best and worst designs

Almost everyone has had issues with a varity of motorcycles. What are the
worst and best designs in the past 25 years? Honda seems to have a
propensity for excessive amounts of wiring connectors is one example.

What about serviceability? Any good war stories? Every manufacturer has
made their share of mistakes.

pierce

 

BMW's electric-assisted brakes come to mind. When simple hydraulics would
have sufficed as on prior year models. Too noisy. Too costly. Too heavy.
Simply, just too much.

B~

 

In 1983 I was riding a 81 CBX, a 6 cylinder bike that, so far, has been
good to me. It sat for nearly 15 years with 20k miles on it. It is now
back on the road and has racked up more miles. It is a reasonable machine
that has never left me stranded. There is a weak point in it and it is the
alternator clutch. The bike seems quite serviceable with no recurring
problems. I think Honda put their best engineers on that project as it was
their flagship. It receiveed a lot of press as it was the quickest and
fastest machine on the planet at the time. It was soon dethroned. By
todays standards it is rather tame. Complaints? The lack of grease
fittings on the rear suspension. You would think that Honda would put
grease fittings on it. Honda seems to avoid grease zerks.

pierce

 

Honda CB500T - one of the worst engines ever built anywhere by anyone.

Anti-dive forks - loads of different solutions to a problem that didn't
reall exist, and none of them worked.

Sixteen-inch front wheels bolted onto bikes not designed for them. Like
Moto Guzzis.

Honda VF750 - under-developed, unreliable.

Yamaha XZ550 - as above.

The list is endless.

 

"Worst" and "best" are very subjective. For example, is a Hayabusa the
"best" motorcycle of the past 25 years? Only if you define "best" as
"fastest", but there are people who would argue thusly.

What is "best" for me probably is not "best" for you. I value pleasant,
comfortable, economical low-maintenance motorcycles rather than the
ultimate in performance and handling. A Ducati may make your "best"
list, but will not make mine because it is a maintenance queen.

Serviceability is one thing that modern Harley-Davidson motorcycles
excell at. The valves adjust themselves, the final drive never needs
lubrication, about all you must do to maintain it is regularly change
the oil and air filter and occasionally the spark plugs. I understand
that they now even use sealed bearings so that you no longer need to
regularly lubricate the wheel bearings. And everything is out there in
the open, easily accessed. By contrast, even the most reliable of the
Japanese makes (Honda) requires final-drive spline lubrication on their
shaft-drive bikes, and don't mention chains to me (maintenance queens
all the way!). And because they bury the mechanicals of their bikes
under tons of plastic to "streamline" them (why that is necessary given
that the fastest anybody would sanely wish to go on American highways is
85mph, eludes me), accessing said mechanicals is an exercise in
disassembling a jigsaw puzzle (to be re-assembled at the end of the
process).

That said, Harley-Davidson motorcycles are far too expensive and lack
many modern amenities (such as, say, modern handling and accelleration).
So they are not for everybody, and I'd be hard-pressed to point at,
say, an Electra-Glide and call it the "best" touring bike ever...

- Elron

 

Hmm.......

Wonder if that is why my Honda CB350 of the mid 60's scored and chewed up
the rockers? I thought it was bizarre when I tore into the bike and saw the
scoring. Almost like someone took a file to the cam and lifters. The cams
were pitted as well, bad casting, but they installed it anyway. The new
parts were perfect in finish. Guess they figgered someone might look at
those. Oh, and that noisy cam chain tensioner (although I cannot say BMW
has done any better years later).

Maybe that's why I steered away from Honda. Seemed like they put the cheap
B-grade stuff into the engine and put the good A-grade stuff out on the
parts shelves.

B~

 

Forgot. BMW's "It never needs lubrication" clutch and driveline splines
of late.

Yeah. Right.

And their R-259 engines didn't *surge* neither....

B~

 

Honda seems to have quite a wide variation of ability in its engineers.

I have a VF700S, which I've done a lot of maintenance and repair on.
Some parts of the bike were brilliant, others were completely moronic.

This past spring, I helped a friend re-street a VF500F. The bike was
brilliant from front to back. The fairing could be easily removed by one
person. The tank was the same way. Etc, etc, etc.

As far as I can tell, Honda had all it's good engineers working on the
VF500F, and had the boss's son-in-law heading up the VF700S project.

Which is too bad--the VF700S has all the features I'd like to get in a
new motorcycle. But no one makes anything like it, possibly because it
was such a dismal failure for Honda.

 

The 1988 Yamaha FZR-1000 was the yardstick by which every other
sportbike chassis was measured by until Honda took the low-mass
approach to sportbikes in 1993 with the CBR-900RR. Nevertheless, it
still took Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki about 12 years to pick up the
gauntlet thrown down by Yamaha's brilliant ExUP exhaust throttling
valve.

Any design to come out of Japan for the last 25 years, no matter how
mediochre the performance really couldn't be called a "bad" design. If
any particular model was particularly unpopular, Honda would just drop
it from the lineup after a year or two, but occasionally riders would
demand its return.

 

Except for the weak crank.

 

Indeed. And Yamaha's two-stroke power-valve has *never* been equalled,
never mind bettered.

 

Heh. The TX750 twin. I'd forgotten that, because they (wisely) never
sold it in the UK.

 

Sigh... that brings back memories... my first "real road bike" was a
650 twin with that wonderful upright two-lunger. It was retro (kind
of a Japanese Triumph) but still very cool, and sounded great. It was
a workhorse, and I don't recall ever having a moment's trouble with
it.

Mark "other than getting passed by faster bikes" Hickey

 

One of the best designs I've seen is the Honda CX series of bikes. I
own a '78 CX500. Granted, they had cam chain tensioner issues the first
year, but the service I got from Honda was first rate. My particular
bike had 10,000 odd miles on it when I took it in for the recall. Honda
ended up putting in a new short block.
The design was what attracted me to the CX in the first place. An
across the frame V twin, shaft drive, liquid cooling, maintenance free
ignition, tubeless tires. All the above in 1978. I could have bought a
new Yamaha XS750D for exactly what I paid for the CX from the same
dealer. I chose the CX instead. And something I've always wondered -
how did that engine rev to 10,000 RPM with pushrods? I thought one of
the reasons for SOHC or DOHC designs was higher engine speeds and less
reiprocating mass in the valvetrain.
Anyway, I racked up 32,000 miles on my CX in 8 years with no problems
whatsoever.
Yeah, it wasn't really fast, it was a little tall and topheavy. But it
got me where I wanted to go.
My $.02.

 

I would not argue. That bike was *years* ahead of its time, and the
amazing thing is that Honda has never tried to make anything in the same
mould; to the same original concept.

 

IIRC, the CX500 was used by the city of Chicago as a replacement for their
aging HD powered trikes. The parking enforcement officers would use them.

pierce

 

And I'll agree as well. I road one for 18 months day-in, day-out as a
courier. The engine did not have a single problem during that time and
I rode it _very_ hard (I was 18-19 at the time). Only problem I had was
a broken sub-frame and that was my fault for carrying way too much in a
rack that was not up to the job.

My boss owned the bike and was nice enough to put a set of Marzocchi
shocks on the back and keep fresh Pirelli Phantoms on it for me. I went
through a few sets, but was able to scrape the footpegs regularly

Brian.

 

The CX500 was an appliance-like motorcycle. I doubt that it ever gave
anybody a hard on...

A Los Angeles-based moto maven once wrote that, if you needed to be
anywhere in the western USA by tomorrow, and you hated to fly, ride a
Yamaha FZR-1000 and you would get there on schedule. I was never in
that much of a hurry.

The third day out of Los Angeles, on a sight-seeing trip through Utah
to Mesa Verde NP in Colorado, I was on my knees beside my shiny new
FZR-1000, trying Pirsigly to apply a little chain lube without benefit
of a centerstand.

A tall seedy-looking local in rather casual old clothes came over and
wanted to know what was wrong, and I told him there was no problem, I
was just oiling the chain.

He asked me what it was like to ride, "All bent over like that?"

I told him it was no problem, I just leaned forward over the tank bag
and
that supported my upper body weight.

He said something about how he didn't think he'd ever need anything so
fancy, claiming that his CX500 got him to work and back. He said that
the handling was a little quirky, between the torque reaction and the
gusty crosswinds out there in western Colorado.

I tried to tell the guy that it didn't matter *what* he rode, all that
mattered was the fact that he did ride a motorcycle and that he didn't
have to make excuses for it.

The ride is the thing, not the machine. The motorcycle's personality
should not dominate the rider's spirit.

Yeah, right. I rode down a winding canyon from Hanksville toward Lake
Powell at 90 mph, screaming in my helmet, the scenery was so awesomely
beautiful, but the motorcycle was in control of my ride, it demanded to
be ridden FAST, I couldn't stop to smell the cactus flowers...

On the way toward Four Corners, a Navajo or Ute gentleman told me that
the soft luggage I had hanging all over the Yamaha was a nice rig for
travelling, but he wanted to know if the wind didn't blow the bike
around a lot. I hadn't encountered really strong crosswinds yet.

Riding south out of Tuba City toward Flagstaff, the steady crosswind
was so strong, it almost ripped my velcro-ed map case off the tank bag.
Some cruiser riders headed home from the Grand Canyon were poking along
at about 45 mph as they crossed the Little Colorado. I think they gave
up and waited for darkness, when the winds would die down.

The ride from Mesa Verde back to Los Angeles only took 14 hours total
on the road, but I did stop overnight. No point in riding to the point
of exhaustion just because the motorcycle never gets tired...

FZR-1000's were once praised for being about 50 to 75 pounds lighter
than Kawasaki's ZX10/11/12 series. Those porkers were called
"sportbikes" in their day, but since the motomags insisted that they
needed something a lot lighter for their racetrack aspirations, FZR's
and the older ZX's are now sometimes referred to as "power bikes".

If you want to beam instantaneously to the horizon a "power bike" is
what you need. Maybe a Hayabusa would get you there.

 

I'd have to agree with your comments and those of the others. I have a '79
CX Custom that stays in the fleet by virtue of its dogged reliability and
butt-ugly charm. Most things on it are repaired easily, valve adjustment is
a breeze, and parts are amazingly available. The cooling system is
pathologically over-designed. There's a smaller rad on my Toyota. There
are examples around with 2 or more hundred thousand miles on them.

But, I find it a bloody nuisance that the engine must be pulled to repair
the (apparently failure prone) stator and the (definitely failure prone when
used with non-silicate-free coolant) water pump seals. Thank god the engine
removes and installs so easily. Oh, and the bloody stupid small tank on the
Custom. Mine goes onto reserve at around 130 km. Why? because the thing
needs another gear or different gear ratios. Pretty tough with a shaft
drive. First gear is so torquey that I actually never use it once i've
warmed up and pulled away. You can pull away from a stop in second or third
if you wish to. Has pretty crappy, inadequate brakes, too, but that's
pretty typical of the vintage, I expect
Not sure if I hate loving it, or love hating it, but its staying with me for
at least another decade. Hell, who would I sell it to?
Brent

 

I have an 81 CX-500 Custom, and ditto the short range tank, but the damned thing
is like the Energizer Bunny, keeps going and going and going...And I can easily
get 50 MPG, which in this day and age is no small thing.

Butt ugly, top heavy as a silicon filled lap dancer, as short legged as a
politicians campaign promise, but dadgummit, there is nothing else like it on
the market today.

Sure wish i had a new one with a bigger tank....