The TT Special…

I had a good ride on the TT Special a couple of days ago and I’m going out on it again this week.   Folks, the bike is fun.  It’s not an RX3 and it’s not designed for the same mission, but it’s a fun bike nonetheless.  We’re leaning toward bringing the bike to the US.

As you know from reading the blog, we’ve got four of these bikes in the US now…a white one, a copper one, and two black ones with different color TT decals.

As originally delivered by Zongshen to us, the bike was woefully under-geared for the kind of riding I do (which is almost exclusively on the street).   The stock sprocket set is a 15T/46T, and the bike would only hit about 62 mph with that gearing.   My good buddy Gerry put a 17T on the front, and it completely changed the bike’s personality.   The lower gears (first through fourth) were perfect, and I could easily run at 65 mph on the freeway in 5th.   With the 17T countershaft sprocket (and less than 150 miles on the clock, most of them put there by me) the bike would touch 73 mph.   There’s no room for a larger front sprocket, but I could put a smaller sprocket on the back if I wanted to gear the bike even higher.   But I wouldn’t do that yet.   I’d like to try a 16T front sprocket to see if I could get any more top end out of it.   Before all of you would-be motorcycle engineers start writing to me about this, I know that would be a lower overall gear ratio than the 17T (and logic would dictate that it should drop the top end), but sometimes lower overall gearing actually increases the top speed because the engine can get into its power band in top gear.   We experienced this on the Mustangs, and my Z-06 Corvette actually hits its top speed in 5th gear (not 6th) for just that reason.

The engine is a carbureted, counterbalanced, and air-cooled 250cc four stroke.   It’s as smooth as the RX3, but not quite as powerful.  Still, the ride is spirited, and it didn’t feel underpowered at all up on Glendora Ridge Road or on the freeway.  The TT Special has both kick and electric starting.

The transmission is a 5-speed (the RX3, of course, is a 6-speed).   It’s smooth and the spacing on the gears feels about right for me.

The forks are inverted and anodized, and they work well.   When I get more details, I’ll post them.  The swingarm has a monoshock and the shock is adjustable for spring preload.

The seat is comfortable.  I didn’t spend all day on the bike, but on my last ride I was out for a couple of hours and I was fine with it.

At the price we’d sell this bike (nothing definite yet, folks) it wouldn’t face any competition from similar Japanese 250 dual sports (which is funny  in a way, because they’re mostly built in China).  All of the Japanese bikes in this niche sell for $5K to $7K.  The TT Special would undercut those numbers by a huge amount.   The real question for us is how the bike would stack up against other Chinese 250cc bikes.  We think we’d do well, based on our after-sale customer support reputation and the fact that the other Chinese 250s are from fly-by-night suppliers who are basically making copies of the Zongshen 250 that do not have counterbalanced engines, or who offer no after-sale support, or who generally offer either a 30-day warranty or no warranty at all.  The most-frequently-heard concern about Chinese motorcycles is that you can’t get support or parts for them, which is something that 5 minutes on the Internet will convince you that CSC has reversed with the RX3.  We would do the same with the TT Special.

Bringing the bike to the US is no small matter…we have to put it through the EPA and CARB certification process, and that ain’t cheap.   We think the market is there, though, and that’s the direction we’re moving in right now.

If you’d like to weigh in on this, drop me a line at jberk@cscmotorcycles.com and let me know what you’re thinking.   There’s a pretty active discussion going on related to this topic right now on the Chinariders.net forum, too.   That’s a good forum, and the discussions on it are usually founded on accurate information presented by knowledgeable people.  You’ll see the odd comment by one or two people whose parents maybe didn’t do such a good job teaching them manners, but for the most part, ChinaRiders.net is a good forum (and when the keyboard commandos get too far out of line, the mods on ChinaRiders do a good job in showing them the light, or the door).

As always, we’ll keep you posted.