READER’S RIDE
Steve Mort swaps a frantic R1 for a retro Honda CB1100.
It was a painful admission for a 53-year-old man to make. I finally found that my modified, tuned 2008 Yamaha YZF-R1 was getting a) too uncomfortable and b) too bloody fast for my old bones to bear. Let me tell you a little about myself. I’m a man who has owned bikes all my life, from the day my dad gave me an old Honda Cub to ride on the fields when I was 11, to the present day, when my job as a motorcycle salesman lets me ride loads of bikes, not just the ones in my garage. But something has changed recently. Now, I find myself drawn these days to the more traditionally-styled bikes in the showroom, rather than this year’s latest, fastest, lightest race replicas. We actually sell Royal Enfields, but let’s not get too far down the timetravelling line, eh? So, I read Classic Motorcycle Mechanics every month, and have (for a long while) been reminiscing about the ‘good old days’ when as a fresh faced (spotty) teenager, my bikes were air-cooled Japanese fours, with aftermarket four-into-ones, racy seat units, and invariably ‘ace’ bars – because that all added up to a faster bike, no? About a month ago, I had what could well have been a life-changing experience entirely down to a lack of talent, or an overdose of ambition, or perhaps both. I found myself on the wrong side of the road, at a speed I should probably not admit to. Fortunately nothing was coming the other way, or the consequences for me and more importantly, for an innocent party, would have been disastrous. I had to face one fact – the bike was a bit too good for me, or more accurately I was getting too old for the bike! And yet that teenage dream kept running through my head: what about a big Universal Japanese Motorcycle like I used to own? I couldn’t just get on the classifieds and buy a 1970s bike – I need to run it every day and (mechanically speaking) unlike most of you CMM readers I have hands like feet, so I’d need to have a ‘daily driver’ as my principal vehicle. Working in a bike showroom, the answer came in the form of a trade-in we took in at the end of May: a mint, 6000 mile Honda CB1100A on a 13-plate. Air-cooled? Check. Four cylinder? Check. Will the boss do me a good deal? Well… 10 minutes later, I was the owner of a big white Honda and none of my race-style riding kit would match! While many of you purists will howl and say ‘why didn’t you buy an original CB750 or some-such’, now I have the best of both worlds: a bike that was made three years ago, but looks like the big Jap bikes I wanted when I was a lad. The question is, will it ride like a new bike, or will it be a totally authentic experience, including poor brakes, questionable handling and a propensity to misfire if it even looks like rain? After owning the 1100 for a few months I am really pleased with the bike. The engine is typical Honda: mechanically quiet, and creamy-smooth in terms of power delivery. The bike develops power (about 90bhp, so not too much power) right through the rev-range, although it all tends to be over and done with before it approaches the red line at 8500rpm, and the five-speed gearbox has plenty enough cogs to keep it going forwards at a rate in keeping with a bike of its stately nature. And all five gears select with the minimum of effort and a
satisfying ‘click’. I don’t miss the earth shattering ‘clang’ that used to accompany selecting first gear on my old air-cooled fours. The CB is fitted with combined ABS, which apparently gives you a little bit of back brake when you apply the front and vice-versa with the rear pedal. I don’t notice it, so I’m presuming it is not too intrusive and for an old dog like me, that’s fine. It’s a big, heavy bus, with the steel frame, and old-fashioned engine and cycle parts and it certainly feels a little weighty as you lift it off the stand, but (here comes the cliché), the weight drops away as the wheels turn, and once you’re into second gear, it’s not noticeable even compared to the more ‘modern’ bikes that I still ride at work. The riding position is typically last century, too. Wide, raised bars make anything over 90 a teethgritting, neck-bracing affair, although it is nice to be able to sit on the bike and not fold my legs up under my bum just to fit onto the bike. The steering is pretty much as I remember on my old Honda fours: it’s not a point-and-shoot bike. Corners become a leisurely, sweeping affair, and I feel no desire to either bury my knee in the Tarmac or to hoist the front wheel on exit: it’s more about enjoying the ride (and yes) just being on the bike, with no pressure to be ‘fast’. I’d owned the bike for just three days before my annual pilgrimage to the Isle of Man TT, so, apart from the addition of a Givi flyscreen to take away some of the windblast you get with big, high bars the bike was as standard as Mr Honda intended. It performed brilliantly during my stay, my trips over the mountain were more leisurely, but in no way less fun than the old R1, but did throw up a few points that I’m in the process of addressing: It’s far too quiet, and it didn’t look like ‘my’ bike – or the kind of bike I had back in the day. And nobody stopped to look at it, which just won’t do! A search on the interweb revealed a distinct shortage of sexy bits for the bike within the UK. I believe Honda only imports about 100 per year, so that’s pretty understandable, but Webike in Japan had pages of lovely stuff, and my credit card was – I say was – in reasonably good shape. Delivery is prompt, too, considering the distance! An exhaust was the first thing that needed to be fitted, and Mizuno, whom I thought only made golf clubs, make a four-into-one in steel, painted black, that allows all stands to be retained and access to the oil filter to be kept. It was purchased for a reasonable £500 (ish) including import duty. It also sounds authentically loud and gruff and looks like an old Kerker that I once had on a CB750F2 in the early 1980s. They also provided a Daytona single seat, and a Chic Design rear mudguard colour matched to the side panels which tidies up the back end, err, no end. I’ve also got a front mudguard to match, and a set of bike-specific clip-ons on order, but they are still somewhere on the way as I type. All of the parts so far supplied have fitted straight onto the bike, with no cutting or adjustment, just a bit of fiddling and a lot of bad language and the build quality has been excellent and I’m hoping that the parts in transit will be of a similar standard. The suspension will probably get some attention in due course, as it is a little soft, and the preloadonly adjustable units at both ends could probably use some damping improvement, as all stiffening the ride has done, is (ahem) stiffen the ride, with no actual improvement to the handling. But let’s be fair, I knew I wasn’t buying a race-replica. But it’s getting there. It will sit all day at a ton, although it tends to run out of puff at about 125, which, to be honest, is plenty. Acceleration is acceptable and the torque means that overtaking is accomplished with a