CSC Blog

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…

You guys and gals will remember our good buddy Washington Joe, who rode with us on the Baja ride last March.  He’s a hell of a nice guy and he’s into adventure riding big time.   Joe retired from the computer biz at a young age, he bought a motorhome and an RX3, and he is living large.  I recently received a great note from Joe detailing his latest adventure, and we’re sharing it with you here on the CSC blog!

Hey Joe and CSC crew,

It’s Joe, the other Joe from the Pacific Northwest, and I wanted to drop you a note on my adventures with the RX3.  To date I have 9838.7 miles on the odometer since the bike arrived last Sept 24^th.  It’s been a blast to own and I haven’t had a single mechanical issue.  I’ve sent you notes on many of my other adventures like the Mojave Desert and Death Valley and we have our shared fun in Baja along with many other short rides to build up my skills for adventure riding.  My first true test of being an adventure motorcyclist came this week.  A friend of mine and myself headed out for a 3 day fully unsupported adventure to ride the first 3 sections of the Washington Back-Country Discovery Route (http://ridebdr.com/WABDR).  The WABDR starts at the Bridge of the Gods in Oregon and traverses up the Cascade mountain range on primarily forest service roads and just a bit of pavement to come out in Nighthawk in Canada.  The route goes from smooth dirt on rolling terrain to some fear inspiring loose rocky climbs and descents with exposure.  The views along the way are spectacular.  Our trip started out by taking some freeway and forest roads from the Seattle area down to Hood River, OR. 

Mt. St. Helens from NF-25 on the way to Hood River

The next morning, we headed to Cascade Locks and the Bridge of the Gods to start the route.  We went up the highway a bit and then turned into dirt for a 122-mile trek on Section 1.

Takhlakh Lake and Mt. Adams

Guler Ice Caves (formations are taller than me)

We rolled into the small town of Packwood, WA for fuel and some food and it was early enough in the day that we started out on Section 2.  This is a 121 mile section that contains two advanced areas.  Both have bypass options available.  We decided to take the hard route for Bethel ridge but took the bypass for Umtanum as we’d heard it was H, E, double hockey sticks level hard and just not worth the effort.

We worked our way up to Bethel Ridge which was pretty technical for me but the views from the lookout were amazing.

Bethel Ridge Lookout

Viewpoint from Bethel Ridge

The descent from Bethel ridge was fairly terrifying for me with very steep downhill grades covered in baseball and football sized rocks that just rolled around under the bike.  Just had to let it roll and hold on!  We eventually came to the small town of Nile but it’s so small there aren’t any services so we kept rolling and climbed up and up on dirt until it started to get late and we pulled off and made camp for the night.

RX3 resting for the evening

The next morning, we wrapped up section 2 and rolled into Ellensburg, WA for gas, water and snacks.  It was about noon so we jumped into section 3 which is about 75 miles long due to a re-route required since a large section of trail is washed out.  Section 3 had some great riding through an old burned out forest.

Narrow and winding paved road in burned out forest which turned into fun dirt

We were a bit bummed at first to have to re-route from the main WABDR route due to the slide but as we were in the hills above Leavenworth, WA we found some golden photo opportunities in this case, a narrow-gauge railroad line and tunnel with ornate doors used by a gold mining operation.

100ft tunnel with ornate wood doors on both ends

Narrow Gauge Railway

After we dropped into the Bavarian themed town of Leavenworth, WA we hit Highway 2 for the 2-hour ride home but had to stop at the candy store for a soda and some famous fudge.

The Alps Fudge/Candy Store

After having desert, we decided to get some real food so we stopped for a burger.  A bit of a story on this.  The 59’er diner was an amazing 50’s themed restaurant off rural Hwy 2 but it burned down last year.  So, while they are getting things together to rebuild they setup a food truck to keep this little slice of heaven operating and the employees employed.

59’er Diner Food Truck

After this stop we headed home to scrape off 3 days of dust and sweat and plan the next adventure.

That next adventure for me will be joining up with a bunch of other Pacific Northwest RX3 and TT250 owners and riding sections 4, 5 and 6 of the WABDR so I can proudly put this sticker on my RX3.

Washington Backcountry Discovery Route. Check out http://ridebdr.com/ for information on the various routes, upcoming routes and to get involved.

As always Joe and Crew, take care and we’ll talk to you all very soon!

Joe…The other one!

Joe, that is easily one of the best ride reports we’ve ever received.  The writing and the photography are superb!  Thanks so much for sending it to us and allowing us to share it with our readers.  Please let us know the next time you’re down this way.  We need to get together for fish tacos and a Tecate!