My 3rd bike was a 1979 CX500. (Stupid damaged fingers! 
)
I should have noticed that! The CX500 wasn’t introduced until the late 70s, and the earliest models were slightly different from the pic I posted. I don’t really remember what year mine was.
I’ve had three Honda CB350s of slightly different flavors and loved them all. My current is a 1970 CB350 twin (had it for a long time). If I had money, the space, and the time to maintain even more motos, I’d get a 4-cylinder version (CB350F) as well as my very first bigger motorcycle, the Scrambler version. They have a special place in my moto-sentimental heart. My Buell and Suzuki DR650 blow them away, but I love those 350s. My former Honda Nighthawk 450…not so much.
My girlfriend when I lived in L.A. had a '74(?) CB360T. I got the first ride, since she wasn’t comfortable riding it on the freeway yet when we went to pick it up. Nice little bike, but a bit ‘buzzy’. I wouldn’t mind having a '72 CB350Four. Might not be quite as fast (it’s a 350, after all), and it might not have a front disc brake, but it would be fun and smoother.
IIRC the CX500 was a pretty underwhelming bike for the era. But was one of the first water-cooled Japanese models. I never had one nor wanted one but hey were pretty popular for awhile.
Yanno… If you’re going to post all over your 11 Facebook pages what a cool Car Guy you are, and you steal someone’s motorcycle, you should at least have the basic ability to put bolts/screws back where they came from. I have a like-new yellow right-side tail fairing. I have a salvaged left-side yellow tail fairing that will probably arrive next week (and which I’ll repaint). I need to paint the rear tail fairing. The thing is, the thief used two different – and wrong – screws to put the three fairing pieces together after he took them apart. One was a slotted screw that was on so tight I had to use a crescent wrench on the screwdriver handle to loosen it. The other was a long Allen-head screw that should have been easy to remove, only the knucklehead tightened it so much he stripped the threads. It could not be removed, but there was enough of a gap so that I could get a hacksaw in there to cut it. The rat fink is in prison, and he’s still causing me grief!
Anyway, I got the tail piece off so I can paint it when the weather warms.
It was perfectly adequate for me; and as I said, I put a lot of miles on the lot of miles it already had. After the CX500, the Seca II felt like it was going to pull my arms out of their sockets. Yes, a 600 cc Standard, which anyone knows isn’t ‘all that’. It just felt that way after the Honda. I wouldn’t mind having another CX500 just because I think they look cool.
It was perfectly adequate for me, too. It had zippy acceleration and was just as happy on highways and high-speed freeways as it was on country back roads and city streets. A bike with a lot more power would be much like a car with an enormous engine, which I always thought was pointless and silly, except that it’s even worse in a bike because the extra weight creates all kinds of problems. I loved my CX500. There’s a reason they were so popular.
Anybody get to try the CX500 Turbo? There’s one on the floor at our Honda car dealership. That and the GPZ750 turbo were probably pretty…terrifying?
Got the YZF-R1 back. Looks like it could use a new front fork seal, and the idle needs to be turned up. I think that can be adjusted just in front of the grip throttle, but I’m not sure. Advice would be appreciated.
There’s another problem. With my knee injury (right knee doesn’t go all the way back), it’s always been a tight fit. I don’t know if my range of motion has decreased over the nine years since I last rode it, or if losing 70 pounds made my butt smaller. Anyway, I’m going to have to figure it out.
I asked the neighbour how much I owed him for all of the work. He said to just give him the first option if I ever want to sell it.
Congrats on losing 70 pounds.
I hope you’ll be comfortable riding it. Riding a literbike is a mind-bending experience.
And wow, what a cool neighbor you have.
Well, you can do it that way, but it’s really not the right way. All you are doing is removing any slack in the cable and artificially raising the idle. Can be problematic and potentially dangerous. Things can get hinky just by laying your hand on the grip. Should be that little fraction of slack for smooth throttle action/feel.
I’ve never worked on anything with more than 2 carbs, so Good Luck! 
The April 1 FortNine video argues that pads are mostly useless. The argument is that the amount of energy pads transmit will still lead to fractures, and that academic research on accident results also shows this conclusion. So if pads can’t protect, then why bother? Just wear a jacket and pants with abrasion protection, and an airbag (helmet, too, obviously).
I have just a few problems with this, but perhaps I’m not reasoning right, or am missing something. Even if pads aren’t protective against fractures in high energy crashes, they still are protective against bruises, which can be a significant injury on their own. Motorcycle airbags are still expensive, and some come out of the gate enshitified, with things like subscriptions and can be $1000+ single use devices. The one F9 recommends is better than that (Helite H-Moov), but is still $800, and is out of stock everywhere.
In my 30 year motorcycling career, I’ve been fortunate to only have one good crash. It was a typical oily-patch-in-the-road low side. Based on the damage to my suit, I was very glad for my hip, elbow and shoulder armor as I landed on all three. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but landing on viscoelastic pads sure seems like it worked out better for me than landing on concrete would have.
Clearly there’s a range of impact energy and rate below which pads are unnecessary, and above which pads are utterly inadequate.
The question is how wide is the useful range between and how does that map to the forces and rates applicable to motorcycle accidents?
I jumped off my bike on the freeway back in college. Leather jacket, leather gloves, & leather boots. No pads & no injuries. Pads would not have helped me.
But …
After I stopped sliding / tumbling I body rolled out of the travel lane into the shoulder just in time to watch a Pontiac slide sideways through where I’d been. Pads wouldn’t have done much good then either. I’d have been shredded.
It’s a Goldilocks problem & I hit both extremes in one fall.
That anecdote certainly isn’t statistical data. But it neatly illustrates the nature of the problem.
[Mr. Bridger] For why, Keats? For Why? [/MB]
Hit a rather tall piece of unseen road debris at ~75 mph and got bucked off. Yee haw!!
Reminds me of one of my closer calls. Riding in the middle lane in pretty heavy traffic, I changed lanes just before a huge pile of debris flew by. The kind of thing that makes you go “hmmm”.
Lotta Hmmms in a riding career. I rode lots from age 9 to 30. Approximately zero since. So no fresh stories.
Just picked up a Beta 300RR Race edition with factory suspension customized for my weight and riding scenario. Woot! Italian beauty for sure!
Only sort of relevant, my more recent riding has included the Dainese air bag vest. Watching the MotoGP guys inflate as they crash at 200+ mph has convinced me that some upper body inflatable protection is not such a bad idea.