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Growing up, Bintang Prasetya’s one love was motorcycles. In particular, Bintang, now a businessman in his hometown, Solo, was infatuated with classic Japanese motorcycles, especially the Honda CB series, with its “cool, vintage look.”

Introduced in the early 1970s, the CB Series is one of Honda’s most famous lines of motorcycles. And while Honda certainly has a lot of much newer models, Bintang says his fascination with the CB is as strong as it was when he was a child.

In 2005 he established Komunitas CB Bikers (CB Bikers Community) with a few friends in Solo who shared his passion for Honda CB motorcycles.

“It turned out there were lots of people in the city who also loved the old CB series models,” he said.

Six years on, the community has more than 25 members and regularly hosts meetings in the city. Solo’s town square is their favorite hangout, Bintang said.

“You may call us eccentric,” said Bintang, who owns a blue Honda CB that was made in the early 1970s. “But maybe we just want to be different from everybody else.”

Most gatherings see the club’s members spending plenty of time exchanging tips and offering advice on maintaining their motorcycles, because it can be hard to find a mechanic who can fix classic bikes.

“That’s why we help other members who are having trouble fixing their motorcycles,” said Bintang, who like many of the group’s members has become an expert on fixing his own bike.

Bayu, a group member, said he joined the club because he wanted to get a better understanding of the CB series from other bike owners.

“In the past, it was hard for me to find information about my old bike and how to fix it when broke down,” he said.

The club, he added, has also given him lots of new friends who share his passion for riding. “It’s fun to meet people who share the same hobby,” he said.

In addition to the look of the Honda CBs, Bintang said club members liked the models because they were easy to modify. Any motorcycle engine produced by Honda can be installed in a CB model, according to Bintang. He has installed an engine from a Honda Tiger, a model introduced to the Indonesian market in the mid-1990s, on his old CB model.

Over the last few years, Bintang and his friends have been running a small workshop where community members can help people fix their CB bikes.

But for Bintang, the biggest rush is from rebuilding CB models. With newer models flooding the market, Bintang said, lots of people just junk their old CB models, Bintang said. He said he has bought CBs for Rp 1 million to Rp 1.5 million ($110 to $165) from people in villages across Central Java.

With their intimate knowledge of the CB series and skills honed through passion and repetition, Bintang and his friends transform these bikes into collectible items worth more than Rp 5 million each.

“We can basically turn a CB model into a completely new motorcycle, depending on the order,” he said, adding that he had started getting requests from cities outside of Solo, including Jakarta.

But Bintang complained that the price of an old CB motorcycle had jumped in Solo. “Since 2007, people have been charging more for their old CB bikes. I guess they realized there is a demand for these old motorcycles,” he said.

Now, he said, an old CB model can sell for Rp 3.5 million to Rp 4.5 million, depending on its condition.

Once the bikes are ready to ride, members of the Solo CB community take them for a spin around Java and even as far away as Bali.

“What can I say? We are all riders,” Bintang said. “A lot of people think that we are crazy to ride old motorcycles to another city. But when we are together, we are not afraid.”