A huge red maple tree shades my garage most of the summer. The shadow cast by its canopy is nearly 40 feet square, and sitting beneath it makes the already mild summer days of northern Michigan that much more pleasant. This shaded area has quickly become one of my favorite places on my property, especially now that my 1986 Honda TLR200 Reflex, one of my cheapest and most fun projects, is all but wrapped up, and I can just enjoy it.
This bike fell into my lap last fall. Not that I was planning on it. My garage was already full of needy things, and I actually intended to sell off one project. Instead, I ended up trading a different Honda, which basically needed nothing, for this TLR, which needed … a lot. Of course, I told myself I would put the TLR to the side for a while and focus on other, more pressing tasks. We all know that was never going to happen.
Unable to ignore the needy little Honda, I decided to set a concrete plan, budget, and goal for the bike, to make it easier to work on when I might have just a few hours or a need to cleanse my mental palate between larger and more involved projects. With very little budget, small slices of time, and the goal of a bike that would be fun to ride in the yard and could maybe do a vintage Trials event, work began.
When the TLR first arrived in my garage, I plunged into a flurry of work purely out of excitement. I installed new chain and sprockets, tires, and a set of larger footpegs, and refreshed the pivots and cables of the drum brakes. The work made it a minimum viable project, one that was functional enough to enjoy but still in “need” of far more things before I would take it to an event or even hold it up as a decent example of a fun motorcycle.
With a minimal budget, what more could I really do? Shave a lot of weight, that’s what. The TLR200 Reflex was an experiment for Honda in the United States. While the international market got the TLR200 (no Reflex), which was a dedicated Trials machine, the U.S. only got the Reflex model, saddled with all of the equipment needed to be street legal: Turn signals, multiple warning lights in a clunky, handlebar-mounted dash, and a massive nest of wiring behind the headlight and under the gas tank, all of which I simply disconnected and unbolted. This left me with the option of putting any or all of the equipment back on the bike at a later time. With humble goals, there is no reason to get heavy-handed with the modifications.
One of the few things I did cut up past the point of restoration was the exhaust. One of my favorite things about Trials machines is the often multi-chamber exhaust systems that keep them quiet while snaking around the woods, but I wanted less weight both visually and physically. Taking off the TLR’s two-chamber system for the first time felt like pulling fishing weights from a ballerina’s tutu. For simplicity’s sake, I hacked off the rear chamber, where the muffler passed behind the left shock, and capped it off with some angle-cut pieces of scrap bicycle-frame tubing. The little 200cc in this Honda has quite a low compression ratio and, even with only half the factory exhaust, the bike still whispers compared to any of my other machines.
It was so much fun pulling off parts and feeling the changes to the bike that I couldn’t leave well enough alone. The more free things I did to the TLR, the more I could justify some careful prying at the purse strings. A whole world of function-over-form upgrades opened up. A new carburetor allowed me to shed the entire airbox and all its weight while also getting a smoother throttle response.
In total, I’ve probably sunk another $1000 into this bike, bringing my grand investment to the $2500 range. That’s a lot of money tied up in a bike that basically never leaves my sub-1-acre plot of land. Interestingly, though, I’ve never been happier with the final result of a project, probably because I’ve never used a finished project so much as this one. That big red maple gives me a little shaded playground in which to putter around, hop logs, and generally practice motorcycle riding without leaving my property. If I can find 20 minutes in my day, I can ride. It’s a total luxury to be able to get so much seat time, if you can call it that, since the TLR’s seat is basically never used.
I’ve already seen my slow-speed, in-the-yard Trials riding improve my other motorcycle riding, similar to how racing a children’s motorcycle on a go-kart track helped me get better at racing full-sized motorcycles on full-sized tracks. Trials teaches a very useful skillset and having a Trials bike in my garage, especially one that I can use right at home, has made me a better rider off-road.
I got the fun of a new project, the joy of working on it, and the benefits of it teaching me new skills, all for $2500. Now that’s a good deal.
