CSC Blog

I’m up here in the Bay Area and this afternoon we went into Chinatown for a great lunch.  It’s been exactly one year since our stunning ride across China, and I was missing the great Chinese food we had over there.   San Francisco’s Chinatown is about as close as you can get to the real thing without a 15-hour plane ride, and I sure enjoyed my lunch today.

As we were leaving town, I spotted a white TT250 in amongst a group of parked bikes on New Montgomery Street.  Traffic was too heavy for me to get a photo, but it felt good seeing a CSC bike in the city.  Hey, if it’s yours, drop us a line at info@cscmotorcycles.com!   We’d love to hear from you!

I did have time later in the afternoon to grab a photo of a Moto Guzzi Griso in Palo Alto.   If I was going to get a big bike, this is one I’d give serious consideration.  I don’t know if they are still in production, but this one sure looked good!

This showed up as a Facebook release by Norton in the UK recently:

Norton motorcycles announce ‘Design & Licence’ agreement with Zhongshen manufacturing of Chongqing, China.

Norton and Zhongshen have entered into a 20 year Design and Licence agreement over an all new 650cc twin engine. The 650cc twin engine jointly engineered and developed by Norton and Ricardo has been specifically designed to the requirements of Zhongshen and will be Euro 4 compliant. This enables Zhongshen to meet current and future emissions regulations, clearly an important step for Zhongshen and enables them to continue their phenomenal growth in the global motorcycle market.

The engine and its’ IP developed by Norton is specific and exclusive to Zhongshen and it is expected the engine will be produced under the ‘Zhongshen’ or ‘Cyclone’ brands.

The value of the deal is to remain private, but the initial consideration paid to Norton is in the millions of dollars with an ongoing royalty on each engine produced. The agreement is for a 20 year term, last year Zhongshen produced around 4 million engines.

Norton CEO, Stuart Garner commented; “It’s a great endorsement of our new 650cc engine platform and shows the high level of engineering expertise we have here at Norton. Working with Zhongshen going forwards will enable them to deliver high quality low emission engines compliant to current global standards. The commercialisation of our IP is a key area for Norton and we will be investing the substantial revenue received back into our skills, training and engineering capability, thus ensuring long term sustainability to our British made Norton motorcycles here in the UK.”

Please note; Norton will continue to hand make ALL of its’ own Norton engines here in the UK at its’ Donington Hall factory.

Interesting, but I have not a clue what it all means.  Other than the italics, what you’re reading above is exactly as it appeared on that most authoritative of all sources, Facebook (sarcasm intended), complete with the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors exactly as they appeared on Facebook.

What it sounds like is that Norton sold a 650cc engine design to Zongshen.  I wouldn’t hold my breath on seeing a 650cc engine from Zongshen in the near- or mid-term (nor would I hold my breath, for that matter, on seeing the 450cc RX4 any time soon).   Zongshen is clearly laying the groundwork for larger displacement engines, but as I’ve told everyone, it’s not anything we’re going to see this year or next.  As we learn more, we’ll share it with you here on the CSC blog.

Me?  I’m going to sit back and watch the keyboard commandos speculate on the above.  I’m a bit leery of the report’s accuracy (I have to wonder about a news release that doesn’t even spell Zongshen correctly).  It will be fun to read the inevitable internet forum comments (I’ll add my own pertaining to the engine’s super-deep sump and forward-facing oil filter).  I’ll do that for just a little while, and then I’m going to go for a motorcycle ride.  On my 250cc RX3.

So I was at the Victoria Gardens mall yesterday, and what do you know, there was another Kiehl’s store there.  I had never even heard of Kiehl’s until about a month ago when we were up in Palo Alto.  Kiehl’s is a store that sells skin softening and similar products (which is something I have no interest in whatsoever), but the Palo Alto store had a beautiful classic Indian on display (I did a blog on that one and you can see it here).   Just as was the case in Palo Alto, the Victoria Gardens Kiehl’s had a classic bike on display.  This time it was a highly customized Harley Shovelhead, bobbed and supercharged…

There’s a tiny bit of info on the Internet about the Kiehl’s collection, but there’s obviously more of a story out there on the Kiehl’s bikes.   Let me do a bit of digging around and I’ll see what I can find.   Stay tuned…

Our good buddy Roland is at the Fontana Autoclub Speedway today campaigning his RC3 racebike!   That’s Roland on the right…

Go get ’em, Roland!  We’ll report results as we received them, folks.

I just got back from the rifle range and I’m about to head to the gym on my TT250 (I know, it’s a tough life), but as is my habit I checked my email first.   Hey, guess what?  I had this nice note from our good buddy Carl Mungenast…

Joe:

Newest arrival at the Dave Mungenast Classic Motorcycle Museum.

Here in the Midwest, scrambles and enduro events were the dominant ways to start your competitive experiences!

While not common in the Midwest, this brand ended up in the hands of those who could not afford or tolerate a “Gold Star”!

Thanks for the blog, it’s the best !!!

Carl

The bike Carl was referring to is shown in the photo below…it’s a 1955 Velocette Scrambler!

That’s an awesome addition to an already awesome museum, Carl!  And for those of you who don’t know about the Mungenast Museum, here’s a link!

This was a fun day for me.   It’s been terribly hot here in So Cal, but that’s okay.   I rode over to Brown’s BMW dealership for lunch with the geezers, I had a great lunch with my friends, from there it was over to the reloading store to pick up components for the upcoming milsurp match (that’s going to be on the 13th, Willie, Matt, Fathi, and Duane), and then it was on to the CSC plant.

When I went into the shop, I thought I was seeing double…

That’s Joey on the left (one of Gerry’s service maestros) and Joey’s son Justin on the right.   These two guys could be twins!

I wanted to get a photo of my good buddy Carlos and myself, so I turned the Nikon over to Gerry, but first I took a photo of Gerry and Carlos…

Carlos is another one of our ace service guys, and he does double-duty as a translator when we make our reservations for the CSC Baja rides.   Carlos is fluent in Spanish (I’m not), so he helps me get our Baja trips set up.

Incidentally, we are going to do the 4th Annual CSC Baja Run next March, so if you’re thinking of going, you might want to make the decision now and let us know.   The rides fill up fast and we limit participation to 15 riders (and one of those 15 spots goes to me).

Hey, here’s the photo I mentioned above of Carlos and yours truly…

That’s it for today, folks.   One more quick photo of a stunning RC3 that was in for service, and that’s all for now!

Hey, here’s our very own Willie Woo explaining the new Doubletake mirrors!

These are great mirrors with tremendous adjustability and for a short while only we’re offering free shipping!   The Doubletake mirrors fit on any motorcycle with a 10mm mirror mounting point (which is the standard size mirror mount on nearly all motorcycles).  The new mirrors will be on the CSC website shortly, or you can give us a call at 909 445 0900.

As I always say, we see incredibly interesting bikes at CSC.   Take, for example, this ’59 BMW…

There’s a hell of story here, folks, including the very real possibility that this bike was the inspiration for the original BMW GS.

Stay tuned, my friends…