Category: Dream Bike

CSC’s RX6

By Joe Berk

Great things continue to emerge from CSC Motorcycles, my alma mater and your favorite motorcycle company.  CSC is now importing the new Zongshen 650cc Cyclone, the RX6.  It’s a logical step up.  The first CSC adventure touring motorcycle was the RX3, and I had a ton of fun on it.  You know the story…when CSC first planned to bring that motorcycle to America, I wrote a blog about it and we sold the first one within a few seconds of the blog being published (it went to a buyer in Alaska).  The sales poured in, and literally within days of the RX3 motorcycles arriving in America, we led a tour of 15 CSC riders on a 2000-mile ride through Baja.  It was awesome, and it was pretty gutsy…taking 15 Chinese motorcycles on a ride like that.

It was onward and upward after that…a 5000-mile ride through the western US with a dozen guests from China and Colombia, a 6000-mile ride across China with Joe Gresh, a circumnavigation of the Andes Mountains in Colombia, and many more Baja rides.  Then came the CSC TT 250, the San Gabriel, the RX4 450cc, the 400cc twins, the electric City Slicker, and the RX1E  electric ADV motorcycle.

You’ve probably heard the rumors of the Zongshen/Norton alliance and their skunkworks 650cc twin, and I’m here to tell you the 650cc RX6 is a reality.  I rode the first one in America in the San Gabriel Mountains above CSC’s facilities, and it’s awesome.  And like all of the bikes listed above, CSC is bringing it here.

There are a lot of features on the new RX6 (I’ll list the specifications and some of the features at the bottom of this blog).   What grabbed my attention immediately when I saw the new CSC were the fit and  finish, the color, the dash, and just the overall aura of excellence.  The RX6 is a world class motorcycle.  One of the coolest things is the dash.  Check this out:

The RX6 is a full-sized motorcycle, but it’s not overwhelming.  If I had one I’d probably name it Goldilocks.  It’s not too big and it’s not too small.  It’s just right.

Another cool feature is the wireless key.  It’s like the electronic key on most new cars.  It has a key feature (you know, so you can insert it in any of the various locks on the RX6, like the fuel filler cap), but as long as you have it on you, you can start the RX6 just by hitting the starter button.  You don’t have to put the key in the ignition.

The brakes felt good on my ride in the mountains.  There are large dual disk  brakes up front, a single disk in the rear, and anti-skid braking front and rear.

The RX6 sounds like a motorcycle ought to.  It has a decisive exhaust note, and it sounded good reverberating off the San Gabriels.   It’s fast, too, with noticeably more power than an RX3 or an RX4 throughout the rev range.  I didn’t push it too hard (it was CSC’s first sample in the US), but the power was definitely there.  Zongshen is claiming a 112 mph top end; I think that is realistic and probably a bit of an underestimate.  The one I rode was literally brand new and I was in the mountains, so I didn’t try a top end run.

Zongshen is emphasizing the Cyclone family name (the RX3 is actually a Cyclone, too, but at CSC we made the decision to refer to it as the RX3).   The badging on the motorcycle’s side panels says SR650 (presumably, the SR stands for Sports Road), so we’ll have to see how the bike is named when it goes on sale, and Steve tells me that will be soon.  The motorcycle will carry a retail price of $7195, and as CSC always does, they are offering an introductory “Don’t Miss The Boat” price of $6695.  It’s a certainty that price won’t last long, so…you know…don’t miss the boat.  More info will be available on the CSC website.

CSC 2023 RX6 Specifications

      • Engine type: SR650, 650cc parallel twin, 4-stroke, water cooled, DOHC, 8-valve, Delphi Electronic fuel injection, ECU ignition
      • Bore/stroke: 82mm x 61.5mm
      • Compression ratio: 11.5:1
      • Horsepower: 70 hp at 8500 rpm
      • Torque: 62 Nm at 7000 rpm
      • Transmission: 6-speed
      • Clutch: FCC slipper-type
      • Wheelbase: 57.1 inches (1450mm)
      • Front suspension: 41mm inverted telescopic fork, 130mm travel
      • Rear suspension: KYB preload-adjustable mono-shock, 51mm travel, 142mm rear wheel travel
      • Front brake: Nissin 2-piston caliper, dual 320mm front discs, 5mm thick, Bosch ABS
      • Rear brake: 2-piston caliper, 260mm rotor, thickness: 5mm thick, Bosch ABS
      • Front wheel/ tire: Pirelli 120/70-R17 cast aluminum wheel, tubeless
      • Rear wheel/tire: Pirelli 160/60-R17 cast aluminum wheel, tubeless
      • Overall length: 86.4 inches (2195mm)
      • Overall width: 32.3 inches (820mm)
      • Overall height: 54.9 inches (1395mm)
      • Seat height: 32.3 inches (820mm)
      • Ground clearance: 6.5 inches (160mm)
      • Fuel capacity: 5.5 gallons (21 liters), locking gas cap
      • Estimated fuel economy: 48 MPG
      • Curb weight: 540 lb (245kg)d
      • Top speed: 112 mph (180 kph)
      • Max load, rider and luggage: 396 pounds (180kg)
      • Instrumentation: Cyclone 7-inch, full-color TFT dash, with digital speedometer, tachometer, odometer, tripmeter, fuel gauge, gear indicator, neutral light, temperature gauge, clock, turn signal and high beam indicators; Bluetooth linking to rider’s phone
      • Electronic tire-pressure monitoring system
      • Lighting: full LED lights and turn signals
      • 12-volt and USB charging outlets on dash
      • 300-watt alternator
      • Automotive-type waterproof connectors under seat
      • Tapered aluminum handlebars with bar-end weights
      • Standard engine guards, adjustable electronic windshield, vibration-damping foot pegs, dual curvature rear view mirrors
      • Front and Rear built in recorder and cameras
      • 5,000-mile valve adjustment intervals
      • Easy maintenance supported by a service manual and CSC online tutorials
      • Options: CSC touring luggage packages, accessory driving lights, heated handgrips, and more

Dream Bikes: Honda Super Hawk

By Joe Berk

That’s me, age 15, in the photo above.  I’m on my Dad’s Honda Super Hawk, and no, I wasn’t getting ready to do my best impression of Rollie Free or Walt Fulton (even though I was apparently wearing the same swim trunks as ol’ Rollie).  I wasn’t getting ready for a high speed run at all…it was summer, and we spent a lot of time in the water in those days.  And when Dad said it was okay (and sometimes when he didn’t), I rode the Super Hawk in the fields behind our house.

We didn’t know as much about photography back in the mid-’60s. But you get the idea. That Super Hawk was a lot of fun.  That’s me in the summer of 1966.
Rollie Free at Bonneville in 1948, on his way to a romping 150.313 mph land speed record. Check out the swim trunks.
Walt Fulton breaking 100 mph in 1952 at El Mirage, California, on a Mustang motorcycle.

The Honda fascination started with me as a 13-year-old kid.  We weren’t motorcycle people.  Yet.  I was mesmerized by a ’64 Triumph 500cc Tiger a guy at school owned.  That started a slew of snail mail requests to the motorcycle companies (snail mail was all we had back then, but we never felt communications deprived), and pretty soon I had a collection of moto sales literature.  Dad started looking at it.  Then we saw a Honda Dream at a McDonald’s (I wrote about that a few blogs back).  A short while later, Dad’s trapshooting buddy Cliff Leutholt (one of those nicest people who rode a Honda) visited us on his Super Hawk.  Jet black, chrome, silver paint, twin carbs, electric start, it was stunning.  Cliff said it was good for 100 mph.  Dad rode it (a first for my father) and he was hooked.   The 1960s were good times.

Me, with Dad’s CB 160, in February 1966. No snow, but it was cold that time of year in New Jersey.

The bug bit hard.  Dad started looking at the classifieds (remember those?), and in 1965, he bought the Baby Super Hawk, a scaled down, 160cc version of the 305.  Dad owned that bike for only a few months, and then he traded it in on a Super Hawk.  Sherm Cooper (of Cooper’s Cycle Ranch) offered Dad $450 for the 160 against the Super Hawk’s $730 (it was $50 more than Dad had paid for the 160), and just like that, we had a Super Hawk.  Boy, that was a blast.

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The Honda Super Hawk emerged from a vibrant and dazzlingly successful Honda Motor Company.  Honda first brought its motorcycles to the US in 1959, and, well, you know the rest.  1961 saw the creation of the 250cc Honda Hawk, which quickly evolved into the Super Hawk.  The Super Hawk bumped displacement to 305cc, and its 180-degree parallel twin was good for 28 horsepower at 9200 rpm (unheard of engine speeds back in the early 1960s).  The Hondas had 12-volt electrics, twin 26 mm Keihin carbs, a single overhead cam, a 4-speed transmission, and a wet sump lubrication system.

Like the Honda Dream in our recent blog, the Super Hawk had an electric starter, along with a kickstarter that oddly rotated forward (it was hard to look like Marlon Brando kick starting a Super Hawk, but I did my best).  The instrumentation was a cool touch.  Instead of the more conventional (i.e., British) separate cans for the tach and the speedo, both were contained in a single panel atop the headlight.  The Super Hawk had a tubular steel frame and front forks, but no front frame downtube (the engine was a stressed member).  The electric starter occupied the space where front downtube would be.  It was a clever engineering solution and that electric starter made life easier, but the Super Hawk didn’t look as cool as the 305cc CL 77 Scrambler (more on the Scrambler in a future blog).

The Super Hawk was a runner.  A road test in Cycle World magazine had the top speed at 104.6 mph and the bike ran a respectable 16.8-second quarter mile at 83 mph.  Super Hawks had twin leading shoe front brakes (something special in the pre-disk-brake era).  The motorcycle weighed 335 pounds.  The Super Hawk could be had in the same blue, black, white, or red color choices as the Honda Dreams, but unlike the Dream, all the Super Hawks had silver frames, side covers, and fenders.  I remember that nearly all Super Hawks were black; it was very unusual to see one in any other color unless you were an Elvis fan.

Click on the image to watch the video.

The Super Hawk had good starring roles, too, before product placement became the mega-industry it is today.  There were pop songs about Hondas.   Elvis Presley rode a red Honda Super Hawk in the 1964 movie Roustabout.  And a fellow named Robert Pirsig rode across the US on one with his son and wrote a book about it (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance); that book has become something of a bible in the travelogue and motorcycle deep think genres.  Pirsig’s Super Hawk currently resides in the Smithsonian.

So, back to my early days and my turning Dad into a rider:  As awesome as the Super Hawk was, it didn’t last long.  The progression back in those days was a small Honda, a bigger Honda, and then (before the advent of the Honda CB 750 Four), a jump to a Triumph or BSA.  Dad had been bitten by the bug big time, and in 1966, he bought a new Triumph Bonneville.  But that’s a story for another blog.

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More Dream Bikes!

Our previous blog on the Honda Dream is here.   And here’s our blog on riding a Honda Scrambler in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens:  Jerry and the Jersey Devil.

Dream Bikes: The Honda Dream

My Dad and I saw our first Honda ever in 1964 at a McDonald’s in East Brunswick, New Jersey.  It was a 150cc Dream, the smaller version of the bigger CA 77 305cc Dream.  I was 12 years old at the time.  In those days, it was a fun family outing to drive the 20 miles to Route 18 in New Jersey and have dinner at McDonald’s (that was the closest one), where hamburgers were 15 cents and the sign out front said they had sold over 4 million of the things. And the Honda we saw that day…Dad and I were both smitten by the baby Dream, with its whitewall tires, bright red paint, and the young clean cut guy riding it.  True to Honda’s tagline, he seemed to be one of the nicest people you could ever meet (although admittedly the bar wasn’t very high for nice people in New Jersey).

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Dad and I started looking into Hondas, and that included a trip to Cooper’s Cycle Ranch near Trenton.   Back then, it really was a ranch, or at least a farm of some sort…the showroom was Sherm Cooper’s old barn.  The little Hondas were cool, but the big ones (the 305s) were even cooler. A 305 was the biggest Honda available in the mid-1960s and Honda imported three 305cc motorcycles to America:  The CA 77 Dream, the CB 77 Super Hawk, and the CL 77 Scrambler.  The Dream was not designed to be an off road motorcycle (that was the CL 77 Scrambler’s domain) or a performance motorcycle (in the Honda world, that was the CB 77 Super Hawk).

Of the 305 twins,  It’s probably appropriate to discuss the CA 77 Dream first.  The Scrambler and the Super Hawk were intended to appeal to motorcycle enthusiasts; the Dream was a much less intimidating ticket in (into the motorcycle world, that is).  The typical Dream buyer was either someone stepping up from a smaller Honda, or someone who had not previously owned a motorcycle.

Honda first used the name “Dream” on its 1949 Model D (a single cylinder, 98cc two-stroke).  No one knows for sure where the Dream moniker came from, but legend has it that someone, upon first seeing the Model D, proclaimed it to look like a dream.  The C-series Dreams first emerged in Japan in 1957.  Pops Yoshimura built Honda engines with modified production parts that ran over 10,000 rpm for 18-hour endurance races, proving the basic design was robust.  Some say Honda based the engine design on an earlier NSU engine, but Honda unquestionably carried the engineering across the finish line.  Whatever.  When’s the last time you saw an NSU?  Another big plus was that Honda used horizontally split cases and that (along with vastly superior quality) essentially eliminated oil leaks.  The other guys (and in those days, that meant Harley and the Britbikes) had vertically split cases and they all leaked.  Honda motorcycles did not, and that was a big deal for a motorcycle in the 1960s.

There were several differences between the Dream and the other two Honda 305cc motorcycles.  The Super Hawk and the Scrambler had tubular steel frames and forks; the Dream used pressed steel for both its frame and fork.  The Dream was a single-carb motorcycle; the Super Hawk and the Scrambler had twin carbs.  The Dream had large steel valanced fenders, the other Hondas had more sporting abbreviated fenders.  The Dream was the only 305 that came from the Honda factory with whitewall tires.  The Dream had leading link front suspension; the Scrambler and the Super Hawk had telescopic forks.   The Dream used the Type II crankshaft (so did the Scrambler) with a 360-degree firing order (both pistons went up and down together, but the cylinders fired alternately).   The higher performance Super Hawk had the Type I, 180-degree crankshaft.  Like the Super Hawk, the Dream had electric starting (the Scrambler was kick start only).  The Dream came with a kickstarter, too, but why bother?  I mean, you weren’t going to be mistaken for Marlon Brando when you rode a Honda Dream.

The Dream’s 305cc engine had a single 23mm Keihin carb and it produced 23 horsepower at 7500 rpm (not that the rpm was of any interest; the Dream had no tachometer).  With its four-speed transmission and according to magazine test results, the Dream was good for between 80 and 100 mph (depending on motojournalist weight, I guess).  The Dream averaged around 50 mpg, although in those blissful days of $0.28/gallon gasoline, nobody really cared.   Honda Dreams came in white, black, red, or blue.  With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I had bought one in each color and parked them in the garage.  My favorites were black or white; those colors just seemed to work with the Dream’s whitewall tires.

Honda built the Dream until 1969.  The Dream retailed for $595 back in those days, but a shrewd negotiator could do better.

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Dreambikes: ’97 Suzuki TL1000S

The year was 1997 and the Ducati V-twins had been dominating magazine covers for years.  Not to be outdone, two Japanese manufacturers produced similarly-configured V-twins (actually, L-twins).  Honda had the SuperHawk, and Suzuki the TL1000S.  I’ve always liked Suzuki better, so I went with the TL1000s.  Suzuki offered the TL in two colors….a forest green with red accents; and bright red with yellow accents.  For me, it had to be red.

My ’97 TL1000S, somewhere in northern Baja.

I bought my TL at Bert’s in Azusa.  If I recall correctly, I negotiated the guys down to $8700 out the door, and part of that was a Yamaha 650 twin I traded in.  I had bought the Yamaha used from a guy in a course I taught at McDonnell Douglas, thinking the Yamaha would be like my old Triumph Bonnevilles but reliable.  The Yamaha was a bust. It was too heavy, it had cheap fasteners, the Hopper/Fonda riding stance was awful, it didn’t handle, and it lacked the low-end grunt of my earlier Triumphs.

I remember riding the TL home from Bert’s.  The riding was awkward with the bike’s low bars and high footpegs, but I got used to it and I made it less punishing with a set of Heli-Bars.  The Heli-Bars were slighly taller and wider (you got about an inch more in each dimension, which made a difference).

A stop for fuel in Catavina. The guys sell gasolina from bottles along Mexico Highway 1.

The TL was the fastest and hardest accelerating motorcycle I ever owned.  It would wheelie in third gear if you weren’t paying attention, and it went from zero to 100 in a heartbeat.  The bottom end torque was ferocious.  Fuel economy was atrocious, and it had a tendency to stall at low rpm.  But wow, did it ever look good.  Did I mention it was fast?

My friend Marty had an Aprilia V-twin (a Mille, I think, or something like that), another bit of Italian exotica, that cost even more than the Ducati.  Marty’s spaghetti-bender was more than twice what I paid for my TL.  We swapped bikes once on a day ride and I came away unimpressed.  My TL was faster.

Baja a few years ago.  Younger, thinner, and hair that hadn’t turned gray yet. That motorcycle made me look good.

I wanted the look of a sport bike, but I’m not a canyon racer and the exotic look didn’t do anything for me once I had ridden the TL a few times.  Then something funny happened.  My Harley died on a Baja ride.  I nursed my Harley home, parked it, and took the TL.  Surprisingly, it did a good job as a touring platform.  And I could ride at speeds the Harley couldn’t dream about.  In those days, if there were speed limits in Baja, I didn’t know about them.

That first big trip on the TL instead of the Harley cinched it for me.  I bought sportsbike soft luggage and used the TL on many rides after that.  700-mile days in Baja became the norm (I could make Mulegé in a day; the TL wouldn’t break a sweat).  The only downside was the abominable fuel economy (the fuel light would come on after 105 miles), but a one-gallon red plastic fuel container and a bungie cord fixed that.  It was Beverly hillbillies, but it worked. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a hillbilly (somebody’s got to shoot those road signs).

TL1000S touring. The bike was a surprisingly good touring machine.

Even with the TL’s mid-30-mpg fuel economy, I only ran out of fuel twice.  Once was on the Bodfish-Caliente Road (one of California’s best kept secrets).  I didn’t have my gas can with me; Marty rode ahead and returned with a gasoline-filled water bottle he hoped wouldn’t dissolve (it didn’t).  The other time was on Baja’s long stretch headed south to Guerrero Negro.  That road runs straight as an arrow, and I ran the TL at a surprisingly comfortable 145 mph (still well below the TL’s top speed).  The TL was fuel injected and when it ran dry it was like someone shut the ignition.  I poured my extra gallon in and made it to the next Pemex station.  The guys I rode with were still far behind.

I had fun with the TL, but I dropped it a lot more than any other bike I had ever owned.  All the drops were my fault.  The low-mounted sport bars restricted steering, and once when pulling into my driveway, there wasn’t enough to keep the bike upright.  Before I realized it, the bike and I were both on the ground (my first thought was to wonder if anyone had seen me).  The next time the bike was in my driveway, facing slightly downhill.  I started it to let it warm up, and the bike rolled off the sidestand.  Again, my first thought was if anyone had seen me.  The third time was more dramatic.  The TL had a slipper clutch; you could downshift with reckless abandon.  The clutch would slip and not skid the rear tire.  It was cool, until I used it diving hard into a corner.  The curb was coming up quickly and I wasn’t slowing fast enough.  The slipper clutch was doing its thing, but when I touched the front brake, that was enough to unload the rear wheel.  It broke loose and I fishtailed into the curb.  I went over the bars, executed a very clean somersault, and came to rest in the sitting position looking straight ahead.  I had been watching the Oympics on TV the day before and I remember thinking (as I completed my dismount) I could be a competitor. A woman in a station wagon saw the whole thing.  She rolled down her window and I half expected to see a sign with a 10 on it (like they do at the Olympics).  “Are you okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered.  “I’m a gymnast and I’m practicing.”  The window went up and she disappeared.

I loved the looks of the TL.   Yeah, the carbon fiber was faux, but I didn’t care.  In those days I was running a factory that made carbon fiber aircraft stuff and I never understood the attraction.  Even with fake carbon fiber, the TL was a motorcycle that looked fast.  And it was.

Serious miles were easy on the TL1000S.

Suzuki only made the TL for a few years.  Some guy in the UK killed himself in a speed wobble, the bike got an Internet rep as a tank slapper, and that killed sales worldwide.  Suzuki had a recall to add a steering damper, but the damage had been done.  Bert’s installed the damper on my TL, I couldn’t feel any difference , and my bike never went into a wobble (either before or after the recall).  My hypothesis is that the UK guy rolled on too much throttle exiting a corner, lifting the front wheel with the bike leaned over.  That will induce a wobble, you know.  There was another recall to fix the low speed stalling issue.  I guess it worked; my bike never had a low speed stall after that.

Suzuki offered a more radical fully-faired version called the TL1000R (I didn’t like its looks), but the TL-R didn’t survive, either.  The engine, however, proved to be a winner.  Today, 25 years later, a detuned version is still soldiering on in the ADV-styled V-Strom.  I never owned a V-Strom, but I should have.  Everybody I ever talked to who owned one loved the V-Strom.  Me, I loved my TL.

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Dream Bike: Honda MT250 Elsinore

The first motorcycle that I couldn’t hold the throttle wide open through the gears was a CR250 Honda Elsinore. I was around 16 years old and had ridden other 250s: Suzukis, Yamahas, 4-stroke Hondas. They were enduro bikes with heavy flywheels and mild porting. The Elsinore was a full-on motocross bike and I had never experienced a real, racing motorcycle.

When I left the line Wide-eFfin’-Open like I normally did the front wheel was climbing into the sky and at the same time the rear tire was shooting rocks and dirt 50 feet behind. The only thing that kept it from flipping over was lack of traction. Each time I shifted gears the front wheel came off the ground and a fresh torrent of debris issued forth from the squirming back tire. It was a breathtakingly fast motorcycle.

It was so light, so powerful, the engine ran clean throughout the rev range, and the suspension was the best I had ever ridden. The steering was telepathic and the bike could fly through the air like Superman. By the time I was topped out in 4th gear the bike was starting a slow, gentle weave and the two-track dirt trail I was on had grown very narrow. I had to lift. I never even made it to top gear. What a motorcycle!

The MT250 was not like that. It was a mild-mannered bike and Honda’s first modern two-stroke street bike. In the mid 1970s street legal, 250 two-stroke enduro bikes were wildly popular. Honda made a decent but heavy 4-stroke enduro.  To compete with the other guys Honda had to lose the valve train and build one of those confounded “Thinking Man’s” engines. Honda building a two stroke street bike was earthshaking news in the 1970’s motorcycle world.  It stirred up passionate opinions, like when Bob Dylan went electric.

The MT250 looked a lot like a real Elsinore except it had gauges, lights and blinkers. The gas tank was steel instead of artificially aged aluminum. The frame was regular steel not chrome-moly like the race bike. It even mixed the oil and gasoline automatically like Yamaha’s Autolube. All these changes added weight but you could get a plate for the thing and ride it to high school.

If my memory has not failed completely I remember the motorcycle magazines of that era being slightly disappointed with the new two-stroke Honda. How could such a milquetoast motorcycle come from the fire-breathing CR250 Elsinore? I guess they were expecting a motocross bike with lights. Eventually one of the magazines did just that. Here again, I may be imagining this but I seem to remember one of the magazines putting a CR250 top end on a MT250. And that was all it took. The heavy flywheel with the CR porting made for a fast, powerful 250 that wasn’t so abrupt that it would spit you off.

I loved the style of the first CR250s and there hasn’t been a better-looking dirt bike built. I’ll go even further: the early CR250 is one of the all-time best-looking motorcycles of any category since forever. The MT inherited a lot of the CR’s style and it flat looks great. The engine was a strange-but-cool, dark brown color and the exhaust pipe swooped banana-like along the right side of the bike.

“If you like the CR250 so much why don’t you just get one?” you may ask. Here’s the reason: the CR250 is a race bike, it’s an old race bike, but it’s still a race bike and fast as hell. I don’t need that kind of pressure at this stage of my life. The MT250 has all the style with none of the fear. I can ride the MT on the street to get to the trails; no need to load it into a truck. Hell, you could ride the MT across country if you wanted to.

Honda’s MT250 never really took off and their low-ish used prices reflect that milquetoast reputation. You can pick up a perfect one for $2500 and a decent daily rider for under $1500. Not counting the very first bikes they built, Honda didn’t make many two-stroke street bikes. There was the MT125 and the NSR 400cc three-cylinder pocket rocket; no others come to mind. Were there any others?

My dream garage would not be complete without an MT250. It’s a bike I could ride around back country trails without fear of breaking down or flipping over backwards. The thing is as reliable as a Honda. While I’m dreaming I’ll think of the CR250’s incredible acceleration and just green-screen that vivid memory onto the background as I putt-putt down to the ice cream store for a fudge sundae.

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Hasty Conclusions: The New BSA 650 Gold Star

There’s not a lot of Internet noise on the revivified BSA motorcycle company and I don’t see any reason why ExhaustNotes.us shouldn’t try and create some buzz with wild speculation of our own. We haven’t got a test bike and if we did we’d be riding the wheels off the thing so we’ll just imagine we have a BSA to examine. If you haven’t learned by now not to trust things you read on the Internet then there’s really no hope for you and you can take everything I say in this review as gospel.

In the US market BSA is re-entering the motorcycle business at a bad time. Our customer demographic for street motorcycle riders becomes older by the minute. 1950’s-1960’s nostalgia-driven motorcycle sales simply must die off with the customers that lived that stifling, bland era. In just a few seconds I was able to gin up a statistic that said the average age for motorcyclists in America is 73 years old. That number shocked me even though I knew it was false because I was the one that made it up. Soon enough I came to believe that number because it was on the Internet in this ExhaustNotes.us story.

In the video below new-BSA’s Indian owners appear to realize the American market is awash with nostalgic motorcycle choices and don’t seem to be in any rush to lose money chasing the urine soaked, grey-haired, pony-tailed, ancient American rider even though that dried up shell of a man would appear to be the natural audience for such a bike.

The motorcycle might be built in Britain, but most likely will be made in India with a steadying British hand on the design choices. BSA has really nailed the look. The new 650 is as close to the old Gold Star style-wise as you can get without having survived the bombing of Coventry. To me, the bike looks great and is so much classier than the swoopy, exo-framed modern bike. BSA even made the engine clatter like an old British single even though it’s a liquid-cooled, double overhead cam, 4-valve engine. I looked on BSA’s website to see of it was fuel–injected but didn’t see that spec. I’m sure it is. Claimed compression ratio is 11.5:1 so hopefully the combustion chamber is shaped well enough to use regular unleaded gas. Finding high-octane gas is a problem out in the hinterlands.

The claimed 45 horsepower BSA thumper comes with all the modern conveniences like ABS, headlights, turn indicators and a hose bib for a washing machine. The bike is also equipped with a 23,000-watt inverter allowing the rider to power a typical suburban home for up to 5 days. The bike is fairly lightweight compared to your average adventure motorcycle clocking in at only 33-1/2 stone. One disc brake on each wheel should stop the light-ish BSA fairly well and with a claimed 70 miles-per-1024 dram you should be able to go roughly 210 miles on the 3240-dram tank. Of course, your mileage may vary depending of which rose-colored glasses you are wearing at the time.

BSA’s website doesn’t mention a counter balancer but one of the guys in the video says it has one so I predict a tolerable vibration level even with that big slug flying around between your legs. Traditional telescopic forks and two rear shocks are nothing earth shaking. I like simple things so I’m good with boring old suspenders. Spoke rims and what looks like tube-type tires are all well-trod design choices that leave plenty of space for improvements on subsequent model years.

As it should, my opinion means nothing to you but I like the new BSA. It looks right, and it has the bare minimum modern junk bolted on. I’ll go as far as saying it’s an honest motorcycle. The only thing wrong is the price. Even with the collapsing British pound, 10,000 British pounds is over $11,000 US dollars and that’s almost twice what Royal Enfield’s 650 twin sells for, a bike that is every bit as cool and most likely better. The Enfield even wins AFT flat track races. I won’t be buying one but don’t let that stop you from buying one.

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Dan’s Drifter

Good buddy Dan, a loyal ExNotes reader, enjoyed our recent blog on the Kawasaki Drifter.  Dan wrote to tell us about his Drifter.  Check this out, folks.  It’s a beautiful motorcycle.

Joe:

My motorcycle is a 1999 Kawasaki Drifter 1500cc.  Recently got it, love the combination of  Japanese bike reliability that will go forever and the Indian style that is a real head turner. Changed up the seat, added some Indian badging including the tank decals and even an Indian VIN plate cover. Other adds on include the jockey shift that is actually linked to the heel toe shift, the book rack and the triple head lights. I couldn’t afford a 40s Indian and even if I could some of those you have to be a mechanic to operate, this is a great compromise that doesn’t feel like a compromise.

I think people who appreciate the bike for what it is might like the look of the seat and such. It’s funny as a tribute I was even on the fence about the Indian badging but at the end of the day I subscribe to “ride whatever, be safe, have fun.”  I even had a rider of a current Indian tell me his was no more Indian than mine…they stopped making them in ’53 and as far as he was concerned anything after that was nothing more than a tribute.

Thanks and be well…I enjoy the blog.

Dan

Thank you, Dan.  Your Drifter is a good-looking motorcycle and it’s one I’d be proud to ride.  Great photos, too!

The 2020 Katana

It’s not every day you get to see a new 2020 Suzuki Katana for the first time, and it’s certainly not every day you get living legend and motojournalist extraordinaire Kevin Duke to take a photo of you standing next to it.  Yesterday was that day for me, and the photo you see above was a shot Kevin grabbed of yours truly with the new Katana.  I was visiting with the boys at CSC Motorcycles, Kevin was there, and he volunteered to let me take a ride on the Katana.  I took a pass on that, but when he asked me to pose with the bike, hey, I figured Suzuki needs all the help they can get.  Not that they need any from me.  The new Katana is a stunning motorcycle.  Visually arresting, I would call it.

We wrote about the 2020 Katana in our Dream Bikes series last year, and at that time, I mentioned that I owned one of the original Katanas in 1982.  Mine was Serial Number 241 of the first batch of 500 Suzuki built.

There’s 38 years between those two photos.   Wow, that’s a scary thought.  I think me and my good buddy Jack Daniel’s will have a talk about that later tonight.

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Dream Bike: Honda CBX

I’d always wanted a CBX, ever since they were introduced by Honda in 1979.  I bought a new Honda 750 Four when that bike first came out, and the CBX seemed a logical extension of the kind of engineering pioneered by the Honda 750.  It was engineering excess raised to an exponent, the CBX was, I was a guy in my 20s, and in those days, dealers would let you take a bike out for a test ride.  I’m the kind of guy that caused them to stop doing that.  I lived in Fort Worth, the Honda dealer there gave me the keys to a new silver CBX with less than 20 miles on the odometer, and I tried to bury the needle on Loop 820 back in ’79.  As I recall, I touched something north of 140 miles per hour, and when I returned to the dealer and put the bike on its sidestand, the cam covers were ejaculating oil.   The bike’s honey-colored lifeblood was squirting out in an almost arterial fashion.

“What do you think?” the sales guy asked, hoping for a quick sale.

“It’s not for me,” I answered.  “I mean, look at the thing…it leaks oil worse than my Harley.”

Still, I wanted a CBX.  Always did, and in ’92, I finally scratched that itch.

The mighty Six.  My old 1982 Honda CBX.  Those film cameras that I had 30 years ago did a nice job, and this photo brings back memories of one my more memorable motorcycles.

I bought the CBX you see above in 1992 (when it was already 10 years old), but the bike only had 4500 miles on it and it was in pristine condition. The price was $4500, perfectly matching the odometer mileage. Everything was stock, and everything was in perfect shape (other than the tires, which were cracking with age).

I must have gone back to Bert’s dealership in Azusa four times drooling over that bike, and when I finally made up my mind to buy it and went back for a fifth time, it was gone.  I’d lost my opportunity.  Ah, well, I could bounce around for a while longer on my Harley.  It was a different Harley than the one I mentioned above.   That earlier one was a ’79 Electra-Glide and I called it my optical illusion because it looked like a motorcycle.  The Harley I owned when I bought the ’82 CBX was a ’92 Softail, but that one was a real motorcycle.  You could ride it without things breaking.

Bert’s was a magnet to me, and lots of times after work I’d stop there just to look at the motorcycles. The place was like an art gallery.  I just enjoyed being there and taking it all in.  Motorcycles can be art, you know.   That bit of art that I had fallen in love with, the pearlescent white ’82 CBX, was gone.  I had let it escape.

So, you can imagine my surprise a month or two later when I stopped in again and the CBX was back on the floor. The bike had been sold to a Japanese collector, I was told, and the deal fell through.  Opportunity didn’t need to knock twice. I bought the CBX on the spot.

The CBX was an amazing motorcycle. 1050cc. Six cylinders. Six carbs. 24 valves. Double overhead cams. Actually, it was quadruple overhead cams. The cylinder head was so long each cam was split in two, and the two halves were joined in the middle of their vast reach across those six cylinders by what engineers call Oldham couplers.  I didn’t know exactly what an Oldham coupler was or how it worked, but it sounded cool.  I owned a motorcycle with Oldham couplers.  How many people can say that?

The CBX didn’t have much bottom end, but once the engine got going, the thing was amazing.  And the sound!  Wow!  It sounded like a Formula 1 race car.  I read somewhere that the Japanese engineers actually spent time on a US aircraft carrier listening to fighter jets take off, and their objective was to make the CBX sound like that. When conditions were right, I convinced myself I could hear the F-14 in my CBX.  Top Gun.  Maverick.   That was me.

The CBX was fun, and it drew looks wherever I rode it. Honda only made the CBX for 4 years (1979 through 1982). They were expensive to manufacture (it seemed like every fastener on the thing was a custom design) and they didn’t sell all that well. But it was an awesome display of technology. I’m a mechanical engineer, and the design spoke to me.

I never had any regrets with that old CBX. I rode it hard for the next 10 years, and other than dropping it a couple of times in 0-mph mishaps, it served me well. I rode it all over the Southwest and it never missed a beat. When I first bought it, I could walk into any Honda dealer and buy new parts (even though it was 10 years old).  Ten years later (when the bike was 20 years old) that was no longer the case, and that scared me. The CBX was years ahead of its time and it was complicated. If something broke and I couldn’t find parts, I’d have a $4500 paperweight.

In those days, I was on a CBX Internet mailing list. I put a note on the list advising folks that I wanted to sell the bike and it sold that day. I got a fair price for it, and the mighty Six was gone.  I have no regrets, folks…I had lots of fun and it was time to move on.    But I miss that bike.  It was fun, it was fast, it was different, and it was everything a motorcycle should be.

Dream Bike: Buell XB12s

Joe Gresh posted a Dream Bike blog the other day about the Buells and I think he was spot on.  A confession:  I’ve always wanted a Buell, too.  Given the choice, I’d probably go for the XB12s like you see in the photo above.  I didn’t much care for the ones at the end of the run with the Rotax engines (apparently, neither did Harley-Davidson), and I didn’t like the ones with the lower bars and the bigger (yet still small) front fairing (the lines just didn’t look right to me).  But that XB12s:  Wow.  I think Buell nailed what a hooligan bike should look like, and Bike Looks Matter (I could start a movement under that name, I think).

Buell had versions of the XB12 with translucent body work (the fairing and the tank) in orange, red, and smoky gray, and those are muey cool, too.  I particularly liked the orange one.  Orange has always worked for me on a motorcycle.  Orange bikes are faster, you know.

I went as far as riding out to Victorville Harley about 15 years ago to test ride a new Buell, and that’s what scotched the deal for me.  I had the money and I was ready to buy.  The bike was beautiful, but it was slow compared to my Speed Triple and the wheelbase was so short it felt twitchy to me.  Maybe it was the steering geometry.  Whatever it was, the bike just didn’t feel stable.

The handling wasn’t what killed the deal, though.  It was summer when I test rode that Buell and when we were stuck in traffic along Bear Valley Road, I suddenly heard this horrific whine from beneath the seat.  The noise startled me.  I thought something broke, but it was the rear cylinder fan (something I didn’t even know the bike had).  Evidently the Buells ran hot (as did the Big Twin Harleys) and they had a problem with rear cylinder overheating.  The answer was a thermostat-activated rear cylinder fan.  Nope, that was too Mickey Mouse for me, and I kept the $12,000 in my wallet that day.

But the looks!  Wow, those Buell boys nailed what I thought were fine aesthetics for a motorcycle.  And the Exhaust Note was perfect.  Nothing sounds better than a Buell at idle.  It was locomotive like:  Big, powerful, industrial, all business.  I liked that, too.

As a mechanical engineer, I appreciated Buell’s concepts…the oil in the swingarm, the fuel in the frame, the oversized single disk front brake, and the whole mass centralization thing.  These were ideas that made sense and were ahead of their time.  Maybe that’s why Buell didn’t make it.  There were other reasons, but sometimes you can be too far ahead of the curve, and Buells were out there.

Gresh said he liked the earlier Buells better, and even though I’d like to someday own a later model Buell, I agree with Joe that the earlier ones were also beautiful.   Buell had an earlier gray and orange color combo that I thought was especially stunning…

I think the earlier Buells didn’t have the rear cylinder cooling fan and I like that.  The fact that Buells were slow compared to Triumphs doesn’t bother me these days.  I think I could put up with the noisy cooling fan silliness.  Or maybe I’d just ride on cooler days, or stay out of traffic.  I’ve found myself poking around a lot on CycleTrader and the Facebook sales pages recently.   Who knows what the future holds.

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