This article, looking at the American Turbo Pak CBX turbocharging kit,
appeared in Cycle magazine's March 1980 issue.
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Turbo CBX
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What happens when you've found the 11-second CBX and still aren't
satisfied? You turbocharge it - because if some is good and more is
better, too much must be just enough.
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EVERYBODY KNOWS THE HONDA CBX IS fast. But after a while,
maybe you tell yourself a bedtime story: You've adapted to the way
the CBX flattens jowls and unfurls fingers during acceleration. Try
climbing off your stock 24-valver and getting on an American Turbo-
Pak turbocharged CBX, and you'll be dealt a new sensation-alarm.
Even for those used to the straight-line G-forces that today's one-liter
Superbikes can generate, the ATP Honda is breathtaking. Utilizing
"street" muffler baffles and eight-pounds-per-square-inch intake
manifold boost, the six-cylinder will unquestionably put you over
backwards in first, second or third gear; and depending on your
riding ability, the bike can hustle down the quarter-mile in 10 seconds
and rush past the timing clocks at over 140 miles per hour - with
stock tires, gear ratios, handlebars and shock absorbers. Pee Wee
Gleason, American Turbo-Pak's competition rider, took the CBX for a
practice run down Orange County International Raceway's drag strip
in 10.23 seconds at 146.10 miles per hour; Cycle's
tester managed to make a 10.73-second, 138.88 mph warm-up
effort.
Considering that Honda's original CBX handily knocked the high-
performance world right off its axis, the American Turbo-Pak version
may seem like a solution to a problem nobody had. Many riders find
it impossible to use a stock CBX to its full potential; they won't
need a turbo that runs up to 30 mph, faster in the quarter. Obviously,
nobody needs a turbocharged Honda six. Only the most
aggressive techno-philes are likely to own stock CBXs,
and adding an ATP kit to one simply proves one, two or three points:
you race a CBX; you're an incurable hardware junkie; you have
something to prove.
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American Turbo Pak CBX components: modified Rajay turbocharger,
Bendix carburetor, hand-built intake manifold.
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Waste gates, disassembled and complete: a piston, spring and valve allow
governing intake-manifold boost-pressure.
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