Mark Guevara’s 1974 Honda CB750

Mark Guevara’s 1974 Honda CB750

Mark Guevara knows he is the fifth owner of this 1975 Honda CB750, which he calls a “barn find”. The quotation marks are there because Guevara said they don’t have any barns in the Philippines. Guevara, a property manager for his family’s real estate business, also makes and designs bamboo and carbon fiber longboard skateboards for his company, Contach Longboards. This was his first stab at building a custom motorcycle.

For $1000 he picked up a completely neglected bike covered in spider webs (and spiders). The tires were rotted, rims and spokes were eaten up by rust. The brake and turn lights were cracked and busted, the ignition coil was missing and the seat was ripped up. The frame had some rust and most of the wheel bearings were seized up. The top triple tree clamp was also busted. The original owner was a commercial pilot, who sold it to “an old hippie”, who sold it to a guy he once worked with, who then sold it to the wife of a Japanese guy who was living in the Philippines. Guevara purchased the bike from their son. From there, Mark spent a year on the build but before he stripped it, he used forums and video tutorials on YouTube and this very website for guidance.

“I had no prior experience doing mechanical work on bikes,” he said. “After doing all my research, I started troubleshooting, looking for parts that I could salvage, and tried to find parts that I needed to replace. Most of the parts that I needed were hard to find here in the Philippines, and had to source from the U.S. Thank God, DCC had me covered!”

To save money on shipping, he had the parts sent to either his mom’s house in Oakland, CA or his Aunt’s in Napa Valley, CA and they would bring them overseas when they visited. Genius.

First,he traced and redid all the wiring and installed an ultimate Pamco kit. Next, he put on new tires and replaced the wheel and steering bearings with All Balls bearings.

“I had it running by then, but after a month of riding it around the neighborhood, there was a loud rattling sound coming from the inside of the valve cover. Turns out the bolt holes for the rocker arm tower were stripped. I pulled out the engine and, using my YouTube video tutorial knowledge, started rebuilding the engine. I also rebuilt the carburetor using jets I ordered from DCC.”

Inspired by one of DCC’s tutorial videos, he fabricated a cafe racer seat made of fiberglass, and had a friend do the welding for the seat hoop. He fabricated the front fender out of fiberglass as well. He then sent the frame, rims and other parts out for powder coating.

“I stripped the original paint off the tank and hand painted the rust look on it and the cafe racer seat cowl. Using an old projector light with halo lights, I custom made a rear brake/turn light combo to replace the busted ones. Mini tach and speedometer were from DCC, really looks clean and nice on a CNC billet aluminum top yoke.”

Mark even joined the Moto Builds Pilipinas and got 3rd place in the cafe racer 201cc and up category!