into the B-52 fuelled forge and is, as they say on the internet “fucking full of win“.

Check out photos by clicking the album preview below.
Instead of saying what’s NOT working on this 43 year old motorcycle, let’s focus on what IS working =)

* The Handlebars
* The Clutchslip (this is a feature on this bike lol)
* The Wheel (as in, the rule of physics is still intact)
* Most of the indicators
* The Oil Release works (read: ‘leak’)
* The headlight works
* The horn would work, if it had one
* The Chain

Ok, that’s the short story, if you prefer that version. If you prefer the long, exaggerated and slightly more sonorous version, then jump on, clutch in, kick down and hang on – tight.

After being sternly lectured by Mrs Hanh and backed up by Mr Hanh about how shite the Honda 67’s were, I was not deterred as any bike with a such a fan-base in Vietnam and well.. They’re still frigging running, must be good deep down.

I had arranged yesterday to meet with a fella to see his Honda 67 which he had advertised for 5,800,000VND (11,575.62 to the AUD at time of publishing) so I thought cool, let’s check it out.

At this point, Mr Hanh, one of the owners of the Hanh Hotel where we’re living helped out with translation and later proved himself to be a hero.

He came past and the bike was pretty nice. Good condition, and after a bit of screwing with the carburettor – it ran well and he’d put on a new muffler, rims and tyres. This was the reason he’d jacked the price to 7 million to which I couldn’t budge him a single dong and he left. No big deal.

Mr Hanh was already outside with the local paper and pointing to some Honda 67’s for sale while the dude left and he pointed one out for an extremely cheap 2,800,000VND ($230AUD) and I thought, why not.

Mr Hanh was right on it and grabbed his raincoat and gave it to me and called a reliable moto driver and gave the driver the address and bam, we were on our way across the bridge and far far away.

Down about 20 backstreets, we’re there and a door gets unlocked in an alleyway with broken houses and chickens and there’s two nice looking Honda 67’s against the wall.

He tries to start it, changes the plug and farts around a bit and bang, I’m down 2.8 million dong and I’m following a moto driver through the Hanoi traffic on a fairly unreliable (a this point) 43 year old Honda.

I can proudly say I can keep up with a Viet moto driver through stupid traffic on a bike with flat tyres and a slipping clutch. Mothers, sleep well. The brakes are fixed.

Truncating this story a tad, later at home I was having problems kickstarting the bike (read, it wouldn’t turn over) so I pushed it the 250 meters to my local mechanic and charaded my way through a list of repairs I wanted done to the bike with a mechanic with bed hair and whiskey breath. He did a sterling job and watching him with the 67 was like watching a Shaman with a bag of bones and he got it started and idling beautifully.

He fixed the front and back breaks, filled the tyres, cleaned the sparkplug points, replaced the oil (which was like TAR! Even he was disgusted!) with fresh bottled oil, all done on the spot.
Parts and labour: 90,000VND. 4 teh w1n.

Took her for a spin and bought some rice and she’s running well except some clutch slip when I open up the throttle and the clutch lever is like pulling an engine block out of the lake with a feather but apart from that, she’s working except a globe here and there.

After she’s mechanically tip-top, I’ll start the radical paint job and polish job. She’ll gleam!

Ooh, on another note, I got a phone call from a guy from the Hanoi Honda 67 club about 1 hour after purchasing the bike! Fluke! I’d put my phone number on one of their videos asking for some information as I wanted to buy one and lo and behold, bam. Planets aligned and we’re gunna have coffee sometime soon and talk about the bike. He knows some good Honda 67 friendly mechanics in Hanoi. Will be boss.

Thanks for reading and looking at our photos.
-Sam

Tags: 1967, honda, honda 67, honda67

This entry was posted by Sam on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Hanoi, Travel Stories, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.