CSC Blog

We’re approved in Canada.   That’s great news, and we want to celebrate this achievement by sharing our success with our Canadian friends.   We discussed what we might do for a special introductory offer and the Boss gave me my marching orders a short while ago:

Do it all.  

Folks, for a very short time only, if you live in Canada and you buy a new RX3, here’s the deal:

• We’ll pay the $195 setup fee.   That’s a hell of a deal, and it’s only on RX3 motorcycles we’re selling in Canada.   Check out what the dealers are getting for setup fees on their bikes.   It’s frequently as much as four times what we charge, but it doesn’t matter. We’re paying your RX3 setup fee, but only while this introductory Canada offer lasts.
• We’ll give you 20% off any accessories you add to your new, Canada-bound RX3.   Our accessories prices are already well under what the other kids charge, and we’re going to drop our low prices 20%. Note that this discount is off of our normal accessories price; it does not apply to any of the accessories package deals currently being offered on our website.   Lights, seats, sheepskin seat covers, aluminum bags, 19-inch wheels, knobbies, accessories outlets, heavy duty aluminum skid plates, center stands, and on and on it goes.   It’s all good stuff, too!
• We’ll install any accessories you purchase with your new Canada-bound RX3 at no charge.   Yep, we’re paying for that, too!
• And finally, while this limited time offer lasts, our Canadian friends can use the very successful Buddy Program we ran for a short time in the US.   If you and your good buddies up in Canada order more than one RX3 and they ship to the same location, we will substantially reduce the freight charges!  That’s a savings of potentially hundreds of dollars.

Roll all this up and the savings could easily exceed a thousand bucks.   It won’t ever be this good again.   And this offer won’t last long.   It’s a celebratory offering available only in Canada.   We want to get RX3 motorcycles rolling in Canada and we don’t want to throw money away on advertising.  We’d rather get the ball rolling by passing the savings along to our Canadian friends who know a good thing when they see it, and let our customers do our advertising for us.

Ah, the impending doom sales close….yep, here it is:  This offer won’t last and we’re not announcing how long it will run, but I can guarantee you it won’t be for long.  It will be measured in days, not weeks. And when it’s over, it’s over.  This is your call to action.  And it is your call.

We have all colors in stock.   I’m told orange is the fastest (that’s my bike below), but they are all beautiful.   These bikes are amazing, but I don’t want you to take my word for it.   Check out what RX3 riders are saying on the Internet forums.

If you’re in, please give us a call at 909 445 0900.   But do so quickly.   This won’t last long.

Yep, you read that right…

Meet Xi Zhenzhong (aka “Micro”) who rode his RX3 from the factory in Chongqing all the way to the UK.   You can read the UK story here:

http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/west-yorkshire-news/meet-micro-man-who-wanted-10230146

Good stuff, folks.   These RX3s can go the distance.

We’ve had one or two queries in the last few days about installing the windshield on a new RX3.  Gerry and I thought we’d take a minute to show you how to do that.

For starters, you’ll find it easier to install the windshield if you unbolt the headlight.  You don’t have to disconnect it electrically; you only need to unbolt it and let it hang out of the way on its harness.   The headlight is secured by two 6mm Allen bolts (one on either side of the headlight).   Just remove these and let the headlight hang down.

The windshield is mounted to the windshield bracket with six sets of fasteners.   Each fastener set consists of a rubber grommet, a steel spacer, an Allen bolt, and a shouldered washer.

Insert the grommets in the windshield and put the steel spacer through the grommet with the shoulder facing out (forward) as you see below.

After you’ve done that, position the windshield on the windshield bracket and put the Allen bolts through the steel washer.   The Allen bolt head should face forward (as you see below).

Next, install the shouldered nut on the opposite side of the windshield, as you see below.   You may wish to use a dab of locktite to keep the nut from backing off, although I’ve never seen this happen on any of our motorcycles.

And that’s about it, folks.   If you have any questions, give us a call and we’ll do our best to help you.

I saw an interesting bike on the Cal Poly Pomona campus yesterday…it was a CB550 Honda Four with a hardtail frame, and it had been given the Bobber treatment:

I like that bike.  I don’t know that it’s anything I’d want to own, but I like it anyway.   It’s cool and even though I haven’t met the owner, I’ll bet he’s an interesting guy.   The bike was parked outside the engineering building where I teach, so I’m guessing he’s an engineering student.    He’s going to be a good engineer when he graduates.  I can tell.

5000 Miles At 8000 RPM is doing well.    We’re going to be offering it from CSC in the near term, but in the meantime you can order it directly on Amazon right here.   At one point it was ranked as high as No. 23 in all of the motorcycle books Amazon sells, which was kind of an ego trip for me (not that I need any help in that department).   The online reviews have been good and the emails you folks have sent to me have been much appreciated.

I’m glad you like 5000 Miles At 8000 RPM, folks.  It was a hoot to write.  So much so that I’m thinking about the next book project, and what I think that might be.   I’m thinking about a photo book based on our next CSC RX3 Baja trip or two.

Yep, I’m thinking about two Baja trips…a three-day weekend run down to San Felipe before the end of the year, and our March 2016 trip to see the whales in Scammon’s Lagoon.   The March trip will be either 5 or 6 days, and it will be awesome.   We said we wanted to hold that to 10 riders, and we already have 7 people signed up.   There’s no tour guide fee or any of that nonsense (I work for peanuts, basically).   All you’ll have to pay will be your expenses (the hotels, your meals, and fuel, and the modest fee to go out in the boats to play with the whales).   You’ll need an RX3, of course, but you know you want one, anyway.

So, back to that next book project.  I’m thinking of a coffee table photo book, with photos from everybody who rides with us on the next two Baja runs.   We could arrange for 100% of the royalties to go to charity to keep things simple, and we’d use the best of all of our photos in it.  It would make the trips even more fun, I think.   Think about it.   A great motorcycle.  A great trip.   A grand adventure.   And a great book with your name on the cover!

And that bandwidth thing…folks, the CSC blog is so popular that it’s become hard for even me to sign on.   That’s a good thing.   Thanks for your continuing support and interest in CSC Motorcycles.

For starters, a compilation of a few helmet-cam videos I grabbed last week on our RX3 ride…

The route was a good one…we rode the freeways up to Lytle Creek, then it was over the mountains on a dirt road (Sheep Canyon), up into Wrightwood, and then on around the northern side of the San Gabriels.

Hey, anyone here interested in a Tech Day during one of our upcoming Donuts and Dual Sports Saturdays?   We’d like to have you visit and we’d do a tutorial on whatever aspect of your bike you feel is most relevant.   For starters, we could do a tutorial on replacing your chain, I think, and we might even offer a discount on a new chain if you order one during our Tech Day.  We might stream it as live video on Periscope, too.  It’s just a thought…let us know what you think!

Next topic…I’m up for a weekend ride.  I’m thinking either a two-day journey through Death Valley, or a three-day trip to San Felipe in Baja.   We’d start from the plant in Azusa, and if we do San Felipe, we’d leave early on Friday.   If it’s Death Valley, we’d leave early on a Saturday.   Dates are TBD right now; you folks let me know and I’ll set it up.  Shoot me an email (jberk@cscmotorcycles.com) if you have an interest in a Tech Day, a Death Valley ride, or a quick run to San Felipe.  Or all three!

I mentioned yesterday that I was going to get to the range this morning, and we did.  It was a grand day.   It got hot again here in So Cal, but my buddy Greg and I were on the range early and we beat the heat.   I took my Mini 14 and the mighty M1.  The Mini 14 is a relatively modern rifle based on the old M1 Garand.  Both use a gas-actuated rotary bolt design, and both are, as the old saying goes, good enough for government work.  Actually, both are quite a bit better than just “good enough.”  These are awesome toys.

The Mini 14 uses the diminuitive .223 cartridge (that’s the smaller one you see above), and the old M1 uses the World War I/World War II era .30 06 (that’s the big round you see in the clip on the left).   The .30 06 is a monster, but don’t let the comparative size fool you.   That little .223 is very powerful, too.  I like shooting both of them.

Ah, just a quick post this evening, boys and girls.   I’m firing up the RX3 in a few minutes and heading over to the gym.  Time for another midnight ride.

This first one shows a bit of the new RC3, the sports bike based on the RX3 250cc engine…

And the next one shows a factory rider on the RC3 doing his best Joe Gresh imitation…

Very cool stuff. As always, more to follow…

Quite a day today. The temperature rose up to 103 degrees. In mid-October. It’s hard to believe.   It’s not even still Summer.   We’re into Fall already.  But it sure feels hot enough to be Summer.

Susie and I didn’t get too much done today.  I’ll blame it on the heat and the donuts.  I wanted to get out and ride to the plant in the morning, but you know how Saturdays go.  Susie wanted donuts, so that meant a quick run down to the donut shop, and when I got there 20 people were lined up with the same idea.  Hey, I wasn’t about to go back empty-handed.  Then I got home and put another pot of coffee on to read the papers and before I realized it, one of my riding buddies had sent me a text message telling me he had ridden into the CSC plant and, you know, where was I?   Well, I was too busy taking it easy, and by the time I got that message, it was nearly noon. It was too hot to ride for this old guy, so Susie and I hopped in the car and rolled on over to the shop (with the air conditioner running flat out the whole way).

When we got to the CSC plant, Ryan told me another good buddy had stopped by on an XR 650 (Tom, I’m guessing that was you), and I had missed him, too.  Wow.  I didn’t do too well today.

Gerry and the Service Department sure are staying busy. We’re getting a lot of service work because Gerry and his crew are tops, we’re not out to gouge people, and the word is getting out.   Gerry had a super sleek BMW K-Umpteen-Hundred-Something-or-Other he had just finished servicing, and there was an FZ1 Yamaha with 100,000 miles waiting right behind it for its turn in one of the service bays. Between doing the setups on the new RX3s and the service work on other brands, our motorcycle maestros sure are staying busy back there.

If it sounds like I’m bragging about our Service Department, I guess I am.  I went to the gym late this evening, and I decided I really owed it to the KLR 650 to take her out after Gerry and Lupe worked their magic on that bike. The KLR has never run better. And somehow, they managed to eradicate all of the chalking that normally occurs on the older first-generation KLR body panels. I don’t know what they used to bring the bodywork back, but my 2006 KLR actually looks newer than my 2015 RX3. That’s undoubtedly because I like keeping the RX3 dirty and I am really racking up the miles on it. I’ve had the KLR nearly 10 years and I’ve only been riding the RX3 since April of this year, but I’ve already got nearly as many miles on the RX3 as I do on the KLR.

The ride home from the gym a short while ago was fun. Surface streets all the way, a hot summer evening, and the KLR was chugging right along.  That motorcycle-manufactured summer breeze sure felt good after fighting with the machines in the gym.  There’s something about a motorcycle ride in the evening on a hot day that’s just, well, right.   It felt good.   I’ve had times in my life when I was younger that I’d find myself in those situations and I’d ride until the sun came up.   I love it.   Tonight was like that.

We’re sure eliciting strong reactions from our friends to the north. One of our Canadian fans signed on to buy a new RX3 a few minutes ago (via an email to me, no less) and he’s going to join us on the Baja trip next March. I’m pumped about that, but then I’m always pumped about any motorcycle ride to Baja. It’s going to be grand.  We’ve had several people sign on for our next Baja run already, and if you want to buy an RX3 and ride with us, well…there’s no time like the present.   Give us a call on Monday.   When your buddies are bragging about their latest chrome doodad or a run to the corner burger joint, you’ll be able to casually mention you rode your motorcycle to Baja.   Trust me on this one, folks.  There’s nothing like it.

Roselda, the prettiest Pemex attendant in El Rosario

Another nice thing that happened today was an early morning email from my good buddy Twin Peaks Steve. Steve is doing it right…he and his RX3 headed north on 395 up into the High Sierras a few days ago.   Steve camped on that trip.  It looks like he had a ball.

Steve, your photos are awesome. I am envious (yeah, I know, it’s one of the seven deadlies), but it looks like you are living the life and doing what you are supposed to be doing with your RX3.   Good for you!

Sunday morning (tomorrow, as I write this) is going to be good, too. My good buddy Greg and I are heading out to the rifle range early with our Mosin-Nagants. We want to beat the heat and the crowds, and throw a little lead downrange.  Good times.  Watch for photos. We have a lot of fun with our 90-year-old infantry rifles.  Not as much fun as riding an RX3 in Mexico, but good times nonetheless.

New RX3 motorcycles being prepped for delivery

It’s been hot out here, folks…almost like our summer weather this year.    Here we are, almost in the middle of October, and it was 102 degrees yesterday.   Good surfing weather for us California surfer dudes, I suppose, but not a lot of fun for riding.

Riding in extreme heat can be rough.   We did that on the first day of the Western America Adventure Ride when we rolled across the Mojave Desert in 103-degree weather.   That was rough.   You can’t see or hear the heat in this video, but imagine what it was like for us on that hot afternoon riding into Amboy on the first day of our 5000-mile adventure ride…

The heat notwithstanding, I’ll be on my bike today.  It’s another one of our Donuts and Dual Sports Saturdays, and I’ll roll into the plant this morning on my RX3, which is running like a Swiss watch.

Nope, scratch that…I have a Swiss watch.  My RX3 runs better.

We’ve observed and participated in some lively forum discussions this week.   One was on the Canada Moto Guide online magazine.   We announced the availability of the RX3 in Canada, and that really lit up their forum.   I was scanning through the other articles in that magazine recently, and the typical comment count was maybe one to four comments.   The story about the RX3 elicited 48 comments in the first two days.  One thing about the RX3 and the CSC organization…we sure excite reactions!  Somebody on that forum actually called me a surfer dude because we’re in California (hence my comment above about surfing).  For the record, I’ve never been a surfer.   Not that there’s anything wrong with surfing.   But I thought it was funny.  Me.  A surfer dude.

We also showed up on another interesting forum…the TW200 gathering spot.   The TW200 is a little Yamaha that’s been around forever, and it seems a few of those boys have taken a liking to the RX3.   That discussion quickly ran up to 14 pages of comments.   Interesting stuff.

One thing about our shared interest in motorcycling that we see on nearly any forum…our hobby sure attracts some strong egos!  It’s been said before…motorcycling is an emotional topic, and a motorcycle is an emotional purchase.   The egos and the authoritarian pronouncements pop up in nearly any online motorcycle forum discussion.  The pronouncements (and convictions behind them) are like politics…everyone knows their opinion is the only “right” one.   It’s entertaining.  I always find myself wondering if the people who post on the forums are the same in person.  I think not.

Enough philosophizing…it’s getting light out and I’m firing up the RX3.   Surf’s up, dudes!

Folks, the RX3 is now approved for sale in Canada!

Details are available in our most recent press release, which you can read here:

http://www.prlog.org/12500774-csc-rx3-motorcycle-approved-in-canada.html

For our Canadian friends, if you want to know more, please give us a call at 909 445 0900 or contact us at info@cscmotorcycles.com.