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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.

I found a CBX 1000, and this is one of the bikes I always dreamed to own. It is not in perfect shape, and the owner says it blows blue smoke. I am thinking about going to look at it. it's red, so it is even more appealing to me. I checked a guy who does work on Honda and BMW's of that era, and he was really enthusiastic about working on a CBX 1000, even if never did. But he said it should not be much different from working on CB750, which he does all the time. However, he is not cheap. $175/hr. Here's the bike, and some photos. If you have some experience with those, please let me have your thoughts. As you can see, I suspect the guy got the bike in a project shape. He did work on it to flip it. I have included the compression test. This was a dry test. He did not do a leak test.

Without a doubt. I've seen and heard one run and ride in the flesh. Impressions? massively overweight, and chunky. Poorly engineered. They had perennial issues with oil leaks from the cam drive covers and an appalling gearbox shifting action that was never really addressed. I learned quickly in the mid 80's from being in Britain and hanging out with the industry people a lesson about the English speaking motorcycle press. They were so parochial in those days you could pretty much dismiss all their opinions on British made or British involved anything. So they pumped this thing up a lot but the reality was disappointing. Bit like those horrid Janus things made in the states now. Phil

I am. I used to dive with contact lenses; I don't recommend. You need to be able to remove your mask underwater, put it back on, and expel the water. You can do it wearing contact lenses by closing your eyes until your mask is dry again. Unless someone knocks your mask off, and then you lose the contact. Later on, they made contacts that you wear and throw away. So it wasn't as big of a deal. As Audiomick correctly said, you can get prescription masks, but they are not as practical. Because the correction is only localized. Also, when you have younger kids, their shortsighted vision evolves a lot.

Es sieht auf jedem Fall stark danach aus. Willkommen zurück hier. Ich habe mich hier mittlerweile ziemlich eingenistet.

It is possible to get diving masks with prescription lenses. May be a bit too much for one trip, though.

Had breakfast every morning with the John Player team that year, NICE. Cheers Tom.

Thanks for the posts. Hawai'i would be wonderful, but this trip has to be closer, quicker, and cheaper. Looks like it will be Coz. One of the kids wears glasses, not contacts, yet, and no desire to wear contacts. Any of yinz nearsighted? Because of magnification, he might be okay without any correction.

Don't think I've seen that colour before..? Looks good. Cheers

It's coming up in two weeks, do not miss this super fun event, one in every major city world-wide! https://www.gentlemansride.com/

Thx for the report! One of these years…