The refined Honda CB500F
The price of Honda’s commuterbike might raise eyebrows, but its added smoothness could settle your nerves, reports Paul Owen.
There are some 200 changes to the latest version of the Honda CB500F that differentiate it from the original Thai-made Honda parallel-twin street bike, introduced three years ago. Most of the changes are relatively minor ones, leaving the price rise the most significant of all.
The cost of the model rises from $11,495 to $12,295, which lifts Honda’s likeable commuter/ learner machine into dangerous pricing territory inhabited by higher-performing 650cc twins like the Suzuki SV650 and the Yamaha MT-07.
These are two price position rivals that possess dynamic power-to-weight ratios of more than 140kW/tonne. Contrast this to the Cee-Bee’s 128kW/tonne, and you might think that Honda has bought a scalpel to a market segment that is more of a sword fight. However cubic capacity isn’t everything when it comes to motorcycles, and the bettermannered CB500F should have stronger appeal to those who value refinement ahead of speed.
All of the 200 changes lift both the quality of the bike and the way it rides in crucial areas. The 35kW/43Nm fuel-injected twin maintains its original power and force outputs while now using less juice. The six gears now slot with added precision while a better clutch makes take-offs smoother. The front suspension gets preload adjustment to match the spring tension adjustment at the back, and the superb control of the spring movements by the damping will make the MT and the SV feel undercooked.
There’s now a hinged fuel cap and you no longer have to find a place for it on the forecourt as you fuel the CB-F up. The new LED lights shine brighter and further than before.
Best of all, the CB500F now has more sharply-tailored bodywork that establishes an identity for the bike instead of encouraging it to blend into its surroundings.
Honda could have gone further with this upgrade. The revised instrument display doesn’t include a gear ratio indicator – something that learners especially would appreciate. The stubbier new exhaust looks great, but the sound coming out of it doesn’t exactly inspire. With Suzuki offering a V-twin at this price point, and Yamaha offering a 270-degree cranked parallel-twin that sounds like a V-twin, it would have made sense for Honda to do something about the bland evenlyspaced bangs of their 180-degree crankshaft twin. It sounds just like the CB350 did back in 1974 – more a honey-throated Nana Mouskouri than a whisky-ravaged Janis Joplin.
Still, that even-bang crankshaft is one of the promoters of the exceptionally-smooth riding demeanour of the Honda 500 twin, along with the counter-balance shaft that rotates in the opposite direction of the crank to further smooth out the pulses.
The 471cc Honda twin is also only slightly over-square in its bore and stroke dimensions (67.0mm x 66.8mm) where most motorcycle motors opt for fatter piston diameters and shorter strokes. This helps boost the bottom-end performance of the 500, and makes it more rideable at everyday speeds than many of its higher-performing competitors. From idle to redline, the 500 is as smooth as possum fur, building its power and torque in a highly progressive manner. The cost of ownership is hardly a taxing one, whether measured by what you spend or the energy you consume when riding such a stress-free bike.
Service intervals are every 24,000km, and the valve clearances can be adjusted without removing the camshafts, further reducing labour costs. If ridden in the manner of most commuters/ learners, the 500 evidently returns 100 kilometres of travel at the price of burning 3.4 litres of fuel. With the larger 16.7 litre tank of the latest model, there’s the potential to ride more than 400km between fuel stops. As someone who tended to keep the motor spinning in the upper third of the rev range, my fuel use averaged 4.3-litres/100km, still enough to get more than 350km petrol between bowser appointments.
There’s a $500 price difference between the CB-F and its betterdressed sibling model, the CBR500R. So, it’s worth trying both before signing the sales agreement for either, as there is a noticeable difference in the way the two bikes handle.
The fairing of the R adds a further 4kg, and most of this weight increase is carried by the front tyre. The lower, narrower handlebars of the CBR also slow the initial leaning over of the bike into corners, and the F is the more agile of the two Honda 500s in the first phase of cornering. However, mid-corner, the CBR feels more settled, and it holds its line better when getting on the power for the corner exit, where the lighter front end of the CB-F is more prone to running wide.
Of course, that position would soon get reversed if buying a Honda 500 simply to commute on, as the more upright riding position of the F would get the nod for urban use.
There would still be that vexing SV vs MT vs CB conundrum to solve however. Can refinement really be a replacement for displacement?