You don’t find many true motorcycle artisans anymore. Oh, Alan Millyard can seemingly craft a V12 superbike out of some junkyard 50-cc minibike engines and there are countless East Indian YouTube “mechanics” reminding us that repairing a broken crankshaft really takes nothing more than chewing gum and a few judicious bangs from some ancient artifact of a mallet. But, other than that, finding someone who bends, welds or otherwise creates something out of nothing — or, more appropriate for the problem I had, re-bends, re-welds and re-creates something apparently interminably broken — is rare in these new digital times.

I found this out the hard way. I have a Honda CB1100R frame. Actually, I have two. Now, never mind that Honda CB1100R frames are as rare as hen’s teeth (I have the only two bare R frames in Canada), or what I am doing with two of said frames (I am a little neurotic in the collection of spare parts for my beloved 1982 CB1100RC). The real reason I am revealing this obsessive-compulsive disorder is that one of my prized frames was bent. 

The reason this warrants an article is because I am almost as old — and, some would say, as beat-up — as my bent frame and I bought it thinking that, well, nothing had changed much since 1982 when getting a tubular steel frame straightened was, if not child’s play, at least a common repair. Specialists were available, the requisite machinery common and, let’s face it, old-school tubular steel frames are visions of simplicity compared to modern aluminum beam affairs. 

Fast-forward some 43-odd years and my decision to pay big bucks — anything with a genuine “R” VIN-number is worth a fortune these days, no matter how mangled — for a broken frame was starting to look a little iffy. As in: My dream of rebirthing, Phoenix-like, a 1982 Honda CB1100RC from all the spare parts that I had, again, obsessively hoarded was turning into a nightmare.

Enter Byron Cox of Cox Custom Fabrication. Getting his start under legendary frame builder Dennis Curtis of CMR Racing Products, Cox has built dozens of complete Yamaha TZ750 chassis (which Curtis based on British Harris frames, but built with more modern steering geometry), TZ350s (ditto) and the frames that made both Cox and Curtis famous amongst vintage racers around the world: their custom-clone knock-off of Suzuki’s famed XR69 racer which, as produced by both CMR and Cox, can accommodate Yamaha FJ and Honda CB engines as well as various Suzuki fours. Oh, and he builds exquisite swingarms out of lighter-than-Japanese-steel Chrome Moly, which means my wallet might be taking a further beating. In other words, if I was going to get my less-than-straight frame fixed, it would be in Trenton, Ont., where Cox calls home.

The first surprise in Cox’s shop is a surprising lack of modern tools. There are no laser beams making sure that surfaces are straight, no computer tracking legion dimensional data. There’s a basic jig — think of a square beam with a 90-degree pillar at each end — a vernier caliper and a digital angle finder. That said, that beam is flat to within two thousandths of an inch, the pillars are at a perfect right angles, and the angle-finder measures in hundredths of a degree. 

The second surprise is how refreshingly basic the measurements needed to understand both if a frame is straight or where it might be bent are. And, unlike my supposition that a ton of data would be required from the manufacturer, Cox doesn’t care. Indeed, to rebuild my frame, all that Cox cared about was the relationship between the steering stem and swingarm pivot and from the rear engine mount to the two front attachment points for which he needed data points from a known good frame (which is where I step in and mention that obsessive compulsive disorder has its benefits).

By comparing the height of the swingarm pivot points on both sides of the frame, Cox could tell if the offending frame was twisted. By comparing the distance between engine mount holes, he could determine if the frame had been bent to the side. And by mounting both good and bad frames in his jig and applying his angle finder, he could quickly see if the steering stem had been bent back in a frontal collision (for the record, my frame had none of the first, precious little of the second but a whole bunch of the last).

Determining that the frame was bent was the easy part; unbending it was, as Cox describes it, a labour of “brute force and ignorance.” Enormous pressure was applied to some points, not an illiberal amount of heat to others, and there was even a little cutting and welding. The result was that a frame once thought unrepairable was, when we lined up all the bolt holes, pivot points and fork attachments for both frames, all but identical. We even built in a 0.5-degree reduction in steering angle, because, you know, those old Hondas — even the raciest of them, like the 1100RC — can be a little ponderous in corners. 

Whatever the case, yet another irreplaceable Honda racing artifact will now see new life. More importantly, I will be able to assemble two more 1100Rs, which means that I will soon have three of the four Honda CB1100Rs registered in Canada. Like I said, obsessive compulsive.