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Honda CBX1000 revival
(by Guy 'Guido' Allen, October 2023)
Fun and games re-awakening
the six
Some months ago we had a sudden
rush of blood to the wallet and bought a 1981 Honda
CBX1000 at a Shannons auction.
There's long been a desire to
add an inline six to the shed and this fit the bill
without being as costly as a first naked model. There
were three iterations of the CBX – one naked and two
faired versions, with both the latter running a Prolink
single shock rear end.
While it was an interesting
flagship, the model line suffered disappointing sales,
to the point where in the USA final versions were being
flogged for whatever the dealers could get.
Comedian and well-known
collector Jay Leno bought one in a fire sale all those
years ago – his first new bike – and still has it. See
the video.
Ours had sat for an unknown
period of time – my suspicion is it was months rather
than years. A few attempts at starting showed it wasn't
about to play, so we took a closer look.
Strip off the seat, tank and
sidecovers and you're confronted with pretty
conventional architecture for the period, albeit with a
lot more going on in the engine department. Mine was
showing signs of fuel leaks, and so we replaced hoses.
The vacuum fuel tap located
centrally under the tank (where you can't get at it
easily) is a notorious weak spot and we bypassed it.
Plus we replaced the manual tap.
With all or at least most of
the old fuel flushed out, we turned our attention to the
spark plugs. The correct range is an 8 in NGK, though
for some reason someone had fitted colder 9-range units.
That was always going to make starting more difficult,
particularly on a cool day in Melbourne. For the time
being we've installed 7s at Mick Hone's suggestion
("You're not racing it, are you?") and see how they go.
I had also been chatting with
Spannerman about this – he's a regular over at InfoMoto.
Rather than hammering the bike's starter and sprag
clutch, and given the size and nature of my fleet, he
suggested it was time to get a set of electric starter
rollers. Good call.
What I ended up with was a
gadget built to order in Australia by a mob
perhaps inevitably called Bike
Starters. The more powerful 2.5kW unit costs
$1260, plus the battery (a car-sized unit which you buy
separately). It turned up promptly, looked very robust
and we set out to give it a go.
Essentially you roll the bike
back into the cradle, and put it in second gear. Sitting
on the machine, you hold the front brake and operate the
starter with a foot switch and ease out the clutch – and
pull it in quickly once you have signs of ignition. In
the case of the CBX it feels a little like you're riding
a hippo on a roller skate, but it's easy enough to
manage.
And yes, we did get ignition,
eventually! It did the usual thing of starting on one or
two, then having others chiming in. I let it run up to
full operating temp before shutting it down.
It started instantly the next
day. However it needs further work to make it sing as it
still sounds and feels pretty ropey.
The next step will be to hand
it over to Gassit
Motorcycles (my local workshop) for a carb
clean-out, brake refresh, roadworthy check and some
fresh rubber, plus they can fit the new exhaust system.
We'll let you know what it's
like once we have the monster registered and on the
road...
See the epic
Classic Two Wheels road test of the first-gen CBX1000
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