Over the last forty years, I have previously owned three small Honda ‘fun bikes’; initially a step-through blue ‘Chaly’, then a couple of ST70s. The first was a white ‘Lady Dax’ model, with the flowery seat; at the time this was just seen as ‘wacky’ – yet to achieve the highly collectable status that it has nowadays.
I did enjoy this bike and used it to commute the short distance to Poole Gasworks until I got re-located further away at Bourne Valley. I did no work to the bike and simply sold it on after a year or so, around 1980?
The second ST70 was in the original metallic red, but I totally rebuilt the bike and resprayed it Honda Racing red with the winged logo. Much as I liked the look of it, the bike wasn’t practical for my needs so it never got used and was sold almost immediately, all in the late 80s?
One might think that I should have learned from these past experiences, but no, the appeal of these little bikes was (once again!) to overcome my rational head. Just before Christmas 2017, I was idly browsing Ebay when I spotted another white ‘Lady Dax’ for sale, at a price I felt to be ‘cheap’, considering their now ‘legendary’ status. Clicking on the advert for further details, I was amazed to discover that the bike was being sold by a local dealer, Metric Motorcycles (now ‘Metric and American’) in Bournemouth. Although I had not even been considering buying another bike, this seemed too good a chance to miss, so I rang up and arranged a viewing, amidst the mayhem of Christmas Eve.
I never usually buy from dealers, but I had bought a Kawasaki ZL600 Eliminator from Metric Motorcycles back in 1997 and had no problems; in fact, I had been quite impressed with their service. Therefore, that experience helped me make the decision to use them again.
However, the bike wasn’t quite as good as it looked in the advert, and had clearly been recently re-painted by the previous owner ‘up North’ in an off-white colour. The dealer realised that I seemed disappointed, and appeared reluctant to waste any more time with me, thinking I had no intention of buying the bike. However, I had already heard the bike running well, I had checked the frame number and established that it was a valuable early model, the seat was the incredibly sought-after flowery type (albeit split) and even the registration number was a preferred 6-character size, so I felt it was maybe worth buying anyway….if the price was right.
I used the split seat, damaged front mudguard and bad repaint to negotiate an even lower price, and did a deal there and then, collecting the bike between Christmas and New Year, after it had been serviced. The weather was awful; cold, wet and frosty, so instead of riding my new bike, I started taking it apart to rectify those issues that I felt let it down.
(As with most of my builds, I did everything ‘properly’, as I planned to ‘keep this one for a long time’ – yeah, right!)
As the engine seemed fine and just been serviced, I dropped that out easily and put it to one side. The priority was to get the frame, forks etc stripped and powder-coated in the correct bright white, a process that I had done by the factory conveniently located behind my house.
The plastic headlight shell and rear shock covers (being NOT oven-proof!) had to be painted in the matching RAL colour, which I did myself with an aerosol. The rear mudguard was slightly pitted but OK, so I chose to leave that alone. However, the front one had quite a bad dent, so I thought it better to simply get a new (pattern) Chinese one, as they were available cheaply.
Sadly, the quality of this was nothing like as good as the original, plus it was not an exact replica anyway – a seriously bad thing on a really collectable bike. Therefore I had no option but to fix the dent myself, and weld up the slight rust damage, before spraying both guards silver, along with the split-rim wheels that I had already stripped.
All the alloy (and chrome) parts were great quality components but were looking a bit tired, so I spent hours polishing them myself until they were better than new.
Wiring was incredibly minimal (especially with no indicators fitted) and the entire rebuild seemed so easy after previous complicated bikes and cars. It did seem strange stripping a bike that seemed to have been rebuilt only recently, but it simply had to be done.
The ‘priceless’ flowery seat obviously needed attention as it was split right across the middle in a very ‘high profile’ place.
Usually I would just have fitted a new cover but the genuine item was totally unobtainable at any price, and the best copy was still ‘stupid money’, and didn’t even look right anyway. Eventually (after MUCH searching) I found a local upholsterer that was willing to repair my cover, by glueing a patch under the existing fabric. It wasn’t brilliant, but did solve the major problem, and I had little other choice anyway.
When the cover was removed, it revealed that the seat base was in a poor state, having previously cracked and been badly MIG-welded. Again, I spent ages sorting this out; TIG-welding the crack and repainting everything before the cover went back on.
The seat had clearly become damaged in the past by the bike being ‘manhandled’, i.e. lifted by the seat, as this was the only hand-hold available. To prevent any re-occurrence of this issue, I managed to obtain a grab-rail from a Chinese ‘Dax-clone’, which fitted perfectly and looked great. Why Honda never fitted these originally is beyond me.
In the meantime, I had also managed to source the correct main frame decals for this bike; not cheap, but far better than the cheap ones I had already bought – which weren’t even the right size anyway! I also elected to go for the ‘White Dax’ style side decals with Japanese script; technically not 100% accurate but that I felt looked much better.
As usual, my partner Linda got the stressful task of applying all these in the right place…and did her typically great job!
So…within a few weeks, the bike had been completely refreshed and looked SO much better, taken by van to a local marina for a photo-shoot!
As part of their ‘after-sales’ service, Metric Motorcycles had fitted a new battery and chain, as well as the usual oil change, etc, so I was confident that all would go well on the first test ride. However, I was rather worried when it became obvious that the kick-starter was simply slipping, rather than turning the engine over, nearly every time. Of course the motor was only 70cc, and had minimal compression (with little resistance) anyway, so this was quite unexpected. As I had not touched the engine since it had just been serviced by the dealer, I took it back to them to rectify.
Although they did look at the bike for me, I was disappointed that they dismissed the fault as ‘one of those things that they all did’ (when clearly they didn’t!), and because the bike was a ‘classic’, it didn’t get any warranty, so basically, I was stuck with it, unless I paid for an engine rebuild, which certainly wasn’t going to happen! Luckily, the bike did start easily when the kick-start did engage, so, especially as I wasn’t going to use the bike (despite my best expectations, but consistent with my previous ST70 experiences!) I decided to sell it before things got any worse.
Thankfully, I had correctly identified a rising market and, along with all my improvements to the bike, I did get a lot of interest. The bike did start first-kick to the winning bidder, who was buying it as a long-term investment for his young children, as he had owned a similar bike many years previously in South Africa. I covered my costs and was able to move on, so everyone was happy – I never had any subsequent complaint about the bike, and I think it went to a great new home.
Note to self: DO NOT buy another small motorbike – you know you’ll never use it, as you never did before – and there have been a LOT, over the last 45 years!
oldjapbikeguyUK 