Back when we were running Briggs and Stratton mini-bikes a few kids had Yamaha Mini Enduro 60cc or Honda Mini Trail 50cc bikes. Both of these bikes were stone reliable and a real leap forward from the hard-tail, flathead, one-speed stationary motored mini-bikes. I had a blue Mini Trail Honda that was indestructible. Riding the Everglades of South Florida the cooling fins would cake with mud and the engine would overheat until it would stop running. Just stop.
Clearing the fins with a handy stick and waiting fifteen minutes restored the bike to health and I could ride away. This happened several times a day and the bike never used oil or smoked. Like I say, Stone Ax.
Into these tiny times strode a colossus: The Steen Alsport 100. What a machine! The Steen was equipped with a 100cc Hodaka engine, and the front forks were Earles type utilizing a swingarm and held up by two oil-damped shocks. The gas tank was fiberglass and beautifully shaped. White was the only color I saw but there were other colors. Steens were rare around the neighborhood.
The Steen was a little larger than a Mini Enduro or an SL70 but smaller than the (to us) full-sized Yamaha 90cc Enduro. The black expansion chamber (stock!) running along the side gave the bike a race-ready appearance. Whoever styled the Steen absolutely nailed it, as the Steen is still one of the best-looking motorcycles from any era.
I have no idea how the bike handled with the swingarm forks. With so much metal spread over such a large area I would guess the front turned heavier than it actually was. Later Steen went with a conventional fork, probably for looks more than suspension performance. The bike sounded great. It had a sharp cackle that our muted minis could not match. Even the Alsport logo and striping were cool.
Dealerships more so than motorcycle quality determined motorcycle popularity at the start of the 1970’s. There were no Hodakas to be found. Very few Kawasakis or Suzukis populated our riding areas. Oddly enough a Montesa or Bultaco might ride by. These were huge motorcycles. The Steen didn’t have much of a dealer network In Miami so there was only the one kid who had a Steen in our group. I should remember his name but it has slipped away to that place all memories eventually slip.
Today Steens are not outrageously priced. I see them for a thousand or two fairly often. Maybe people don’t know what they are or Hodakas are seen as more real; I don’t care, I love the things. If I win the lottery I’ll have a Steen just to stare at. I’ll start it up a few times a day and listen to the cackle.
Here’s one that sold for $1600 a few years ago:
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The RX3-to-RX4 comparison continues. We’ll pick up several more areas in this blog. Note that we’ve added an RX4 page to the ExhaustNotes website, too. More on that in a bit; for now, on to the comparo!
Starting at the back of both bikes, the RX4 has a subfender behind the rear wheel. The RX3 does not. Take a look…
The RX3 rear wheel. Note that there’s no subfender.The RX4 subfender. This was something CSC could have added to the RX3, but chose not to (wisely, in my opinion)..
When CSC specified what they wanted on the RX3 a few years ago, they opted to leave the subfender off. I didn’t like the subfender, I thought it was ugly, and I didn’t see a need for it. I thought leaving it off was a good move.
You might think the RX3 subfender could have been added as an aftermarket accessory. It can, but it’s not easy. On the RX3, adding the subfender actually requires a different swingarm, so if you wanted to add a subfender you would have to replace the entire swingarm. That’s because the swingarm mounting points for the subfender are built into the swingarm (you can see that on the RX4 subfender photo, too). When CSC was defining the RX3 configuration, the question became why not just specify the swingarm that can accept the subfender, and offer the subfender later as an accessory? The reason is that because without the subfender, the swingarm looks goofy. It’s got this big mounting bracket at the rear on the right side, hanging out in space with nothing mounted on it.
Personally, I could do without the subfender on either bike. It just adds weight and I don’t care for the look. But that’s my preference. Your mileage may vary.
Moving back to the front of the bikes, the RX4 incorporates a radiator bottle fill port on the bodywork to the right of the fuel tank. It’s easily accessible (far more so than the radiator bottle fill port on the RX3, which is tucked under the fairing). This was a good way to go on the RX4. You know that if you have ever needed to add fluid on the RX3 it’s not easy to get the radiator bottle. Score one for the RX4. I like the RX4 approach better.
The RX4 radiator bottle fill port. It makes it a lot easier to add coolant.
The sidestands (or kickstands) on the two bikes are similar…and in the two photos below, you can see that the two bikes use the same footpegs. These are good footpegs, I think, because you can remove the rubber inserts if you wish. I never have done that, but I suppose there are guys out there who think they need to do that.
The RX3 kickstand. I found it easier to reach than the kickstand on the RX4.The RX4 kickstand. Note the “wing” to make extension easier.
I find it very easy to reach the kickstand on my RX3; on the RX4 it was not as easy for me. That could just be me being used to the RX3.
Neither the RX3 nor the RX4 have a centerstand as standard equipment. It’s an option on the RX3 and I imagine it will become an option on the RX4, although it will be little harder for CSC to add a centerstand to the RX4. On the rear suspension linkage photos (they’re coming up next), you’ll notice that the RX3 has two mounting points that CSC uses for the bike’s optional centerstand. When I first saw those underframe mounting points on the RX3 in China, I assumed Zongshen added them because they anticipated adding a centerstand, but that wasn’t the reason. Zongshen uses the below-the-frame mounting points as an assembly aid during RX3 production as the bike is traveling down the assembly line.
Zongshen also has temporary centerstands (it takes two of these to lift the bike’s rear wheel off the ground) for use if you need to fix a flat tire, and I think CSC sells them if you want to buy a pair. I have a couple I carry around in my RX3, but (knock wood) I have never used them. I got a flat on the ride across China, though, and one of the RX3 clubmen we rode with in Beijing had the accessory maintenance centerstands with him. They work well, and that guy had my flat fixed in no time flat (pardon the pun).
That said, let’s move on to the rear suspension comparison. Here’s the rear suspension linkage on the RX3. Note that the RX3 linkage is constructed of stamped metal pieces. This is the setup that CSC changes when you buy an RX3 lowering kit.
The RX3 rear suspension linkage. Note the stamped metal parts, the rear damping adjustment point, and the centerstand mounting points below the bike.
The RX4 rear suspension linkage is substantially beefier, and it uses cast metal bits instead of stampings. It’s one of the reasons why the RX4 is heavier than the RX3.
The RX4 rear suspension linkage. I don’t think the RX4’s rear damping adjuster is as easily accessible as is the RX3’s.
The shift levers and the rear brake levers are different on the two bikes. The RX3 uses cast parts; the RX4 uses what appear to be stamped weldments. The photos below show the shift and brake levers on the RX3. Note that they are cast bits, they are painted silver, and they have a nice look to them.
The RX3 rear brake lever. It’s a nicely-finished casting.The RX3 shift lever, another nicely-finished casting.
On the RX4, the shift and brake levers appear to be stamped weldments painted black to match the frame. In my opinion, they are not as nice looking as the ones on the RX3, but I suppose you could make the argument that if you bend the RX4 parts in a spill, the levers on the RX4 will be easier to fix than would be the RX3’s castings.
The RX4 rear brake lever. It’s fabricated from a stamped weldment.The RX4 shift lever.
The RX4 I’ve been riding has two ignition keys. One looks like a regular ignition key, and it fits the ignition lock, the standard luggage, the gas cap, and the rear seat release (just like the RX3). The other key that comes with the RX4 has a smaller black plastic handle. I don’t know why the two RX4 keys are different. I had a similar two-key arrangement when I owned a 1997 Suzuki TL1000S. The regular key (with the larger black plastic handle) was for normal use, and the one with the smaller black handle was in case the bike had an electrical issue and the fuel injection didn’t work correctly. It was designed to put the TL into a “limp home” mode. I never had to use it. I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, but I don’t know for sure. It’s one of those things I’ll have to ask the wizards at Zongshen about.
The black plastic handle on the RX4 key is larger than is the one on the RX3 key. Here’s a photo showing the RX4 key and the RX3 key…
The RX4 (on the left) and RX3 (on the right) ignition keys.
The rear brake master cylinders on the two motorcycles are also different. Here’s what they look like…
I like the rear master cylinder on the RX4 much more than the one on the RX3. You can just unscrew the RX4 cap to get to the reservoir, while on the RX3 rear master cylinder you need a Phillips head screwdriver and you have to remove two screws. The more-complicated RX3 design has a story behind it. Originally, the RX3 rear master cylinder was a much smaller affair. One of the CSC consultants advised that it was too small for its location near the exhaust pipe (the concern was that the master cylinder would be heated by the exhaust pipe and this could adversely affect brake performance). It never was an issue when riding the preproduction RX3 motorcycles or the RX3s we rode across China (both had the original design master cylinder), but I guess if you pay consultants you take their advice. On the RX3 I would have just gone with a conventional master cylinder like the one on the RX4 (which is similar to master cylinders on just about every other motorcycle on the planet). But Zongshen wanted to design a custom rear master cylinder for the RX3, and that’s how that strange-looking tapered affair on the RX3 came to be. In my opinion, the one on the RX4 is a better approach.
That’s enough for this blog, folks. Again, CSC asked me to mention that they are taking deposits now on the RX4, and if you want to get on board, here’s the link to do so.
Okay, okay….just two more things.
I’ve got a couple more blogs coming up on the RX4, including one I’m polishing now comparing the CSC RX4 to the Kawasaki KLR 650 (as my good buddy Chris suggested; it’s one that will probably draw lots of comments). You’ll want to keep an eye on the ExNotes site for the latest tech info on the RX4. And as promised, here’s the ExhaustNotes RX4 index page! Click on it and you’ll find an easy way to get to all of our RX4 articles.
And as mentioned before, please consider adding your email address for an auto-notify every time we post a blog (there’s a place do to that near the top of this page on the right). Do that and you’ll be eligible for our newest contest. On a quarterly basis, provided we get at least another 200 folks sign up each quarter, we’ll give away a copy of either Moto Colombia, Riding China, or 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM to a name drawn at random from our email database. The first winner will be announced sometime around Christmas this year. Please encourage your friends to sign up, too. If you’re already on the list, you’re eligible for the first drawing. We don’t give or sell our email list to anyone, so your address is safe with us.
Kawasaki’s bold new W800 Café looks a lot like a restyled W800 standard but we here at Wild Conjecture have no way of confirming this statement. You see, Wild Conjecture by its very name is nothing but guesses bulked up with opinion into a plausible hunch.
The standard Kawasaki 800cc was a traditional British vertical twin brought into the modern world and for some reason sold poorly in the USA. I loved the thing from afar because I never saw one in the flesh. Before the 800cc version there was a 650 model that also suffered from desultory sales. Everyone who owned either model raved about them online but both were released before the latest wave of nostalgia motorcycles crashed ashore.
Kawasaki claims the styling is inspired by Kawasaki’s W1 650, which taken to its logical conclusion would mean the Café was inspired by an ancient 1950’s BSA A7 (later becoming the A10) twin. And that’s not a bad thing. For years the W1 650 held the title of the largest displacement motorcycle built in Japan until the CB750 Honda came sauntering into the room.
For me, the Café looks good overall but misses the mark in a few key areas. The colors shown on Kawasaki’s web site are dreadful. The faring and side covers are a mismatch for the fenders and gas tank. I know this is done on purpose but a bike like this should have an all alloy tank with chrome fenders. Kudos to Kawasaki for trying something different. Better luck next time.
The seat isn’t bad, in fact it looks good but I would prefer a dual seat without the hump on the back. The gas tank is a wee bit too short. Café Racers have long tanks for the rider to hunch over while he’s puffing on a fag. The short W800 Café tank would look better on Kawasaki’s W800 Scrambler. (No one has told Wild Conjecture that the Scrambler will be released early next year.)
The forks, side covers, rear fender and exhaust all look great to me. I like the shaft-driven camshaft and the air-cooling system. Hopefully you’ll be able to buy the thing without anti-lock brakes but I suspect the days of ABS delete are nearly over.
I’m sure the bike will ride well and the brakes and mechanicals will function perfectly. I’m also sure it’ll have a rev limiter that kicks in way too soon. I don’t see this engine leading Kawasaki’s push to retake the Flat Track series from Indian. It’ll be mild, maybe 50 horsepower.
At a list price of almost ten thousand dollars the W800 Café is up against stiff vertical-twin competition from Royal Enfield and Triumph. Both have better Café styling in my view. The Royal Oilfield has the added plus of an extremely low price.
But those other two aren’t built by Kawasaki. I’m kind of a Kawasaki fan boy so having the “K” beats not having the “K.” I think I’ll wait for the non-existent Scrambler version because a high-pipe model will work so much better with the cycle parts included on the W800 Café.
Wow, we sure are generating a lot of interest, a lot of hits, and a lot of comments here on the ExNotes website and blog. We appreciate the comments, folks, so please keep them coming.
I need more form-generated junk emails like I need a summer cold, and I’m willing to bet you feel the same way. That said, please consider adding your email address to the list of folks we auto-notify every time we post a new blog. We try to post every day, and I know many of you probably just check in when it’s convenient. Getting on our email list, though, will add one advantage you won’t otherwise get. On a quarterly basis, provided we get at least another 200 folks sign up each quarter, we’ll give away a copy of either Moto Colombia, Riding China, or 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM to a name drawn at random from our email database. The first winner will be announced sometime around Christmas this year. Please encourage your friends to sign up, too. If you’re already on the list, you’re eligible for the first drawing. We don’t give or sell our email list to anyone, so your address is safe with us.
More news: The next Long Beach Moto Show is just around the corner. I’ll be there, and I’ll have lots of photos of Bold New Graphics from the Big 4, and interesting new models from everyone else. And yeah, I’ll get a few photos of the young ladies in the Ducati, Harley, and Indian booths, too.
Make sure you check the newsstands for the latest offering from Motorcycle Classics magazine. It’s titled Tales from the Road, and it’s a dynamite collection of great travel stories that MC, one of the greatest motorcycle magazines ever, has run in the past. Two of my stories are in there, and I know you’ll enjoy them.
We’re going to be adding a couple more index pages to the ExhaustNotes site, as we have already done for the Resurrections, Baja, Dream Bikes, YouTube, Tales of the Gun, and Books pages. We’re thinking the next index pages will be on e-bikes, and another one for the CSC RX4. Those areas are getting a lot of attention and a lot of hits on the blogs we’ve done, and the idea is to make it easy for you to find all of our blogs on a particular topic. And speaking of resurrections, Joe Gresh tells me we may not be too far from hearing Zed, the star of the Resurrections page, fire up. I’m excited about that. Joe’s work on that barn-find Kawasaki Z1 sure is interesting. And there’s more good stuff in the works…a feature on an old Ruger rifle in 7mm Remington Magnum for which I finally found the secret sauce (a load delivering less than 1-inch groups at 100 yards), and a special feature on something that weighs more and has less power than a full-dress potato-potato-potato cruiser (I know you didn’t think that was possible, but I have the photos to prove it).
It’s getting dark what with the time change being in effect, and my keepers are telling me I have to take my pills and get ready for bed. Stay tuned; there’s more good stuff coming your way.
Wow, where to begin? I thought I would do this in a single blog, but I quickly realized it’s going to take more than a few.
Joe Gresh thought it would be a good idea to do a comparison between the RX3 and the RX4, and since he’s the brains in this outfit (I’m the good looks), I started the photos for the comparo earlier today. There’s a lot to discuss, and I don’t want to try to cram it all into a “Gone With The Wind” single blog.
So, here we go with the first set of comparisons, and I guess as good a place to get started as any is with a shot from the rear of both bikes…
My RX3 on the left, and the new RX4 on the right. The RX4 has a 19-inch front wheel (the RX3 has an 18-inch front wheel). As a result, the RX4 leans a little bit more to the left than does the RX3 when on the sidestand.
You’ll notice that my RX3 has the stock plastic luggage and the RX4 has the optional Tourfella aluminum luggage. The RX4 will come stock with the same plastic panniers as the RX3, but it will have a taller tailbox than the current RX3 design. The current RX3 tailbox won’t close with a full face helmet, but the taller stock plastic tailbox to be provided on the RX4 will. I’m hoping the 2019 RX3 will have the taller tailbox, too.
The Tourfella luggage is a great option. Both sets of luggage are lockable; the stock plastic bags use the bike’s ignition key. The Tourfella luggage has a separate key. The Tourfella bags have considerably more capacity than the stock plastic bags, and when I rode in Colombia with good buddies Juan and Carlos, my AKT RS3 (a carbureted RX3) had the Tourfella bags. You get a huge increase in capacity (which is nice), but the aluminum bags are wider and I’m guessing they are heavier. You’ll see a slight decrease in fuel economy and top speed with the larger bags on an RX3; I don’t know what they’ll do to both stats on an RX4.
I like the looks of both sets of luggage. I’m a guy who travels light, so the stock bags have been good enough for me on my adventure tours. One other minor disadvantage of the Tourfellas is they are wide. I scraped a taxi splitting lanes when debarking from a ferry ride down the Magdalena River in Colombia. Joe Gresh’s RX3 had the Tourfellas in China, and I watched him have the same problem a couple of times when splitting traffic there. But those big aluminum Tourfellas sure are nice. They are a high quality bit of kit, too. And like I said, you can carry a lot of stuff in those aluminum boxes.
Here are photos shot from the rear of each bike, starting with the new RX4…
The Tourfella luggage on the RX4. It’s 34-inches across those two aluminum panniers. That’s wider than the bike’s handlebars.
And here’s my RX3. It’s one of the very first delivered to the United States, and I’ve done some serious traveling with this motorcycle. It has the stock plastic luggage.
A dirty bike that’s seen a lot of miles…my kind of machine. The width across the stock RX3 panniers is 29 inches (they are 5 inches narrower than the Tourfellas in the above photo, and they are 2 inches narrower than the RX3’s handlebars). I don’t know what the width of the stock luggage will be on the RX4.
Next up are two photos of the exhaust outlets. On the RX4, the muffler has two openings, suggesting the bike is a twin (it’s not; it’s a single like the RX3).
The RX4 muffler. It’s stainless steel, and it contains the bike’s catalytic converter. Two openings aside, the bike is a single. The exhaust note is sweet. I’ll do a video in a future blog.The RX3 muffler, with its single outlet. It’s also a stainless steel muffler, and it has an awesome exhaust note.
As I mentioned in my earlier blog on the RX4, the new bike sounds like the RX3, but you can tell it has a bigger and stronger engine. Both bikes sound almost as if they have a custom pipe. They are both actually a little bit louder than I’d like, but the sound is great. Good ExhaustNotes, I’d say.
Moving to the other end of both motorcycles, let’s take a look at the front brakes. The RX4 has twin-piston calipers and dual disks…
Dual discs on the RX4. The braking is a bit stronger than an RX3 with the CSC larger single disk.
The RX3 has a single disk with a twin-piston caliper up front. My bike has the CSC larger diameter brake rotor. I think this is a worthwhile addition to the RX3, but I also think the stock RX3 brake is sufficient.
The larger diameter front disk rotor on my RX3. It works well.
If you look closely at both of the above photos, you’ll see the two front wheels are different. I’ve already mentioned the RX4’s 19-inch front wheel (the RX3 has a standard 18-inch diameter front wheel, with a 19-inch wheel available as an accessory from CSC). What is also shown (but maybe is not so obvious) is that the RX4 has aluminum rims, while the RX3 has steel rims. I think that might be what makes the RX4 handle so well. Aluminum wheels mean less unsprung weight, and they also make a motorcycle handle more crisply.
The production RX4 motorcycles will have anti-skid braking, and unlike the the 2018 RX3 ABS, you’ll be able to turn the ABS off on the RX4. That’s something you dirt denizens asked for, and your voices have been heard. The RX4 will come standard with wire wheels (like you see in these photos), and cast aluminum wheels with tubeless tires will be an option. The RX4 wire wheels require tubes.
Here are couple of tangential thoughts intended for the wizards at Zongshen (they read ExhaustNotes, too, you know). I’d like you guys to consider adding the dual discs, the aluminum-rimmed wire wheels, and the switchable anti-skid braking on the 2019 RX3. That would make an already great motorcycle even better, I think.
Both the RX3 and the RX4 have Cheng Shin (CST) tires. They’re bigger on the RX4 (more on that in the next blog). These are good tires. They hook up well and they last a long time. I get about 6,000 miles out of a rear tire on my RX3, and as is the case with most motorcycles, the front tires last about twice as long as the rear tires.
Staying at the front of the motorcycle, let’s now take a look at the face of both bikes. This is my RX3…
The iconic look of the RX3 motorcycle.
CSC changed the windshield and headlight design on the RX4. During my trips to Chongqing, I saw that Zongshen evaluated using the same RX3 windshield and headlight on the RX4. I thought keeping the windshield would have been a good idea, but hey, what do I know? The RX3 windshield has been universally praised by everyone who has ridden an RX3, including every magazine that tested the bike. It is a good design. It just works…there’s no turbulence, and it’s well below your line of sight. But like I said, who am I? I don’t make a million motorcycles a year. Zongshen does.
The RX3 headlight…well, that’s not the RX3’s strong point. Being charitable, I’d say it’s anemic. I don’t ride at night if I can avoid it, but I recognize that the stock headlight doesn’t light up the world the way I’d like it to. The spotlights you see on my bike are from AKT Motos in Colombia. I had them on the RS3 I rode there, and I liked them so much that my good buddy Enrique Vargas gave a pair to me when I left his beautiful country. CSC sells accessory spotlights, too, but I kept the AKT Motos lamps on my bike. I use the spotlights as headlights on my RX3 when I ride at night. Many folks who buy an RX3 put a brighter bulb in the headlight, and that works well. I have one that my good buddy TK gave to me, but I haven’t put it on my bike yet.
You’ll also notice the very cool headlight guard on my bike. That was another gift from Enrique in Colombia. CSC now sells a similar headlight guard. Mine is Colombian, and I’ve kept it instead of the CSC headlight guard because it was a gift and I like it.
Onward and upward…here’s the front end of the new RX4…
A clean, modern look: The RX4 front end.
The RX4 headlight and windshield design are much changed from the RX3. Like I said above, CSC could have gone with a front end look identical to the RX4, but they opted instead for the new look. It’s grown on me. I would be okay with either one, and at first I recommended staying with the RX3 look because I feel it is an iconic Zongshen motorcycle face, but I like the new look, too. The new RX4 windshield is adjustable (the RX3 one is not). The headlight is a completely different design, and later tonight, I’m going to move both bikes onto the street to see how the headlight illumination patterns compare. I’ll try to get some photos so you can see the difference.
I’ll write more comparing the two bikes in the next several blogs. This blog is already longer than I intended, and there’s a lot more to cover in these comparisons.
You know it’s coming, folks. Like I always say: Stay tuned.
I first rode the first prototype RX4 in June 2015, which is really quite a ways back if you think about it. I was in Chongqing to discuss things we were doing on the RX3 and the new RC3 model, a sports bike based on the RX3 engine. The RC3 bike was stunning, but it suffered from a bad case of “me, too” (Honda, Kawasaki, and Yamaha all had credible 300cc sports bikes here in the US) and the RC3 just didn’t sell well when it reached our shores. The RX3 was going great guns, though, and there was a cry for a similar bike with more beans.
Enter the RX4.
That first one was wild. I remember standing out in the heat and humidity with the Zongshen folks snapping photos of the RC3 when a Zongshen engineer rode into our midst on what appeared to be a hacked-up RX3, smartly executing a stoppee that lofted the rear wheel 3 feet in the air, and coming to rest right in front of us. This guy can ride, I thought. In my younger days I had done stoppees like that, but not by design and they didn’t end the same way.
The bike was rough. It was an RX3, but somehow the Zongsters had shoehorned a prototype 450cc motor into the frame. The engine was made of castings and machinings, and it looked (and sounded) very rough. Telling me that they hadn’t worked out the mapping, my hosts asked if I wanted to ride the prototype. Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope poop in the woods? Hell, yeah, I wanted to ride it. I couldn’t talk about the bike in the CSC blog at the time, and that was probably a good thing. It didn’t run well, and the handling was, well, let me put it this way: Imagine you’re drunk as a skunk and you’re wearing stiletto heels, and you’ve got to walk across a rocky stream bed through swiftly-flowing water. In my checkered past, I’ve done two of those three things, and I don’t need to try the stiletto heels thing to imagine what the combination would be like because I rode that first prototype RX4. It was that bad, and I told the Zong folks what I thought. They smiled politely. They knew.
Passport in pocket, standing in the rain with an RX4 in Chongqing about a year or so ago. The GS decals had to go, I told Zongshen…others can advertise their “Go Slow” ADV bikes with big GS decals. Thankfully, they’re gone.
A year or two later I was in Chongqing again, and I rode an RX4 that was closer to what the production bike would be. It was a much more refined machine. Heavier than an RX3, most definitely. Faster? I really couldn’t tell. It was raining and I was on the Zongshen test track, which is a tightly wound affair with topes and no straights tucked away on the Chongqing manufacturing campus. It felt a lot better than that first prototype, but I really couldn’t let ‘er rip because there wasn’t enough room. I also saw a clay mockup of the RX3S (the 380cc twin) in the Zongshen R&D center, a bike I just couldn’t understand. Again, no photos allowed, but it made no matter to me because the RX3S was a solution to a marketing problem that didn’t exist.
Singing in the rain on Zongshen’s tight test track.
That brings us to today and the production configuration RX4 I am picking up later this afternoon. Or maybe tomorrow. It depends on when Joey has it ready. It’s going to be interesting. I’m flattered that CSC wants my take on the bike, and that they want me to write about it with no preconditions on what I can and cannot say.
The dictionary tells us it means existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time, and folks, that pretty much summarizes the Honda CG clone engine. I first heard the term used by a Harley dealer when he was describing that little thumper, and did he ever get it right. You see these engines everywhere. I know. To quote Mr. Cash, I’ve been everywhere, man, and I’ve seen these engines there. Everywhere, that is.
When I first hooked up with CSC 10 years ago, the CSC Mustang replicas used a CG clone motor. I didn’t know anything about it at the time, although I am a well-traveled fellow with the frequent flier miles to prove it. I’d seen the engine everywhere; I just didn’t know (at the time) what I was looking at. Then I had my first trip to Zongshen, and I saw that they were using variations of the CG clone in many different motorcycles. You want a 110, no problem. A 125? No problem. A 150? Same answer. How about a 250? Yeah, we got those, too. You want 4 speeds or 5 speeds? Counterbalancer, or no counterbalance? Black? Silver? Some other color? No problem. Whatever, there’s a CG clone to fit your needs and wants and the budgets of your intended markets. And it isn’t just Zongshen making these engines. There are companies all over Asia (and elsewhere) doing it. It is an engine that is, in a word, ubiquitous.
Take, for example, the CSC TT250. That bike came about as the result of my being in an RX3 meeting, in Chongqing, in one of the Zong’s many conference rooms. It was hard for me to pay attention in that meeting because Zongshen had a white scrambler on display outside the conference room, and my gaze kept turning to it. I told the Zongsters it would be cool if we (i.e., CSC at that time) could get the bike as a 250. No problem, they said, and the rest is history. Same story on the CSC San Gabriel…it was presented to CSC as a 150, we asked to get it as a 250, and, well, you know the rest. I’d say they were selling like hot cakes, but hot cakes couldn’t keep up with the San Gabriel’s sales pace.
So I travel a lot, and after my exposure to the Mustang replicas, I started noticing bikes in China, Thailand, Singapore, the Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere, and the overwhelmingly dominant engine was (you guessed it) the CG clone.
I’ve written about the CG engine when I used to write the CSC blog, and you might want to look at a couple of those stories, too. They are here and here.
So you might be wondering…what’s the story behind this engine and why is it so reliable? The Reader’s Digest version goes like this: Honda was building bikes in Brazil a few years ago, and those Brazilians just wouldn’t take care of their motorcycles. Honda was getting clobbered with maintenance issues and folks badmouthing their bikes. You might be thinking hey, how can you blame Honda if the people buying their bikes weren’t maintaining them, but if you have that thought, maybe you don’t know as much about the motorcycle business as you thought you did. When folks bitch, it doesn’t have to be rational, and the most of the time the bitcher doesn’t care if the bitchee is at fault. If you’re the manufacturer, you can’t afford to have people bitching for any reason, and Honda realized this.
Honda recognized this well before the Internet came along. The CG engine development happened back in the 1970s, when Honda set about designing an engine that could, like the old Timex ad used to say, take a licking and keep on ticking. That’s what the CG engine was all about…it was designed to be an engine that could survive with little maintenance. Like I said, that’s the Reader’s Digest version. If you want the straight skinny, this article does as good a job as I’ve ever seen on this subject. You should read it.
You might be wondering: Who all makes these engines, where do they go, and how is it the other companies can make an engine originally designed by Honda? The answers, as best I can tell, are everyone, everywhere, and beats me. Zongshen is but one company in one country that makes the CG engine, and to put this into perspective, Zongshen manufactures 4,000 engines a day. They’re not all CG motors, but a lot of them are. The Zong motors are used in their bikes, and they ship a whole bunch to other motorcycle manufacturers. Every day. All over the world.
So are the engines reliable? In a word, yes. If you are following the CSC 150 Cabo story here on the ExNotes blog, you know my friends and I rode the little 150s to Cabo and back, in super oppressive heat, and we absolutely flogged the things. They just kept on going. The TT250 is wonderfully reliable. Are they super fast? Nope. But they just keep on keeping on. It’s a tortoise and the hare story. You’ll get there, while the hypersports are waiting for desmodromic shims.
CG motors are also made by several other manufacturers in China, at least one in South America, another one in Taiwan, and who knows where else. Maybe it’s easier to say who isn’t making them. That would be us, here in the USA. It sure would be nice to see someone set up a plant here to do so. It’s a simple engine. We could do it.
And there’s that last question: How can other companies build a Honda design? As near as I can tell, I don’t know. When I ask the folks in China about this, they just sort of smile. I imagine whatever patents there are must have expired, or maybe Honda just feels okay with other people doing this. The short answer is that I don’t know. But it’s a worldwide phenomenon, and I imagine if it was illegal, Big Red would have done something about it a long time ago.
So there you have it: The CG clone engine story. The ultimate ubiquitous motorcycle engine.
Yep, we’ve added another index page, this time for our Dream Bikes blogs…
The Dream Bikes page is a concept started by Arjiu, and it’s one of my favorites. It’s all about bikes we wished we had bought back in the day, bikes we’d still like to own, bikes we have owned and miss, and more. It’s a favorite, and now you can get to any of them quickly.
The lead photo above is one of the best bikes I’ve ever owned, my old 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200. It was an awesome ride. That bug-spattered headlight shot? It was the result of a sustained 120 mph run across central California on Highway 58…a ride I was on with my good buddy Marty. Good times on a dream bike…something we call can relate to.
Wow, this is a departure for ExhaustNotes. So far, all the dream bikes we’ve listed have been blasts from the past.
This one is and it isn’t.
I’m over here in Singapore this week on yet another secret mission, and this story floats in: Suzuki is resurrecting the Katana! Whoa!
The 2020 Suzuki Katana. 1000cc, just like the original, but with a Gixxer engine.
This is a story that has my attention. I’ve always liked Suzuki motorcycles, and I think Suzuki engineering is as good as it gets. But that’s not what attracted me to this latest development. I actually owned one of the very first Katanas, way back when they first came out in 1982…
A skinny guy with hair, a leather jacket, and a new ’82 Katana. Life was very, very good.
I still dream about that 1982 Katana. I paid over MSRP because they were so hard to find (I’ll never do that again, but the fact that I did says just how much I wanted that bike). It was fast beyond belief, and the colors just flat worked for me. It had a Joan Claybrook speedometer (remember her?) that only registered 85 mph, as if that would somehow counteract my willingness to do stupid stuff. 85 mph, my ass…that bike lived half its life with the needle buried. The instruments were cool, too…the tach and the speedometer were pivoted in a way that made them look like they were unwinding when accelerating. I hope Suzuki does something tricky like that with the new one. My ’82 Katana was so ahead of its time that I actually got pulled over twice by cops who just wanted to see the thing. And you know what? I never got a ticket on that bike. Not once. Lord knows it wasn’t because I was a good boy.
I don’t need 150 horsepower and I don’t need 1000cc. But there’s a big difference between need and want, and I want this new Katana. This just might be the dream that comes true.
So, some of this is from a blog I did for CSC several years ago, and some of it is new. It’s all centered on one of my all-time dream bikes, the Triumph ’66 TT Special.
A ’66 Triumph TT Special. Love those colors!
Some background: In the mid-60s, the ultimate street bike was a Triumph TT Special. The regular Bonneville was a pretty hot number back then, but it came with mufflers, lights, a horn, and all the stuff it needed to be street legal. Those bikes were pegged at 52 horsepower, and although that sounds almost laughable now (as does thinking of a 650 as a big bike), I can tell you from personal experience it was muey rapido. I don’t believe there were any vehicles on the street in those days (on two wheels or four) that were faster than a Triumph Bonneville. And there was especially nothing that was faster than the Triumph TT Special. It took the hot rod twin-carb Bonneville and made it even faster. And cooler looking. The Triumph TT Special will always hold a special place in my heart.
I had a spare hour a couple of years ago (yeah, that’s about how it happens), and that’s when I stopped in Bert’s. My good buddy Ron had a Triumph TT Special on display. I wondered what most folks thought when they saw the TT Special in Ron’s showroom. Bert’s sells to a mostly younger crowd (you know the type…kids who just got a licenses and go for 170-mph sports bikes), and my guess is they didn’t really “get” the TT Special. I sure did. Like I said, back in the mid-60s the Triumph Bonneville ruled the streets, and the TT Special would absolutely smoke a standard Bonneville.
Back in those days the Triumph factory rated the TT Special at 54 horsepower (as opposed to the standard Bonneville’s 52), but let me tell you there was way more than just 2 horsepower separating these machines. The TT Special was essentially the starting point for a desert racer or flat tracker. They were racing motorcycles. The TT Special was never intended to be a street bike, but some of them ended up on the street. If you rode a TT Special…well, you just couldn’t get any cooler than that.
A ’65 Bonneville TT Special, in the blue and silver colors of that year. This is a beautiful motorcyle on display in the Owens Collection in Diamond Bar, California.
I only knew one guy back then who owned a TT Special (Jimmy something-or-other), and he did what guys did when they owned a TT Special. He made it street legal, and that effort consisted of a small Bates headlamp, a tail light, and a single rear view mirror.
The first time Jimmy was pulled over in New Jersey the reason was obvious: He was a young guy on a Triumph TT Special. Back in those days, that constituted probable cause. After the officer checked the bike carefully, he gave Jimmy a ticket for not having a horn. It was what we called a “fix it” ticket, because all you had to do was correct the infraction and the ticket was dismissed. Jimmy didn’t want to spend the money (and add the weight) that went with wiring, a switch, and an electronic horn, so he bought a bicycle bulb horn. You know, the kind that attached to the handlebars and had a black bulb on one end and a little trumpet on the other. It honked when you squeezed the bulb. Ol’ Jimmy (old now, I guess, if he is even still around) went to the police station, honked his horn, and the police officer dismissed the citation. With a good laugh. It was a good story 50+ years ago and it’s still a good story today. Simpler times, I guess.
I love the ’66 white and orange color combo, too. My Dad had a ’66 T120R Bonneville back then (that’s the standard street version of the Bonneville), and it was a dream come true for me. Those colors (white, with an orange competition stripe framed by gold pinstripes) really worked. 1966 was the first year Triumph went to their smaller fuel tank, and it somehow made the Bonneville even cooler.
My father, an upholsterer by trade, reupholstered his Bonneville with a matching white Naugahyde seat. Dad put a set of longitudinal pleats on the seat in orange to match those on the tank, and each was bordered by gold piping. The overall effect was amazing. It looked like the bike ran under a set of white, gold, and orange paint sprayers. The effect was electric. That bike really stood out in 1966, and it continues to stand out in my mind. In fact, while I was at CSC, that color combo (with Steve Seidner’s concurrence) found its way into one of the new San Gabriel color combos. Some dreams do come true, I guess!
Back when we were running Briggs and Stratton mini-bikes a few kids had Yamaha Mini Enduro 60cc or Honda Mini Trail 50cc bikes. Both of these bikes were stone reliable and a real leap forward from the hard-tail, flathead, one-speed stationary motored mini-bikes. I had a blue Mini Trail Honda that was indestructible. Riding the Everglades of South Florida the cooling fins would cake with mud and the engine would overheat until it would stop running. Just stop.
Into these tiny times strode a colossus: The Steen Alsport 100. What a machine! The Steen was equipped with a 100cc Hodaka engine, and the front forks were Earles type utilizing a swingarm and held up by two oil-damped shocks. The gas tank was fiberglass and beautifully shaped. White was the only color I saw but there were other colors. Steens were rare around the neighborhood.
Dealerships more so than motorcycle quality determined motorcycle popularity at the start of the 1970’s. There were no Hodakas to be found. Very few Kawasakis or Suzukis populated our riding areas. Oddly enough a Montesa or Bultaco might ride by. These were huge motorcycles. The Steen didn’t have much of a dealer network In Miami so there was only the one kid who had a Steen in our group. I should remember his name but it has slipped away to that place all memories eventually slip.
Kawasaki’s bold new W800 Café looks a lot like a restyled W800 standard but we here at Wild Conjecture have no way of confirming this statement. You see, Wild Conjecture by its very name is nothing but guesses bulked up with opinion into a plausible hunch.
Kawasaki claims the styling is inspired by Kawasaki’s W1 650, which taken to its logical conclusion would mean the Café was inspired by an ancient 1950’s BSA A7 (later becoming the A10) twin. And that’s not a bad thing. For years the W1 650 held the title of the largest displacement motorcycle built in Japan until the CB750 Honda came sauntering into the room.
For me, the Café looks good overall but misses the mark in a few key areas. The colors shown on Kawasaki’s web site are dreadful. The faring and side covers are a mismatch for the fenders and gas tank. I know this is done on purpose but a bike like this should have an all alloy tank with chrome fenders. Kudos to Kawasaki for trying something different. Better luck next time.
The forks, side covers, rear fender and exhaust all look great to me. I like the shaft-driven camshaft and the air-cooling system. Hopefully you’ll be able to buy the thing without anti-lock brakes but I suspect the days of ABS delete are nearly over.
The lead photo above is one of the best bikes I’ve ever owned, my old 1995 Triumph Daytona 1200. It was an awesome ride. That bug-spattered headlight shot? It was the result of a sustained 120 mph run across central California on Highway 58…a ride I was on with my good buddy Marty. Good times on a dream bike…something we call can relate to.
