¿Quantos Pistones?

By Joe Berk

The question du jour (and for several upcoming blogs) is as stated above:  How many pistons?

A thought occurred to me the other day:  I’ve owed singles, twins, triples, fours, and even a six (a Honda CBX, which was a wonderful motorcycle).  There have even been (and are) companies that offer 8-cylinder bikes.  1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8: What’s should be the right number of pistons for the perfect motorcycle?

Man, I don’t know.  I’ve owned a lot of motorcycles of varying engine configurations.  This blog focuses on the singles.  There will be future blogs on other engine configurations.  What I’ll describe are my experiences with singles, and (spoiler alert) they’ve all been good.  Your mileage may vary.

Honda Super 90

My first motorcycle ever was a Honda Super 90 previously owned by Sherm Cooper of Cooper’s Cycle Ranch in New Jersey.  Sherm was a famous flat track and ISDT racer in the 1950s and 1960s.  Mr. Cooper had customized the Super 90 I bought from him with an upswept pipe, a skid plate, and knobby tires.

I owned the Super 90 before I had a driver’s license, and I rode my Honda all over.  It would hit 65mph given enough time and road.  I had a lot of fun on that bike.

BSA Bantam

Somewhere in my misspent youth as a goofy teenager, I owned a 125cc two-stroke BSA that actually ran, but not well enough that I was willing to venture very far from the house on it.  I rode it in the fields behind our place for a couple of weeks and then parked it on the front lawn with a for sale sign.  My first and only Beezer sold quicky.

My Bantam was all black (I don’t know if that was its original colors), it had a lot of power for a small bike, and then it was gone.  I didn’t own it long enough to get a photo, but decades later when visiting a motorcycle museum in Australia, I did manage to get a photo of a concours condition Bantam.

Honda SL90

I sold the Super 90 and the BSA Bantam you read about above, and I was  a working kid, so I was pretty flush with cash but I didn’t have a motorcycle.  I didn’t have a driver’s license, either, but that didn’t slow me down.  I bought a new Honda SL90, a model Honda had just released, and I loved it.

The SL90 wasn’t any faster than the Super 90, but it had that SL look.  Honda had a series of SL bikes back in those days, including an SL175 and an SL350.  I’d really like to own an SL350 today, but the prices on those bikes are in the stratosphere.   I rode the wheels off my SL90, and I kept it immaculate the entire time I owned it.  You know, it’s funny:  I can’t remember selling it.  But I guess I did.  I just checked my garage and it’s not out there.

Honda Cub

One of the families in our neighborhood had a welding business (I guess their welding business was good; they bought new Cadillacs every year).  The guy who owned that business somehow acquired a 50cc Honda Cub.  You know, the little ones with a step-through frame.  I offered him $50 for the Cub.  Suddenly, I owned a 50cc Honda Cub.

The Cub had three speeds and a centrifugal clutch.  I sold it a month or two  later for $75 and considered myself a wheeler dealer.  Seiko recently came out with series of watches commemorating the Honda Cub.  I’m wearing that watch as I type this blog.

Honda Cubs are still in production (new ones MSRP for $3,899.00, not including transportation to the dealer, California emission equipment, government fees, taxes, finance charges, dealer document preparation, electronic filing fees, tire tax, and, well,  you get the idea).  As I understand it, more Honda Cubs have been built than any other motor vehicle of any type.  I’ve traveled a bit in my life, and I can tell you that Honda Cubs are everywhere.   The people who keep track of such things stopped counting when the total number of Cubs went over a hundred million.  Soichiro outsold Henry Ford.  Imagine that.

KLR 650

I had always wanted a Kawasaki KLR 650, and in 2006, I scratched that itch.  It was one of my all time favorite motorcycles.  I used mine as a touring bike, and that touring sometimes included offroad excursions here and in Mexico.  I had fabulous rides in Baja with the KLR.

I sold the KLR just because I was busy riding other machines.  Looking back on that, I wish I’d kept it.  The KLR was a fabulous motorcycle.  I think it made less than 40 horsepower, and that was all I needed.  I could touch 100mph on mine.  The ergonomics on it were perfect for me.  I loved that bike.

CSC 150

My CSC 150 Mustang replica was kind of my comeback bike after I crashed big time on a Triumph Speed Triple (that’s a story I’ll tell in a subsequent blog).

I caught a lucky break after the above-mentioned motorcycle crash:  My buddy Joseph Lee told me about a new venture, the California Scooter Company, that was resurrecting the Mustang motorcycle.  I consulted for CSC for the next 6 or 7 years, and one of my brilliant ideas was to ride the little 150cc Mustang to Cabo San Lucas and back.  I and three of my friends did so.  You can read about it here.

Janus Gryffin

I never owned a Janus, but I spent a four day weekend riding one through southern California and northern Baja with the Janus CEO and his videographer (you can read about that ride here).  It was a Janus promotional ride that I talked them into doing, it was a lot of fun, it resulted in a couple of magazine articles for me, and I had a hoot doing it.

The Janus Gryffin uses a CG-250 Honda clone engine (the same one used in the CSC TT 250: see below).  I had a good time on that ride.  Hell, I’ve had a good time on all of my rides through Baja.

CSC TT 250

I talked CSC into bringing the TT 250 to America.  On one of my many visits to Zongshen (in Chongqing, China), I noticed a 150cc motorcycle on a platform in their marketing department.  It was a sharp bike, I knew that the CG 150 engine has the same exterior dimensions as the 250cc engine, and I asked the Zong wizards if they would make that bike for us (us being CSC) with the larger engine.  The answer was yes, and the CSC TT 250 was born.

The bike was wonderful, and they initially retailed for $1895.  They sold like hotcakes, and to this day, they still comprise the bulk of CSC’s motorcycle sales.  I had a blast on mine.  Many of the folks who owned CSC RX3 motorcycles also purchased the TT 250, and we ended up doing a ride through Baja on those bikes.  They were awesome.

CSC RX3

My last single-cylinder motorcycle was a 250cc RX3, imported to the US by CSC Motorcycles in Azusa, California.  The RX3 is a Chinese motorcycle that looks a lot like a slightly scaled down GS1200 BMW.

A lot of the China haters claimed that Zongshen copied the styling from BMW (hey, nearly everyone else did, too, on their adventure touring bikes in those days).  There sure was a big cost difference, though.  BMWs were going for $25K; the RX3 sold for $2895 when it first came to America.

The RX3 proved to be a remarkably reliable motorcycle.  We took a dozen Chinese riders on a 5000-mile tour through the American west, Gresh and I rode a 6000-mile loop through China, I rode around the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and we did numerous Baja rides with groups of CSC riders in Baja, all without a single mechanical breakdown (well, we had one guy break his gearbox in Baja, but he was a guy who liked to shift without using his clutch, so I’m not counting that one).  The RX3 is a wonderful machine.

I was one of the key guys involved in bringing the RX3 to America, and I’m proud of that.  It was one of the high points of my professional life and my riding life.  I wrote a lot of blogs for CSC and several books about my adventures on the RX3. I think the RX3 is one of the best motorcycles in the world.  I wish the bike was still in production.

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You know what?  In searching for photos of my old twins, I found another single I’d forgotten all about.  It was my Triumph Cub.

I never put the Cub on the street.  I just rode it a bit in the fields behind my apartment building and then sold it.  It was crude compared to other bikes of the era, but it was nice.  It would be worth way more today than what I paid for it or what I got when I sold it.

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Next up in our Quantos Pistones series?  The Twins, of course.  Stay tuned.

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