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Backed off a full rotation seems like a lot to me, but I'm no expert.

Some speculate that the new rules will make it more appealing for someone like BMW to join the fray. Personally, I don't see how the new rules would make it more appealing. The new rules will make it harder to get it right, and more expensive. While banning the ride height devices does reduce costs, the restrictions on fuel would likely offset that. And the tightening of the rules on aero makes that aspect more expensive, generally when you tighten rules on some aspect of it that makes development of that aspect more expensive because you have to put more effort in to getting it right. Fewer rules about an aspect of it allows for it to be easier to get right. Making something harder to get makes it more expensive to get. Same thing with the rules reducing the number of engines, that makes it more expensive, not less expensive. Very little in the new rules package makes it less expensive to field a bike. As to Marc Marquez, only time will tell. Nothing is sure yet. That said, I would be surprised to see Ducati sign him to the factory seat. That would surely upset their apple cart. Just having him on the Gresini team has already cost them some precious championship points. More concerning is the statement by Lin Jarvis that there will be a second pair of factory Yamahas on the grid next year. I wonder who is drawing that short straw. And it will make the seat available even more rare as that will basically take two competitive seats out and replace them with a pair of seats on a Yamaha. So, two good seats will become two field fillers. Fewer good seats will be on the grid next year if what Jarvis said is true. Gresini seems like one of the possible options to run Yamahas.

I'm still waiting for my tires to arrive, but last night I seated each dowel; it was fairly straight forward. I measured each to assure same starting threads, then clockwise rotated each evenly, one side then the other; back and forth, back and forth. When one eventually seated, I backed it off one full turn, and matched the other. As it sits now, one side is one full rotation from seated, and the other is a little less than one full rotation. It seems to me, there is a bit of acceptable variance, and I should be well within. Once I mount the tires, I'll bounce it a bit and see what it looks like, listen for any concerns. Hopefully, that should do it. Thanks for the advice.

I don't know if it is just gossip, but BMW is rumored to maybe, possibly, be interested to get into MotoGP in 2027; the current objective remaining to win the WSBK title this year. Joining in 2027 makes sense, because on paper, everyone is starting from scratch. But if looking at the details, it is not as easy as to put a 850cc engine in a frame. Honda and Yamaha are illustrating the struggle today. Even the mighty BMW may not be enough to get a jump start. 2027 is far away, and I am looking forward to seeing what is going to happen at Le Mans this weekend. What Marquez has shown at Jerez de la Frontera bids well for the next races. It's now obvious that he is looking for a seat in the Ducati factory garage. Will that happen? Ducati's pre-season declaration they were not interested to contract Marquez' services is most likely obsolete.

The advice I got from the CBX club, is to do the top end myself; if not, I would be better off purchasing a CBX that does not require opening the engine first hand. Even if I think that I am technically able to do it, I do not have the setup to be able to take up such a task. Doing very simple housekeeping on the V11 is already strenuous enough, owing to the temperature and humidity. 10 minutes of work, and you are completely drenched in perspiration. I can't leave the engine in pieces lying around, when I already have no space in my garage. You need an elevator table, some kind of crane to lower the engine, a bench with a vice and tools. I have none of that. I am going to check with the mechanic I found, if I help him, maybe he can lower his hourly rate.

My first 'big bike' was a '72 non-combat commando. I bought it Christmas 1981, for $350. After getting it running (I don't say tuned, because I was still completely ignorant) first thing I did was learn how to burn out in a circle like in Mad Max. Then, February 27, I and an equally stupid but better equipped friend left Detroit for Daytona. We rode about 30 miles, stopped at his parents' place, where I discovered only 2 of the 6 cradle studs holding the driveline in the frame remained. Fortunately, the marine hardware had exactly what was needed, in stainless steel so expensive it cost near what I paid for the bike. Then it rained from Toledo to Macon, Georgia. Took us 3 days to get there, but the bike ran flawlessly the entire time- discounting discovering that the reserve tube was missing from the petcock on I-75 in the bottom of Cincinnati, forcing a half mile push uphill to the previous exit. My 'snowmobile' suit turned out not to be waterproof, and the blue die stuck to me and I was a Smurf for a week. I remember blasting into Chattanooga sliding both ends in the rain at about 70mph, giving no shits about my safety; a hospital would be warm and dry and I was willing to make that trade. This trip was ten years dead before I could tell the story and laugh. So we make it past Atlanta, the temperature went up to about 55* and the rain stopped. My friend was on a '75 BMW R75/5 which had the precise same gearing as the Norton; the harmony next to each other was beautiful, and finally the trip was fun. On the Macon bypass, at 1 in the morning, at 55mph, I heard and felt a bang and my left leg was hit by something, then very hot and wet. I thought the timing chain had broken and cut my leg; when the State Trooper stopped with his flashlight, he found a hole in the cases big enough to stick the head in. That's when I discovered that Norton used aluminum conrods... I took my license plate, packed what I could in my buddy's panniers, left the key in it and left it against the guardrail never to be seen again. The trip home from Daytona was worse, but that's another story. Then there's that '70 Fastback in buckets on my garage shelf, waiting to redeem the Norton name.

I did. Actually, I knew of them a long time before I came across this particular CBX. https://www.cbxclub.fr/ They balked at the 175/hr labor price, for a guy who isn't even a CBX specialist. I don't know what is the given rate for mechanics at dealerships; 100/hr? I am looking for alternatives.

Now has MOT, replacing engine oil and brake fluid this weekend

Carefully watching this thread...

Locally? Dystopian Downunder substack and Aussie17 #1 by a country mile? Ex- Pfizer VP Mike Yeadon

When I was a youngster I couldn't afford a car and the only motorbikes I could afford were old pieces of Pommy dross because by the mid nineteen seventies everybody with half a brain in the UK realised they were utter shite and they were therefore almost valueless. Sure we used to talk about 'Jap Crap' but that was because like all young men we were stupid automata whose every waking thought was driven by our penises. It didn't stop anyone who could afford it buying a Japanese bike though because they were just superior in just about every way! OK, so they didn't handle as well but that was simply because the crappy British junk didn't produce enough power to tug the skin off a rice pudding! Never mind over tax its frame! They all had shite brakes and the first thing you did with any Japanese motorbike was put new tyres on it! Back then all Japanese bikes had Bridgestones as OE and Bridgestone seemed to have developed a compound that has no grip but the wear properties of granite! Riding on them was like riding on something carved out of a Cairngorm, only slippery! My first real motorbike was a BSA A10 with a huge Watsonia sidecar on it. There was an anomaly in the road rules that meant you could ride a bike of any capacity if it had a chair attached. I had been forbidden by my parents to get a motorbike so it had to live at a mates place and I lived in perpetual fear that I'd be seen by my father who was a GP when he was out on his rounds, (These were the days when doctors still made home visits to people who weren't actually dying!). It also was the reason I got into mechanics as I certainly couldn't afford to have anyone else work on it so I had to teach myself how to maintain it, badly, but I never managed to do anything that actually killed me! Over the next few years I went through a load of other old shite. In fact anything that came my way that would actually propel itself down the road, no matter how wonkily, with me on board. I even had an Ariel 'Bleeder' at one point a bike that combined a startling amount of threadbare ugliness with a two stroke motor of profound lack of both performance and reliability! Utterly loathsome. I even at one point picked up a Ducati 350 MkIII valve spring model at one point. The only Ducati I ever owned it was unspeakably horrid as well. I somehow managed to scavenge a Desmo head for it from some weasly little spiv in Huntingdon, rebored it, ran it in super carefully and the first time I gave it 'The Berries' down the Sawston bypass it blew the crank out of the bottom of the cases. The only salvageable part of the whole motor was the bloody Desmo head! I sold it, and the cycleparts, back to the spiv who smirked and gave me less than I'd given him for the head. Bastard. Anyway, that gave me a lifetimes loathing for Ducatis that remains with me to this day! I returned to riding shitty Pommy bikes but by the early eighties I'd learnt enough to be dangerous and my last foray was with my little Triumph T500. It rolled off the production line the same year I did but over the, in hindsight, few years I had it I hotted it up to way over Daytona spec and it was, for what it was, a bit of a weapon. It would give GPz 550's a run in the traffic light GP but, because the little head was still doing the thinking, all the effort went into making it GO and none into making it STOP so it still had the single leading show front brake that wouldn't lock the front wheel even in the wet! It was a f*cking death trap! I have no idea how I survived it! Along the way I had one of my favourite bikes of all time. A Jawa 350 with a Velorex chair. What a wonderful thing that was! And a revelation! Unlike the Triumph which would gleefully 'Nom-Nom-Nom' a timing side main bush every 5-6,000 miles the Gentle Jawa was stone axe reliable, had brakes that worked and would carry me, the girlfriend and a mate and all our camping gear down to Devon for the weekend AND get us back to London afterwards. Soon after I met Jude in '83 and wooed her by taking her to Paris in the spring on the Triumph, (Which for once didn't break down!) I decided enough was enough. Doing complete engine rebuilds every 5-6,000 miles had whiskers on it so I looked around for something else that wasn't a total nail. A few weeks later an ad popped up for a Moto Guzzi V50-II. A brand I knew nothing about but a bit of research said it was a pushrod twin so I knew it would be simple and it had, 'Gasp!' Shaft drive! It was also very cheap. I found out why when I when to look at it. The then owner was even more youthful and obviously feckless than me! He'd rattle canned the whole bike black! Everything! Forks, brake rotors, tyres, the lot! What a knob! But it was cheap so I took it away, scraped the paint off it and proceeded to thrash it mercilessly for a year or two and it never went wrong! I sold it when I went to Oz with Jude in '83 and when we returned at the end of 84 I used a small inheritance I'd been left by an aunt I ended up buying an SP 1000 that I owned for twenty years and took with me when I emigrated to Oz in '88. After going Italian I never looked back. Those Pommy bikes of the post war years had only one redeeming feature. They taught you how to wield a spanner! Why? Because you had to. The odds of you getting anywhere without being stranded or run over when you sputtered to a halt in the pouring rain, at the bottom of a hill, in the dark were very high. But unless you were riding on a day that didn't end in a Y that was what was going to happen. Dear god they were awful! Many people forget that and view the past as halcyon days to be viewed through rose tinted specs but the reality was much harsher. The only 'Good' thing about the 'Good Old Days' is that they are gone and anyone who says otherwise needs a 'slap up the head'! Bugger Norton! I fart wetly and lavishly at them, with pinpoint accuracy!

You have never been in a love/hate relationship until you have owned a British motorcycle .

That is because he has air time and has to say somethin' . Lok at H-D , their forks are/were made by Showa , or whoever is the low bidder is now .

Another thought: I'm not all that rapt about the tyres in the photos. The profile looks good, but... This is them: https://www.bridgestonemotorcycletires.com/en-us/product-results/spitfire-s11# The blurb seems to be biased towards "cool" more than performance. And H-rated. Top speed 210 km/h according to here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_code#Speed_rating and the bike can allegedly do about 220 km/h according to here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_CBX and here https://www.motorcyclespecs.co.za/model/Honda/honda_cbx1000_79.html Ok, you're not going to be hammering something like a CBX at top speed all the time, but still, the tyres are slightly underrated for the bike. It would be interesting to know if the load-rating is appropriate, particularly in respect to the hot conditions you have in Texas.

G'day. I also had a mate with one and got to ride it back in the 80's. His one is still going strong too I believe. Mate there is a thriving owners club here in Oz but also very active clubs for them overseas so maybe contact them for advice. From what I know they are or can be EXPENSIVE to restore and like anything have their foibles so maybe specialised advice may save you $ ?? Try CBX world and ICOA both seem USA centric? Cheers

Ok, so maybe 10k is not too unreasonable, and maybe you can talk him down a bit For what it is worth, I just had a look here on one of the bigger platforms. There were some CBXs on offer. The ones that I might consider start at around €10,000. The highest was a low-mileage, original, very clean from a dealer in Holland for a bit over €22,000

There was an auction in Houston, two weeks ago. There was one CBX 1000 in top shape for sale, it went for 30k. Kaplan cycles had one, 2 weeks ago, but I don't know how much it sold for. Same year, same ugly handlebars, by the way. Once I get into the nitty-gritty of where the owner got it, then I will know.

Seems a lot for a bike that is a bit ratty. Have you looked at the prices that are being asked for a good CBX, assuming there are any at all on offer?

The guy wants 10k, negotiable. Based on his assumption, the valves are the problem of the blue smoke. But there is no certainty to that. But your estimated time to rebuild the top end is actually very helpful. $1400 + spares should bring the total to about 2k. That gives me a base for negotiation. I also saw there is a lot of rust everywhere on that bike. Rust, I should be able to take care of. That mechanic I spoke to has never worked on a CBX 1000 before. I may be able to negotiate his hourly rate, or maybe find somebody else that has experience on a CBX. I asked him that very question this morning, how much to rebuild the top end, and he managed to not answer that question directly. I should see the bike this Sunday.

Seems decent with 1 cylinder low on comp for whatever reason. Looks like the guy who's selling isn't an "engine guy" more a chassis aesthetics guy so isn't prepared to go inside the engine. Your question isn't answerable without knowing what the asking price is. Also you haven't mentioned the mileage believable or not. As for $175/hr labour well that's in the luxury/rich persons bracket isn't it? I had to laugh at the working environment, budget quality tools and cheap old rusty compression tester, working outside in the dirt. Probably best he left the engine alone. I often look at the background more than the item to get an idea of whats on offer. A plus is he hasn't been inside the engine but the reality of old bike restos is if you need to farm out the engine work to someone else the risk is high and your pockets need to be deep unless you are exceedingly lucky. At your mechanics rate i'd estimate a simple top end flex hone job with new rings and valve seat lap and re assemble would be 8 hrs work at least plus parts. So you can see how the costs can blow out if anything else crops up. Phil

I never rode a Hesketh but I do remember on the few occasions I saw one they looked like they needed a wading pool to park in to keep the oil anywhere near them. They were like a colander with a wheel at either end!

Ok, it looks like a Vespa, so it's almost a Guzzi.

My experience with the CBX 1000: a bloke I shared a house with in the early nineties had one. It was in pretty good nick, and I was able to ride it a number of times. My bike at the time was a 1976 Kawasaki Z900, so as you know what I was comparing to, but I rode a lot of different bikes belonging to various friends at the time, so I wasn't "one-eyed". Incidently, the bloke with the CBX also had a Le Mans 850 III, and it is predominantly his fault (for letting me ride that as well) that I now own Guzzis. Anyway, the CBX is big and heavy, and has a late 70's japanese frame. 'nuff said. And it is an enormous amount of fun. That motor is absolutely fantastic. Although the motor looks enormous, it actually isn't any wider than the Z900 motor. I know this for certain. I measured them. The one in the photos: I reckon you're right about the "buying it as a project". Either he's done a "pimp my ride" on it to turn it over, or he started in on renovating, and has given up for some reason. The photos indicate that he got into the carbs and brakes, not purely cosmetic things, so maybe he really intended to finish it off. If I had the readies to get it finished, I would buy it. I reckon a CBX in good nick must be like hen's teeth, and if you do find one, it is likely to be astronomically priced. I'd be inclined to take the risk. When it is finished, you know what you've got. The risk is that there is something in there that needs doing and might break the bank. But then you might not, and at the end of the day you would have a brilliant bike. EDIT: if you buy it, throw away those stupid handlebars immediately, and put something useful on there. The ones in the photo would undoubtably turn a reasonably sporty bike, according to the standards of the time, into a heavy pig.