Ubiquitous.\u00a0 I love that word.<\/p>\n
The dictionary tells us it means existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time, and folks, that pretty much summarizes the Honda CG clone engine. I first heard the term used by a Harley dealer when he was describing that little thumper, and did he ever get it right. You see these engines everywhere. \u00a0 I know. \u00a0 To quote Mr. Cash, I’ve been everywhere, man, and I’ve seen these engines there. \u00a0 Everywhere, that is.<\/p>\n
When I first hooked up with CSC 10 years ago, the CSC Mustang replicas used a CG clone motor. I didn\u2019t know anything about it at the time, although I am a well-traveled fellow with the frequent flier miles to prove it. I\u2019d seen the engine everywhere; I just didn\u2019t know (at the time) what I was looking at.\u00a0 Then I had my first trip to Zongshen, and I saw that they were using variations of the CG clone in many different motorcycles. You want a 110, no problem. A 125?\u00a0 No problem.\u00a0 A 150? Same answer.\u00a0 How about a 250? Yeah, we got those, too.\u00a0 You want 4 speeds or 5 speeds?\u00a0 Counterbalancer, or no counterbalance?\u00a0 Black? Silver?\u00a0 Some other color? No problem.\u00a0 Whatever, there\u2019s a CG clone to fit your needs and wants and the budgets of your intended markets. And it isn\u2019t just Zongshen making these engines. There are companies all over Asia (and elsewhere) doing it. It is an engine that is, in a word, ubiquitous.<\/p>\n
Take, for example, the CSC TT250. That bike came about as the result of my being in an RX3 meeting, in Chongqing, in one of the Zong\u2019s many conference rooms. It was hard for me to pay attention in that meeting because Zongshen had a white scrambler on display outside the conference room, and my gaze kept turning to it. I told the Zongsters it would be cool if we (i.e., CSC at that time) could get the bike as a 250. No problem, they said, and the rest is history. Same story on the CSC San Gabriel…it was presented to CSC as a 150, we asked to get it as a 250, and, well, you know the rest. I\u2019d say they were selling like hot cakes, but hot cakes couldn’t keep up with the San Gabriel\u2019s sales pace.<\/p>\n
So I travel a lot, and after my exposure to the Mustang replicas, I started noticing bikes in China, Thailand, Singapore, the Middle East, Mexico, Colombia, and elsewhere, and the overwhelmingly dominant engine was (you guessed it) the CG clone.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve written about the CG engine when I used to write the CSC blog, and you might want to look at a couple of those stories, too.\u00a0 They are here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n So you might be wondering…what\u2019s the story behind this engine and why is it so reliable? The Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> version goes like this: Honda was building bikes in Brazil a few years ago, and those Brazilians just wouldn\u2019t take care of their motorcycles. Honda was getting clobbered with maintenance issues and folks badmouthing their bikes. You might be thinking hey, how can you blame Honda if the people buying their bikes weren\u2019t maintaining them, but if you have that thought, maybe you don\u2019t know as much about the motorcycle business as you thought you did. When folks bitch, it doesn\u2019t have to be rational, and the most of the time the bitcher doesn\u2019t care if the bitchee is at fault. \u00a0 If you’re the manufacturer, you can’t afford to have people bitching for any reason, and Honda realized this.<\/p>\n Honda recognized this well before the Internet came along.\u00a0 The CG engine development happened back in the 1970s, when Honda set about designing an engine that could, like the old Timex ad used to say, take a licking and keep on ticking. That\u2019s what the CG engine was all about…it was designed to be an engine that could survive with little maintenance. Like I said, that\u2019s the Reader\u2019s Digest<\/em> version. If you want the straight skinny, this article<\/a> does as good a job as I\u2019ve ever seen on this subject. You should read it.<\/p>\n You might be wondering:\u00a0 Who all makes these engines, where do they go, and how is it the other companies can make an engine originally designed by Honda? \u00a0 The answers, as best I can tell, are everyone, everywhere, and beats me.\u00a0 Zongshen is but one company in one country that makes the CG engine, and to put this into perspective, Zongshen manufactures 4,000 engines a day. \u00a0 They’re not all CG motors, but a lot of them are.\u00a0 The Zong motors are used in their bikes, and they ship a whole bunch to other motorcycle manufacturers.\u00a0 Every day.\u00a0 All over the world.<\/p>\n So are the engines reliable?\u00a0 In a word, yes. If you are following the CSC 150 Cabo story here on the ExNotes blog, you know my friends and I rode the little 150s to Cabo and back, in super oppressive heat, and we absolutely flogged the things.\u00a0 They just kept on going.\u00a0 The TT250 is wonderfully reliable. \u00a0 Are they super fast? \u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 But they just keep on keeping on.\u00a0 It’s a tortoise and the hare story. \u00a0 You’ll get there, while the hypersports are waiting for desmodromic shims.<\/p>\n CG motors are also made by several other manufacturers in China, at least one in South America, another one in Taiwan, and who knows where else. \u00a0 Maybe it’s easier to say who isn’t making them.\u00a0 That would be us, here in the USA.\u00a0 It sure would be nice to see someone set up a plant here to do so.\u00a0 It’s a simple engine.\u00a0 We could do it.<\/p>\n And there’s that last question:\u00a0 How can other companies build a Honda design? \u00a0 As near as I can tell, I don’t know.\u00a0 When I ask the folks in China about this, they just sort of smile.\u00a0 I imagine whatever patents there are must have expired, or maybe Honda just feels okay with other people doing this. \u00a0 The short answer is that I don’t know. \u00a0 But it’s a worldwide phenomenon, and I imagine if it was illegal, Big Red would have done something about it a long time ago.<\/p>\n So there you have it:\u00a0 The CG clone engine story.\u00a0 The ultimate ubiquitous motorcycle engine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ubiquitous.\u00a0 I love that word. The dictionary tells us it means existing or being everywhere, especially at the same time, and folks, that pretty much summarizes the Honda CG clone engine. I first heard the term used by a Harley dealer when he was describing that little thumper, and did he ever get it right. … Continue reading “The most ubiquitous engine in the world…”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[235,232,89,280],"tags":[368,367],"class_list":["post-1361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amazon","category-dream-bike","category-motorcycle-adventure-ride","category-wild-conjecture","tag-cg-clone","tag-cg-engine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1361"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10522,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1361\/revisions\/10522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}