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Sam Brocato is a mechanical masseur, and this 1980 Honda CBX
is his primary patient. It's taken years of painstaking work, a few
bent valves and many lessons learned, but Brocato has developed
this six-cylinder into a beautifully well-rounded, meticulously tuned
motorcycle. Despite its antiseptic appearance, this Honda gets
run hard regularly; Brocato uses southern California dragstrips to
give him the results of his labor in unbiased numbers. In the past
six years this CBX has made over 250 runs in various states of
tune; Brocato held various NHRA and AMA records in Pro-Comp/Gas
and other motorcycle classes. He is one of the most
consistent dragracers we've seen and complements the CBX
perfectly because it too is steady and durable.
"The CBX came from Honda about 95 percent developed, and extracting any extra horsepower isn't easy unless you resort to turbocharging or nitrous-oxide injection," Brocato said. "When the CBX first came out, everyone thought bigger cams would really wake it up, but they didn't. There really isn't one thing that can be done to add a lot of horses to this engine. All the things that work to wake up a GS1100 engine have little effect on the CBX, mainly because the intake ports are so big that the intake flow isn't very high. I wish Honda would have given the engine a little more stroke; that would have increased intake flow, and basic high- performance tuning would have more effect."
Brocato claims the stock six is strong with the exception of the
connecting rods which can fail when the engine is run hard or the
horsepower upped. What does it take to improve the power
characteristics and peak output of a CBX? "About six years and a
lot of patience," Brocato said.
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