by Victor Van Tress.
Honda has made a lot of really wild motorcycles in many configurations. Yet no matter the design, one thing remained constant – Their reliability. Be it a Turbo Twin, V4, straight 4, straight 5 and straight 6, flat 4 or flat 6.
I however, have only had the straight 6 version, multiplied by four. Yes, I’ve owned 4 CBX bikes, all 1981 variety, for a total mileage of around 400,000 miles. The mileages may not seem that significant over a 44 year period, except for the noteworthy reason that all those miles are in town. In Los Angeles and lane splitting most of the time.
Bike #1 was a Demonstrator (Demo) that I got when I tried to be a salesman. I put in two years on it and left for other adventures. In that time, I managed to put 24,000 miles, and tried to replicate the experience with a Suzuki 550, adding suitcases and a little fairing on it. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that I really wanted a CBX again.
Enter bike #2 which I bought directly from American Honda through a friend who worked there. This is a good point to mention that there were, and still are, some 1981 CBX’s that were donated by American Honda to trade schools because they couldn’t sell them as fast as they could make them. Mine was NOT a school bike and therefore had not been disassembled 10 times before they had 10 miles on them. Occasionally, even today, one can find an extremely low mileage 1981 CBX. My advice? That’s probably a school bike and thus, let the buyer beware.
Sadly #2 met a premature demise as it got hit while parked by a “professional crasher” (Her car had a primed right front fender that was dented before she hit my bike into the ivy). Before that untimely accident, I did get 75,000 miles out of that one.
Enter #3 with 30,000 miles on it. That bike still exists today, but now has 190,000 miles on it. I stopped riding it when it started leaking oil onto both my shoes and I gave it to a friend who said he’d make a new bike out of it. That was many years ago, and nothing has happened on the “make new” front.
Enter #4 with 40,000 miles on it. This is the current CBX and has 145,000 miles. I’m pretty sure #4 will outlast me and I have little desire for anything else.
Victor yours is an interesting story, but I will take umbrage with the first paragraph declaration that Honda’s innovations are always reliable. The 1982 V4 had serious cam wear issues when it first came out and I’m not sure how they resolved that but Honda did end up switching to gear driven cams.
The CBX really grabbed me when it came out in ’79 and I always toyed with the idea of getting one. At one point in the late 80s you could find one of the first iterations without the fairing and saddlebags for maybe $4k and I almost pulled the trigger.
The biggest problem was the Suzuki GS1100 was faster and simpler with a 4 cylinder and better handling and that’s what I ended up with. It never had the presence of the across the frame 6 and the GS is long gone but I probably would still have the CBX, if anything just to look at it.
Cheers
Honda quickly fixed the top end issue on the V-4 bikes but the damage was done: the V-45 engine was branded as unreliable and nothing Honda could do would fix this issue. It is really too bad because the V-4 engines were wonderfully smooth and torquey, too boot. It didn’t help that the 500 cc V-4 had crankshaft failures upon introduction. That too was fixed quickly, but consumers stayed away.
The main reason these failures happened was owners lugging the flexible V-4. For proper lubrication of the top end, it was necessary to keep the revs above 2000.
It could be argued that the Honda V4 cam train issues were not fixed “quickly” – it felt like there was a significant number of years in which Hondas suffered from cam wear and timing chain issues.
To be fair Honda recognised what this was doing to their stellar reliability reputation, and the VFR750 was the result. The introduction of gear-driven cams was seen as an emphatic corporate statement on the topic, and these engines are widely regarded as bullet proof.
I could qualify that as “In my world …… ” I also owner an ST1100, a Transalp. and a NX250
That was an interesting bike to syncronize the carbs on since most carb sticks only have 4. So you had to sync the left 3 carbs, then sync the right 3 then sync both banks.together. I was a factory Honda mechanic in that era.
While in the Army, I bought a 1 year old ’79 CBX from a fellow soldier on orders to Korea. I took a complete lap around the country between duty stations to burn excess leave time I had accumulated. At times I hooked up with other solo bikers. Other times I traveled alone. That CBX was such a wonderful bike – and such a contrast with the Yamaha RD350 I was riding prior to the CBX.
A lot of great memories are associated with that CBX. Not so many good photos though. One thing I recall about the bike was that it chewed through alternator brushes about every 9k miles. The 1st time they went out on me was around Laramie, Wyoming. The CBX being relatively uncommon, the local dealer did not have replacement brushes in stock. One of the dealer mechanics took the brushes from his personal CBX and got me back on the road. Incredible kindness to a traveler that I’m grateful for to this day.
His bike had about 6k miles, so I found a new set of brushes when I hit Seattle. After that I replaced them every 7.5k until I sold the bike. Prior to the CBX, the largest bike I had owned was a Honda 450. As I traveled, fellow riders with 4 cylinder “super bikes” often wanted to switch for a few miles. Coming off the CBX to a 4 cylinder bike it always seemed to me like part of the engine was missing from those 4 cylinder motors.
Thanks to a jackshaft design that kept the bottom end little wider than the top end, the widest part of a CBX really wasn’t much different than the widest part of most 4 cylinder bikes. The difference was the CBX was wider at the top while most other bikes were wider at the bottom. I liked the design. That wide top end was incredibly handy on colder rides up mountain passes. I used the top end width to tuck my legs behind the warm engine.
The CBX may have enjoyed a short period as the fastest stock production bike for 6 months or so. Motorcycle makers were seriously competing for top dog title when the CBX came out, so it wasn’t at the top very long. While I owned it, bikes like the V-Max and others dethroned the CBX. I didn’t care. By then I had just enough maturity to realize the bike was scary fast. The CBX had far more performance than I had riding skills. Nor do I really the CBX as being a particularly good handling bike. My RD350 was much better on the twisties. Lucky I couldn’t afford one when I was 18. If I could, there’s more than a 50-50 chance I wouldn’t be around to write this.
Despite losing its crown as the hottest stock motorcycle, no bike I’ve ever experienced sounded better than a CBX winding out to the red line. It was one of the best mechanical symphonies I’ve ever experienced.
yes sir the sound, like an F1 Ferrari we could actually own.
Nice bikes and worth a lot. Lane splitting is incredibly dangerous… just sayin.
Like the red 505.
I wondered if anybody would spot the Turbo 505. Check this out. I doubt you’ll see this anywhere in the world. And I didn’t look for red, red found me.
Still find that to be one of the most incredible Hondas made. We have one or two that’ll periodically show up at the shop for service work, and yes, we’ll still work on them. In the offseason (preferably February, when we’re dying for work) only, however. Right now we’ve got a thirty day backlog, and it’s current models only.
I’ve always wanted to own one but the opportunity never presented itself.
Amazing bikes, my experience with them was back in the late 80’s. A friend’s brother rode a 79 that he traded back to the dealer for a still crated 82. As a new rider with 75 CB550 he offered to ride with me. I was just to scared I couldn’t keep up.
Hard to believe that at 450,000 miles of lane splitting you never met an open door. I hope your luck continues
I raced Showroom Stock cars for 10 years. driving them to work, to the race track and back from west coast to east coast and back.. Think that’s luck?
Love you story
I finally stopped riding a few months ago, as I had just lost interest. Donated my last two bikes to NPR. But 3 years of showroom stock racing and 50 years of riding, all of it (except out of state touring) in the busy San Francisco Bay Area with many miles of lane splitting, and luck may be a small factor, but it’s mostly skill and judgment. In fact I’d argue that lane splitting adds safety in some ways. About 0.1 miles of that riding was on a friend’s CBX, a pearl white example with the fairing and bags. My daily ride at the time was a 4 cylinder CB900F so the CBX felt wide, but not overwhelming. And smoooooth. I had bad luck with timing chains and tensioners on all of my inline Honda 4’s; how have the CBX’es held up in that regard?
Very interesting! I’ve had 72 bikes so far, mostly Hondas but never a CBX: too complex for me!
Good luck with the lane splitting out there; I remember doing that on the 405 on my PO$ ’57 Triumph Thunderbird 650. I can’t recall ever doing it with any other bike tho, and back here I’m mostly riding backroad two lanes with as many (few?) curves as possible. FUN…and darting deer are the BIGGEST problem! 🙂
Early this morn I was out on my ’07 “semi-moto” Suzuki DR-650 carving curves…yup, completely a street bike with Hi-Po Bridgestone radials on Akront rims. Makes for a very entertaining street bike, but with one LARGE piston!! 🙂 DFO