In this episode I take our 1982 Honda CBX for a ride around our test loop.
Oh i need my gloves take we’ll call it take two in our video lingo hello this is me dylan from throttle company i’m standing in the shop we opened about four months ago since july it’s now it’s now november that’s what i was to say we finally just got our next section here well as i trip over this and so we’re doing some current remodeling anyway i’m gonna
This is episode one uh what i’m gonna call in the loop so we have a test ride that we do it’s like three four five miles something like that maybe four miles and uh we’re just gonna go around the loop we’re going to talk about a bike and then that will be the whole episode so i just thought i’d give you a little glance around the shop and the new area that we’re
Literally just just opened today we just finished the floor uh sealing it up so we put the bikes in here this is all royal enfield’s here brand one brand new one that just came out the truck and then over here is customer bikes some of them are ours uh that we’re getting ready to fix up and sell or fix up and ride whatever so anyway what i’ve got today is an
Interesting bike all right hi again like i was starting to say this is episode one of what i’m calling in the loop we’re gonna take our little uh four mile loop that we normally do for test drive it’s got a bunch of twists and a big straightaway we do need to go through a little traffic but every time i’m going to do a unique motorcycle you can see kind of on the
Wall there’s some examples these are our bikes i could ride every one of them at some point and the new royal enfields and customer bikes that are unique that come in but what we’re going to do right now is a bike that is pretty rare not a lot of people have ridden it’s the cbx so this bike is unique because it is a inline six cylinder you see all those exhaust
Pipes there that’s one for each cylinder it’s six cylinders so in 1979 honda came out with the cbx they were getting crazy with the technology six six cylinders six carburetors like it says on the front or on the top of the tank 24 valves so you can do the math that’s four per cylinder they were really getting crazy with the technology this is an 8182 they have
The fairings and the bags these are more the sport touring models so these honda branded bags they disconnect you take them into your 1980s board meeting impress all your friends so you got the awesome 1980s look to it let’s start it up let’s take it around the loop oh i need my gloves take we’ll call it take two okay safety first i know how the comments would
Go if i wrote that without gloves also it’s getting a little cold you got lucky here it’s november 18th here in columbus ohio i probably should have been talking over my cool startup so you can hear this bike it really doesn’t have much of a sound until you get going so you really give it some gas here now full disclosure i’d actually just started these bikes
Are a little cold blooded normally you do need some choke but i had actually just started a little bit earlier you’ve got your big voltage thing right here actually this is a funny thing but this bike goes revs up real high and like i was saying about it being kind of quiet a six cylinder bike is very smooth very quiet and we’ll hear that out on the road but uh
The speedometer only goes to 85 miles an hour that was a big thing in the 80s government got involved and the earlier bikes went i think to 140 and the 81 and 82 we have another 81 that goes to 85 as well uh people were racing i think people were trying to say how fast they could go and well if it only goes to 85 uh then i guess you don’t want to go any faster i
Don’t know so we’re gonna make a right out of here this is my uh business the thought of company vintage motorcycles i am a co-owner with my dad and my girlfriend nicole maybe you saw her in there she also does videos she’s a photographer we all wear many hats and my dad and i have been collecting motorcycles vintage motorcycles for a long time i do all the
Mechanical work i also have another mechanic that works for us named zach he has his own kind of custom shop ratchat customs anyway it’s us the four of us uh probably with the new expansion we’ll be adding somebody but we’re a small business and we focus on vintage motorcycles and the new royal enfields and it has been awesome so far so i just thought i’d share
With people some of the unique motorcycles that i get to ride commonly honestly you know sometimes in one day i’ll ride six different motorcycles and uh some of them will be like this just iconic motorcycles that most people have never ridden only ever heard of maybe seen in magazines that kind of thing and we’ve got a couple of those so i don’t know if putting
Up my visor or not we’ll see that after i go to edit this video but typically in a stop light i like to put my visor up even though it might be a little louder so the cbx as you can notice it’s sitting here at idle it’s actually hiding a little bit high i probably should have turned that down but it’s very hard to reach um while i’m actually on the bike it’s way
Under there with the six carburetors all in line um some of the things are hard to get to so anyway it’s not going to hurt anything but you can kind of hear how smooth it is uh of you know 800 rpm lower than this it’s even quieter but this is it has a air suspension you can kind of see how it recommends the air suspension there and that’s what these lines here
Do you fill it up like you normally do like a bike tire and so it has a very smooth very easy to ride just glides down the road and you’ll see that when we get into some turns and stuff here now interestingly uh the honda cbx was introduced in 1979 it was naked it didn’t have this fairing it didn’t have the bags i’m touching the bags but you can’t see that um
Those were just like basically bigger versions of the 750 that was around at the time that came out 10 years earlier and the 81 and 82 are like this like i said earlier they’re the sport touring model and kind of sports touring was very new uh i don’t know i’m not going to say exactly honda invented that because i’m sure someone somewhere will say oh you know a
Kawasaki ltd or something was already there but basically this is the beginning of going fast taking corners well a sport a full-on like high technology sport bike but you could go you know 500 miles in one day and it wouldn’t be too big of a deal so this is really the beginning of that and the position is awesome i don’t know if it’s something about me personally
Uh i’m like six foot one and uh i kind of feel like i have slightly shorter than average legs for my height but this bike just feels perfect for me that the handlebars you can see they kind of reach back to you this is the american model of course and uh in europe the bars are a little lower and you can kind of see my knees i don’t want to get an accident here
As i show you but my knees are tucked in perfectly to where the tank is and where the fenders protect them from the wind the controls are slightly back you know a little sporty position man it is just the perfect riding position i would love to recreate that on a smaller bike because you just feel like this is a big bike uh let’s be honest with that it’s big it
Feels heavy it’s very hard to move around in the garage especially compared to a modern bike this is 1 000 cc so if you do the math on that it’s really about a 750 with those two extra cylinders on it and uh thousand cc’s a hundred horsepower in 1979 that is just crazy uh by today’s numbers those don’t see them those don’t seem that wild but in 1979 this was
Like the king of the road this was about as big as it got and uh it really does feel like that here it’s just like just a big bike i mean harleys were bigger cc wise they were not performance bikes especially in 79. uh we’re still talking about the iron head years the amf stuff and uh other than that you could not buy a triumph this big you’re starting to get
Into that with some of the kawasaki’s or a thousand cc four cylinders but this was a big big motorcycle and it still feels like a big motorcycle but like i said with that air suspension and the riding position i do feel in control we’re gonna take this turn some people always stick out a little bit further here so this is like i said right by the shop uh this is
The test ride if you ever come out and take a test ride with us this is our little route we’ll see if this guy up here turns because i don’t i hate being behind a car because this is a horrible road in a car yeah he’s gonna turn it looks like but on a motorcycle it it just doesn’t get much better honestly especially like pretty much in downtown columbus so you
See 15 miles an hour on the turns and they’ve got these lights i mean they’re not joking around these are these are pretty serious turns but on a motorcycle it’s a fun road on a car kind of annoying all right we’ll give it the beans here and scare this guy so you see a little bit of the just quick revving i mean this thing is just smooth as can be and it’s high
Uh it’s tops out on the rpms at what is it 9 500 about 10 000 you can hear that just perfect note at a really after six thousand seven thousand rpms it just screams uh this maybe you noticed when i was looking at it there but it has six cylinders into two so there’s one exhaust pipe on each side they make some aftermarket exhaust six into one six into six they
Get pretty wild with this thing good brakes it’s disc brakes front and rear dual disc up front and a disc in the rear so that’s three total discs if i cover that a little too quick here’s the straight away when i like to get it so i’ll be quiet during this hopefully that was too uh to everybody’s audio visual satisfaction that thing that’s what it’s meant to do
Is to just put all those six cylinders to work and just scream on the highway this thing feels like it’s going 20 miles an hour it is just about as long legged as a bike can get and that fairing actually i think it makes it feel great uh i don’t know if you could tell the difference between the wind here i’m all the way in the wind here i’m kind of protected and
It just does a great job keeping it off you especially at the higher speeds but this thing is just running about as good as can be just as smooth as can be i keep saying that as can be but anyway pretty pretty low seat here i’ve actually got a corbin seat if you notice my feet flat on the ground and uh it’s easy to control here at these uh at the stop lights now
That we’re warmed up here this thing so like i was saying about those other exhausts people compared to an f1 car you know an f1 car they’ve got multiple cylinders uh and uh you know sometimes they’re v12s which is basically two straight sixes in a row and they will just scream up there so that’s a similar sound there’s something interesting about uh multiples
Of three when it comes to cylinders we’re basically sorry i probably bumped you around there we’re basically talking about uh think about a circle and think about the firing order just being equal like kind of like the mercedes symbol or the peace sign or whatever so if that firing order is completely equally spaced you wind up getting a very va balanced engine
And so multiples of three are going to have that characteristic so we’re talking about a six a three cylinder a six cylinder a 12 cylinder 16 if we i guess 16 isn’t it exactly multiple three but anytime you can add three cylinders in there we’re talking about getting crazy in there and uh and we’re talking about basically naturally counterbalancing so that is
Why this bike is so smooth there’s just basically zero vibration my handlebars feel the road completely i don’t feel any vibration from this engine it’s actually kind of weird if you’re dr if you’re riding with someone who has a louder bike and you have this bike you’re like is it even on did it just stall you know it’s just wild how quiet and how smooth it is
I don’t know what we’re doing here is this guy trying to get back on the road so anyway there are some improvements in 81 and 82 like i said we get the fairings we get the sport touring you know style we also have a pro link they’re also called the pro link suspension uh the rear swing arm is like heavy-duty aluminum and it’s just a real upgraded piece uh so a
Lot of times people call these the pro-link years 81 and 82 and uh you get an idea of the performance that they were really going after and then they discontinued them i don’t think they sold that well with all the bodywork and stuff tastes were changing or whatever but that’s why they’re so rare and they’re so complicated with that four valves per cylinder and
The six carburetors people just it takes a real take some real skill sorry as my visor flips up there it takes some real skill to keep these things on the road uh the carburetors is an all day thing you’ve got to take off all that bodywork you’ve got to take off the exhaust you have to drop the engine down a few inches uh if the the engine is actually the lowest
Part of the frame there’s no frame underneath it you drop the engine down you have to take the car it’s like slide the carburetors out and of course it’s a rack of six all connected it is just wild uh it’s like i said it’s it’s an all-day thing maybe even two days so here we are back at the throttle company uh of i don’t want to be all salesy that’s not the
Point of this video it’s just to tell you what it’s like but uh if you want to come see this bike or any of these other bikes that we have kind of the idea of what we’re trying to do with this place is park museum part store community you know that kind of thing so i want a place where you can check out 30 rare exciting vintage bikes maybe you would never see
Before and they’re all for sale and you can test ride them and we can talk about bikes and we also do service and stuff so a lot of those in there where customer bikes that are in here for carbs and tires everything so uh i appreciate of course everyone anyone who happens to watch this is the very first one so i don’t have like viewers to speak of but anyone
That happens to find this on the internet i really appreciate you taking the time to watch this hopefully i’ve got other ones out there at this point um i really personally love 70s hondas i love 60s triumphs i love everything i love all motorcycles really but those are the uh the years that i really focus on and so we’ll see a lot of that well we uh hopefully
I just think it’s something interesting where people who aren’t gonna know what is it like to ride a 1982 cbx and hopefully i said i shed some light on that in this video so anyway thank you very much for watching hope to see you next time
Transcribed from video
In The Loop | Episode 1 – 1982 Honda CBX By Throttle Company