CBX Racing

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

Post by Warwick Biggs »

Thanks Steve but I've tried email and F/book to no avail. There does not appear to have been any activity on the latter for over 12 months which is why I'm wondering if it has become a dormant site. The last posts were about moving inter-State so perhaps the move is more existential than expected.

I'm aware TIMS does race engines and so will Roly but their prices are high partly because of expensive component parts (particularly rods, cranks and re-sleeving). Hall's advert was interesting because he was offering a full kit at a fraction of those prices. Perhaps it was too good to be true and I don't know anything about Hall other than he advertises race parts for CBX's and he apparently builds CBX engined dragsters.

Slightly off subject but I have just read about Moto Guzzi's extraordinary 1953 500 cc water cooled V8 that weighed roughly half the weight of a CBX engine. It was used to good effect by Oz's first World 500 GP Champion, Keith Campbell to win that title. Keith was later killed in a racing incident but his octogenarian brother George who helped him on the spanners is still around and regularly attends our classic meets where he fields a brace of very fast CZ P3 & Honda CB72 P4 bikes for his son Keith. Keith takes after his namesake uncle, being a diabolically quick, aggressive and stylish racer.

Not that I would ever admit that to him.

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Re: CBX Racing

Post by NobleHops »

I think you should move on from thinking you’ll make headway with Hall.

Preston Marks is in Florida, and if you can get him interested, he might build you a hi performance engine.What about Robinson?
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Tucson, Arizona, USA '80 CBX, sort-of restored :-)

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Re: CBX Racing

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Hi Nils, I have to be careful about what I say in regard to Hugh Robinson. Hugh is still around but keeping a low profile.

Altho' his RPE business site remains listed on the web and he still advertises Chinese made rods for the CBX on e-bay his previous well established machining and tuning business in Bathurst has closed. From what I gather from his public statements he experienced some domestic problems leading to the loss of the business. When I finally made contact some months ago he was reluctant to engage but sounded bitter about what happened to his business and resentful that Roly was now doing my race tuning.

Altho' we've had our differences I don't harbour any ill feelings towards Hugh but Bathurst is half a continent way whereas Roly is only about 500 klms down the road in Melbourne. In reality I have to rely more on myself with tuning in any event because of my relative isolation.

What happened to Hugh is sad for him and unfortunate for the CBX community at large because he had an international presence and a genuine enthusiasm for the big 6's. I hope he can re-group and get back on his feet.

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Re: CBX Racing

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I'm happy to report that Jim Hall has finally responded but in the meantime I'm back talking to Roly about some improvements that he thinks we can make to the motor without busting the bank.

AD Racing shot peened forged CrMo H rods are available as a set for the same price as a single Carillo rod. Not that I don't appreciate the quality of the Carillos but they are just so expensive. These rods can be mated to forged and balanced 68 mm 10.25:1 MTC pistons and a lightened and balanced HRC crank in re-bored liners for a slightly larger capacity of 1170 cc. Roly reckons anything bigger requires re-sleeving and machining the cases at a significantly greater cost.

Chasing the extra 130 ccs out to the 1300 limit that the class rules allow it seems is beyond my limited resources. These relatively modest modifications are unlikely to deliver a huge leap in power but it should be a stronger motor that does not sacrifice reliability for improved drive. Some other mods will be necessary but in theory the increased piston pressure should improve gas flow and revs as will the lighter crank by reducing the gyroscopic effect. Then the bike will need to be tuned on the dyno to take advantage of the mods and the new exhaust. It sounds like a feasible plan. We will see...

Its' not all sitting around prognosticating tho' and I've been bedding in a new set of sintered HH brake pads on the NC30 after sanding the rotors and cleaning up with acetone. The average road rider might not bother with this process but for racing it can make all the difference if done properly. After all, late breaking duels are the easiest way to pass if you can't do it under power.

Provided South Australia doesn't suddenly go into any snap lockdowns I should be able to take it out to the track on Saturday to finish bedding them in at somewhat higher speeds. Something to look forward to at any rate.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Does anybody have any experience with any of these items?

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Re: CBX Racing

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Is anybody reading this blog or am I just talking to myself?

There are some potentially tasty and economical CBX performance modifications described above and nobody has any response???

OK then, stuff the past. Here is the future:-

https://www.energicamotor.com/motoe/#video

Tell me that Marco Melandri's eMoto racer does NOT sound a bit like a CBX. And its' fast. I want one.

And here is my idea for an even better eMoto racer (you heard it here first). A light weight induction motor. The biggest problem with all electric motors in performance applications is weight. In the eMoto racers it means a weight of around 260 kg, almost twice the weight of an ICE MotoGP bike. The reason is all that heavy metal. I mean they are really heavy man! All that copper and iron.

So copper is not the only good conductor of electricity. Crikey, if you can splash a bit of liquid nitrogen around you can make super conductors that power super fast trains. But they are too heavy too. For a bike you need a light weight mobile solution and these days it has to be sustainable. My idea will make your hair stand on end. Yes, literally. It is hair. Hairy motors!

Hair is constituted of keratin. The same material from which feathers are made. It is a biopolymer protein and researchers in Maryland have worked out a process for melting feathers and extruding keratin. Think, just like copper wire but much, much better and sooo light. The poultry industry producers mega tons of waste feathers so the basic ingredients can be found lying around chook pens, barber shops and in fact, everywhere you look.

Nobody has yet thought of using it to make light weight electric motors, until now. Here. Monday 30 August 2021 Warwick Biggs, Copyright.

There.

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Re: CBX Racing

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B4 anybody else says it, I know, its' a hair brained idea but it just might work... Any pun advances?

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Re: CBX Racing

Post by Rick Pope »

Have you been drinking? That idea is so crazy, it makes sense.
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Syscrush
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Re: CBX Racing

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I'm very excited about the future prospects of electric bikes, even if I doubt I'll ever own one. I think we're going to need 1-2 more big leaps in battery & charging tech before it would make sense for me and the way I use a motorcycle. Still exciting to watch and I hope those leaps come sooner than I expect.

Thanks for keeping this thread going, it's something that makes me look forward to Monday mornings, which is quite an achievement!
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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Research in Finland has already led to the development of aramid fibres as a replacement for copper which while being the second most conductive metal after silver is still not a very efficient conductor with something like 45% loss. New carbon nano technology is already in development for electric motors by companies like Teijin but I believe biopolymer 'wire' could be the future of improving electricity transmission, sustainability and reducing weight.

Expect big improvements and technological advances in this field and the demise of the internal combustion engine within the next decade altho' we will still be able to ride our CBX's.

I would be thinking twice about investing in coys that are mining copper altho' they also tend to be the same coys mining gold.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Entropy and the posterior cingulate cortex or the strange connection between keratin and ketamine.

During a pandemic we are all confronted with individual powerlessness in the face of mass contagion.

All we can do to protect ourselves in the short term is to stay home, a form of semi-voluntary home detention. Ultimately we need to make some modifications to our immune system and train our lymphocites to recognise the hostile invader and to defuse it.
In the meantime we are stuck in a kind of limbo and confronted with our worst existential fears. It is not all bad tho’ because we know there is a way out. Simply get vaccinated.

For some there is no way out. My old friend Dallas had developed an early taste for ketamine during his veterinarian studies. Naturally, after a few years of veterinary practice he became a futures trader following stock indices at night and then playing the markets as they opened, trying to stay one step ahead.

During the day he was an easy going somewhat lackadaisical Queenslander. Increasingly tho’ he spent more time alone playing with computer programs and communicating with other nocturnal geeks.

Then after years he emerged from his chrysalis, seemingly happy with a new woman and in the embrace of her mature family. Or, so it seemed. Until he went down to the Wyvenhoe dam where he neatly folded his clothes on the bank and then swam out into the deep, cold waters, never to return.

He had been slowly depleting his new partner’s bank accounts to feed his spiralling drug habit that had returned with a vengeance and he knew the deception was time limited. In his mind it seems, he had no way out.

Deep in our brains is an area known as the posterior cingulate cortex. What neuroscientists believe is the core of our ego, our id, our self awareness. For a long time this self referential characteristic was supposedly what distinguished us from other life forms and made us special. Whole creeds were based upon this conceit. Scientists have now exploded this myth and demonstrated that even birds with brains smaller than a pea also possess this characteristic. We are not so unique after all.

The posterior cingulate cortex is central not just to our nervous system but to our deepest fears of death. The certain knowledge that eventually we will cease to exist and that our fate is no different to any other life form and indeed like most complex systems subject to entropy and decay. That is the basis of all creeds.

So, the moral of this story is to focus on the way out, hot up your system, hop on your sensibly modified CBX and go for a (socially distanced) burn, because life is great.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Last w/e we managed a good track day - sunny and I had a really satisfying dice with one of our young aces.

I have entered the NC30 in the Master of Mac Park historics feature race in 3 weeks time. The CBX is awaiting the engine mods that I foreshadowed earlier - CrMo rods, lightened balanced and super finished HRC crank and high compression pistons. Finally, a proper race engine.

The Master is my Club's blue riband event normally restricted to superbikes, supersports and outfits. This year historics have been included because numbers are expected to be down because of covid and State border restrictions (we are a federation so think 'herding cats'). I did think of entering the GSXR below but even track days on it place a strain on my 70 year old joints because of the phenomenal G forces modern bikes generate. Those hands are a bit arthritic too so I think I'll leave racing modern superbikes to the youngsters.
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Re: CBX Racing

Post by Syscrush »

Will you keep the GSX-R for sharpening skills and having fun on the track?
Phil in Toronto
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Pics of Perry, my '79.

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Re: CBX Racing

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Yes Phil. Less wear and tear on old bikes that deserve a little respect for having survived for as long as they have.

The other problem with the modern bikes is the rate at which they get thru' tyres. I can usually get 3 track days out of a set of slicks but the really fast youngsters need to have sponsors because they will go thru' at least one set of $5-600 slicks every track day. This sort of expense is really beyond the average club racer much less age pensioner like moi.

Yesterday I acquired a spare set of rims fitted with a brand new set of wet tyres for the NC30 from another racer who is converting his bike back to road use. I confess to never having ridden with full wets and I find it hard to believe the corner speed they can carry when the track is really wet. I'm still coming to grips with slicks, much less wets. My brain is still calibrated to the Dunlop K81's we used to use in the early 1970's and it is weird that when I was hit by the stroke it destroyed the part of the brain that controlled my motor functions but left my memory unaffected. That disparity continues to confound me in that it makes some changes harder to manage.

Part of the reason the wets can maintain temperature better than slicks in wet conditions is the chunky tread pattern as you can see from the attached pic. I'm not really looking forward to trying them.

I do need to fit a new set of Battlax slicks for the NC30 so today I will take the opportunity to pull the old tyre and paint the black rim white just to match the front and make the bike look a bit better. It does look fairly scruffy with my daggy fibreglass repairs, drippy painting and lots of scars from crashes. Replacing the stock rear 18" rim was one of my first modifications but 17" rears are now hard to come by and the mis-matched colour has always bugged me for some silly reason. The other alternative is to paint the front black. I'll see what paint I have. Decisions, decisions ....
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Re: CBX Racing

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A little thought tells you that re-painting the wheels on a race bike involves more than colour choice. Tyre warmers typically operate at around 80 degrees C so cheap paints will blister and peel. Race bikes also go thru' tyres at a prodigious rate and tyre changes tend to be a bit 'wham bam' on the rims so the paint has to be robust and avoid chipping.

So ultimately none of my paints that were lying around the workshop were going to cut it and instead of a $4 spray can I ended up buying a $45 two pack with a hardener mix. After stripping off as much of the old black paint as I could and applying an etching paint the follow up white was applied and apart from the odd dribble went on nicely. Now I'm waiting for new tyres. The GSXR will be out for a track day on Saturday week then it too will need tyres and both bikes are due an oil change. $$$

My new CrMo rods for the CBX should arrive soon and then I have to work out how to get the lump over to Roly in Melbourne which is in yet another lockdown. All a bit tentative at the moment and still waiting to see whether we will be able to run the national historic championships or we forfeit and it goes to the banana benders.

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