CSC Blog

So, how about this?   At the tail end of our Western America Adventure Ride, our good buddy Allen from northern California saw us heading south on US 101 somewhere north of San Francisco.   Allen was so intrigued by the RX3 that he looked us up on the Internet, flew down to Azusa, bought the bike, and rode it home!

Well done, Allen, and best wishes with your new motorcycle!   You are our kind of rider!

I came across this on Facebook…it’s the new S1000RR BMW engine (a cutaway, of course) spinning at a cool 14,200 rpm!

And speaking of rpm, I spent a good chunk of today working on 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM.   It’s fun writing it, and I’m including chapters up front about how CSC came to be, my joining the company, the story behind the original Mustang motorcycle, and how all that led us to Zongshen.   All good stuff, and the book is progressing quickly.   It’s been about three years since I wrote a book, and I had forgotten how much fun it is to burn into a project like this.

It’s hot out here today.   I rode the RX3 yesterday when I went to lunch with the geezers over at the BMW place, and I looked at BMW’s S1000RR motorcycle (the bike with the engine in the YouTube above).   The bike is beautiful and it has nearly 200 hp, but it costs $20,000.    That’s six RX3s.

Anyway, I was going to ride today, but it was just too hot.  I went to the range instead and punched holes in paper a hundred yards downrange with the .30 06 and .300 H&H rifles.  Good times.

There’s a ton of interest in the Good Buddy program, folks.   You can read about it a blog post or two down.   Don’t wait.  It won’t go on too much longer.

…than my good buddy Joe Gresh!

Baja John (on the left) and Ar Jiu Joe Gresh (on the right). Joe has a piece of cheese John gave him for riding for 2 weeks without doing a single burnout.   Alas, we had to take it away a few days later.   It’s a story for another time.

You know from reading the blog that Joe Gresh is the Motorcyclist magazine columnist who rode the entire Western America Adventure Ride with us.   He’s a hell of a writer and an enormously entertaining guy to be around.   Joe Gresh is one of many things that made the ride a lot of fun.

I just read one of Joe’s Cranked columns, and it really hit home.  I think he absolutely nailed it, and I urge you to read this latest posting…

Total Recall: Taking Your Motorcycle Back To the Dealer For a Zip-Tie?

You might be wondering what that Ar Jiu business is all about in the caption above.   You’ll have to buy 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM to find out!  The book is in work now, and I’m having a lot of fun writing it.   I’m going to include a chapter for each portion of the ride, one on the people, and a lot of background info on what was involved in bringing the RX3 to America and changing people’s perceptions of Chinese motorcycles.

That’s it for now.  I’m going to lunch with the geezers today, and I’m riding my RX3 there.    Later, my friends!

For a very limited time, if you and a good buddy each order an RX3 motorcycle and have the bikes shipped to the same location (at the same time), we’ll pay the freight.

Folks, it’s not going to get any better than that, it’s not retroactive, and there’s no guarantee on how long we’re going to run this special (other than that it won’t be for too long).  Depending on where you live, this could be up to $500 in freight avoidance costs on each bike.

You know, the RX3 truly is a world class bike.   Think about what we’ve done so far in the 4 months since we’ve been selling these bikes in America.   We’ve sold more motorcycles than most dealerships do in two or three years.   We did a 1700-mile trip through Baja with 15 of our good buddies.   We just finished a 5000-mile ride around America with 10 bikes, we ran them hard for 18 days straight in temperatures ranging from the mid-30s to well over 100 degrees, and the engines never missed a beat.   Four magazine tests, and four thumbs up.   84 mph.   70+ mpg.   Electric starting.  Luggage.  Engine guards.  Liquid cooling.   6 speeds.  Windshield.   Full instrumentation.  Handlebar-mounted accessories switches and built-in accessories outlets.   300-watt alternator.   Free online maintenance tutorials.  A free service manual with each bike.  Parts availability and customer service that people are bragging about on the Internet.   A complete accessories line.  Yeah, we’re bragging a little bit.  Or maybe not.   Like that guy said…no brag, just fact.

Don’t wait on this one. If you were thinking about buying an RX3, do the right thing and convince one or more of your friends to do the same.  Give us a call at 909 445 0900, but act fast.

My Baja Blaster, the little engine that could, the one that I rode all the way down to Cabo San Lucas and back, is on the block.

To be honest, I don’t ride it any more now that I have my RX3.   I wasn’t sure if I wanted to sell it, and I thought about that a lot on the recent Western America Adventure Ride.   It’s one of the things that happens when you spend hours and days (weeks, actually) on a motorcycle without things to distract your thinking.    Things started moving in that direction a few weeks ago when I noticed several CSC-150 and CSC-250 owners trading their bikes in on a new RX3.     I love the bike; I just don’t ride it.   She’s never missed a beat, she’s never failed to start, and she’s gorgeous.

You know, we’re out of Mustangs, and we get calls for them.   Ryan mentioned that the other day.  Maybe you want one.   This could be that bike.

I have three bikes in my garage (my RX3, my 10-year-old KLR 650, and the Baja Blaster).   That little lipstick red puppy will fire right up, just like she always does, and I’m rolling into the plant on her later this morning.   Steve and Ryan will sell the Baja Blaster for me.   It’s time for someone else to make new history on it.  Me, I’m going to apply whatever I get to my next bike, which most likely will be a TT Special.   If you’re looking for a Mustang with a story to tell, this could be your next bike.

We shipped a bike out for brake testing last week, we have a couple more documents to submit, and then it’s all over except for what we believe will be a short administrative wait.   Folks, we’re predicting we’ll be approved to sell the RX3 in Canada by the end of September (if not sooner).  We’ll keep you posted right here.

One of the three Western America Adventure Ride bikes sold a few minutes ago…the only white one we had.   That didn’t take long!   There are two left now.   You can still choose red, blue, or orange!

That’s what we do.   And we have fun doing it.   We’ll be at the AIMExpo Show in Florida (it’s 15-18 October at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando), and we’ll have few things to show you.   Of course, we’ll have our paradigm-shifting, watershed RX3 motorcycle…the bike we couldn’t kill in Baja, on the Western America Adventure Ride, and more.    It’s set a new standard and it is the bike that is changing the world’s perception of Chinese motorcycles…

And we’ll have a couple of our Special Edition RX3s to show…this one (the BumbleBee) will be sold by the time the show rolls around, but we’ll have more…

We’ll bring a couple of the TT Special test bikes with us…it’s the 250 dual sport we are evaluating right now, and it’s a pretty safe bet we’re going to proceed with type certifying them for the US and Canada…

And one more we’ll have at the AIME show…this is exciting stuff, folks!   When I was in Chongqing a few months ago I was able to ride several exciting new bikes in development, and one of those was the RC3 sports bike!

I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I have more information on all of these, but I can’t share all of it.   And yes, they pay me to do this!

Stay tuned, my friends.

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.

You asked, and here’s the answer:   We are selling three of the RX3s that accompanied us on the Western America Adventure Ride.    Only three, and we have all four colors available (yep, you get to pick your color, unless someone beats you to it).   The price is $2,995.

These bikes are in super condition.   We’ve completely serviced them:   Oil change, filter change, valves adjusted, chain adjusted, all cables lubed and adjusted, and all the rest.   The bikes each have about 5,200 miles on them, and yours truly personally observed their use on every one of these miles.

Don’t wait, folks…if you’re looking for a clean RX3 in “as new” condition, this is it, and these bikes will probably be gone by the weekend.  Give Ryan a call at 909 445 0900.   You know you want to, so do it now.