eye-candy

just for pleasure ... (taken from another forum in Germany, so the credit goes to Wasten who posted them there ...)
Holger

Stunning examples of two iconic motorcycles. I even appreciate the pic of the inside of the fuel tank. Kudos to the individuals responsible for keeping these bikes in such fine shape.

The holy grail of 750 Honda fours, a K0 with the famous ie very rare “ripple” tank 
the Z900 isn’t bad either 

PaulD wrote:

The holy grail of 750 Honda fours, a K0 with the famous ie very rare “ripple” tank 

Your comment intrigued me enough to look up :ripple tank" which sent me to a sight which told why they called it a ripple tank. Apparently the tank was a stamped sheet metal part that left ripples in the the sheet metal.
Another interesting thing was that the first 7000 engines had a sand casted case and because the first models were 68 HP, they tended to break drive chains and destroy the casings and Honda replaced the damaged ones with newer high pressure mold casted (smooth finish) cases. One of the pics shows the rare sand casted casing.

Yes your spot on, I have to admit to having a strange addiction to early 1960’s Hondas being of a certain age 
as you probably know Honda used the K designation on the early bikes and the K0 (first edition) was indeed produced with the sandcast motor. They changed to die cast motors as it was easier and more importantly cheaper to produce, they altered the cases at the same time so they could fit a larger front sprocket as the original 16t one was the cause of the chain breaking and damaging the crankcase. This also reduced the top speed from 131mph to 126mph! The first edition bikes are seriously sought after and therefore VERY expensive 

Apparently Honda retro fitted a sheet metal chain guide around the drive sprocket to early bikes that was supposed to encourage a broken chain to exit the case without any damage but according to owners it actually made it worse as the chain wrapped around the guide and caused even more mayhem