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Congrats on BOTM. Very nice resurrection!

Nicely documented story and a well deserved Bike of the Month of October.

Yowza! Thanks, all.

Fun update: We know that the seat has the '78/9 stepped profile and not the '75/6 breadloaf one.

I wasn't exactly itching to pick up the period-correct original seat for this bike. Then I saw an opportunity for the right seat in a barn find of pretty-much abandoned early GLs and parts. That barn stash is four hours from my home, a little beyond my standard range for this sort of mission. BUT...

I already had a work-related road trip to that state, and the drive would literally - in the actual and not Gen-Z meaning of that word - take me through the town where the stash is located. I got my work colleague to agree to the pit stop, a 5-minute detour off the highway. (I promised not to get too lost in the hunt to reduce possible friction.)

In the back of the garage, up high on a shelf was a dirty, dusty, cobweb-coated '75/6 seat in a stack of king/queen Corbins/Gentrys and a stepped '78/9 or two. The seat was piled amid the parts that document a story of someone's abandoned plans to put several of these bikes back on the road. It was sad, actually.

Preservation by dust was years in the making. I pulled the seat down. Cobwebs dangled off it like a beard. (I should have snapped a photo because the cobwebbing was October-appropriate and gave the garage the air of a haunted house.

Outside, I quickly wiped the seat cover with a pile of fall leaves to clear the webs and get a closer look. No rips, nicks. Good. It was way too crusty to tell much more than that, and the HONDA logo looked like it had faded away long ago. I bought the seat and a few other hard-to-source items from the piles on the shelf, tossed it all in the back of the car, and continued the work trip.

Once home, I gave the seat a 5-minute cleaning and uncovered a very nice example of a first-gen seat, and the HONDA logo is still quite prominent.
Whoever got that feverish itch to rebuild or restore an early GL did a pretty good job sourcing components.

I'm not sure I'm entirely done with that garage. But it's a half-day drive from my house.

Save that seat for the next buyer as the seat you have is more comfortable for sure. At least for me.

Well Done

Fred Camper wrote: ↑Sun Oct 05, 2025 2:09 pm Save that seat for the next buyer as the seat you have is more comfortable for sure. At least for me.

Agreed. 30 minutes on that '75/6 seat is a bit harder on the tail. Something about the foam density. One virtue of the breadloaf is that I can slide back a bit to get my personal ergonomics working well.

There's a guy in Rhode Island selling a registered, running red '76 right now. He has the newer saddle on it but claims to also have the original. I think his listing reinforces your point, Fred.