Warren Ratcliffe and his lifelong love of the chopper

‘‘I was 16 or 17 and was in Shepparton one day when I saw a Honda four (cylinder) with a springer front end drive through town and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen,’’ Warren said.

‘‘I told myself ‘I’m going to have one of those one day’.

‘‘I’m 60 this year so it took a while to get it.’’

Warren actually completed his motor mechanic apprenticeship at a Honda dealer and has been operating his own garden machinery business since 1990.

He has always been into motorbikes.

His first bike was a 1955 Vespa Scooter at the age of 10.

‘‘I was working for a fruit orchard one season and that was my payment, the scooter,’’ Warren said.

THE BIKE

Warren started building his 1976 Honda CB750 chopper six years ago from bits and pieces he had collected over the years and from ideas in his head.

It was finished 12 months ago in what turned out to be a collective project.

‘‘I wanted to reflect what local people could do,’’ Warren said.

‘‘Everything on the bike was done in Kyabram except for the bent exhaust pipe and handlebars.

‘‘They were done in Melbourne because he was the best in the business.

‘‘Pretty much everything else was done by somebody who either lives in Kyabram or did their apprenticeship in Kyabram.

‘‘A fitter mate did the framework and another fitter did the mudguard, fuel tank, oil tank.’’

The bike was even painted in Ky — pearl black, to highlight the polish of the aluminium and chrome.

‘‘Even the seat cover was done by a local saddlemaker,’’ Warren said.

‘‘I said ‘have you ever done a motorbike seat before?’ and she said ‘no’.

‘‘So I told her what I wanted and a week later she came back and said there you go.

‘‘We’ve got pretty good tradesmen in this area. I wanted this bike to reflect that and I think it’s done that.

‘‘It’s a community bike, it belongs to the people.’’

Even with so many hands involved, the 1976 chopper is still period correct.

‘‘It’s the way they were built in the 70s,’’ Warren said.

‘‘The only thing is I installed a GPS speedo so I didn’t have to run a speedo cable.’’

The GPS is disguised under a fake analogue speedometer on the bike.

‘‘Aside from that it is very period correct,’’ Warren said.

‘‘I ran cables through the handlebars so it’s got an internal clutch and throttle.’’

A feat in itself, with Warren admitting he went through 15 pairs of handlebars before he settled on the final design.

Another period correct detail is the CUB beer tap handle on the ignition key.

It came from a former publican in Kyabram who was grateful to Warren for fixing his lawnmower.

‘‘In his shed he had a heap of beer taps and said I could take one,’’ Warren said.

Warren glued the CUB tap onto the key the week before the publican died.

‘‘You see,’’ Warren said of the people’s bike, ‘‘I don’t even own the bloody key in it.’’

WHERE DID YOUR BIKE COME FROM?

‘‘I had a CB750 four-cylinder engine that needed a rebuild and I wanted to run it with Honda wheels,’’ Warren said.

‘‘A mate had a whole bike and said ‘take this and see what you think’.

Cosmetically it looked terrible, with about 53,000km on the speedo.

‘‘He had bought it years ago just to save it from going to scrap metal,’’ Warren said.

‘‘I started it up and it ran fine and that’s what started me off on the restoration.

‘‘And I’ve still got my engine that needed the rebuild in the first place.’’

WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE BIKE?

‘‘I’ve always liked Honda four choppers,’’ Warren said.

‘‘They represent an era in my life as a young bloke.

‘‘They were a very popular bike in their day.

‘‘They were the first Japanese superbike when they came out in 1969 and had a production run from 1969 to 1979.

‘‘The power and reliability you could get out of these things was so much superior to what was on the market at the time.

‘‘The British bikes were capable speedwise but not all day, every day, whereas you could with this.’’

Motorcycles became popular on the roads after World War II.

‘‘Servicemen were coming home and motorcycles were a cheap form of transport,’’ Warren said.

‘‘There were plenty left over from the war, although they were all pretty slow.

‘‘So they were modified to go faster.’’

This led to backyard modifications, which saw riders pull off mudguards and other attachments.

‘‘But as they went faster, they got a lot more sketchy to ride,’’ Warren said.

‘‘That’s why the longer fork and rake came in to make them more stable.’’

The big handlebars started to appear in the 1960s as a safety precaution.

‘‘Bike riders were not real popular in the United States,’’ Warren said.

‘‘In some of the redneck areas people would string piano wire across the road leading to serious injuries for riders, even decapitations.

‘‘Hence the high handlebars to counteract that.

‘‘There was a reason for everything at the start but then it went past that and became an artform where everything was exaggerated.’’

The exaggeration was never more evident than in the poster hanging in Warren’s shed of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper riding on the highway on their Harley-Davidson choppers in the 1969 counterculture movie Easy Rider.

Warren said his Honda chopper was ‘okay to ride’.

‘‘It sits on 80 to 90km/h fine,’’ he said.

‘‘I get it out once a month on short runs.

‘‘It’s not very comfortable but it’s about the art, not about comfort or performance.

‘‘The artform of the motorcycle crosses all borders. The aim is to make it look good.

‘‘This is an idea I had in my head since I was 17.

‘‘It ended up basically what I had in my head, although things changed and it took on a life of its own.’’

The art of Warren’s chopper has led it to being used in promotional shots of the Euroa show ‘n’ shine, where it has won best Japanese bike and best chopper.

It has also picked up awards at Tatura and Kyabram shows, demonstrating the hold the chopper image has on the public.

SO WHAT’S YOUR PERFECT BIKE (OR CAR)?

‘‘The bike I’d buy would be a Triumph Hurricane,’’ Warren said.

‘‘They were only made for one year and are a very sought-after thing.

‘‘It’s a choppery looking thing and took on the Harley.

‘‘So it would be that, or an early model Harley-Davidson knucklehead or panhead.

‘‘Car wise, I’ve always had a soft spot for a 1946 Mercury Coupe, the standard one with the original V8.’’

AND WHAT’S NEXT?

Warren’s passion for restoring Hondas continues.

‘‘A C50 roadbike is the next one off the list to do,’’ he said.

‘‘It was given to me by a customer who used to ride to work each day.

‘‘It will be an ‘every last nut and bolt’ resto.’’