We’ve been featuring toolkits and rider resources in recent blogs, and here’s another one. It’s based on tailoring a toolkit for a specific bike (in this case, the CSC TT250). It’s from a blog I wrote for CSC about 4 years ago when I led a group of TT250 riders through northern Baja. The idea is to carry a tool for every likely need, without carrying any unnecessary tools. This blog should be particularly useful for TT250 riders. The concept can be extended to any motorcycle.
Originally posted on October 13, 2016
I promised a recommended TT250 toolkit a few blogs back, and this afternoon I put together a list of the tools I’m going to bring with me on the Baja trip. The Internet being what it is, I have no doubt this will spark a firestorm of controversy from those of you who have different ideas. Hey, as my personal hero (that would be Dubya) once said, bring it on. Seriously. If there’s something you think I missed, let us know and if I think it makes sense I’ll add it to the list. That last part is important. I’m bringing along the tools I think I might need in the unlikely event something goes south. I’m not planning on doing an engine rebuild on the side of the road. Knock wood, I’ve only ever had one serious breakdown on any of my rides (and it wasn’t on a Chinese bike; in fact, it was on a bike that costs about 10 times what a new TT250 goes for…and that bike didn’t come with any tools).
The TT250 comes with a modest tool kit mounted in a container along the frame, as you see below.
They say halitosis is better than no breath at all, and that’s kind of how I feel about the tool kits that come with new motorcycles (indeed, as mentioned above, some new motorcycles don’t include any tools).
Here’s what you get with the stock TT250 tool kit:
It includes a screwdriver with both blade and Phillips head drives, two wrenches with 8mm, 10mm, 13m, and 15mm ends, and a pressed steel socket that you’re supposed to turn with the screwdriver shaft. The problem is that I don’t think that pressed steel socket would hold its shape under serious torque (and even if it did, and you probably couldn’t exert enough torque with the screwdriver shaft to adequately tighten or loosen the larger fasteners or the spark plug).
I took a hard look at the nuts and bolts on my TT250 this morning, and here’s what I’m putting in my tool kit for Baja:
From left to right, here you go:
A reversible drive screwdriver with both Phillips and blade drives. It’s a big screwdriver, but I like the thing. It’s one of those tools that’s gone on all of my rides.
A 17mm wrench. There are a lot of 17mm bolts and nuts on the TT250, including the oil drain plug. It’s a must-have item.
A cool wrench that has both 18mm and 19mm box ends. This will come in handy for both the front and rear axles.
A crescent wrench. This is a catchall and it’s a good thing to have. I could have left out several other wrenches and just taken the crescent, but I wanted the others.
I kept the two wrenches that come with the standard TT250 tool kit. They fit virtually all of the smaller fasteners on the bike.
A small channel lock pliers. I mainly carry these because I once read about a guy using them when he lost his shift lever. I’ve never had that happen, but these things were on sale for a buck at a Lowe’s and I couldn’t pass them up. If I ever lose a shift lever, I’ll be good to go.
A pair of pliers. These came with my 1965 Honda Super 90 tool kit, which I bought in 1966. I’ve had them with me on every ride ever since.
Allen drives in 4mm (for the fuel tank filler cap), 5mm (for the body panels), and 6mm (for the handlebar clamps). I could have bought one of those pocketknife-like things that have a bunch of Allen drives, but these are the only three I think I’ll need and I didn’t want to add the bulk of the larger multi-driver tool.
A spark plug socket. You might wonder why I don’t have a socket driver for it. The 18mm wrench fits it perfectly.
And that’s about it, folks. All of the above won’t fit in the little plastic case the original factory tool kit occupied, so they’ll go in a tool roll that’s going in my soft luggage. That plastic box for the original tool kit? I may use it to carry a burrito.
Want to see our other rider tool and resources blogs? Here you go:
Rider Tools. Good buddy Mike Huber, our paratrooper-at-large, wrote a concise compendium of website and other resources every adventure rider needs to know.
Rider Tools: Part 2. This blog covers the tools Joe Gresh carries with him. It’s a good one. He saved my butt in Baja with that jump start gizmo!
Baja Spares. This is a list of the stuff I take with me when I ride in Baja.
I woke up last Friday with but one thought: I have got to get out on my motorcycle today.
Well, I did, and I had a glorious ride up through the Cajon Pass in southern California. That’s the pass that cuts between the San Gabriel Mountains and the San Bernardino Mountains. Most folks would just take Interstate 15 from So Cal to the High Desert through the Cajon, but to me riding a motorcycle on the freeway is a bit of a crime against nature. There are surface streets that get you through most of the Cajon Pass, and if you know where to look, there are dirt roads that do the same. Those roads are way more fun, but it’s like I said…you have to know where to look.
Me? I know where to look.
On old Route 66 through the Cajon Pass. Yep, it’s still there, and it was a perfect photo op with my black CSC TT250 on a cloudy June morning.
Big freight trains slog through the Cajon Pass on a regular basis, and there’s a dirt road that runs along the tracks for several miles. It was a perfect road for the TT250. I was out there on my own, having a good old time when I stopped to grab a photo, and that’s when I heard it. The rails, that is. They started singing. They do that when there’s a train downrange. You can actually hear the metallic buzz the rails emit miles before the train comes into view. Time to switch the cell phone camera to the video mode. I didn’t see anything for a couple of minutes, and then way down the hill in the distance I could just make out a headlight. Then that one orange orb became three blurry headlights, the signature of the first of several freight locomotives. They were working hard. It takes a lot of power to pull a train up a mountain pass. The lights grew in size, the indistinct three orange dots came into focus, and there it was:
The train was a monster. I finished the video, I took several stills, and then I mounted up and rode at a sedate pace in the opposite direction for a good five minutes before I saw the end of that train. I’ll bet it was three miles long. Maybe more. There were four locomotives pulling and there was a fifth on the tail end. It’s hard to imagine the weight and the energy of a freight train like the one I saw that morning. And it was doing it all going uphill, charging through the Cajon Pass from the Pomona Valley up to the High Desert. It was impressive.
That train just kept coming, and coming, and coming.
I had a hell of a ride that morning. A bit of freeway (but not too much), a fair amount of dirt, a stream crossing that was deeper than I thought it would be (and damn, there was no one to video me standing on the pegs with water splashing all over my boots and jeans), a train, Old Route 66, and nice, cool weather. It was grand.
It was about 5 years ago that I was sitting in Zongshen’s marketing offices in Chongqing discussing this, that, and the other thing on the RX3 for CSC Motorcycles. All the while, I kept stealing peeks at a 150cc dual sport bike the Zongshen wizards had mounted on a display pedestal in their conference area. Finally, I asked…what’s the deal on that motorcycle? Can it be had with a 250cc engine?
My good friend Chongqing Fan smiled. I could read that guy like a book, and what I was reading was this: He knew, and he knew I knew: The guys at Zongshen, China’s largest motorcycle manufacturer, they can do anything. A few quick digital pics back to CSC, a recommendation, a quick decision from a CEO who’s not afraid to make decisions (that would be Azusa Steve), and the CSC TT250 was born. I own one of the very first to arrive in America, and it’s been a hoot. We’ve even done Baja on the TT250s (talk about brand loyalty…half the guys on that ride also own an RX3). CSC can barely keep TT250 motorcycles in stock; they sell as soon as they arrive. Most of the time, they’re sold before the ship gets here.
I selected black for my TT250 (one of three or four colors available in 2016) because I thought it would photograph well, and I was right. It does a lot more than just sit there and look pretty, though. The TT250 is a great motorcycle. It’s simple, torquey, easy to maintain, great handling, reliable, comfortable, and inexpensive. Plus, I know the factory and the people who make and import this motorcycle. Good buddy Gerry and I wrote the shop manual for this motorcycle, and I know the bike’s innards. You might say I know it inside and out. I think the fact that I know most everyone involved in creating and importing this motorcycle makes it even more of a hoot to ride.
TT250s on the production line in Chongqing. Mine was in there somewhere.Your mileage may vary.
The TT250 is about as simple as a motorcycle gets, and it has what has to be one of the most ubiquitous and reliable motorcycle engines on the planet. You see these motors in various versions (ranging from 125cc to 250cc) everywhere. They’re bulletproof. They’re designed to be rode hard and put away wet, and that’s what folks in South America, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East do. It’s no accident that my good buddies at Janus Motorcycles chose the same engine to power their amazing 250cc motorcycles. I’m going to ride my TT250 until the wheels fall off. Then I’ll buy replacement parts for probably something like $9 and repeat the process.
The TT250 is a light bike. It’s easy to ride and easy to keep vertical (they tell me it’s easy to pick up if you drop it, but I’ve never dropped mine). The TT250 weighs 309 pounds wet and in an age of overweight, bloated, and expensive monster motorcycles, riding it is fun. It’s not an ego statement. It’s a motorcycle. It’s what a motorcycle should be. I feel like a kid every time I get on it (and in six months, I’ll be 70 years old). I started riding motorcycles on a Honda Super 90 (a 90cc single) when Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. Riding a simple single makes me a hooligan again, braapping the mean streets of rural New Jersey before I was old enough to have a license and loving every second of it.
I have the 49T rear sprocket on my TT250 (one down from the stock 50T), and that’s about perfect for me. My bike tops out at about 66 mph indicated, and after my hundred mile ride through the Cajon Pass that morning I topped off and checked my fuel economy. 62.5 mpg. Just a little better than I usually get. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
I have the Wolfman bags on my TT. They’re light, they don’t get in the way, they’ve held up well, and they’re handy if I want to carry stuff. That’s usually a few tools (just in case, but I’ve never needed them on the road), a bottle of Aleve, a change of underwear, and I’m good for a couple of weeks in Baja.
Speaking of Baja, good buddy Baja John is another guy with the same affliction as me: He owns both an RX3 and a TT250. And a .44 Magnum or two, but that’s a story for another blog. Baja John keeps his TT250 at a beachfront home in Baja, and as soon as this Covid 19 business is in the rearview mirror, I’m headed down there. I want to photograph one or two of the more remote missions, John knows the trails, and the TT250 is the motorcycle to get us there.
More good times are on the horizon, folks. Stay tuned.
When you don’t run a carbureted bike for a while and it runs rough or won’t idle, it’s probably because the slow jet is clogged. It’s not from dirt or contaminants getting into the fuel; it’s from the fuel itself. The fuel congeals when the bike sits for an extended period (we’re talking months here), the jet clogs, and your bike just won’t idle or run well at small throttle openings. That often occurs if you let your bike sit over the winter. One way to potentially avoid this is to close the petcock and run the bike out of fuel when you’re done riding. I don’t do that, though, mostly because I don’t want to let the bike idle for an extended period and, truth be told, I’m lazy.
I wrote the CSC maintenance tutorials for the TT250, so I had a bit of a leg up doing this myself on my TT250 when I had the problem recently. I hadn’t ridden my TT250 in a few months, it was hard starting and I couldn’t get it to idle when I finally did get it to start. I knew what was going on immediately: It was the slow jet clogging. All carbed bikes will do this (it’s not a problem unique to the TT250).
Everything I’m showing you here is right out of the CSC TT250 carb maintenance tutorial. That tutorial covers everything about the carb. This blog is specifically focused on cleaning the slow speed jet to address the idling and slow speed roughness issue.
I find the best way to do this is to pull the carb off the engine. To do that, you’ll need to remove the bike’s side panels. Close the fuel petcock and remove the fuel line from it to the carb (you’ll spill a little gas, so don’t do this around open flame or heat). Like a lot of maintenance actions on modern motorcycles, half the job is just removing stuff that’s in the way first.
Disconnect the duct that goes to the airbox and pull it off the carb.You don’t have to disconnect the duct at the airbox end; just take off the end that attaches the carb.Unscrew the top of the carb.Remove the slide from the carb.Working from the left side of the bike (opposite the carb) remove the bolt securing the rear brake fluid reservoir and let it hang free. You need to do this to get to the carb mounting bolt on the left side.Unbolt the carb from the cylinder head. The nut on the right is easy to get to; the nut on the left side of the carb is a bitch to get to, which is why we moved the brake fluid reservoir out of the way.
At this point, you can remove the carb from the bike, and then the float bowl from the carburetor. This will provide access to the jets. Some folks might think that you can remove the float bowl with the carb still on the bike, but I’ve not found a way to do that. It’s best to do it the way I describe here.
Undo the three screws securing the float bowl to the carb.Remove the float bowl. You’ll spill a little gas here, so be careful.
After have removed the float bowl, you’ll be able to see the jets. The one we’re interested in here is the slow jet. Remove it with a flat-bladed screwdriver.
The slow speed jet is the main character in this “won’t idle worth a damn” story.
After removing the slow jet, clean it thoroughly. This involves cleaning all the orifice holes on the sides of the jet, and the main hole through the inside diameter of the jet. You need to use a thin wire to do this. Just blowing it out with carb cleaner or WD 40 won’t dislodge the tiny bits of congealed fuel. There are tools to do this (CSC Motorcycles sells them). I used a small diameter brass wire and it got the job done.
Use a wire to clean the slow jet and then blow it out with carb cleaner or WD40.Looking down the bore of the slow jet.Make sure you use the wire to get everything out of all the holes.
Once the slow jet is clean, reinstall the jet in the carb. There’s no adjustment here; just screw it in taking care not to overtighten it.
After you’ve done the above, assembly is the reverse of disassembly. Your bike should start easily, idle, and run well at small throttle openings.
I stopped by to visit with the boys at CSC Motorcycles yesterday morning and the TT250 Supermoto setup you see above stopped me in my tracks. This, my friends, is one seriously good looking motorcycle. Seriously good looking, seriously well equipped, and seriously inexpensive. Think new hubs and aluminum wheels, custom tires, new disks, a matching red anodized sprocket, anodized red footpegs, and red grips. Don’t like red? CSC has a bunch of colors you can order the Supermoto package in to suit your tastes. But that red and black is going to be hard to beat.
I own a TT250 (one from the very first shipment) and I like it a lot. I played a minor role in helping to configure and bring that motorcycle to the US, and I’ve toured Baja on it. It’s a grand bike and it sells for just $2,195. And to close out the last of the 2019s, CSC is knocking $200 off that. You’ll make up that amount and a bit more configuring it with the Supermoto option shown above, but you’d still have a brand new motorcycle for something around $3,000 (roughly the price of a set of BMW saddlebags).
A CSC motorcycle is one of the best values in the motorcycle world. I’ve maintained that from Day One, and I’ve got the miles under my belt in Asia, America, South America, and Baja to back it up.
Take a look at some of the details on this bike:
Here’s the tab on all of the above:
Red and black always work for me. Those are my school colors (go Scarlet Knights!), they just look good, and the bike kind of matches my Gear’d Hardware ZX2 wristwatch.
Red and black works on a lot of things, one of them being this Gear’d Hardware ZX2 watch!
Hey, I spoke with good buddy Baja John yesterday. I’m still thinking about a quick run down to his place in Baja next month. I need to get my knees in the Baja breeze. John is like me…he rides a TT250 and an RX3, too. Maybe I can talk Gresh into a ride…that would be fun!
Want to read about the TT250 and other bikes in Baja? Give a click here!
You might wonder why the first photo in a blog about the Royal Enfield Bullet is a CSC TT250. Let me explain. That guy in the photo above is good buddy Dan, with whom I’ve ridden in Baja a couple of times on the CSC trips (once on TT250s, and the other time on the RX3s). Dan is the only guy I know who owns an Enfield Bullet, and before I go into the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding my Bullet experience, I called him to get his take on the bike. Dan has owned his Bullet since 2013, it’s the fuel injected model (like the one I rode), and he has 7500 miles on it. Lest you think Dan doesn’t ride much, he owns several motorcycles, and that’s why he only has 7500 miles on his Enfield.
Dan told me his Bullet has been trouble free, but he also told me he is fastidious in maintaining it and he is a conservative rider. Dan said things vibrate loose and you have to keep an eye on that, but his bike has never broken down, it’s never had any electrical issues (like the missing and stumbling Joe Gresh and I experienced on the entire Baja trip), and he likes the bike. That’s good input, and it’s what I hoped I would hear.
For reasons I’ll explain later, I asked Dan about the rear sprocket and chain maintenance, and he laughed. “It’s the only thing I was going to mention,” Dan said. He replaced his rear sprocket at 7500 miles, and he is a fanatic about chain maintenance and lubrication. More on that in a bit, folks.
Another bit of background up front. Royal Enfield North America was kind enough to lend Joe and I a Bullet. Our particular bike was a 2016 press bike that had been stored at a dealer for some time (not Southern California Motorcycles, but another Enfield dealer), and when we received it, it was in a state of extreme neglect. I won’t go into that in detail (you can read about it in a prior blog); I’ll just mention it again and touch on it a few times through this post. The Enfield Bullet is an old school bike and it requires maintenance; this one had essentially none and it put a damper on our trip. I wanted to love the bike and write great things about it; the condition of the bike made that difficult.
This is what a motorcycle is supposed to look like.Joe Gresh on a Royal Enfield Bullet in Baja. Life is good.
With that as a backdrop, let’s get into a detailed review.
I think the Bullet is a beautiful motorcycle. It has a look I just love. It screams 1950s, it screams British, and I love the feel and sound of a big single. The black paint and chrome work for me. The pinstriping is superb, and I found a video that shows how Royal Enfield does it…
The centerpiece of any motorcycle has to be the engine, and on this count, the Bullet excels. That beautiful, tall, exquisitely-finned single and its polished cases can only be described as stunning. It’s what a motorcycle is all about. No water-cooled, take-the-fairings-off-and-I-look-like-a-washing-machine silliness here. Nope. This is a motorcycle, with the accent on motor. I love the look.
A motorcycle with a motor you can see!
The Bullet’s fenders are enormous, deeply-valanced metal structures. They have a very 1950s look, which I like. No plastic here, folks. Curiously, the rear fender was not centered on the rear tire when viewed from behind. The wheels were aligned and the bike tracked true. My take is that the tolerance build up and assembly technique allowed the mismatch. My old 1978 Triumph Bonneville suffered from the same cosmetic issue.
Deeply valanced and all metal…no mud is going to splash up on this puppy!The rear fender is similarly deep and serious. Check out the support bars running from the fender to the frame. It’s a good place to attach bungee cords. Note also the stepped seat. It was hard, but comfortable. Check out the rear drum brake (the newer ones have disk brakes front and rear, and ABS).See the rear fender and seat bias to the left? The tires were aligned and the bike tracked true. This bike started life at Southern California Motorcycles and I wished it had been delivered by them (it would have been in much better shape). Our bike had been kept at another California Enfield dealer.
The front brake is good. It’s a disk brake and it stops well. The rear brake on the 2016 model I rode was a drum brake, which was adequate but not great. The newer Enfield 500s have ABS and a disk brake in back. I didn’t attempt to get the brakes to fade. That sort of whackadoodle stuff is best left to the mainstream moto media journalists as they flog bikes and overuse catchy phrases like “the controls fell easily to hand…” (that’s Gresh’s line; I wished I had thought of it). The brakes worked fine for us.
The Bullet comes with a decent tool kit (that’s the good news), which we actually had to use several times in Baja (that’s the bad news). It’s stored in a key-locked metal container on the left side of the bike. There’s a similar key-locked metal container on the right, and it provides access to the air cleaner.
The tool kit and the fuse box are inside the ignition-key-opened box on the left side of the bike.The air cleaner is in in the locked container on the right side of the bike.
There’s another key-locked metal cover on the left side of the bike covering the battery, and that’s another good news story. The battery is big, and the terminals are accessible even with the cover on. That makes good sense. On our press bike, the battery was shot when we received the bike (we didn’t know that before we left for Mexico, though) and we had to buy a new battery in Guerrero Negro. We bought it at a tiny shop tucked away on a dirt road, and as you can imagine they didn’t stock Royal Enfield parts. We bought one that was close enough in size to go into the bike (but we couldn’t put the battery cover back on after installation). It worked just fine. Like they say, halitosis is better than no breath at all.
The Bullet has a kick starter. It looks cool, but the big single is tough to kick over. Both Gresh and I failed to start the bike with the kick start. I view the kick starter as more ornamental than functional. The electric starter works well, although our bike would go through several crankshaft rotations before it fired up. It was kind of like starting an old radial-engine airplane. It would get the engine turning, somewhere in there a little British chap yelled CONTACT, and then the engine would run on its own.
The wheels and tires on the Enfield are another old school touch. They’re both 19 inchers, with a 3.25×19 in front and 3.50×19 in the rear. Both have old-school tread designs. Both felt secure on the road and in the dirt, their narrow treads notwithstanding.
The Bullet’s 3.25×19 front tire.The Bullet’s 3.50×19 rear tire.
The fuel cap was not attached to the fuel tank, and it was the kind you completely unscrew. The Enfield website says the Bullet’s fuel tank holds 3.5 gallons. On the long stretch from Catavina to the Pemex station 20 miles north of Guerrero Negro (a distance of exactly 110 miles) the low fuel light indicator was just starting to flicker about 100 yards shy of the gas station. I don’t know for sure how many miles are left when that happens, but with a published capacity of 3.5 gallons, I suspect that like most fuel injected bikes, the low fuel light comes on early. Motorcycle manufacturers do that to keep the fuel pump immersed in fuel (it’s how the fuel pump is cooled). The Bullet’s fuel economy was superior. Gresh got just over 75 mpg riding it down to the border, and I got 72.something riding it north from the border. With that kind of fuel economy, I’m guessing that when the low fuel light comes on there’s still a good two gallons left in the tank.
At first, I thought the Bullet’s horn was tragic. It bleated like a baby lamb (sitting on the motorcycle, I could hear it, but no one else could). Then the battery died, and like I explained above, by the grace of God we found a useable replacement in Guerrero Negro. With the new battery the horn flat out honked. It’s a good horn, one that speaks with the authority a proper 500cc thumper should have.
The Bullet’s horn works well with a good battery.
Instrumentation can only be described as primitive. Adequate would be stretching the word. There’s a speedometer and an odometer, but no tripmeter. There’s no tach, but the engine speeds were low enough that you could almost calculate rpm by counting thumps and using a wristwatch. There’s a fuel warning light but no fuel gage. That makes for dicey riding. You either have to hope the fuel warning light leaves enough range to make the next gas station (very dicey in parts of Baja), or you need to remember the odometer reading when you last filled up (very dicey at my age), or you need to ride with someone who has a trip meter on their bike (very dicey unless you know people in high places in Royal Enfield North America, like I do). There’s a check engine light (which is kind of funny, because like I explained at the beginning, this motorcycle is all motor…yep, the engine’s there alright!), there’s a turn signal indicator (which I never could see in the daytime), there’s a high beam indicator (can’t see it in the daytime), and there’s a neutral light (same story, you just can’t see it during the day). One other mild concern for me was that when I cruised between 55 and 65 mph (the Enfield’s sweet spot), the speedo needle obscures the odometer and I could not tell how far I’d ridden when I tried to use the odometer as a fuel gage.
The ignition switch has two positions (on and off). It’s labeled “IGNITION” just in case you don’t get it. Speedo, odo, neutral, high beam, turn signals, check engine, low fuel, and that’s it. The neutral light is actually on in this photo.
The Bullet has both a centerstand and a kickstand, and it was easy to deploy both. On our ride, after the third day I was sure the bike was leaning more to the left than it had been on the kickstand. Gresh looked at it and he started laughing. It sure was. The thing leaned further left than Bernie Sanders. The sidestand and the left footpeg are bolted to a metal plate, which is in turn bolted to the frame. That plate was bending. Gresh deployed the sidestand and stood on it, which bent the mounting plate back to a more reasonable position. We thought we were good until the bike died on the road a short while later. It didn’t start missing or stumbling this time; it just died as if someone had turned the ignition off. Here’s why: The kickstand actuates a “kickstand down” switch, which prohibits engine operation if the kickstand is extended (sort of; bear with me on this part of the story).
We had another failure the morning we left Guerrero Negro, and it was one of those sudden “ignition off” failures. Joe unbolted the kickstand interlock switch by the side of the road out there in the Baja desert and we did a quick test to find out if the switch needs to be open or closed to allow engine operation. We quickly concluded it is a normally-closed switch, and then we simply ziptied the switch to the frame after removing it from the kickstand mounting plate. From that point on, our easy-to-fool Bullet thought the kickstand was always up. Problem solved; no more engine sudden death syndrome. Yeah, things were going south, but in its defense, problems on the Bullet are easy to diagnose and fix.
Joe Gresh, inflight missile mechanic.The plate holding the kickstand and the right footpeg. The bad news it bends easily. The good news is it bends easily back. More bad news is that bending it back into position disrupted the relationship between the kickstand interlock switch and the kickstand. More good news is that it was easy to bypass.The kickstand interlock switch, ziptied to the frame after removal. No more engine shutting off.
The plate securing the kickstand is either underdesigned (i.e., it’s too weak), or the metal was improperly heat treated and it’s too soft. In the bike’s defense, I was carrying about 50-60 lbs of stuff in my Wolfman bags and Nelson-Rigg tailpack, and I have a habit of standing on the left footpeg and throwing my right leg over the luggage when I get on a bike. That puts a strain on the kickstand and its mount. But that’s a likely scenario for any rider, and the bike should have been able to take it without the kickstand mounting plate bending.
One more thing on the kickstand switch…the logic is weird. With the bike on the sidestand, you can crank the engine all you want. It just won’t fire. Consequently, you can’t idle the bike to let it warm up on the kickstand (if the bike is running, as soon as you extend the kickstand, the engine dies). But you can crank the starter with the bike on the kickstand. I think that’s dumb, because it will allow you to propel the bike forward on the kickstand if the bike is in gear. On most bikes, with the kickstand down you can’t crank or run the motorcycle. That’s how I would do it, but then, I don’t sell a zillion bikes a year like Royal Enfield does, so what do I know?
I found the Bullet to be surprisingly comfortable, more so even than the Interceptor and most other motorcycles. The seat was hard and the step in it prevents moving around during long hours in the saddle, but the ergonomics worked for me. Gresh said the same thing. The bike doesn’t have a fairing or a windshield, but it was supremely comfortable at any speed.
Suspension, front and rear, is non-adjustable on the Bullet. It’s not an issue for me. Stack 20 mattresses, put a pea underneath the mess, and I can’t tell you if that pea is there or not. For me, adjustable suspension is the same sort of thing. I think the entire concept of adjustable suspension for most folks is a joke (particularly suspension dampening), little more than a marketing gimmick. I’ve had bikes with adjustable suspension that I rode for years and I never changed the factory suspension settings. Your mileage may vary. I don’t know the suspension travel, but whatever it is, I found it to be sufficient. I carried a lot of freight on the Bullet over roughly 1300 Baja miles and I never bottomed out.
The Bullet’s top speed was somewhere in the indicated 72-73 mph range. The bike had enough power for passing, but just barely. Again, for the kind of riding I do, it was adequate. On the US freeways down to Mexico, we ran at about 60-65 mph, we stuck to the right lane, and we were fine. Enfield advertises 27 horsepower for this motorcycle, and that figure sounds about right. My 250cc Zongshen RX3 has 25 horsepower, it’s a little lighter, and it’s a little faster. But I recognize that nobody buys the 500cc Enfield to race other motorcycles. I suspect the people who buy this bike don’t care about 0-60 times or top speeds. It’s all about the vintage riding experience, and in that regard, the Enfield excels.
The Bullet frame is a massive tubular steel affair, like they made them when men were men and well, you get the idea. On some of the rear portions of the frame, the tube diameter was so large my bungee cord hooks wouldn’t fit. The Bullet has these sort of frame runners that go outside the bike on either side in the rear; those were very handy for bungee cord hookups.
On the ride home, with 20 miles to go at the end of our trip, the Bullet started misbehaving big time. It was clanking and banging, so much so that I initially thought I had thrown a rod or toasted a main bearing. Nope, it wasn’t that at all. We hit a bit of rain, and even though we had lubed the chain that morning and found it to be sufficiently tight, it was bone dry from the rain and it was hopping over the rear sprocket. The chain was already rusty, and the rear sprocket teeth were rounded and hooked. In under 3500 miles. Amazing. That’s what my good buddy Dan laughed about when I called him earlier. His take on it is that Enfield uses a very cheap and soft rear sprocket. That and the neglectful dealer’s lack of maintenance on our Bullet combined to toast the chain, the rear sprocket, and probably the front sprocket. In defense of the Bullet, it got me home, but the last few miles of our trip were at 10 mph or less.
As I stated at the beginning of this blog, and as Joe and I talked about in previous blogs, the dealer who had this bike did nothing we could see to maintain it, and they certainly did nothing to prep the bike for our Baja trip. When the Bullet was delivered, the oil was a quart down, the chain was rusty, the spark plug wire and lead were corroded, and the battery was on its last legs. Before the bike was delivered, I called the dealer to ask if the Bullet had a tool kit, and the salesperson I spoke with became defensive. Like Steve Martin used to say, well, excuuuuse me. The bike was a press bike, and it probably was abused by others writing about, you know, the controls falling easily to hand and such (and maybe doing burnouts and wheelies), but there was just no excuse for the bike to be delivered in the condition it was in. It only had 2264 miles on the odometer when we got it. Royal Enfield was apologetic and embarrassed by all of it; the dealer should be ashamed. I think that was a major screwup on their part. Maybe they just don’t care, or perhaps they’re too busy finding new ways to inflate ADM fees and overcharge for desmodromic valve adjustments. Whatever. I’ll never buy a motorcycle from them. On the other hand, the dealer who provided the Interceptor (Southern California Motorcycles) delivered that bike in perfect condition. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
The Bullet dealer’s failure to prep the 500 was unfortunate. I really wanted to love the thing and maybe buy one, but I can’t after what we experienced. That’s a shame. The Bullet reminded me of my ’92 Harley Softail in many ways. It was a paint-shaker at speed, it was okay on the freeway, it excelled on country roads, and it looked, felt, and sounded like a motorcycle should.
The last topic I’ll touch on is the Bullet’s pricing. For whatever reason, I thought the Bullet’s MSRP was around $4795, but I was off by nearly a thousand bucks. A new Enfield 500 is $5599, and that’s before the fiction dealers call freight and setup. A new 650 Interceptor is $5799. To me, that’s nuts. For an extra two hundred bucks, the Interceptor is just too much motorcycle to pass up. Maybe Enfield is going to phase out the 500. Or maybe the Bullet just costs that much to make (which I think is very, very unlikely, as any Bullet tooling or other fixed costs were probably amortized before most of the folks reading this were born). I like the Bullet enough to consider going the Joe Gresh route (you know, buy a used one for cheap). But a nationwide search on CycleTrader showed almost no used Bullets for sale, and the few that were listed were close enough to a new bike’s price that their owners (in my opinion) were dreaming. Go figure. I guess folks who own these bikes just don’t sell them, and I think that speaks well for the bike.
You might be wondering…why did we take a 2016 Bullet instead of a 2019 new Enfield 500? Hey, you go to war with the Army you have, and the 2016 Bullet is what the good folks at Royal Enfield North America gave to us. I don’t know if some of the things I’m writing about have been addressed in newer versions. Maybe it’s not fair to do a road test on a bike that’s already 3 years old, but if there’s any unfairness here, it’s in the fact that the bike was just flat neglected, and that’s something we had no control over.
So there you have it. Neglected or not, the Bullet got us down to Guerrero Negro and back, and it took us to see our friends in Scammon’s Lagoon. The whale watching this year was awesome…some of the best I’ve ever experienced.
Next up? Our take on the new Interceptor. That’s really exciting, both because it’s a new model and to my knowledge we are the first folks in the US to take the new 650 Enfield on a real adventure ride.
You guys and gals will remember my good buddy Baja John, a guy with whom I’ve been exploring Baja for close to three decades now…
Baja John back in the mid-’90s. Big V-twins and black leather were all the rage. I shot this photo at La Bufadora during a break in the El Nino rains.
John sent an invitation to me to ride with him in Baja this month, but I couldn’t make it (I’ve been in northern California this week). I suggested to John that our ExNotes readers sure would appreciate it, though, if he could send photos from his trip, though, and here’s an email I just received from him…
Joe,
I was originally going to send you just the pictures when you mentioned putting pictures in the blog, so I thought that you might want a story to go with them. I’ve attached a Word document with a story just in case. For some reason, I cannot transfer the pictures to my laptop, so I left places within the document to place the pictures. I will try again to upload the pictures from my phone to my email. Hopefully it works this time. It should be easy to figure out which picture goes where. If you don’t want the story, just enjoy the pictures. BTW, I just finished two fish tacos and two shrimp tacos at Antonio’s. I may go back and eat another one for you before I leave town.
John
That sounds awesome, John. Tell Tony hi for me when you see him again, and tell him I’ll be down there soon enough! We sure appreciate the story and the photos. And folks, without further ado, here’s Baja John’s most recent Baja adventure…
In early 2002, I bought a house in Bahia de Los Angeles on the Baja Peninsula with thoughts of retiring there someday. Over the ensuing years, I continued to ride motorcycles to and from Mexico, anxious for the day when I could leave from my house in Mexico instead of riding 600 miles just to get there, and then begin my ride. Well, that day finally arrived, and I decided to take a ride to Jardines in San Quintin for lunch. I’d heard a number of positive remarks from fellow Americans who had stayed there and who had eaten there. It was time to give the place a personal assessment.
I packed some snacks and water in my tank bag in preparation for my trip. The morning was cool and crisp when I left. It was within a couple of days of the winter solstice and the days were short, so my plan was to leave at sunup, hoping to complete the 450-mile roundtrip before dark. This picture was taken about 20 miles out of town.
The fog nestled so close to the ground made it appear as though I was looking at a forest of cacti poking their heads through the clouds. For some unknown reason, I took that as an omen of good things to come. I passed one truck on that 40 mile stretch to the main highway.
When I reached the junction at Highway 1, my fuel gauge read 3/4 full. I turned to the north, and immediately saw this sign.
I wasn’t yet familiar with my CSC TT250, but I had read reviews of 65 mpg, and since I didn’t yet know what 3/4 full meant on my bike, I decided to press on, optimistic that I would find gas somewhere on the way.
Traffic increased on Highway 1. I guess that’s to be expected since it’s the only paved highway that travels the entire length of the peninsula. After passing 6 vehicles within the first 30 minutes, I decided that traffic probably wasn’t going to be bad enough to have a negative impact on my ride, so I continued north, enjoying the solitude and watching the highway twist its way through the desert as I came down yet another mountain.
As I continued north, I noticed my gas gauge reaching 1/2 full at Chapala. I still had 63 miles to go to Catavina, which was the only place that I thought may have gas. Hoping that the gauge accuracy was a bit on the conservative side, I continued on. Running the numbers in my head, I concluded that I should make it to Catavina, even if my actual fuel level was a little less than indicated. However, if Catavina didn’t have gas, then I was going to either have to stay there until I could find someone passing through with extra gas, or try to locate a rancho that might have a couple of gallons to spare. Fortunately, in Catavina I came across a small sign stuck in the dirt on the left side of the highway that said Pemex. The arrow pointed to the right side of the road, and as my eyes scanned the opposite side of the highway, I saw a pickup truck with a couple of 55 gal drums and a few one gallon plastic containers. By this time I had travelled about half the distance to San Quintin, and although my low fuel light was already flashing, I still had not gone on reserve
I figured the price would be astronomical, but that was ok since I would only need a couple of gallons. Surprisingly, it was only $1 per gallon higher than the Pemex station where I had filled up in my town the day before. Confident that I could now make it the rest of the way to San Quintin, I pressed on north, maintaining between 60 and 65 mph indicated.
The desert continued to get greener as I closed in on the town of El Rosario where Mama Espinoza’s famous restaurant is located. I passed by knowing that I had a meal waiting for me in less than an hour at Jardine’s. Traffic remained consistent through the remainder of my trip, and I reached my destination at 11 a.m.
Jardines was like an oasis in the middle of the desert. There were no signs indicating its presence, and as I turned off the main highway just south of town, I thought the place must really be nice since it appeared that they relied on word of mouth for advertisement. Making the turn onto the final dirt road, I still didn’t see it, and there was no indication that a hotel existed anywhere ahead.
After a 1/2 mile, a beautiful hotel, restaurant, and gardens appeared on the right through the trees.
I pulled into the empty parking lot of the restaurant, dismounted, and approached the door. It was locked. Fortunately the hours were posted. Another hour before they opened. That wasn’t good. If I waited around until they opened, got seated and served, I wouldn’t get back on the road until after 1 p.m. That would make it difficult to make it home before dark. Hmmm! Better check the hotel. I had heard the rates were good, but I was pleasantly surprised that a single room was only $31. A two bedroom-suite was a bit steeper at $45. It didn’t take me long to decide to take advantage of one of the perks of retirement – unscheduled time. I quickly pulled out my wallet, checked in, walked around the grounds for a few minutes, and then waited outside the restaurant until they opened.
I opted for the Mediterranean Shrimp at $8.40.
It was fantastic. I was seriously glad that I decided to stay. I kept occupied throughout the day by reading my kindle and talking to Anna, the hotel manager that day. She had spent several years in Wichita, KS, so she spoke English quite well. That night I paid a whopping $4.00 for some Fish and Chips. Another great meal.
The next morning I took my time riding around the area before heading home. I finally left town at 11 a.m. Traffic was the same as the previous day, and I made it home at 3:30 p.m. I stopped for a moment, looking at the moon over the bay before winding my way down the mountain toward home.
Hard to believe; for less than $100 I had a wonderful two days of riding, great food, a good night’s sleep and not one stop light. I feel truly blessed.
Just awesome, John! I had never heard of Jardines, but you can bet it’s on the list for my next visit. Thanks again.
Folks, if you’d like to know more about Baja and our moto adventures down there (and our recommended insurance company, BajaBound), just click here! And if you’d like a more in-depth discussion of what is arguably the greatest adventure riding spot on the planet, why not pick up a copy of Moto Baja!
The RX4 on the road. I wanted to get a shot at the truck scale, but conditions were not conducive to good photography.
The next two blogs (this one and the next) address more differences between the RX3 and the RX4, including the weight, the dash and instrumentation, the rear fender, tire sizes, the radiators, the radiator bottle fill port, the kickstand, the rear brake and gearshift levers, the rear wheel adjust mechanism, the swingarm, and the engine mounts. This blog will focus on the bike’s weight and the two bikes’ highway performance. I’ll sweep up the other differences mentioned above in the next blog.
Let’s talk about the 450-lb gorilla in the room first, and that’s the RX4’s weight. The RX4 is a heavier bike than the RX3, and I guess the question is: Is this a good thing or a bad thing? It’s all a question of perspective and intended purpose.
For starters, I still don’t have an accurate, measured weight on either bike. That’s a shame on me, although I will tell you that I tried.
My plan was to get the RX4 weighed first, and then return with my RX3 to do the same. I took the RX4 to our local certified truck scale, but the bike was too light to register on the scale and a loudspeaker-borne voice basically told me to get out of Dodge. It was a scary experience. There’s a monstrous Petro truck stop on the I-10 freeway about 10 miles from where I live, and I thought it would be a simple matter to roll the RX4 onto the scales and come back with The Number. That was my plan, anyway.
I entered the super-busy truck stop through an area teaming with idling 18-wheelers, engines barking and belching, crammed together weighting (or is that waiting?) to funnel onto the Petro parking lot scales. On my RX4, I was acutely aware of three things: The guys driving these monsters couldn’t see me, the engine noise and fumes were overwhelming, and the RX4’s fat rear end (those Tourfella bags are wider than the bike’s handlebars) made maneuvering through the 18-wheeler maze a dicey proposition. The pucker factor was elevated, folks. Big time.
I made it through, though, and I was finally on a scale with a platform as long as, well, an 18-wheeler. There was this elevated control house sort of thing next to the platform. It wasn’t clear to me what was supposed to happen next, as I couldn’t see anybody running the operation, and there was no digital or analog readout telling me the weight. I stopped the bike and dismounted, and I walked toward the elevated control house when an electronic voice from the Heavens boomed. It was way louder then the idling diesel engines surrounding me and I could tell: It was pissed. At me.
“Can I help you?” It didn’t come across as a request that implied an intent to be helpful. It implied anger. Seething anger. Directed at me. As a two-wheeler, I was but one-ninth the vehicle I was supposed to be.
Well, yeah, I want to weigh my bike. I mean, why else would a normal person be here?
“You’re setting off my alarms.”
Sorry about that, dude. What alarms?
“You’re too light and my alarms are going off!”
I want to weigh my bike (sometimes repetition helps, I thought).
“You need to get out!” There it was. No more implying or inferring. It was out in the open now. It was as if I was wearing a MAGA hat on the Harvard campus. I was not welcome.
Okay, I can take a hint. Hell, a weight is just a number anyway.
Which brings me to my next point. What’s in a number?
Whatever the answer is to that question, I can tell you these three things: One, the RX4’s official number from Zongshen is 450 lbs. As I said before, I don’t know if that is the right number, but I suspect it is not. Two, the RX4 is substantially heavier than my RX3, and weigh heavier (or should that be way heavier?) than my TT250. It feels it, and it feels to me like the weight rides higher. Three, the RX4 is a substantially better road bike than the RX3, and the bike’s added heft and longer wheelbase (along with that marvelous 450cc motor) probably plays a role here. Anyway, the bottom line here is this: There’s no Joe Berk official weight yet (read that to mean a weight actually measured on a scale).
Like I said, I can feel the difference in heft between the RX3 and the RX4. It’s enough to make me wonder: Am I man enough to take this puppy off road? I suppose I could be. I know there are a few guys who actually take GS 1200 BMWs off road, and those things have seat heights and weights that require altimeters and maybe truck scales to measure. But would I want to go off road?
The short answer, I think, is this: If your main objective is off-road riding, there are other choices. I’d go for my TT250 or something else. If you are primarily a road rider, though, with the occasional off-road excursion, then the RX4 is a good choice. In my opinion, the RX3 would be better off road, but that’s just what I said it was: My opinion. Your mileage may vary, as they say. I was thinking about the stretch to the Sierra San Francisco cave paintings in Baja, and to me, I’m right at the limits of what I feel comfortable with on that gnarly stretch on my RX3. It’s heavily rutted, there are big boulders, and it’s a challenge. But then, I freely admit I’m not a dirt biker. I know there are guys reading this who are thinking they would have no problem taking the RX4 off road. If you’re one of them, you’re probably right.
If you are primarily a road rider, though, the RX4 is the better choice. I put about 100 miles on the RX4 on freeways and surface streets here in So Cal, and I can tell you this: The RX4 is clearly a more capable road machine than is the RX3, especially at freeway speeds. I didn’t get a long enough stretch to measure the RX4’s top speed, but I can tell you there were spurts where I cranked it up to an indicated 99 mph and there was still more left. That’s indicated (not actual) top speed, and the speedo is 10-12% optimistic. Zongshen claims a top speed of 97.5 mph for the RX4, and that’s probably accurate. The RX4 is a bike that can cruise comfortably at 80+ mph all day long; the RX3 has essentially run out of steam at that speed. The RX4 makes running with the big dogs seem easy. It is rock steady at high speeds, and it’s comfortable. It feels secure.
That magnificent 450cc motor…
In many ways, the RX4 reminded me more of my Triumph Tiger than it reminded me of my RX3. The Triumph was essentially a touring machine/sports bike styled like an off-roader with saddlebags. The Triumph was heavy and I only took it off road once on purpose (and that was enough). I rode the Triumph off road a few more times when I had to in Mexico, but it really was not an off-road bike. I know there are guys who ride the big Tigers off road, but it’s not where the bike wants to be. It wants to be headed to the next state, or maybe the next international border. That’s what the RX4 wants, too.
My Triumph Tiger. In many ways, the RX4 is quite similar to the Tiger. It was a stellar long-distance touring machine; I think the RX4 is, too.
I’ll make a prediction: Within the next two years, someone (perhaps several someones) will do the Iron Butt on the RX4. I don’t mean a single 1000-mile Baby Butt day (good buddy Rob Morel has already done that on his RX3). I’m talking the full-tilt boogie here: The 11,000-mile, 11-day Iron Butt. I think that’s going to happen. And I think the RX4 is the bike that will do it.
I was talking to Steve Seidner about this a day or two ago, and he asked me to mention to you that CSC is taking deposits now on the RX4 (here’s a link to get to their page for placing your deposit). CSC will sell a lot of RX4s. The bike is that good.
A week or so ago we posted a blog about my good buddy Baja John considering the purchase of a bike to keep at his home in Bahia de Los Angeles. We asked for your inputs and we received several (thanks very much). John pulled the trigger, and he wrote a guest blog to tell us about the rationale behind his decision. Here you go, folks…
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As Joe mentioned in an earlier post, I have been considering a bike to keep at my house in Mexico. Although I’ve had the house for several years, I never kept a motorcycle there because I had no secure place to store it. Thus, my motorcycle riding in Mexico was limited to bikes that I could ride long distances at highway speeds from my home in the U.S. Both my KLR 650 and my CSC RX3 250 fit this bill, however, I recently built a garage at the house in Mexico, and now I can keep a motorcycle there. Since this motorcycle will only be ridden in Mexico, and primarily on the Baja Peninsula, I don’t necessarily need a bike that can do more than 60mph comfortably. I also want a bike that will probably see on and off road equally. So, I laid out the requirements, and set out to find a bike.
My requirements are a bike that is 1: reliable, 2: simple to work on in the field, 3: lightweight with a smooth power band, 4: comfortable for long distances, 5: a range of at least 150 miles on a tank of gas, 6: has enough ground clearance for the majority of off-road riding that I will do, and if I’m lucky, 7: has a kick starter that will fire the engine up in the event of a dead battery. That last requirement is tough to satisfy these days, so it became more of a desire. If I were going to ride in cold weather, I would also require enough wattage to power heated gear, but fortunately, the majority of my riding will be in temperate climates.
So, why the desire for the bike to start with a dead battery. For me it boils down to peace of mind. Many years ago, when I rode the 2,200 mile round trip to Cabo San Lucas on a small 150cc bike, the battery died before I was halfway through. No problem. I used the kick starter and rode that bike all the way back to the border with a dead battery. I thought that all motorcycles would start with a dead battery, as long as you could turn the engine over. I recently found out that this is not the case when I went to the movies on my RX3. I came out of the movie theater and started the bike. It cranked over as usual, and started. About 2 blocks down the street, I came to a stop sign. The engine died. I hit the starter, but nothing. I thought that I had inadvertently hit the kill switch. Nope. I pushed the bike to a nearby downgrade, rode it down, popped the clutch, the engine sputtered a little, but would not run. Put in a new battery and it was business as usual. I called Gerry, the mechanic at CSC at that time, and he explained that fuel injected motorcycles will not run without a good battery. Lesson learned. Thus, my strong desire to find a bike that won’t leave me stranded in the desert because the battery died.
My first thought was to use my KLR, but the riding height always bothered me even though I am 6’ tall. That’s OK though, because I can get some lowering links, but it is also a heavy bike with enough power to get me into trouble. I know that dirt bikers rely on a bike with a good power band to maintain control with the throttle when they need to, but I’m not a dirt bike rider, and I prefer not to throttle my way out of trouble. Buying another RX3 also crossed my mind. A gentleman near my home in AZ is selling one with 9K miles for $2,195 with a few extras already installed. I like the RX3 for the majority of off-road riding that I do in the U.S. I like the lower seat height so that I can plant both feet firmly on the ground when I need to. I like the smooth power band so that I don’t break the rear tire loose if I accidentally blip the throttle. No surprises with the RX3. I like the confidence that it instills in me to take roads that I wouldn’t feel comfortable taking on the KLR, however, I don’t want to have to carry a small alternate battery with me in Mexico with enough power for the EFI system, and then attempt to find a way to push start it in the desert. It is also a heavier bike than I prefer for the dirt, and as an adventure bike, it doesn’t have quite the ground clearance of a dual-sport bike.
So, how heavy is the RX3? The internet says 385lbs wet with the stock side bags and trunk. I decided to find out by taking my RX3 to the local scale. It weighed in at 420lbs with a half-tank of gas and my aluminum Tourfella trunk on the back with no side bags attached. The Tourfella just had a few tools, air pump, and some tie-down straps in it. The internet says that my KLR is 370lbs dry, so it shouldn’t be much heavier than the RX3 when wet, but I’m staying in Wisconsin for the summer, so I currently don’t have the KLR with me to take to the scales, but it feels like it’s quite a bit heavier than the RX3, and it definitely feels more top heavy. Based on the discrepancy between the RX3 advertised wet weight and the actual wet weight that I saw at the local scale, I’m going to guess that the KLR is close to 500lbs. Although neither of these bikes are too heavy to pick up by myself, I’m 65, and it appears that I’m never going to get any younger, no matter how much wishful thinking I do, so I prefer something lighter. Enter the Yamaha XT250.
The XT250 pretty much checks all of the boxes. I recently stopped by a dealership to see one. I wanted to sit on it and check out my riding position and standing position. Everything good so far. The tank is only 2.4 gal, but at the advertised 78mpg, it should meet the 150 mile range. It’s Yamaha reliable, easy to work on, and less than 300lbs wet with a very comfortable 32” seat height. I would still have to ride one to get some feel of the power band and comfort while riding, but at a price of $5,200, I decided that a new one was out of the question, so I didn’t bother with a test ride at the dealer. A little research told me that the 2008 to 2012 models were carbureted, so I searched Craigslist and Cycle trader to find a used one. The pre-2013 models were running a much more reasonable $2,500 to $3,200, but I couldn’t confirm whether there was a kickstarter kit available for them like there was for the Yamaha TW200. Yep, this bike is looking good, but I still prefer to find a bike with a kickstarter that is post-1980’s and not a pure dirt bike, so the search continued, however, I may still buy a used XT250 in addition to another motorcycle. After all, it’s always good to have a spare bike, especially in Mexico where my bike may be down for a couple of weeks waiting for someone to bring me a part from the U.S.
I remember seeing the CSC TT250 when I was visiting CSC a couple of years ago when I returned from one of the CSC sponsored rides, so I went online to review the specs. Wow, this bike had possibilities. Although it’s a Chinese bike, my RX3 has been very reliable, and probably the best motorcycle that I’ve ever owned, due to its reliability, versatility, and comfort. I take that bike with me wherever I go, either on the back of my motorhome or on a hitch carrier attached to my Jeep. Manufactured by Zongshen, the same company that builds the RX3, I was sure it would be well made and reliable. Plus the Honda CG clone engine has been known for its reliability for decades. So, let’s check the boxes.
I went online to the ADV and China Rider forums to see what TT250 owners had to say about the bike. 1: Reliable: Yes. 2: Simple to work on: Obviously, being a CG clone engine. Plus CSC provides a service manual and online service tutorials. 3: Lightweight with a smooth power band: Advertised at 309lbs it looks like it will be about 100lbs lighter than the RX3, and riders say it has a smooth power band. 4: Comfortable for long distances: Riders say that they like the wider seat, the riding position, and apparently there is not too much wind buffeting. 5: Range of 150 miles: At 65mpg, the 2.9 gallon tank should make 150 miles even if only 2.3 gallons is usable. 6: Good ground clearance: Yes. 7: Kickstarter that will fire up the engine even with a dead battery: Yes to the kickstarter, but I haven’t been able to verify whether it will start with a dead battery. I suspect that this is true since it’s a carbureted engine. Steve at CSC Motorcycles said that he believes that this is true as well. One other thing that I like about the TT250 is that CSC offers a seat that will reduce the seat height to 32” if I feel uncomfortable with the 34” stock seat height.
So, what did I decide to do? Looks like that answer would be obvious, but first I wanted to verify the price out the door for a CSC TT250. $2,195 seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? So many times we find that things cost much more than the advertised price by the time the dealer tacks on fees for everything that they can think of. So, I asked Steve what the price would be shipped to my home. He said that they only add $400 to the price of the bike for prep, documentation, and shipping, so the cost to my door would be $2,595. At this point I was close to ordering one, but I had one last thing to check; accessories. I wanted to see what kind of accessories CSC offered, as well as the prices. Turns out, CSC offers a number of accessories, although not as many as the RX3. That’s understandable due to the type of rider and riding that the TT250 is designed for. Also the accessories are much less expensive than those for the majority of motorcycles manufactured today, so I chose a power outlet kit, rear luggage rack, handguards, helmet lock, and a 47 tooth rear sprocket in case I want a little more speed and less torque than the OEM 50 tooth provides. I was still thinking about waiting a few weeks until I returned home to Arizona to order one, but Steve said that they could hold the bike for me and ship it when I arrived home in October if I wanted to buy it now. Steve also told me that the next shipment of bikes arriving in October might be more expensive due to the possibility of additional tariffs imposed on Chinese products. In addition, he said that CSC stocks all accessories and OEM parts that you need for the bike, and they will usually arrive at your home within 2 or 3 days of ordering them. At that point I said, “Sold”, and ordered the bike. Within 15 minutes I had received and approved the invoice from Sara. They will ship it to my home in Arizona shortly after I arrive during the 3rd week of October.
Now that I pulled the trigger, I’m very happy with my decision. During my lifetime, I’ve seen customer service slowly decline over the decades. It’s refreshing to deal with a company that has a strong customer service ethic. I’m anxious to get home, break the bike in, and change the oil before I take it to Mexico at the end of October. I’m also going to run the battery down and see if I can kickstart it with a nearly dead battery. It turns out that there was an added bonus to ordering the bike when I did, since I found out after the fact that I bought the last white one that CSC had in stock. “Hoorah!!!”
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Awesome inputs, John, and thanks very much. We think you made a good decision. CSC is one of our advertisers, so we are glad to see that you bought the TT250. For those of you following the ExNotes blog installments about the CSC 150 Mustang ride to Cabo and back, John was one of the guys on that ride. And those of you who read Moto Baja! will know that John is the guy with whom I’ve ridden many, many miles in Mexico (he and I rode my first trip ever to that magical land).
With Baja John in Mexico many moons ago….
And for our other readers…do you have a story you’d like to share with us? Hey, let us know, and we’ll consider it for the ExNotes blog!
I stopped by to visit with the boys at 
The fog nestled so close to the ground made it appear as though I was looking at a forest of cacti poking their heads through the clouds. For some unknown reason, I took that as an omen of good things to come. I passed one truck on that 40 mile stretch to the main highway.
I wasn’t yet familiar with my CSC TT250, but I had read reviews of 65 mpg, and since I didn’t yet know what 3/4 full meant on my bike, I decided to press on, optimistic that I would find gas somewhere on the way.
As I continued north, I noticed my gas gauge reaching 1/2 full at Chapala. I still had 63 miles to go to Catavina, which was the only place that I thought may have gas. Hoping that the gauge accuracy was a bit on the conservative side, I continued on. Running the numbers in my head, I concluded that I should make it to Catavina, even if my actual fuel level was a little less than indicated. However, if Catavina didn’t have gas, then I was going to either have to stay there until I could find someone passing through with extra gas, or try to locate a rancho that might have a couple of gallons to spare. Fortunately, in Catavina I came across a small sign stuck in the dirt on the left side of the highway that said Pemex. The arrow pointed to the right side of the road, and as my eyes scanned the opposite side of the highway, I saw a pickup truck with a couple of 55 gal drums and a few one gallon plastic containers. By this time I had travelled about half the distance to San Quintin, and although my low fuel light was already flashing, I still had not gone on reserve
I figured the price would be astronomical, but that was ok since I would only need a couple of gallons. Surprisingly, it was only $1 per gallon higher than the Pemex station where I had filled up in my town the day before. Confident that I could now make it the rest of the way to San Quintin, I pressed on north, maintaining between 60 and 65 mph indicated.
The desert continued to get greener as I closed in on the town of El Rosario where Mama Espinoza’s famous restaurant is located. I passed by knowing that I had a meal waiting for me in less than an hour at Jardine’s. Traffic remained consistent through the remainder of my trip, and I reached my destination at 11 a.m.
I pulled into the empty parking lot of the restaurant, dismounted, and approached the door. It was locked. Fortunately the hours were posted. Another hour before they opened. That wasn’t good. If I waited around until they opened, got seated and served, I wouldn’t get back on the road until after 1 p.m. That would make it difficult to make it home before dark. Hmmm! Better check the hotel. I had heard the rates were good, but I was pleasantly surprised that a single room was only $31. A two bedroom-suite was a bit steeper at $45. It didn’t take me long to decide to take advantage of one of the perks of retirement – unscheduled time. I quickly pulled out my wallet, checked in, walked around the grounds for a few minutes, and then waited outside the restaurant until they opened.
It was fantastic. I was seriously glad that I decided to stay. I kept occupied throughout the day by reading my kindle and talking to Anna, the hotel manager that day. She had spent several years in Wichita, KS, so she spoke English quite well. That night I paid a whopping $4.00 for some Fish and Chips. Another great meal.
Hard to believe; for less than $100 I had a wonderful two days of riding, great food, a good night’s sleep and not one stop light. I feel truly blessed.
