CSC Blog

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.

Our latest video, folks, with a couple of very cool customs at the end…

No, I’m not talking about teaching manners to people on the Internet or getting politicians to remember who they actually work for…I’m talking about the latest Tom Cruise movie.   That would be Mission Impossible:  Rogue Nation.   We saw it yesterday afternoon.

It’s good, and it’s one I’d recommend.

It’s all about product placement (you know, getting your stuff in a movie), and BMW sure did it well in this movie.   Nearly every car was a BMW, and the obligatory motorcycle chase scene used nothing but Beemers (and a lot of them).

We looked into product placement years ago with the CSC Mustangs, but the cost was prohibitive.   It was $300K just to have an agency consider you.   To get your stuff in a major movie like BMW did in this one, I’ll bet they spent something north of $10 million.

I guess it’s coincidental, but I had lunch with the geezers yesterday over at Brown BMW in Pomona and I spent a bit of time looking at the latest BMW models.    They have some nice motorcycles.   All of their bikes are expensive and technology intensive.   Like I’ve been saying for a while now, my days of spending big bucks on bikes are long gone, but I can still look.   And then Susie and I went to the movies.   More BMWs.  It was a BMW kind of day, I guess.

The Mission Impossible franchise has gone beyond James Bond with special effects, martial arts, and the chase scenes in this latest Cruise movie.  There are the usual Hollywood silly things (like sliding off motorcycles wearing no protective gear and walking away from it with not even a scraped knee), but it was entertaining.  The last time I had a departure from controlled flight like some of the ones in the MI chase scene I spent a couple of weeks in the hospital and 6 months recuperating.   But still, the movie was good.   I liked Tom Cruise in it, too.

I’m going to fire up the KLR later today just to get some gas flowing through the carb.   I’m bringing the bike into the plant this week and Steve is going to sell it for me.  I might sell my little CSC 150, too.   I’ve got three bikes in the garage and I only ride the RX3.   And I want to make room for another one that I really enjoy riding…

We’ll be posting more info on the TT Special soon. A few facts up front…it’s a carbureted, air-cooled 250 single with a 5-speed gearbox, it’s older technology than the RX3, it’s not nearly as fast as the RX3, and it’s a lot of fun. We’re not selling these (yet) and we don’t know if we ever will; we just brought a few in on an EPA exemption letter to evaluate them.  We’ve geared ours taller for our kind of riding, and we’re playing around with a few other things on the bikes.   You might let us know what you want in a bike like this, and maybe even tell us what you think it should sell for.

One more thing:  I received a lot of email from you about the book (5000 Miles at 8000 RPM) yesterday and it was 100% positive.  Thanks for all of your inputs (based on those, the book is a go).  I’m starting the book this week and I’ll have it finished in a month.   When Hollywood buys the rights and makes it into a movie, I’m going to insist that Tom Cruise play me (but with appropriate protective riding gear).    We’re going to do all of the chase scenes in Chongqing and Medellin.  I’m going to insist on cameo roles for all of the guys on our Western America Adventure Ride, too.  We’ll get Joe Gresh in the movie for the RX3 burnout scenes.  Justin Herx will play a role equivalent to Q (the equipment specialist) in the James Bond movies (he’s a natural for it, and I can already imagine some of the secret weapons he’ll fashion out of thin gauge stainless steel wire).  My good buddy Hugo will have a lead role (not bigger than my role, of course, but it will be a good one), and his tag line will be “it’s okay, it’s okay.”  And more.

Coming soon, to a movie theatre near you.

During the recent Western America Adventure Ride, in one of my blog posts I mentioned I was considering writing a book on the ride.   It was an offhand comment based on the daily machinations of keeping 10 people pointed in the same direction and trying to hold to a schedule.   I jokingly said the working title would be 5000 Miles at 8000 RPM, which for me is essentially a description of how I spent July 2015.

Since then, I’ve received emails asking me about the book, and I’m leaning toward actually writing the thing.  It would be the story behind the story.  What do you folks think?  Any interest out there?   Email me at jberk@cscmotorcycles.com and let me know…

Tourist trophy racing started in 1907 on the Isle of Man as an event in which folks could use their street bikes.   The TT format evolved into many different racing styles.   The result?   Anything called a TT motorcycle was understood to be a machine focused on performance.   That was especially true when I was a youngster.

Fast forward from 1907 to the 1960s.

Back then, Triumph ruled the streets and the flat tracks.   The 650cc Bonneville was the ultimate ultimate…the big dog of the day.  Oh, I know that there were Beezers and Nortons, and even the XLCH.  But Triumph was the ultimate expression of cool.  You can bring up all the other marques you want, but folks, I was there and I know.  Yes, I know Bart Markel was National No. 1 and he raced a Harley, but that wasn’t a bike you could put on the street.   Gary Nixon was National No. 9, and his bike used an engine based on the Bonneville motor.   Markel’s Harley was a 750 Harley flathead…way different than the 883cc Sportster engine.

The Triumph TT Special.   When I was a teenager, that was a name that riveted your attention.   Like I said, Triumph was the big dog of the day…every motorcycle they built had a little decal on the gas tank that said “World’s Fastest Motorcycle,” and they were. Triumph held the motorcycle land speed record.   Nothing was faster, and nothing was cooler.

Triumph introduced the TT Special in 1964 and built them through 1967.   That photo you see above is a ’66.   The TT Specials had no lights, no battery, no mufflers, and no horn.  (None of the bikes had turn signals in those days.)   They were sold as bikes you could race, but most of them ended up on the street.   The TT Special had swept-in straight pipes that sounded as if the Almighty were speaking directly to you.   Guys bought these, ran Bates lights off the magneto, and put a kid’s bicycle bulb horn on the handlebars to be street legal.  Trust me on this:  Nothing was cooler in the mid-1960s.  Nothing.

When I saw the TT logos on the Zongs you see above, I got excited.   It was as if someone was reaching out to me from 1966.

More to follow, folks…I’m going riding tomorrow on the CSC TT Special.   Maybe I’ll grab some photos…

In my time, we called a hot car or bike that didn’t look like it was fast (but really was) a “sleeper.”   The idea was that you could beat people in a drag race because your car or bike’s appearance was misleading.

The term “sleeper” took on a new meaning for me on the recent Western America Adventure Ride.   Our Chinese visitors had the time change to contend with as well as the prospect of riding hundreds of miles a day in temperatures that ranged from the mid-30s to well over 100 degrees.

Adapting to the time change in traveling from China to the US is far worse than going in the opposite direction.   I know because I’ve done it.   When I go to China, I’m on local time and fully adjusted within 36 hours.  When I go from China to the US, it takes me a good two weeks to get back on US time.   The bottom line is that a few of the Chinese guys never missed an opportunity to grab 40 winks…

And speaking of sleepers, we’ve been playing around with a new product we’re evaluating, including gearing it a tad taller to see what the motor will pull.   It’s awesome.   And it has the signature CSC touches, like a big alternator and integrated accessories switches and outlets.  But I can’t tell you too much more than that…it’s a secret….

More to follow.   I’m going riding.  On the TT Special you see above!

My good buddy Ryan, who continues to dazzle the world with his world-class customer service, received these photos from San Jose Eddie today…

Eddie, your bike is looking good, and you’re using it the way it was intended to be used.   We understand you’re en route to Arizona, and we know you’re having a good time.    Your bike is nicely accessorized, and the photos are awesome.

You know, my good buddy Tommy M. told me about a friend of his who bought a new motorcycle and then asked Tom what was the first thing he should change.   “The little numbers on the odometer,” Tom answered.   Looks like that’s what you’re doing, Eddie.   Ride safe and have fun!

One of the many stops on our Western America Adventure Tour was Devil’s Tower National Park in Wyoming.   Like the entire ride, it was awesome.

Enjoy, my friends….

Our good buddy Rob sent a nice note and these photos to me last night…

Hi, Joe!

Great ride today! I rode with my buddy, Rikki Rockett (yes, THAT Rikki Rockett, the drummer from Poison). That’s his Husqvarna 350, brand new. The pics are from Liona Divide, a favorite trail.

This was my first ride on the RX-3 after adjusting the valves and fitting the Shinko tires. The Cyclone ran fantastic! I think it has a little more top end after the valve adjustment (they were just a touch tight). And the Shinkos are awesome off road. Tons of traction.

The Cyclone more than held its own with the Husky. That might have been the fastest I’ve ever made that run.

Another great day on the RX-3, but sadly, it might be the last until September. I leave on the 13th riding the GS through Idaho, Washington and Oregon…2200 off road miles. Plus another 2000 on the highway.

The days between now and then are all prep, no riding (or very little).

Talk soon,

Rob

Cool stuff, Rob!   Thanks for the note and the photos, and have a great time on your Pacific Northwest ride!