Zongshen – Page 2 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

Volcan Nevado del Ruiz

By Joe Berk

That big photo above? That’s my old HJC carbon fiber helmet at an elevation of 13,576 feet, and the gunk you see on it is ash. As in volcanic ash. We’ve written about Colombia’s Volcan Nevado del Ruiz before here on ExNotes. I’m writing about my ride there again because it seems the old girl has awakened again.

The view from afar. I would be a several hour ride and a monstrous elevation climb (but on amazing roads) to get to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz.

Volcan Nevado del Ruiz is an active Colombian volcano 80 miles west of Bogotá. Starting in April of this year, it started acting up again. I say “again” because in 1985, Nevado del Ruiz erupted and killed 25,000 Colombians. That event was not only Colombia’s deadliest eruption…it was all of South America’s.

The National Park entrance. They turned us around a half hour after we arrived when the volcano started spewing ash.

I’ve been to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz. I rode to the top on a motorcycle with good buddies Juan and Carlos. We were there in 2015, and a short while after we entered the Colombia’s Brisas National Park at the 4,138-meter summit, the park rangers told us we had to leave because the volcano was active. It had started spewing ash. It was snowing at that elevation, too. It made for a fine mess and exciting riding.

The ride up to the top of the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz was awesome. The roads were typical Andes Mountains Colombian switchbacks and we were in rare form. The day was beautiful at the lower elevations, but that was about to change as we continued our Andean ascent.

Ah, the Andes. The riding in Colombia is amazing.

On that ride, we were mounted on AKT Motos RS3 motorcycles. That’s the Colombian equivalent of CSC’s RX3, but with carburetors instead of fuel injectors. The fuel is a bit more flaky in Colombia, so AKT opted for carbs instead of injectors. People have asked if the carbs were problematic or if the bikes were slower than the US RX3. I couldn’t tell the difference.

Volcanic ash on my beautiful black AKT motorcycle.

Colombia has a pretty good deal for AKT making Zongshen motorcycles over there. If AKT brings in assembled bikes, they would have to pay a 30% import duty on them. If they components from Zongshen and then buy 15% of the bikes’ content in Colombia (thus encouraging Colombian manufacturing), AKT pays only a 2% import duty. Ah, if only our politicians were that smart.

Carlos and I at the park entrance. It was cold, wet, and gritty with the airborne volcanic ash mixing with the snow. This wasn’t a beer and burger run to Cook’s Corner!

My Olympia motorcycle jacket, spotted with ash and my CSC pilot wings.

After running to the top of Volcan Nevado del Ruiz, we descended along dirt roads to a magnificent Colombian hotel just a few miles down the road, the Termales Del Ruiz. My buddy Juan knows how to organize a great ride, and I sure had an awesome time. The Termales Del Ruiz is at the end of that dirt road somewhere in the fog, and it’s at 3,500 meters above sea level (still pretty high). It has a thermal pool fed by water (heated by the volcano, I guess) and that water was hot! The air was bitter cold, but the water was nice. It was one of the best nights in Colombia, and that’s saying something. Every night was awesome.

So, back to the Volcan Nevado del Ruiz going live again: It’s really happening, and it wasn’t that many years ago that this same volcano killed 25,000 people in Colombia. Here’s a recent news story on what’s happening now:

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Triumph’s New 400cc Motorcycles

By Joe Berk

Well, what do you know? Triumph is the latest moto manufacturer to jump on the small bike band wagon with the announcement of their new 400cc single-cylinder motorcycles. Not to be too snarky, but better late than never, I suppose. Harley did the same thing a year or so ago with their 350cc and 500cc motorcycles, but the Harleys were supposed to be manufactured and only available in Asia. More’s the pity, although I get it: A small bike wouldn’t go well with the typical Harley crowd.

Back to today’s topic: The new 400cc Triumphs: I like them.

Triumph announced two models: A Speed 400, and a Scrambler 400. They look like Triumphs, which is to say they look fabulous. I like the colors (each will available in three different color themes) and I like the looks.

With a published 40 horsepower, the bikes will probably be good for 100 mph, and that ought to be enough for any sane rider. I’m guessing the bikes will get something around 70 miles per gallon, and that should be good, too. Triumph turned to Bajaj (in India). There’s nothing wrong with that. Triumph’s Bonneville line is manufactured in Thailand. My Enfield 650 (which I’ve been riding for three years) is manufactured in India, and its quality is magnificent. Prices on the new Triumphs haven’t been announced yet. If the Mothership can keep the dealers from pulling their normal freight and setup chicanery, these bikes should be a good deal (but expecting dealers to abandon their larcenous freight and setup games is, I realize, probably wishful thinking).

On that Harley thing I mentioned above: QianJiang (also known QJ Motor) bought Benelli (an Italian motorcycle company) in 2005. QJ took the name and started offering bikes made in China but labeled as Benellis (I saw them at the Canton Fair a few years ago). The QJ/Benelli bikes are not bad looking, but I’ve never ridden one and I have no idea how good (or bad) they are. It’s that very same Benelli (i.e., the Chinese one) that Harley announced would be making 350cc and 500cc small Harleys. The Harley plan was that their smaller models would only be sold overseas (i.e., not in America). Harley makes and sells more motorcycles than I ever will, so I suppose they know what they are doing. But I think they are making a mistake not bringing their small bikes to America.

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a QJ Motor! No, it’s a Benelli! No, it’s Super Harley!

Let’s not forget the new BSA Gold Star, another made-in-India Britbike reported here on the ExNotes blog about a year ago. That one is still in the works, I guess. For a delivery date, the new BSA website still says “available to order soon,” which is to say we have no idea when the new BSA Goldie will be here.

The revivified Beezer Gold Star. I think it is a better-looking bike than either the new Triumph or the small Chinese Harley.

While all this is going on, my friends in Zongshen (they make the RX3, the RX4, the Zongshen 400cc twins, the TT 250, the San Gabriel, and now the RX6 650cc twin that CSC imports to the US) tell me that the craze in China has gone full tilt toward bigger bikes. That’s why they introduced the RX6. I was the first journalist/blogger/all around good guy in America to ride and report on the RX6. It’s a good bike, but I’m not a fan of the movement toward ever larger motorcycles. I’m convinced that my RX3 was the best all around motorcycle I ever owned (especially for riding in Baja), and I’ve written extensively on that.

I’m looking forward to seeing the new Triumphs. Hell, I’d look forward to seeing the new small Harleys and the BSA, too, but maybe that’s not in the cards. Why the fascination and appreciation for small bikes? Take a read here.

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Coimbra, Portugal

I photographed the Honda VFR you see in the big photo above in Coimbra, Portugal. Bait and switch? Perhaps. We are a motorcycle site, sort of. I’ll try to work in a little moto content when and where I can. For us on this adventure, it was all walking, buses, and high-speed rail transport (and that was really cool). But that’s coming up later.

Coimbra was another stop on our recent trip to the Iberian peninsula. Coimbra is a college town on the Rio Mondego. It was Portugal’s medieval capital before the Portuguese government relocated to Lisbon. But this college town was particularly cool. The UNESCO-recognized Universidade de Coimbra is one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in Europe.

On the Universidade square in the medical school area in Coimbra. It was a stunning day.

Like many areas in Portugal, Coimbra also has a rich wine producing heritage. Many of the signs display this heritage.

The shape of signs in Coimbra. Wine was everywhere in Spain and Portugal. We had wine with virtually every meal except breakfast.

The Biblioteca Joanina is one of the world’s great libraries. One of the things that is particularly interesting is the way the librarians protect the ancient manuscripts from insects (insects are the books’ natural enemies, because they eat the pages). Bats reside in the library. They live behind the books. The bats come out at night and eat the insects in the library. I can’t make this stuff up, folks. This really happens.

Books, books, and more books. The principal threat to these books is insects eating the pages. The University has an app for that.

I grabbed a macro shot or two as we wandered the campus. This sidewalk guardpost was interesting.

Photo ops galore. Nothing fancy with equipment here…all these shots are with a basic Nikon consumer-grade D3300 DSLR and 18-55mm kit lens.

As we would find to be the case in virtually every Portuguese and Spanish town, Coimbra has a cathedral. Actually, it has three. We visited St. Michael’s at the University of Coimbra. That’s where I grabbed the interior photos below.

Inside St. Michael’s with our fellow travelers.

The tile work, the organ, the roof colors…I had a great time on this trip.

A coat of arms, surrounded by scrollwork.

After walking around the University, we walked into the city. It was pleasant. The weather was comfortable, the city was beautiful, and the photo ops continued.

One of many statues in downtown Coimbra.

This almost looks like a fancy ancient church or castle. Actually, it was a store catering to tourists with a unique product line: Canned sardines.

Another statue in the Coimbra town square.

A street menu for one of the many restaurants in downtown Coimbra. The food was excellent; the prices were reasonable.

I enjoyed Coimbra. As a retired college professor, I thought visiting a campus was a cool thing to do. We had a fabulous lunch, and then our journey continued.

Back on the motorcycle thing again…I’ve traveled by motorcycle in some pretty exotic locales. I think bopping around Europe on a motorcycle would be a fun way to see the continent. I wouldn’t want a big bike, and even on the freeways, the speeds are such that a 250 or a 400 would be just fine. Maybe someday. I know my friends in Chongqing read the ExNotes blog. If you need somebody to ride around Europe on your motorcycles to spread the gospel, the ExhaustNotes staff is available. We’re your boys (and one girl). Call us.

Stay tuned. I’ll work in more from Spain and Portugal as time and other blogs permit.

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More Spain and Portugal stories? You bet!

Spain and Portugal
Camino de Santiago: Part 1
The Sportster of Seville
Évora
Lisbon
Gibraltar

Pandas!

By Joe Berk

The big photo above is shows three very real pandas. I took it in Chengdu when Gresh and I rode across China. It’s a little blurry because I was shooting through inch-thick super-smudgy glass. The photo is for attention only. This blog is about a different kind of panda.

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When I was a pup back in the 1970s, I bought a Seiko chronograph watch in the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange. The Seiko model number was 6138-8020, and it was $67. I could have bought a Rolex there, too, but I remember thinking who spends $300 on wristwatch? Nope, it would be the Seiko for me.

A Seiko 6138-8020 recently advertised on Ebay for close to $2,000.

The Seiko 6138 was an automatic (i.e., self-winding) watch. It became known as the Panda due to its two black subdials on its white face. I liked the Seiko a lot. I was a jogger in those days, and I used the Seiko every day to time my 3-mile runs. Life was good but I went on to other things. After the Army I worked in the aerospace industry, and like most engineers I went the digital route (I wore a Casio calculator watch). When Ebay became a thing I went on a decluttering craze and the Seiko went down the road. I got $80 for it and I thought I was pretty clever. Then I watched the price of a 6138 go through the roof. That may be why I collect watches now. I’m still trying to make up for that mistake.

I’ve missed my Panda over the years, and I started looking around to see what was available. There are several. In my opinion, Breitling makes the best (and best looking) Panda. Their Premier model is an awesome automatic watch, but who spends $7,299 on a watch?

Breitling’s Premier chronograph. It’s a Holy Grail kind of a watch.

The Hamilton automatic American Classic is another great looking Panda. That answers the mail for me, too, but it’s a little bit rich for my blood. The Hamilton goes for $1,541.

Hamilton makes a Panda chronograph. Nice, but a little bit pricey.

Seiko has a solar-powered Panda watch in their Prospex line that looks pretty good to me. It’s a $700 watch. If you shop around, you can find them for about $500. That’s not bad, but Seiko also makes that watch with a red and blue face and a red and blue bezel (informally known as the Pepsi), and one of these days I’ll probably pull the trigger on one of those. So, I took a pass on the Seiko Panda.

Seiko’s Prospex Panda. This is a very good-looking watch.

Bulova recently got into the Panda shtick as well, with a set of different colors on their Lunar Pilot watch:

The Bulova Lunar Pilot Panda. Nice, and incredibly accurate.

The Bulova is $895. It’s nice, but a few years ago I bought the black dial Bulova that emulates the watch astronaut Dave Scott wore to the moon. With a Lunar Pilot already in the collection, I wanted something else.

I’d been thinking about this Panda thing for a couple of years now, and looking at watches from time to time on the Internet, and you know where this is going. The Internet is insidious, and the marketing emails starting coming in. Amazon sent one on the Orient Panda and it was $188. Seiko and Orient are both owned by Epson (yep, the printer company), and I know Orient to be a good watch (I’ve written before about my Orient moonie automatic watch). Here’s the Orient Panda:

The Orient had great reviews on Amazon, and I liked the look. One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that it’s hard to judge a watch’s appeal by a photo. Some that look great in a picture are totally unappealing in person, and vice versa. But for $188, I’m willing to take a chance. When the watch arrives (it’s a non-US model and it’s shipping directly from Japan), I’ll let you know how it looks. I like the metal bracelet; I may spring for a black leather (with white stitching) band (like the Breitling’s) somewhere down the road.

A few general observations on the above watches. You may have noticed that the bezel rings are different between the Orient Panda and the others. The Orient has equally-spaced marks that show how many seconds have elapsed when the stopwatch is activated. All the other Panda watches have what is known as a tachymeter bezel. The idea behind it is that you can use the tachymeter for determining rate. If you activate the tachymeter when passing a mile marker and then stop it at the next mile marker, it will tell you your actual speed (as long as you are going faster than 60 mph). If you are on a production line, you can activate the stop watch when starting one item and stop the watch when the item is completed. Let’s say it takes 9 seconds to complete one item. The stop watch’s second hand will point to how many items can be completed in an hour (in this case, 400). The tachymeter is a cool feature but I have never used it, so the fact that it is not on the Orient is okay by me.

I’ve mentioned automatic and solar powered watches. An automatic watch is a mechanical, self-winding watch. For some collectors, there’s a panache associated with a mechanical watch. I feel that way, and I have automatic watches. The downsides of an automatic watch are that if you don’t wear them for a few days they stop and then you have to reset them, and they are less accurate (typical automatic watch accuracy is about ±25 seconds per day. Some are better than others. If you’re a fanatic about time, you’ll probably reset an automatic watch about once a week. For watch geeks that’s okay. We like playing with our watches.

Solar powered watches are essentially quartz watches that are powered by the sun instead of needing a battery. The downside is the watch has to be in the light (either sunlight or artificial light) a little bit each day to keep running. The upsides are that if you don’t wear a solar powered watch but keep it where the light hits it, it keeps running, and solar powered (and quartz regulated) watches are phenomenally accurate (to the tune of a few seconds per month). I have solar powered watches that I haven’t worn for a year or more, and they accurate to within a few seconds of the time.gov website. That’s pretty cool.

Back to that ride into Chengdu to see the real pandas…you can read all about it in Riding China. Here’s a short video of Joe Gresh and yours truly slogging through Chengdu traffic on Zongshen RX1 motorcycles.

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Phavorite Photos: Tall Tales in Chongqing

By Joe Berk

It’s been a little while since we posted a phavorite photo (thanks for the series suggestion, Peter), so I thought we were due. Usually the pics in our Phavorite Photo series are pics I took, but I can’t take credit for the photo you see above. Susie was with me when we visited Zongshen to negotiate CSC’s first RX3 order, and during those meetings, Zongshen asked about sending Chinese folks over to ride with us in the United States. The idea was Zongshen would provide the motorcycles and pay all expenses for a dozen or so riders if we would plan and lead the ride. During our meeting, good buddy Thomas Fan asked if I had any destination suggestions (Fan is Zonghsen’s marketing director; in the photo above he’s the first guy seated on my left). Boy, did I ever. I had a bunch of photos on my laptop from my rides to US National Parks, Baja, and more. I pulled up the photos, told tall tales about each, and our Chinese hosts were mesmerized. Sue had the presence of mind to grab my Nikon and snap the photo you see above. It became an immediate favorite.

Zongshen came through on their promise, and we had a hell of an adventure. We rode from southern California to Sturgis, cut across the country headed west to the Pacific Coast, and then followed the coast back down to So Cal. It was a 5,000-mile ride we dubbed the Western America Adventure Ride. Folks in the US who had purchased RX3 motorcycles joined us on portions of the ride. It was where I first met Joe Gresh (Motorcyclist magazine sent Joe and he wrote a wonderful story). The Western America Adventure Ride was a key part of our CSC marketing strategy and it worked. You can read all about in 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM. Buy the book; don’t wait for the movie.

About those destinations: What Fan didn’t know when he asked if I had any suggestions was that I write the “Destinations” column for Motorcycle Classics magazine. We did a book on that, too. You should buy a copy. If you buy a thousand copies, I’ll ride my Royal Enfield to your place and sign every one of them.

Earlier Phavorite Photos? You bet! Click on each to get their story.

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The Wayback Machine: We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…

By Joe Berk

This Wayback Machine post goes back to a blog I wrote for CSC Motorcycles in December 2014. The nine years between then and now has been quite a blur. A bit of background…CSC was transitioning from production of its Mustang replica bikes to importing the about-to-be-released Zongshen RX3. Susie and I went to Chongqing to help finalize the deal, and this was a blog I wrote while I was in that city.

I guess I’ll start by telling you that riding my CSC-150 Baja Blaster, Steve Seidner’s resurrection of the venerable vintage Mustang, has been good practice for me and this visit to Chongqing. When you ride a CSC motorcycle, you collect stares wherever you go (we call it the rock star syndrome, and we even had a CSC custom in the early days we named the Rock Star). The photo at the top of this blog is Steve’s personal CSC-150, the Sarge, and it draws stares wherever it goes. That’s sure been the situation with Susie and me here in Chongqing. Susie and I are the only non-Chinese folks everywhere we’ve been, starting with our getting on the airplane in Beijing, and people are naturally curious. It’s like riding the CSC…we’re drawing the stares. Like the title of this blog says, we’re well off the tourist trail on this trip.

The view from our 21st floor hotel room…it stays misty in this mystical city!

After a great breakfast this morning (see the blog below), we asked about the things to see and do in Chongqing, and our sights this morning settled firmly on a cable car ride across the Yangtze River. We started by grabbing a cab…

I hope this guy knows where we want to go, I thought to myself as we got in his cab…

It’s strange…the cabbie spoke no English, so the guy at the hotel had to explain what we wanted. Then he gave us a card so that when wanted to return, we could show it to the next cab driver. Another sign of not being in Kansas anymore.

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It’s a bit on the cold side over here, but riders ride and the Chinese are no exception to that rule. These folks use their motorcycles as transportation, as trucks, as cabs, and more.

This guy would make a good KLR rider…looks like this bike gets washed about as often as my KLR!

If you take a close look at the photo above, you’ll notice something that’s pretty common here in Chongqing…a set of handwarmers. These are no-fooling-around, guaranteed-to-keep-your-paws-toasty, sure-fire handwarmers, folks! They go way beyond the heated grips that BMW brags about (and that we’ll be offering as options on the Cyclone, by the way). I’ll show you a few more motorcycle photos; be sure to check out the handwarmers on many of these bikes.

Here’s another shot…a Chinese scooter equipped with what has to be the ultimate luggage rack…

The Yangtze River cable car ride was awesome. It’s about 4,000 feet across the river, and we were packed into that little box like sardines. Going up to the cable car in the elevator gave a hint of what was to come…we were squeezed in with folks I’ve never met before, and I was already more intimate with them than I had been on most of my high school dates. I guess that’s just a natural consequence of being in a city with 34 million inhabitants.

A scene vaguely reminiscent of a James Bond movie…that’s downtown Chongqing in the mist

In the photo above, just to the right of us is where the Yangtze and the Jialing rivers meet. It’s the downtown area that you’ll see in the following photos. 34 million people live here. I’m pretty sure we met about half of them this morning.

First, a photo of a Chinese postal service motorcycle. They paint their postal service vehicles green. Zongshen is a big supplier of motorcycles to the Chinese postal service. Check out the handwarmers on this rig!

A postal service motorcycle in downtown Chongqing…check out the handwarmers and the parcels

Here’s another bike we spotted while walking downtown.

Live to ride…ride to live…and loud pipes save lives.

There were a lot of people out and about. There were so many people on the sidewalks we were starting to get a little claustrophobic. It’s way worse than New York City. You won’t get a sense of that in the photos that follow, mostly because I waited until there were brief instances when the crowds parted to give me a less-obstructed photo.

Fresh fruit delivered the old-fashioned way.

I grabbed a few more scenes on our walk downtown.

This fellow was making and selling necklace pendants from animal teeth…those are skulls on the ground in front.

Here’s a cool shot of a youngster who wasn’t too sure about this old guy in an Indiana Jones hat taking his photograph…they don’t see too many people like Susie and me in this neighborhood.

And of course, the food vendors. We did a lot of walking and bumping into people (literally; the sidewalks were jam packed…it was wall-to-wall humanity). It made me a little hungry. Check out the food photos.

Chongqing used to be known in the West as Chun King. The way the Chinese pronounce it, it almost sounds like Chun King. When I was a kid, my Mom used to buy Chinese noodles and the name of the company on the can was Chun King. Little did I know that it was a real place and one day more than a half century later I’d be visiting it!

People…lots of people…and motorcycles…lots of motorcycles!

Another Chinese rider in downtown Chongqing.

Just another photo or two, folks. The Chinese use these three-wheel vehicles that I guess are cars, but they are based on a tricycle design. I had not encountered this particular model before, so I grabbed a photo…

I looked inside of one of the three wheelers and it actually looked pretty nice in there. They are used as taxis. Maybe we’ll grab a ride in one before we leave Chongqing.

I told Susie that I was getting a bit tired (we’re still fighting the time change). I think I said I wanted to stop monkeying around and head back to the hotel. That’s when she pointed this scene out to me…

I think that’s probably enough for now. Tomorrow’s the first day of this visit with the good folks from Zongshen. I’ve been following all the stuff on the forums and in your emails to me, and I’ll address many of the things you’ve written about. I won’t be able to post all of it here, but keep an eye on the blog and maybe I’ll get a photo or two of the factory. I’m pumped, and I’m looking forward to our discussions tomorrow.

That was quite a visit. I’d been to Chongqing once before, but that was an in-and-out trip, and on the visit described above, Sue and I poked around the city a bit. I loved it. It was one of the most beautiful and exotic places I’d ever been. It was fun because we were in a place most Americans don’t get to visit, I made great friends in China, and it was cool being in on the ground floor of the effort to bring the RX3 to America. I know there are a lot of people out there who hate China and who think anything that comes from China is of low quality. I’m not one of those people and I make no apologies for it.

The RX3 was a watershed motorcycle. It was the only small displacement adventure touring bike in America until BMW, Kawasaki, and others tried copying the RX3. The RX3 was still the better motorcycle, and I had a lot of fun on mine.

If you’d like to know more about the RX3 and CSC Motorcycles bringing the bike to the US, pick up a copy of 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM. I’ve been told it’s a good read.

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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

The Wayback Machine: Zongshen, Chongqing, and Tempus Fugit

By Joe Berk

Time flies when you’re having fun. It’s hard to believe it’s been a dozen years since I first visited Zongshen for CSC Motorcycles, and when I did, the RX3 wasn’t even a thought. I went to Zongshen looking for a 250cc engine for CSC’s Mustang replica (the photo above shows CSC’s Mustang and an original 1954 Mustang Pony). CSC’s Mustang replica had a 150cc engine and some folks said they wanted a 250, so we went hunting for a 250cc engine.

The quest for a 250 took me to a little town called Chongqing (little as in population: 34,000,000). I spent a day with the Zongers and, well, you know the rest. This is the email I sent to Steve Seidner, the CSC CEO and the guy who had the foresight to dispatch me to Chongqing. I was energized after my visit that day, and I wrote the email you see below that night. It was a dozen years ago. Hard to believe.

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17 Dec 2011

Steve:

Just got back from the Zongshen meetings in Chongqing. This letter is a summary of how it went.

Our host and a driver picked us up in a Mercedes mini-van in the morning at the hotel. It was about a 1-hour drive to the Zongshen campus. Chongqing is a massive and scenic city (it just seems to go on forever). Imagine mid-town Manhattan massively larger with taller and more modern buildings, built in a lush green mountain range, and you’ll have an idea of what the city is like. We took a circular freeway at the edge of town, and the views were beyond stunning. It was an overcast day, and every time we came around a mountain we had another view of the city in the mist. It was like something in a dream. Chongqing is the Chinese name for the city. We in the US used to call it Chun King (like the noodle company). We drove for an hour on a freeway (at about 60 mph the whole time) to get to the Zongshen campus, and we were still in the city. I’ve never seen anything like it. The city is awesome. I could spend 6 months here just photographing the place.

The Zongshen facilities are huge and completely modern. The enterprise is on a landscaped campus (all fenced off from the public) in the city’s downtown area. We were ushered into their office building complex, which is about as modern and clean as anything I have ever seen. You can probably tell from this email that I was impressed.

Let me emphasize this again: The Zongshen campus is huge. My guess is that they have something in excess of 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space.

Here are some shots of some of their buildings from the outside…they have several buildings like this. These first two show one of their machining facilities.

There were several buildings like the ones above on the Zongshen campus. It was overwhelming. This is a big company. The people who work there live on the Zongshen campus (Zongshen provides apartments for these folks). They work a 5-day, 8-hour-per-day week. It looked like a pretty nice life. Zongshen employs about 2,000 people.

Here’s a shot showing a portion of the Zongshen office building. Very modern, and very nicely decorated inside.

Zongshen is the name of the man who started the business. The company is about 20 years old. Mr. Zongshen is still actively engaged running the business (notice that he is not wearing a beret). I had the Chinese characters translated and what he is saying is “I want Joe to write our blog.”

Zongshen has a few motorcycles and scooters that have received EC (European Community) certification. They do not have any motorcycles that have received US EPA or CARB certification. They do have scooters, though, approved in the US. They have two models that have EPA and CARB certification. I explained that we might be interested in these as possible powerplants for future CSC motorcycles.

I asked to see the factory, and they took us on a factory tour. In a word, their production operation is awesome. The next several photographs show the inside of their engine assembly building (they had several buildings this size; these photos show the inside of just one). It was modern, clean, and the assembly work appears to be both automated and manual (depending on the operation). Note that we were in the factory on a Saturday, so no work was occurring. I was thinking the entire time what fun it must be to run this kind of a facility. Take a look.

Zongshen has onsite die casting capabilities, so they can make covers with a CSC logo if we want them to. Having this capability onsite is a good thing; most US manufacturers subcontract their die casting work and I can tell you that in the factories I have managed, getting these parts on time in a condition where they meet the drawing requirements was always a problem in the US. Doing this work in house like Zongshen is doing is a strong plus. They have direct control over a critical part of the process.

In addition to all the motorcycle work, Zongshen makes power equipment (like Honda does). I grabbed this shot as we were driving by their power equipment factory.

Here are some photographs of engines in work. Zongshen makes something north of 4,000 engines every day.

Yep, 4,000+ engines. Every day.

The engines above are going into their automated engine test room. They had about 100 automated test stations in there.

Zongshen makes engines for their own motorcycles as well as for other manufacturers. They make parts for many other motorcycle manufacturers, including Harley. They make complete scooters for several manufacturers, including Vespa.

These are 500cc, water-cooled Zongshen ATV engines….

Zongshen can make engines in nearly any color a manufacturer wants. When we walked by this display I asked what it was, and they told me it showed the different colors they could powder coat an engine.

Quality appears to be very, very high. They have the right visual metrics in place to monitor production status and to identify quality standards. The photo below shows one set of their visual standards. These are the defects to avoid in just one area of the operation.

This idea of using visual standards is a good one. I don’t see it very often in factories in the US. It’s a sign of an advanced manufacturing operation. And here’s one set of their production status boards and assembly instructions…boards like this were everywhere.

The photo below shows their engine shipping area.

Here’s a humorous sign in the Zongshen men’s room…be happy in your work, don’t take too long, and don’t forget to flush.

As I said before, this entire operation was immaculate. Again, it’s a sign of a well-run and high quality plant.

We then briefly ducked into the machine shop. It was dark so I didn’t grab any photos. What I noticed is that they use statistical process control in manufacturing their machined parts, which is another sign of an advanced quality management approach.

I also have (but did not include here in this email) photos of their engine testing area. They test all engines (a 100% test program), and the test approach is automated. I was impressed. Zongshen’s quality will be as good or better than any engine made anywhere in the world, and we should have no reservations about using the 250cc engine in our CSC motorcycles. These guys have it wired.

My host then took us next to a factory showroom at the edge of the Zongshen campus. Here are a few photos from that area.

Check this one out…it’s a 125, and it looked to me to be a really nice bike.

Now check out the price on the above motorcycle. This is the all inclusive, “out-the-door-in-Chongqing,” includes-all-fees price.

Yep, that’s 8980 RMB (or Yuan), and that converts to (get this) a whopping $1470 US dollars. I want one.

The Chinese postal service uses Zongshen motorcycles….as do Chinese Police departments, and a lot of restaurants and other commercial interests. These green bikes are for the Chinese Post Office, and the red ones are for commercial delivery services.

Another shot from their showroom.

Zongshen also has a GP racing program, and they had their GP bikes on display with photos in the factory and the actual bikes in an office display area. Cool.

And finally one last photo, Steve, of Indiana Jones having a blast in Chongqing.

The bottom line, Boss, is that I recommend buying the 250 engine from these folks. Their factory is awesome and they know what they are doing. I write books about this stuff and I can tell you that this plant is as well managed as any I have ever seen.

I’ll be in the air headed home in a few more days. This trip has been a good one.

That’s it for now. I will send an email to the Zongshen team later today confirming what we want from them and I will keep you posted on any developments. Thank you for the opportunity to make this visit.

Joe

So there you have it. What followed was CSC becoming Zongshen’s North American importer, the RX3, the RX4, the TT 250, the San Gabriel line, the electric motorcycles, the Baja RX3 runs, the Andes Mountains adventure ride, the 5000-mile Western America Adventure Ride, the ride across China, the Destinations Deal ride, and more. Lots more. The first big ride with Zongshen was the Western America Adventure Ride, and in a few more days, we’ll post the story about how that came about. We were excited about hooking up with Zongshen; the Chinese were excited about riding through the American West. And ever since then, it has been one hell of a ride.

Stay tuned.

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A Cup O’ Joes is available now on Amazon. Every bathroom in every motorcycle shop and every motorcyclist’s home needs this book. They make great gifts. Check out the blurb:

Joe Gresh and Joe Berk bring you a collection of their favorite articles and stories from the ExhaustNotes.us website, Motorcycle Classics magazine, Rider magazine, Motorcyclist magazine, ADVMoto magazine, and other publications. Ride with the Joes in China, Colombia, Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, the former Soviet Union, and the United States. Read their opinions on motorcycles, accessories, and more. Humor, wit, insight, and great reading…this collection of motoliterature belongs in your library. Published in black and white.

You could wait for the movie, but the movie deal fell through. You know the story…I wanted Leonardo di Caprio to play me or Gresh, the studio countered with Danny DeVito, and things fell apart after that.

Seriously, though, you need this book. It will make you taller, skinnier, more attractive, and a faster rider. Trust us on this.

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The Wayback Machine: Indiana Jones in Liqian

By Joe Berk

Yes, it really was like that. Somewhere along the Silk Road (the actual Silk Road) in China. I parked my RX3 when I saw the double rainbow, thinking someday I might use the shot in a blog about this adventure.

Almost 40 years ago, I saw my first Indiana Jones movie and it affected me profoundly. I started traveling the world stumbling upon lost empires. Things that have been swallowed by time, as they say. My motorcycle ride through Colombia had some of that. The Baja adventures have a bit of it, too. But none of the rides had more of an Indiana Jones flavor than did the ride across China. That ride was three years ago this month, and I still think about it every day. There were several things we saw in China that would have been right at home in an Indiana Jones movie. One was Liqian. I can best tell you about it with an excerpt from Riding China, the story of the ride with Joe Gresh across the Ancient Kingdom.

Gobi Gresh, aka Arjiu, stopping to smell the sunflowers in China.

The ride in the morning was just like yesterday. We rode the Silk Road at high speed, making great time in magnificent weather. I knew we were going to Wuwei (you could have a lot of fun with that name; it’s pronounced “woo wee”), but that was really all I knew about that day as we started out that morning. Boy, would this day ever be an interesting one!

It was to be a very full day, and Wuwei would be another one of those cities of several million people that seem to pop up in China every 50 to 100 miles. It was a huge city I had never heard of. China is an amazing place, and I was going to learn today it is more amazing than I could have imagined, and for a reason I would have never guessed. I’ve mentioned Indiana Jones movies a lot in this book. Today, we came upon something that could easily be…well, read on. This is going to be good.

After riding for a couple of hours, we left the freeway and entered a city called Yongchang. It seemed to be pretty much a regular Chinese city until we stopped. I needed to find a bathroom and Wong helped me. Wong is a big, imposing guy. He’s a corrections officer supervisor in Xi’an. He has a friendly look, but he can turn that off in a New York minute and become an extremely imposing figure. I saw him do that once on this trip, and I’ll tell you about that episode when we get to it.

Corrections Officer Supervisor Wong. He looks like a mischievous guy. This guy’s command presence was amazing. I saw him stop a car just by looking at it. Here, he’s enjoying the attention in Yongchang.

Anyway, I followed Wong through a couple of alleys and businesses until we came to an empty restaurant (it was mid-morning, and it had no customers). Wong spoke to the lady there, she nodded her head and smiled at me, and pointed to the bathroom. When I rejoined the guys back on the street, several women at a tailor shop (we had coincidentally stopped in front of a tailor shop) were fussing over Wong. He needed a button sewn on his jacket and it was obvious they were flirting with him. Wong seemed to be enjoying it. Like I said, Wong is a big guy, and I guess you could say he’s good looking. I think the women who were sewing his button on were thinking the same thing.

Beautiful young Chinese ladies. Mostly Chinese, anyway. The one on the left is entering my phone number in her contacts list.

Three teenage girls approached us and wanted to know about our bikes. Like many young Chinese, they spoke English (in China, you learn English as a second language in grade school; it is a strong advantage in Chinese society if you can speak English well). They wanted to practice with us. It was the routine stuff (“how are you?” “hello,” and things like that) until one of the teenaged girls looked directly at me and asked, “Can I have your phone number?” Gresh and I both had a good laugh over that. I actually gave her my phone number and she carefully entered it into her phone (and no, she hasn’t called me yet).

I was enjoying all of this immensely, taking photos of the girls, the seamstresses flirting with Wong, and the rest of China all around me. There was something different about one of those teenage girls. I couldn’t quite recognize what it was, but to me she definitely looked, well, different.

Yongchang statues. They don’t look as Chinese as you might think they should. There’s a reason for that.

It was at about that time that Sean approached me and said, “Dajiu, do you see those three statues over there?” He pointed to three tall statues that faced us, perhaps 300 yards away. I nodded yes. “If you look at their faces, you will see that they have Roman features.” Truth be told, I couldn’t really see it in the statues because they were too far away, but I grabbed a photo and later, on my computer, I could see something different. But before I looked at the photo, it all clicked for me. That’s what had my attention with that girl. We were literally in the middle of China and she didn’t look as Chinese as her two friends. She looked different.

All right, my friends, I need to go tangential here for a minute or two and share this story with you. Hang on, because this is real Indiana Jones stuff. No, scratch that. I’ve never seen an Indiana Jones movie with a story line this good (and I’ve seen all of them).

More than 2,000 years ago, before the birth of Christ, the two most powerful empires on the planet were the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. These two superpowers of their time enjoyed a brisk trade relationship along the Silk Road. Yep, the very same trail we had been riding for the last few days. Between them (in what became Iran and its surrounding regions) lay a smaller empire called Parthia. For reasons only the Romans understood, Rome thought it would be a good idea to attack Parthia. They sent several Roman Legions to war (and to put this in perspective, a Roman Legion consisted of about 5,000 men). To everyone’s surprise (including, I would imagine, the Romans), the Parthians kicked Rome’s butt.

Wow, imagine that. Rome, defeated on the field of battle by the much smaller Parthian Empire. To put it mildly, things did not quite go the way the Romans thought they would.

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All of this severely disrupted trade between the Han Dynasty and the Romans, and nobody liked that. “Why the hell did you do that?” the Han Dynasty asked Rome. “We had a good thing going and you screwed it up.” At least that’s what I’m guessing the conversation went like. You get the idea.

Cooler minds prevailed and the Romans realized, yeah, that was a dumb move. The Romans told the Parthians, hey, it’s over, let’s be friends again. The war ended, the Chinese were happy, the Romans were happy, the Parthians were happy, and trade resumed. All’s well that ends well.

Well, sort of. There was still that matter of those pesky Roman legions that had invaded Parthia. They didn’t come back from that war, and for two thousand years, no one knew what happened to them. The Romans probably assumed their Legionnaires had all been slaughtered. No one knew until an Australian dude and a Chinese guy, both University archeologist types (starting to sound a little like Indiana Jones yet?) put a theory together in 1957. Hmmm, maybe those Romans had not been killed after all.

The Parthians, being bright enough to defeat the Romans, were not about to let the Legionnaires go home and perhaps attack them again in some future war. They didn’t want to kill the Romans, either. I guess they were kinder, gentler Parthians. Here’s where those two Aussie and Chinese archeologists enter the picture. They hypothesized that the Parthians told the errant Legionnaires, “Look, we don’t want to kill all you guys, but there’s no way we’re going to let you go back to Rome. And there’s no room for you here, either. Your only option is to keep heading east. Go to China. Maybe you crazy warmongering Italians will find nice Chinese girls and settle down.” With that, and as one might imagine, a hearty arrivederci, the Romans continued their eastward march straight into the middle of China.

And folks, the prevailing wisdom today is that is exactly what happened (although the prevailing wisdom evidently hasn’t prevailed very far, as I had never heard the story until that morning in Yongchang). In fact, prior to this theory surfacing, folks wondered why the Chinese referred to the area around Yongchang as Liqian. That’s not a Chinese word, and it’s unlike the name of any other Chinese town. The folks who know about these things tell me it is an unusual word in the Chinese language.

Liqian is pronounced “Lee Chee On.”

Get it yet?

Lee Chee On? Liqian?

Doesn’t it sound like “legion?” As in Roman legion?

A Chinese man in Liqian. This guy could be the Marlboro Man for a Chinese cigarette company!

I found all of this fascinating. I saw more than a few people around the Liqian area that had a distinct western appearance, and they all consented to my taking their photos when I asked. They recognize just how special their story is. The Chinese government is taking note of this area, too. They are developing a large theme park just outside of Yongchang with a Roman motif. We visited that theme park, and while we were there, Sergeant Zuo gave a book to me (printed in both English and Chinese) about the place. It is one of the two books I brought back from China, and that book is now one of my most prized possessions.

Imagine that: Roman legions, resettled in the middle of China, in a town called Liqian. And I rode there. On an RX3.

That photo at the top of this blog? All the gear, all the time?

Nah, it was nothing like that. One of the Zongshen guys had this idea about making a movie with a Roman Empire theme (you know, being as we were in Liqian and all that), and he bought along gladiator costumes. I’m not sure what Gresh and I were thinking (we’re not normally into gladiator movies) but we let those guys talk us into putting the costumes on and taking a few pics and videos. I guess you had to be there to understand it; it was all in the spirit of the ride.

Watch for our next Indiana Jones episode in China. It’s about the lost Buddhist grottos at Mo Gao in the Gobi Desert. There’s more good stuff coming your way. Stay tuned!

Want to read more about the ride across China? Pick up a copy of Riding China!