CBX Racing

CBXs, new bikes, old bikes, cars, trucks, general chat, off topic, this is the place to post it.
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Syscrush
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Re: CBX Racing

Post by Syscrush »

Warwick Biggs wrote:
Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:53 am
Did I do that?
No, I meant the phenomenon you're describing of people walking up and telling you what they think of our bikes and/or what we should do with them. "My cousin's buddy had one with a TURBO KIT on it - you should do that!!!" "If I had one of these I'd put a 330 tire on the back!" :lol:
Phil in Toronto
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Pics of Perry, my '79.

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Re: CBX Racing

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The best way to share video is by posting it to YouTube, then you can embed it directly in your post with the tags:

[youtube] put the URL here, but with an http prefix instead of https [/youtube]

That lets you embed videos like this:

Phil in Toronto
A cool guy deserves a cool bike, a dork needs a cool bike...
Pics of Perry, my '79.

Warwick Biggs
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Re: CBX Racing

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Thanks Phil, I'll try it when I have some time.

As for pontifications, you are off the hook but whenever I see that term it reminds me of an event back in the early 60's. It was summer and my parent's place overlooked a popular beach that was packed with cars, people, dogs, umbrellas, etc when I noticed a commotion further up the beach. As it grew closer I could see a large low car (it turned out to be an open pink Cadillac) with somebody standing tall in the back surrounded by a crowd that was moving at the same slow pace as the vehicle.

The person in the back was very tall, robed in white and carmine, his height exagerated by a mitre hat and he appeared to be sprinkling water and blessing the crowd. It was Phil Nunn-Smith, a well known Oz female impersonator and member of Les Girls cabaret act. He was literally pontificating and that was in the era when we had much stricter sacrilege laws in Oz but also a reforming Pope in JP the VI.

I thought it was striking and funny and the people on the beach seemed to think so too. I wonder how it would go down today with all the evangelicals?

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Re: CBX Racing

Post by Rick Pope »

Well, I can tell you that THIS Pope would laugh as well. Can't speak for the others.....
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Re: CBX Racing

Post by daves79x »

I think you misunderstand evangelicals, but this is way off-topic, as we privately discussed before.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Still off topic but relevant to my racing here is a pic of my last road bike and the proud new owner. The BM was barely run in after 14 years or ownership. Since the stroke I rarely do long trips anymore and find the weight (even of a twin) too much to handle comfortably.

Still, sorry to see such a nice bike go and the end of an era is always a bit sad. Now attention has to return to my racers.
The Lump needs another session on the dyno to clean up the top end and the 400 needs a new set of pistons and a re-bore.
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Re: CBX Racing

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The CBX is under the sheets, drained of it's vital bodily fluids and hopefully awaiting a dyno appointment closer to the championships in October.

Meanwhile I've been tossing up whether to acquire a low mileage NC35 just for the donor motor which is more or less the same as the NC30 or else to rebore/rehone my existing 400 and maybe install a 444 kit. Unfortunately, Cosworth pistons for the latter are sold out (if anybody knows of any left please toss me a line) altho' there are still slightly heavier 13:1 58 mm JE pistons available that would necessitate limiting maximum revs by 500 rpm. Probably still worth it for the extra grunt plus some certainty as the NC35 is an unknown quantity.

Here is a pic of my existing spare NC30 naked. The motor is coming out so that I can inspect the barrels. If they are OK I can have them machined in readiness for quickly swapping a new big bore kit into my race bike. As you can see, there is not a lot to it once the wheels and incidentals come off. An RC30 750 will slot into that frame if anyone has one kicking around looking for a new home and it may even be possible to wrangle a 750 VF Interceptor engine in for a hybrid. The NC30 was a real weapon and sold in Japan for not much less coin than it's iconic 750 sibling. Fitting a bigger motor with HRC mods would transform it into a great race replica.

In the background of the pic is my gixxer track bike. Upon investigation I discovered that in my earlier ham fisted efforts at chasing ground clearance I had dropped the forks over 8 mm from stock which explained why I had to work so hard to get it to go quickly and why it was pushing wide. A simpler and more sensible expedient was to cut a hole out of the belly pan where it was scraping (there was nothing behind it anymore after removal of the cat) and put the forks back to where they should be. Apparently all 750's have the ground clearance problem but it is not an issue on road bikes that don't have the extreme angles of lean that race slicks allow.

I will have it back out on the track this weekend to see just how quickly it can go now.
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Re: CBX Racing

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Another interesting bit of lesser known Honda trivia is that single sided banana swingarm that you can see in the pic. It has a tiny HondaFrance/ELF label on it referring to the interesting development partnership between Honda and ELF France's chief engineer, Francois Guiter thru' the '70's that culminated during the 80's in a slew of revolutionary patents in Formula 1 and motorcycle racing.

Apart from the well known hub centre steering that resulted was the design that Honda called the Pro-Arm; a single sided swingarm of unique alloy manufacture. This was long b4 Ducati or any of the other factories employed it and a logical albeit radical development of the Prolink first featured on the B model CBX. The Pro-Arm was actually developed from Superbike racing mainly by multi-Australian Superbike champion Malcolm Campbell and it is a lovely piece of engineering and a very trick aspect of the NC/RC30.

In 30 years Honda had travelled a lengthy path of innovation from their first Honda 4 that came fitted with an Earles link front end and knobbly tyres for racing around a Japanese volcano called Asama.

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Re: CBX Racing

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A quick correction. Monsieur Guiter was ELF's marketing guru who put the deal with Honda together. The engineer behind the actual designs was Andre de Cortanze.

Malcolm 'Wally' Campbell was a Tasmanian and contemporary of Wayne Gardner's in the GP's and World Superbikes and still races in our historics. I'm hoping to see him at the championships in October.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Here is Wally on an RC30...
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Re: CBX Racing

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The years come and go, but the RC30 keeps looking amazing to me.

And since you mentioned ELF... This bike still looks so radical to me that it's hard to wrap my brain around the fact that it was running around tracks when CBX's were still being mass-produced:

Image

https://www.bikeexif.com/elf-honda
Phil in Toronto
A cool guy deserves a cool bike, a dork needs a cool bike...
Pics of Perry, my '79.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Another piece of Oz bike development trivia. A guy from Mount Gambier whose name was also Campbell (none of the speedy Campbells seem to be related) was amongst the first to mate 2 Yamaha TR2350 twins into a 4 cylinder with separate contra rotating cranks and exposed primary chain. When Yamaha released their first TZ700 4 cylinder 2 stroke they gave him one of their earliest customer bikes. So I'm told. It is hanging up on display somewhere, which seems a pity.

Altho' it was cold and damp today and I was slithering around on slicks the Suzuki was easily the quickest bike in any of my sessions. In just one of which I missed 5 gear changes due to wet boots so I can only assume others were having similar problems. Some were on full wets. So, the mods worked. So well that I was approached and asked if I would sell the bike. Maybe, but not yet.

Somebody else pointed out that the big hole across the bottom of the belly pan would not pass race scrutineering but this is just a track bike, not a race bike. And at least it drains well. There will always be a quicker modern race bike. Racing the moderns seems to me to be a rather pointless exercise unless you have buckets of money and a dedicated electronics engineer to map every sector of every race track. That is how they do it in modern superbikes and the rider is more or less the crash test dummy.

That's unfair. They do have to be very fit athletes with great ambitions and plenty of resources as well as being talented riders with high pain thresholds and.... a lot of luck. The road is littered with 'could have beens' and what seems to be an endless stream of aspirationals. Tomorrow, like just about everybody else, I'll be watching some of the lucky ones racing at an extraordinary level at Assen in Dutch GP.

That is yet another reason why the CBX is such a satisfying club racer. It is raw and visceral and fun to ride. If I miss a gear or bang it down too far I don't have a slipper clutch to stop the back end locking up and wanting to step out and if it washes out on me when its cranked over too far there is no traction control other than my knee and a shot of adrenalin. And it doesn't sound like any of the other machines out there. My crew always knows where I am on the track when I'm on the CBX without having to search thru' the field of other similar looking and sounding bikes because they can hear the howl of the big 6 anywhere on the track.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Hey Phil, if you think the ELF looks modern, check out this White 2WD electric bike. It has a hollow bell shaped tube running thru' the middle under the rider that acts like a venturi and reputedly gives it a top speed over 400 kph.

https://thedriven.io/2021/06/29/white-d ... sive-duct/

I tried to post a pic of it but the site thru' up an error code saying that the attachment quota had been reached??????

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Re: CBX Racing

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Yeah, I saw that bike this week on BikeEXIF. It's atrocious - I love it.

Image

Phil in Toronto
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Pics of Perry, my '79.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Flashback to how it used to be. Proddie racing at Bathurst in '81. The Arai 500 where Dennis Neil was killed on the bike he developed for Honda; their first real production racer - the CB1100R.

I only recently discovered this footage, a piece of which was actually shot from his bike right before his front wheel fell off (referred to in an earlier post) while leading going up the mountain. This film also shows the conditions in which we raced. Cliffs, armco, concrete walls and 200 mph down Conrod Straight (it was faster than the Mulsanne Straight at Le Mans) on fairly primitive and evil handling superbikes. The commentator says he survived. He didn't.

The winner Greg Pretty (nearly taken out by Neill's wheel) was a fellow Phoenix club mate who went on to found a very successful jet charter business and was only killed a few years ago on the public roads while out for a scratch on his restored K1. The guy who came second, Rob Phillis became an early World Superbike champion and is still a regular in our historic race scene and just as crazy as ever (sorry Rob, but its true!).

I had already retired from racing in 81 and was trying to help rebuild government in Papua New Guinea after the first Bougainville war. You won't see many films like this and it gives a real taste of how wild production racing in Oz was in those halcyon days...

https://www.facebook.com/waldemar.bury. ... 0449467094

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