Hear me roar…

We’ve had a ton of hits and comments on the Cyclone video I posted the other day, and in addition to the comments about my shiny noggin and expanding belt line, there were several requests for a video that would let folks hear the engine.

Here you go!

We’ll be posting more videos over the next few days and weeks, so keep an eye on us!

 

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Comments on the vid…

We’ve had some fun comments on the video I posted yesterday, and I thought I’d share a few of them with you.   Good stuff.  Fun stuff.

 

First, an email from my good buddy Tommy M…

Good commercial, Joe.

Your high school public speaking teacher would be proud… i.e., who, what, where when, and why.

My computer experienced a slight technical problem, there was as blinding glare coming from the area of your head when the sun was in just the right location. 

See you this weekend. 

Tom

 

A blinding glare off my head?

Tom, I spilled my coffee this morning when I read that one!

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Here’s one from RTKing on the ADVRider site…

Thanks for the video. (And my first and second color choices, no less!).   Good to see a size comparison with you by the bike.

 

Hey, our pleasure, RT!    The bike is a full size motorcycle, with a much more sensible saddle height and overall riding position than most adventure touring bikes.   I like it.  A lot.

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Here’s another one from the ADVRider site, this time from LongHaul747…

Good job on the video. I am just about sold….now I just need to talk the wife into it and find the $. Need to find room in the garage as well!

One question I have is the delivery process for those out of state who can’t visit CSC for delivery. Will these be drop shipped in the same crate they arrive in from China and the customer will have to do his own uncrating and PDI?   Or will CSC uncrate it and set it up making sure everything is okay and then use a dedicated motorcycle shipper for shipping?  I prefer CSC doing the setup and likely in everyone’s best interest. Only thing the customer has to do is give a quick going over and add gas and oil if they can’t ship with those fluids.  Also no crating material to dispose of.   The rest is pretty easy.   Take the Certificate of Origin to the DMV and pay the tax and they will create a registration.

 

LongHaul, we’re explaining the particulars to everyone who calls to get on the list.  There are a lot of options here and we’ll posting those for all to see on the blog in the very near future.

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Here’s one from Tiffany posted on our Facebook page…

I cannot WAIT for this machine to arrive at my house!!  I’ve been struggling to move to an adventure bike as the only feasible option for someone my size is the 650gs and it’s still huge for me (trust me I know as I had to try to pick it up from its side in Prudhoe bay).  I truly hope your bike will inspire and empower even more females to ride their own. Thank you thank you thank you for finally addressing the gap in our motorcycle industry!!

 

You and I both, Tiffany.  I can’t wait to get mine, either.  

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And finally, this one on the YouTube site from WanderAbroad (what a great name for an adventure rider!)…

THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Ok, enough with my caps.

I’m a 35 year old U.S. citizen working in China now and I spent months researching every bike I could find. Comparing forums, debates, listening to pros and watching them perform. I could find no other options better than this one (with maint. cost and ease being a huge factor) I got this bike and went bananas!

For anyone wanting more info read past this to the rest of my long post. So here goes. This bike feels like the Mercedes of the off road to me. The passenger seat is FINALLY done correctly vs. other bikes and is not one long sloping seat that pushes the rear rider into the front rider when you hit bumps. The motor has power hands down.

Careful with the throttle. It may be 250cc’s but start releasing to fast and the bike won’t have a problem showing you what its hiding. It’s stable on the freeway and light on the bad roads and boy China has some tough roads to test you on! Other offroad bikes are just – too – doggone – heavy!  Those guys end up doing more fighting with those behemoths than actually enjoying the ride it seems to me. If you want to drop the money you can get (I don’t know about the U.S.) 3 very large sturdy padlocked waterproof stainless steel luggage carriers made for this bike with their own special mounting.

Cost of repairs on this bike like I said before are WAY lower than those giant BMW’s KTM’s etc. The upfront cost is WAY lower than the others. When I return to the U.S. for six week visits I plan to buy another one just for the U.S. This bike is hands down fantastic. I hope you can get a good deal of video of you guys riding this around. I can’t really video myself since I drive alone a lot.

Push this bike guys, it’s the perfect tour bike meets motor cross and had the perfectly balanced baby.

 

WanderAbroad, you said it better than I ever could!  

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Thanks to all for your inputs!  We’ll have more videos and more information on the RX-3 on the blog in the near future, folks, so like always, stay tuned!    And don’t forget about our open house this weekend!

 

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Where’s my dog Spot?

I know…I sound just like Cal Worthington…

There’s lots more coming, folks, so keep an eye on us!

 

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Open House This Weekend

Folks, just a gentle reminder…don’t forget about our open house this coming weekend.   We’ll be open on both Saturday and Sunday (that’s 27 and 28 September) from 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.   You’ll see the CSC Cyclone in person, along with our extensive vintage Mustang collection and several CSC 150 and CSC 250 models.

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We hope to see you there!

 

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Why a 250?

A 250cc bike seems too small to many riders.   Is it?

The 250cc CSC Cyclone

The motorcycle craze in the US really started in the mid-1960s.   I know motorcycling goes back way before that, but motorcycling was essentially a fringe endeavor until Honda came on the scene.   We met the nicest people on Hondas, if you remember, and that ad tagline was a winner (so is “Don’t Miss The Boat,” by the way).

Honda’s sales model was a good one.   They pulled us in with small bikes and then convinced us we needed larger and larger bikes.   Many of us started with a Honda Cub (the 50cc step-through), we progressed to the Super 90 (that was my jump in), then the 160cc baby Super Hawk, then the 305cc Super Hawk, and at that point in about 1967 that was it for Honda.   They didn’t have anything bigger (yet).    After the 305cc Super Hawk, the next step for most folks was either a Harley or a Triumph.

Yours Truly, on a Honda Super 90 in the mid-’60s

You know, back in those days, a 650cc motorcycle was a BIG motorcycle.   And it was.

But Honda kept on trucking…they offered a 450 that sort of flopped, and then in 1969 they delivered the CB-750.   That bike was so far in front it killed the British motorcycle industry and (with a lot of self-inflicted wounds) almost killed Harley.

The Japanese manufacturers piled on.   Kawasaki one-upped Honda with a 900.   Honda came back with a 1000cc Gold Wing (which subsequently grew to 1100cc, then 1500cc, and is now an 1800cc).   Triumph has a 2300cc road bike.  Harley gave up on cubic centimeters and now describes their bikes with cubic inches.    And on and on it went.  It seems to keep on going.   The bikes keep on getting bigger.  And bigger.   And bigger.   And taller.  And heavier.    And bigger.   In a society where everything was being supersized (burgers, bikes, and unfortunately, our beltlines), bigger bikes have ruled the roost for a long time.   Too long, in my opinion.

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Is this where it’s going?

Weirdly, today many folks think of a 750 as a small bike.  It’s a world gone nuts.   But I digress…

I’ve done a lot of riding.  Real riding.  My bikes get used.   A lot.  I don’t much care for the idea of bikes as driveway jewelry, and on a lot of my rides in the US, Mexico, and Canada, I kind of realized that this “bigger is better” mentality is just flat wrong.   It worked as a motorcycle marketing strategy for awhile, but when you’re wrestling with a 700-lb bike in the soft stuff, you realize it doesn’t make any sense.

Really?

Really?

I’ve had some killer big bikes.   A Triumph Daytona 1200.   A Harley Softail.   A TL1000S Suzuki.   A Triumph Speed Triple (often called the Speed Cripple, which in my case sort of turned out to be true).   All the while I was riding these monsters, I’d see guys on Gold Wings and other 2-liter leviathans and wonder…what are these folks thinking?

I’d always wanted a KLR-650 for a lot of reasons.   The biggest reasons were the bikes were inexpensive back then and they were lighter than the armored vehicles I had been riding.  I liked the idea of a bike I could travel on, take off road, and lift by myself if I dropped it.   To make a long story short, I bought the KLR and I liked it.   I still have it.   But it’s tall, and it’s heavy (well over 500 lbs fully fueled).   But it was a better deal than the bigger bikes for real world riding.   Nobody buys a KLR to be a poser, nobody chromes out a KLR, and nobody buys leather fringe for a KLR, but if that’s what you want in a motorcycle, hey, more power to you.

More background…if you’ve been on this blog for more than 10 minutes you know I love riding in Baja.  I talk about it all the time.   My friends tell me I should be on the Baja Tourism Board.   Whatever.    It is some of the best riding in the world.   I’ll get down there the first week I take delivery on my CSC Cyclone, and if you want to ride with me, you’re more than welcome.

I was talking up Baja one day at the First Church of Bob (the BMW dealership where me and some of my buddies hang out on Saturday mornings).   There I was, talking about the road to San Felipe through Tecate, when my good buddy Bob said “let’s do it.”   Baja it was…the other guys were on their Harleys and uber-Beemers, and I was on my “small bore” KLR.  The next weekend we pointed the bars south, wicked it up, and rode to San Felipe.

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The Boys…bound for San Felipe with my KLR leading the pack

That was a fun trip.   I took a lot of ribbing about the KLR, but the funny thing was I had no problem keeping up with the monster motos.   In fact, most of the time, I was in the lead.   And Bob?   Well, he just kept studying the KLR.   On Saturday night, he opened up a bit.   Bob is the real deal…he rode the length of Baja before there was a road.   That’s why he was enjoying this trip so much, and it’s why he was so interested in my smaller bike.    In fact, he announced his intent to buy a smaller bike, which surprised everybody at the table.

Holding court on the Sea of Cortez

Holding court on the Sea of Cortez

Bob told us about a months-long moto trip he made to Alaska decades ago, and his dream about someday riding to Tierra del Fuego.   That’s the southernmost tip of South America.   He’d been to the Arctic Circle, and he wanted to be able to say that he’d been all the way south, too.

I thought all of this was incredibly interesting.   Bob is usually a very quiet guy.   He’s the best rider I’ve ever known, and I’ve watched him smoke Ricky Racers on the Angeles Crest Highway with what appeared to be no effort whatsoever.   Sometimes he’d do it on a BMW trade-in police bike standing straight up on the pegs passing youngsters on Gixxers and Ducksters.   Those kids had bikes with twice the horsepower and two-thirds the weight of Bob’s bike, and he could still out ride them.   Awesome stuff.    Anyway, Bob usually doesn’t talk much, but during dinner that night on the Sea of Cortez he was opening up about some of his epic rides.   It was good stuff.

Finally, I asked:   Bob, what bike would you use for a trip through South America?

Bob’s answer was immediate:  A 250.

That surprised me, but only for an instant.   I asked why and he told me, but I kind of knew the answer already.   Bob’s take on why a 250:  It’s light, it’s fast enough, it’s small enough that you can pick it up when it falls, you can change tires on it easily, you can take it off road, you can get across streams, and it gets good gas mileage.

Bob’s answer about a 250 really stuck in my mind.   This guy knows more about motorcycles than I ever will, he is the best rider I’ve ever known, and he didn’t blink an eye before immediately answering that a 250 is the best bike for serious world travel.

It all made a lot of sense to me.   I had ridden my liter-sized Triumph Tiger in Mexico, but when I took it off road the thing was terrifying.   The bike weighed north of 600 lbs, it was way too tall, and I had nearly dropped it several times in soft sand.   It was not fun.   I remembered another ride with my friend Dave when he dropped his FJR in an ocean-sized puddle.   It took three of us to get the thing upright, and we dropped it a couple of more times in our attempt to do so.   John and I had taken my Harley and his Virago on some fun trips, but folks, those bikes made no sense at all for the kind of riding we did.

Upright in this photo, but it was like wrestling a pig in mud a few minutes earlier

You might be wondering…what about the other so-called adventure bikes, like the BMW GS series, the Yamaha Tenere, or the Triumph Tiger?   Good bikes, to be sure, but truth be told, they’re really street bikes dressed up like dirt bikes.   Big street bikes dressed up like dirt bikes.   Two things to keep in mind…seat height and weight.   I can’t touch the ground when I get on a BMW GS, and as you’ve heard me say before, my days of spending $20K or $30K on a motorcycle are over.   Nice bikes and super nice for freeway travel, but for around town or off road or long trips into unknown territory, these bikes are just too big, too heavy, and too tall.

There’s one other benefit to a small bike.   Remember that stuff above about Honda’s 1960s marketing strategy?  You know, starting on smaller bikes?   Call me crazy, but when I get on bikes this size, I feel like a kid again.   It’s fun.

I’ve thought about this long and hard.   For my kind of riding, a 250 makes perfect sense.   My invitation to you is to do the same kind of thinking.   And remember, folks, that $2895 offer is one sweet deal.  It’s not going to last long.   I received an email last night from my buddy Dave (the guy with that blue FJR in the photo above), and he’s about to get on the list.

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How about you?

 

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Lighting Up the Net

And boy oh boy, that’s what’s been happening.   We sent our press release around a day or so ago and the Internet lit up.   Rider magazine, ADV Pulse, ADV Moto, ADV Rider, Motorcycle.com, Internet forums, and more posted the story and are seeing a ton of hits.   Rider magazine had 37,000 hits on their FB page with our story the first day!   I’ll provide a list of some of the links a bit further below.

One of the things I think was really cool was a comparo chart ADV Pulse put together in their story (you can see the entire article here)…

Comparo-Chart

That chart was something I was thinking of doing but we have been so busy with the new bike I just had not had time.   Thanks, ADVPulse!   And folks, don’t be confused by the $3495 price listed for our bike…that’s what the price will be soon, but for just a little while longer, it’s only $2895.

How much longer?  Hard to say, but it won’t be long.  I personally took the first order from our good buddy Chester just 15 minutes after posting the story about the RX-3 here on the blog, and the phones have been going nuts ever since.   It won’t be long.   My good buddy Peter (a good friend for over 30 years) tracked me down in my car yesterday morning to order one, and when I asked him about color, he asked how the blue looked.   I told Peter it looked great, he said let’s do it, and then I grabbed this photo to email to him…

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Later this morning I’m going to post a blog about why a 250cc makes so much sense.   Right now I’m enjoying a hot cup of coffee, but before I sign off, let me suggest a series of links to you showing just how brightly the Internet is lighting up with the RX-3 story..

Rider Magazine

Rider Magazine’s Facebook Page

Motorcycle.com

ADV Moto

ADV Pulse

ADV Rider

Ride Asia

Ride or Burn

The NC700 Forum

And there’s more, but you get the idea.   On the forums and FB pages, you’ll see all the haters out in force, with all of the usual criticisms and stupid stuff people are emboldened to say on the Internet.   That’s okay…it’s what folks do on the Internet.   We’re enjoying the comments when we can find time to read them…in between taking orders on this exciting new motorcycle!

 

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Zongshen

Zongshen.

You’ve heard me mention them.   They make the 250cc engine for our CSC 250, and they make the new CSC RX-3 Cyclone.

So who exactly are these guys?

Well, that is a good question.   I’ve been fooling around with motorcycles for 50 years and I had never heard of Zongshen until about 3 years ago.  That’s when we were looking for a 250cc engine to put in our CSC 150 motorcycle.   Zongshen’s name surfaced quickly as a potential supplier.    Steve sent me to visit Zongshen in Chongqing, and it was one of the more memorable trips of my life.   Rather than reinvent the wheel, I thought I’d share the email I sent to Steve in December 2011 after spending time with Zongshen so that you get my observations just as I provided them to Steve.

With that as an introduction, here we go….

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17 Dec 2011

Steve:

Just got back from the Zongshen meetings in Chongqing.    This letter is a summary of how it went.

Our host and a driver picked us up in a Mercedes mini-van in the morning at the hotel.  It was about a 1-hour drive to the Zongshen campus.  Chongqing is a massive and scenic city (it just seems to go on forever).   Imagine mid-town Manhattan massively larger with taller and more modern buildings, built in a lush green mountain range, and you’ll have an idea of what the city is like.  We took a circular freeway at the edge of town, and the views were beyond stunning.  It was an overcast day, and every time we came around a mountain we had another view of the city in the mist.  It was like something in a dream.   Chongqing is the Chinese name for the city.   We in the US used to call it Chun King (like the noodle company).   We drove for an hour on a freeway (at about 60 mph the whole time) to get to the Zongshen campus, and we were still in the city.   I’ve never seen anything like it.  The city is awesome.  I could spend 6 months here just photographing the place.

The Zongshen facilities are huge and completely modern.  The enterprise is on a landscaped campus (all fenced off from the public) in the city’s downtown area.  We were ushered into their office building complex, which is about as modern and clean as anything I have ever seen.   You can probably tell from this email that I was impressed.

Let me emphasize this again:  The Zongshen campus was huge.  I would estimate that it covered maybe 8 or 10 acres.  My guess is that they have something in excess of 1.5 million square feet of manufacturing space.

Here are some shots of some of their buildings from the outside…they have several buildings like this.  These first two show one of their machining facilities…

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There were several buildings like the ones above on the Zongshen campus.  It was overwhelming.  This is a big company.   The people who work there live on the Zongshen campus (Zongshen provides apartments for these folks).   They work a 5-day, 8-hour-per-day week.   It looked like a pretty nice life.  Zongshen employs about 2,000 people.

Here’s a shot showing a portion of the Zongshen office building.  Very modern, and very nicely decorated inside…

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Zongshen is the name of the man who started the business.   The company is about 20 years old.  Mr. Zongshen is still actively engaged running the business (notice that he is not wearing a beret).  I had the Chinese characters translated and what he is saying is “I want Joe to write our blog…”

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Zongshen has a few motorcycles and scooters that have received EC (European Community) certification.  They do not have any motorcycles that have received US EPA or CARB certification.  They do have scooters, though, approved in the US.  They have two models that have EPA and CARB certification.  I explained that we might be interested in these as possible powerplants for future CSC motorcycles.

I asked to see the factory, and they took us on a factory tour.   In a word, their production operation is awesome.  The next several photographs show the inside of their engine assembly building (they had several buildings this size; these photos show the inside of just one).   It was modern, clean, and the assembly work appears to be both automated and manual (depending on the operation).  Note that we were in the factory on a Saturday, so no work was occurring.  I was thinking the entire time what fun it must be to run this kind of a facility.  Take a look…

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Zongshen has onsite die casting capabilities, so they can make covers with a CSC logo if we want them to.   Having this capability onsite is a good thing; most US manufacturers subcontract their die casting work and I can tell you that in the factories I have managed, getting these parts on time in a condition where they meet the drawing requirements was always a problem in the US.   Doing this work in house like Zongshen is doing is a strong plus.   They have direct control over a critical part of the process.

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In addition to all of the motorcycle work, Zongshen makes power equipment (like Honda does).  I grabbed this shot as we were driving by their power equipment factory…

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Here are some photographs of engines in work.  Zongshen makes something north of 4,000 engines every day.

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Yep, 4,000+ engines.  Every day.

The engines above are going into their automated engine test room.  They had about 100 automated test stations in there.

Zongshen makes engines for their own motorcycles as well as for other manufacturers.    They make parts for many other motorcycle manufacturers, including Harley.   They make complete scooters for several manufacturers, including Vespa.  Interesting.

These are 500cc, water-cooled Zongshen ATV engines….

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Zongshen can make engines in nearly any color a manufacturer wants.  When we walked by this display I asked what it was, and they told me it showed the different colors they could powder coat an engine.  Hmmmm….

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Quality appears to be very, very high.  They have the right visual metrics in place to monitor production status and to identify quality standards.  The photo below shows one set of their visual standards.   These are the defects to avoid in just one area of the operation…

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This idea of using visual standards is a good one.  I don’t see it very often in factories in the US.   It’s a sign of an advanced manufacturing operation.   And here’s one set of their production status boards and assembly instructions…boards like this were everywhere…

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The photo below shows their engine shipping area…

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Here’s a humorous sign in the Zongshen men’s room…be happy in your work, don’t take too long, and don’t forget to flush…

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This idea of keeping an emphasis on cleanliness is very important.   When I ran factories in the US I always focused on this, including the bathrooms.  If you emphasize cleanliness everywhere (like I know you know), the whole operation is efficient.   As I said before, this entire operation was immaculate.  Again, it’s a sign of a well-run and high quality plant.

We then briefly ducked into the machine shop.  It was dark so I didn’t grab any photos.   What I noticed is that they use statistical process control in manufacturing their machined parts, which is another sign of an advanced quality management approach.

I also have (but did not include here in this email) photos of their engine testing area.  They test all engines (a 100% test program), and the test approach is automated.  I was impressed.   Zongshen’s quality will be as good or better than any engine made anywhere in the world, and we should have no reservations about using the 250cc engine in our CSC motorcycles.  These guys have it wired.

My host then took us next to a factory showroom at the edge of the Zongshen campus.  Here are a few photos from that area…

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Check this one out…it’s a 125, and it looked to me to be a really nice bike…

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Now check out the price on the above motorcycle.  This is the all inclusive, “out-the-door-in-Chongqing,” includes-all-fees price…

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Yep, that’s 8980 RMB (or Yuan), and that converts to (get this) a whopping $1470 US dollars.   I want one.

The Chinese postal service uses Zongshen motorcycles….as do Chinese Police departments, and a lot of restaurants and other commercial interests.  These green bikes are for the Chinese Post Office, and the red ones are for commercial delivery services.

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Another shot from their showroom…

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Zongshen also has a GP racing program, and they had their GP bikes on display with photos in the factory and the actual bikes in an office display area.   Cool.

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And finally one last photo, Steve, of Indiana Jones having a blast in Chongqing…

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The bottom line, Boss, is that I recommend buying the 250 engine from these folks.  Their factory is awesome and they know what they are doing.   I write books about this stuff and I can tell you that this plant is as well managed as any I have ever seen.

I’ll be in the air headed home in a few more days.   This trip has been a good one.

That’s it for now.  I will send an email to the Zongshen team later today confirming what we want from them and I will keep you posted on any developments.    Thank you for the opportunity to make this visit.  As you can probably tell, I am happy in my work.

If you wouldn’t mind, please let me know you have received this email.  It’s got a lot of photos in it and I want to make sure you received it.

Joe

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So there you have it, folks.   We’ve been buying the CSC 250 engine from Zongshen for 3 years and it has performed flawlessly.

Watch for our next blog related to the RX-3 and why we are so excited about it.   One of the key questions, I think, is why a water-cooled 250cc engine is perfect for a real-world adventure touring machine.   That’s next, my friends.

Like always, keep an eye on the blog!

 

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Don’t Miss The Boat!

CSC Motorcycles is certifying the CSC Cyclone RX-3 motorcycle in the United States.   This new 250cc adventure bike is a great motorcycle, and we’re not saying that because we’re the folks bringing these bikes here.   We know quality, we know manufacturing, we know Zongshen, and we know motorcycles.   This is a great machine. 

We posted a bit about this motorcycle elsewhere and our plans for bringing it to America.   We asked for your input, you responded, and we listened.

$2,895.

Yep, you read that right.   The first shipment of these bikes will sell for $2,895 each.   After the first shipment leaves the port, the price goes up to the bike’s normal price of $3,495.   The $2,895 price is a one-time offer.   Once the ship leaves port, we won’t sell any more motorcycles at this introductory price.  Kick, scream, yell, call us names, it won’t matter.   The $2,895 price is for the first shipment only.

We know the RX-3 Cyclone is a superior motorcycle and it’s the perfect size for real-world adventure riding.   But we need to get the word out.   That’s why we’re selling the first shipment of these bikes for just $2,895.

After the first shipment, we’re going to sell the RX-3 for $3,495, which is a hell of a deal.    It’s a lot of motorcycle for $3,495:  Water-cooled, fuel-injected, overhead cams, counterbalanced, disk brakes, adjustable suspension, 6-speed transmission, rack, luggage, electric start, engine guards, full instrumentation, all the road amenities, a 1-year warranty, and the list goes on.   But that’s the price after the first group ships to the US.   You might not want to wait that long.

You might be thinking a Chinese motorcycle, no dealer network, “just” a 250…why would I go for that?   We’re going to answer those questions one at a time, but not here.   We’ll be posting a series of articles on our CSC blog (just go to www.CSCMotorcycles.com and look for the blog).   You’ll see.

We’re not asking for any money now.   All you need to do is call us (800 884 4173) and get your name on the list with the color you want.   When the bike completes the US certification process, we’ll call you and ask for a $500 deposit.  If you change your mind at that point, you’re off the list and you won’t be able to get back on.   That first shipment may be 44 bikes, or it may be 440.  It all depends on how many of you recognize the start of a good thing and want to get in on the ground floor.

One time, folks.   Now or never.   It’s your call, and our advice is simple:   Don’t miss the boat.

 

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Happy Labor Day

What a day and what a weekend this has been!   It’s been go-go-go the entire weekend, and I’m just starting to slow down a bit this evening as I write the blog.

My Old-School Bianchi

My Old-School Bianchi

Today’s high points were a quick early-morning 15-mile bicycle ride (before it became too hot, which it has been doing a lot lately here in So Cal).   I enjoy getting on my old-school, steel-frame Bianchi bicycle.   We head over to a local coffee shop for an iced coffee and a toasted bagel for our standard ride.   It’s good times.   I like nearly anything on two wheels, and the bicycle thing for me goes back about six decades.   I’m old, but I still do pretty well on that bicycle.

After the bicycle ride, I fired up the Baja Blaster.  I hadn’t ridden my CSC in about three weeks, but like always, it fired up at the first touch of the starter button.   Part of that is the warm weather, part of it is my keeping her on a trickle charger, and part of it is just the nature of my wonderful CSC 150 motorcycle.   Every time I get on it I think about our ride down to Cabo San Lucas.   I’m going to do that again someday.   And if you’re new to the blog and you’re wondering what that’s all about, you can read the Cabo story here.

Anyway, today I took a 25-mile putt through the local neighborhood (downtown Upland) and then up to Mt. Baldy.   I grabbed a few shots because I knew I wanted to post them on the blog, and here you go…

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The Baja Blaster with a ’65 F-150 in downtown Upland

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At the Mt. Baldy Lodge, where I stopped for an iced tea…it was hot today!

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Euclid Avenue from the cockpit of a CSC 150 at about 35 mph

Last night we had dinner with the CSC senior management team, and the new RX-3 CSC Cyclone was our primary discussion topic.  Folks, you really need to keep an eye on the blog and on our website.   We’re going to be announcing some things regarding the price and how we go to market with our new 250 Adventure Touring bike in the very near future, and (trust me on this)…it will knock your socks off.

The new CSC RX-3 Cyclone!

The new CSC RX-3 Cyclone!

That’s it for now.   Start thinking about your new CSC Cyclone.   That’s all I can say for now.   More to come…and you’ll hear it first right here.

 

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Our latest press release…

You can read it right here, folks…

http://www.prlog.org/12363512-csc-announces-new-250cc-adventure-touring-motorcycle.html

The certification effort is moving along, and we will be releasing the price on this exciting new motorcycle soon!

 

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