Category: Zongshen

RX3 to RX4 Comparisons: Part 1

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.

The RX4: First Impressions

A stunning RX4 in the San Gabriel Mountains. The paint is pearlescent metalflake orange, the new fastest color.

I rode my TT 250 to the CSC plant early today and picked up a new RX4. Steve asked me to ride the RX4, make observations, and write about the new bike on the ExhaustNotes and CSC blogs. I’ll be preparing several blogs on the RX4; this is the first of many.

I rode my favorite Azusa Canyon, East Fork Road, Glendora Mountain Road, and Glendora Ridge Road route. It’s one of my favorite rides, it’s just under 50 miles of the best riding on the planet, and I knew it would give me a good chance to wring out the bike’s handling. The RX4’s handling was my biggest concern going into this review, as the RX4 I first rode in China two years ago left a bad taste.  That early bike was porky and it handled poorly.

First significant observation:  The RX4’s handling is phenomenal. It’s really, really good.  I’ll get to that in more detail, but I wanted to mention that first.

Tourfella bags…lots of capacity.

Next, let me tackle the weight issue.   That was another one of my earlier concerns, but not anymore. The RX3 has a published weight of 386 lbs. The RX4 has a published weight of 450 lbs. I never put much stock in any published weight figures, because I know how the manufacturers calculate weight. They do it the same way we did it in the defense industry: Mass properties analysis. Some engineering weenie tucked away in a cubicle looks at the dimensions of every part, calculates each part’s volume, identifies the part’s material and its density, and puts it all together in a spreadsheet to calculate total weight. It’s a scientific guess.  They’re always low compared to reality.

Me? I go by what the bike feels like and how it handles. Sometimes if there’s a scale handy I’ll do something old-fashioned and actually weigh the thing. My KLR 650, for example, had a published weight of something in the low-400-lb range. We had a scale when I worked at Layne, and I rode the KLR onto it one night and saw that my Kawasaki actually tipped the scales at well over 560 lbs. So much for published weights.

So, the RX4 is heavier than the RX3. No, I didn’t have a scale available, so I didn’t weigh it today and I don’t know if that 450 lb number is accurate or not. The weight concerned me big time in China two years ago, and then again when I first sat on the new RX4 last week. Last week, it was mostly because the bike felt heavy when I tipped it off the sidestand.   Last week, the RX4 had the CSC tall seat on it.  And, the RX4 has a 19-inch front wheel (the RX3 has an 18-inch front wheel).  The bigger wheel and the tall seat make the bike taller, and that 19-inch front wheel means the bike leans at a perceptibly steeper angle on the sidestand, so tipping it to vertical (off the sidestand) made for a noticeable increase in effort compared to my RX3. First order of business was to have the boys put the stock seat on the new RX4 (it takes the same seat as the RX3).  That alone made it easier to get off the sidestand.  But yeah, it’s heavier than the RX3.  Is it a problem?   Read on, my friends.

It was on to my ride, where I would soon learn if the RX4’s added weight adversely impacts handling.

Let me get to the good stuff.  I was soon on Highway 39 and in the twisties. The bottom line?  The bike handles phenomenally well. It feels more planted than the RX3 and handled the twisties just fine. Actually, it was great. The bike handles better than the RX3, and the RX3 is a sweet handling ride.

I wanted to stop for photos on 39 (I have a few favorite photo op spots), but truth be told, I was having too much fun riding the thing. The RX4 sounds a lot like the RX3, but the exhaust note (love that phrase) is a bit deeper and a bit louder. Not objectionably so, but it’s noticeable.

I stopped for a few photos on the East Fork Road, and then I was on Glendora Mountain Road.  I had the road to myself and it was a glorious morning.  Cool, crisp, California mountain air.  Life is good.

Glendora Moutain Road is all tight uphill twisties. This stretch climbs sharply and it literally has no straights; it’s curve city all the way to the top. To cut to the chase here, it was on this stretch that I could feel the RX4’s huge improvement over the RX3.  In the lower rev ranges, the RX4 has more grunt than the RX3, but it’s not a dramatic difference. It just has more oomph in the 3500-5000 rpm range.

Then I noticed a couple of things: I was getting through this stretch way faster than I would on my RX3, and I wasn’t rowing up and down through the gears like I would on my RX3. I just left the RX4 in 3rd and throttled up and down as needed. The bike wasn’t in its power band yet (and it’s not broken in yet), but it liked being in 3rd powering up into the San Gabriels. Then I noticed something else: This bike handles. It’s rock solid and it doesn’t seem to have any lean angle limits. Oh, I know it does and at some point something would have to scrape, but let me tell you, I was surprised at how good I must have looked carving my way up there this morning. I kind of wished somebody had been there to YouTube the thing. I was cooking. I’m not normally a guy who cooks, but I sure was cooking this morning.

The run east on Glendora Ridge Road was similarly exciting (I mean that in a good way).  From the time I left Highway 39, all the way up on Glendora Mountain Road, and then all the way to Mt. Baldy Village on Glendora Ridge Road, I had the road to myself. I didn’t see a single other car or motorcycle. That doesn’t happen too often.  Like I said, it was a glorious morning.

Up on Glendora Ridge Road. I was the only guy up there this morning.

A quick check on my GPS shows the RX4 speedo to have the characteristic Zongshen 10-12% optimism built in. The speedo reads faster than you are actually going, just like it does on my RX3.  I don’t know why these guys won’t correct this. I tried.  Hey, it is what it is.

More impressions: The peg to seat distance felt very slightly cramped for me with the stock seat. It wasn’t a big deal. I guess I need to find something negative to say to be like one of the magazine guys, and so far, this and the speedo error are it. I have the tall seat on my RX3 (which is a better deal from a comfort perspective). I may have Steve put the tall seat back on the RX4. There may be an opportunity down the road for CSC to offer a footpeg lowering kit. But it’s not a deal breaker. I guess I’d say the RX4 felt about like my Triumph Tiger used to feel.

A lot of guys want to know about the brakes. They’re a significant step up from the RX3’s stock brakes. The RX4 has dual disks up front. I have the large diameter aftermarket front brake on my RX3, and the RX4 subjectively felt maybe a little bit better than that. On that subject, though, I will tell you that I think the whole issue of the RX3 standard front brake has been overblown.  I made a comment about the magazine guys having to find something to bitch about to prove they are objective and not unduly influenced by advertising dollars. On the RX3 it was the front brake.  I never quite got that, though. I had a Harley Softail and a KLR 650 before I got my RX3, and the stock RX3 front brake was better than either of those bikes.

I like the headlight on the RX4. I have no idea how good it is at night (that will come later); my comment is based on the looks of the thing. The way it works it has a trace light around the headlight (that’s the daytime light). You can either switch the headlight on, or leave the lights on auto and when it gets dark, the lights will come on automatically.  When I first saw this headlight in China, I thought it looked too much like BMW’s GS headlight design, but it’s grown on me.  You can bet some Internet weenie will make a snarky comment about Zongshen copying BMW.  Throw ’em a bone, boys.  They gotta bitch about something.

The RX4 headlight. I don’t yet know how it does at night. I sure like the look!

The bike I’m riding has a pearlescent metalflake orange and silver paint theme. It’s beautiful. I don’t know what colors CSC will specify for their production order, but I hope this one makes it to our shores. It’s way nicer, I think, than the standard RX3 orange.  I know that orange bikes are faster, too.  It’s a win-win.

My RX4 has the optional Tourfella aluminum bags and top case. I rode with these through the Andes in Colombia (I like being able to say that).  The Tourfella luggage capacity is amazing. They are huge, though, and I know on an RX3 I can feel the difference in handling between the stock bags and the Tourfella bags (on an RX3, the stock bags are faster). I didn’t have an RX4 with stock bags to make a similar comparison. It’s a tough question; I don’t what I would do on a new RX4.  I do like those big aluminum boxes, though.

So, my first impression is that the RX4 is an awesome motorcycle. The handling is great. It just seems to find its way through the corners and the added power makes the bike feel more planted and more stable, if that makes sense to you. I would say it’s the bike’s strongest point.

Steve told me the RX4 is going to sell for $5,895. That’s $2,000 more than an RX3. Is it worth it? In my opinion, yes (assuming you’ve got the shekels). But I will also say this: The RX3 is one hell of a motorcycle, and I like the idea of a 250 for serious adventure touring in less developed countries.  We’re a freeway country.  In other parts of the world, freeways are rare or non-existent.  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve done a lot of freeway miles on my RX3 and it’s quite capable in that environment.  But the RX4 would probably be better on the freeway.  I say that having ridden no freeways on the RX4.  Yet.  All in good time.

There’s a lot more coming on this bike, folks. I’m just getting started. Top end, high speed long distance touring, fuel economy, freeway handling, and more…I’ll get into all of that. I’ve got a lot going on back at the ranch right now, but I may see a quick two-day ride through Baja on this bike. Hey, I gotta probe for weaknesses, or this wouldn’t be a complete report.

One last thing…somebody asked the spoke diameter. Before I forget, Joey measured that for me before my ride this morning. It’s 3.5mm up front, and 4.0mm in the rear.

Need I say it?  Stay tuned…

The RX4

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.

Like I always say, folks:  Stay tuned.