Welcome to my "Hondamatic" page...

I purchased this bike on eBay for my friend, Cornelia (she paid for it), who is wanting to ride a motorcycle for the first time in her life. Cornelia is a special case, as she has a prosthetic left leg from about 8" above the knee, down. Consequently she was interested in an "automatic" motorcycle. I received a call from her one morning as she told me about this "automatic" motorcycle she had seen on eBay. I explained to Cornelia, that, though the Hondamatic has no clutch, it still has a shift lever that must be shifted with the left foot. At first she was disappointed, but then I went on to explain that we may be able to modify the bike to work in her specific situation. Since Cornelia can't shift with her foot, my first plan of attack is to remove the foot shifter and facilitate a hand-shifting device. I'm toying with the idea of a jockey shift. Cornelia seems to be okay with that, so that's the first modification I will make to this bike. In time we will begin training her on a minibike to get her used to the feel of a 2-wheeled, powered vehicle. I will add to this page as things develop.

Click any picture for a full resolution version of the same picture.

#1 #2

#3 #4

As anyone can see, this bike is in very good condition. The thing that concerns me about converting this bike to a hand-shift model is the shifter spline is recessed pretty far back under the stator cover (picture #4). At this point I'm not overly concerned with this problem, but it is a concern none-the-less.

It was suggested to me that I could weld some kind of shifting mechanism to the existing foot shifter, but I don't think I like that idea for 2 reasons:

The foot shifter is very unique - a rocker type (look closely at picture #4), so I don't want to ruin it.

I would like to be able to return this bike back to bone stock if Cornelia decides to sell her.

I suppose the possibility exists that I might be able to mount something to the existing shifter without ruining it (no welding or drilling), so I might explore that possibility.

If you look closely, you can see that the bike is equipped with a crash bar. I may or may not mount some sort of shifting device to the crash bar, and then transfer that movement to the shifter spline via some sort of linkage set-up. At this point I'm very open to suggestions.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions for this hand-shift project, please
e'mail me.

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