Review: Throttle Rocker II.

I love my CX, and my CX loves me...well, up to 55mph. Any faster than that, and she shakes way too much. The handlebar vibration really gets to me, and I do have the liberty of letting my left hand let go of the handlebars, but not my right because I need it to control the throttle. Some days I get up and ride and my right hand extremely numb because I didn't have it positioned right or something. I eventually got over that, but sometimes it creeps up on me and ruins a large portion of my ride.

I started looking for alternatives to make the ride more comfortable (and bearable) at highway speeds, and I found the "Throttle Rocker". ($9.99 at jcwhitney.com) It's one of those "wow, why didn't I think of that?!" kind of inventions. It's a simple piece of contoured plastic that wraps around your grip and is positioned so that you can control the throttle with your wrist or pretty much any part of your hand, letting your hand raise up and stretch and get some airflow without slowing down or letting go of the throttle. I tried it out for the first time the other day and it worked awesome for about the first 15 minutes until it started slipping. My wrist started cramping up because it was in such an awkward position to keep the throttle at 55.

It came with a big fat rubber band to put over your bar to help prevent the device from slipping. I guess it would have worked nicely for grips that aren't foam like mine. With the foam you really don't need the piece of rubber to keep the Velcro from slipping; the Velcro with the foam just works out better. I'll have to test this sans-rubber trick on my next ride this weekend. I ordered one for the left too, but I don't think I'll use it because I really don't need it; I can let go of the left grip whenever I want.

One con I noticed was that it wasn't as comfortable as I thought it should have been, but that's just because I'm using the stock CX500C handlebars, that have ends that just point past the rider, not like traditional motorcycle handlebars. I think that these would be a lot more comfortable on bikes with straighter bars, like drag or Daytona bars. I could put it on the GT750 and see how that feels.

In other news, I haven't been able to work on the Suzuki lately because of school. My classes are wrapping up soon (less than a month!), so I'll be able to tinker with it fairly soon. The CX is getting a new tire mounted in the next two weeks (Just need to remove the front wheel), so I'm pretty excited about that. The Canada trip is still on for June, and I'm looking for a set of crash bars...

O, Canada...

Here's a chart of my progress, in my attempt to collect 48 states by the time I'm 35. Let's be real here; I'll probably never get Alaska or Hawaii.


Forgive my sloppy graph; I did it on MS Paint at 1AM.

Yeahhhh that's right, I'm riding into Canada this summer :D

It's about time...

Anyone following my Twitter account knows that I've been pretty excited about something lately. I try my best to keep my motorcycle tweets down to once or twice a week. Really, I do try...

Anyway, riding season has officially started for me!

Yesterday, my Dad took out his GT750 to the car wash to hose it down and spray on some Enginebrite, then took it out for a ride. I couldn't join him because I had work in an hour, so that sucked. But today I was able to do the same with my bike, but under cloudier skies.

Front tire pressure was down, but I expected that. My rear tire didn't lose any air, so that was convenient. I can't wait to get my new front tire on, it'll feel amazing... Took the bike to the new gas station in town, where a guy approached me about my CX. I love it when people walk up to check out my bike and talk to me about it and listen to them remenisce about their Jap bikes in the '70s.

Their comments tend to vary, however. I've gotten :

"Look at the size of that engine!!"
"Don't your knees get warm?"
"Hey, is that a 500? I used to own one of those!"
"Shit, that thing is OLD"
and my favorite...
"What year did Harley make that?"

After talking to the guy for a few minutes, I went to the "Dirt Trap" car wash down the street. Threw on Enginebrite and did an obligatory "muahahha" as it hit the hot header pipes, causing a nice fizzy sound and smoke. It cleaned up pretty well, but brought many different things about the bike to my attention, like new spots of rust (or is it not new?) and tears in the seat. Meh. It's an old bike, you'll have that.

The CX ran very well. A little sluggish at first, but I expected that because it just sat in the garage for 3 or 4 months. Started up in less than 5 minutes with my electric start, which isn't too shabby for a bike that age. No kickstart on the Honda! Took it on a few country roads to dry it off, then eventually took her home, hoping for a whole week of good weather during spring break next week :)

Wants.

I want a Honda GL650I. Based on Honda's CX500/GL500 model, it's basically just a GL500I with a 650 engine in it. The GL series (500/650, the FIRST Silverwing series...not the Goldwing, and not the Silverwing scooter line) is cool because it included nice midsized touring bikes. Full fairing, luggage, comfortable seat, etc. The GL series had front dual-disc brakes and better suspension than the CX line. It also had a bigger tank and a similar frame, but a sliiiightly different engine.

Here's my CX500 with my touring crap loaded on it in Colorado.


I think it would be cool to have a Silverwing with all the goodies on it, plus maybe an mp3 player and a GPS integrated into the fairing. I know I complain about people that listen to music when they ride, but when you're out in the middle of nowhere on a long stretch of road in Kansas, I think it's acceptable. I just like the fact that it's a midsize touring machine with a transverse GL/CX engine in it. And the 650's engine is blacked out. I'll get one someday...

History Lesson.

Here's a little history on the Suzuki T500.

1968 Suzuki T500 Cobra

The Suzuki T500 was launched in 1968, and was known to the American market as the "Cobra". The name "Cobra" was changed to "Titan" a year or so later, as well as the general appearance of the bike. The 60's were almost over, and the classic styling of 60's machinery was replaced with a sleeker, faster look for the 70's. This bike was famous in the '70s because on the track, it was faaaaaast. It was also used by many for touring, but soon became unpopular in that category with triples coming out from the Big Four (Honda, Suzuki, Yamaha, Kawasaki) like the GT750. More power, more comfort, more convenience. Suzuki felt that the T500 had a few more years left on it, so they made a few adjustments for it to compete in the growing touring market.

1973 Suzuki T500K Titan

The look and performance of the bike remained pretty much the same until 1975 when the T500 was replaced with the GT500, which included improvements like a GT750 tank, GT seat, front disc brake, new instruments, etc. The GT tank gave it much more fuel capacity, letting riders go longer and farther without refueling. The disc brake was a nice feature, as most motorcycles were updating their brakes from drum to disc- This update was a lot safer, too. This model was discontinued in 1977, along with Suzuki's GT triple line to make room for their GS series.

1975 Suzuki GT500M

Suzuki History Archive: Suzukicycles.org

Suzuki Progress.

I live in Iowa, and in the winter, it gets cold. Really cold. Unfortunately, I lack a heated garage and I'm not excited about going into the garage and working on a frozen machine. I'll admit it; when it comes to the cold, I get lazy, but not too lazy. I still try to work on things...

So, I started on the tank. A few months back when we got the bike, we took the tank off my dad's GT750 and put it on the Titan, just out of curiosity. We thought our Titan's tank was shot just by looking at it- you can see, it's not pretty. A previous owner must have forgotten to sand down the big glob of Bondo on the side of the tank...and also forgot to paint it after applying that thick coat of ugly purplish-brown primer 30 years ago.

T500 tank

T500 with GT750 tank

The bike definitely wasn't as much of an eyesore after laying the GT tank on the frame. In fact, it looked awesome. But the tank wasn't mine, so at the end of the night my father put it back on his shiny '75 GT and I immediately went to eBay looking for a cheap, fixable GT tank.

After having a few near success stories with eBay, I decided that I should just save what I have for other necessary improvements and try to fix up my Titan tank. First, I dealt with the rust inside the tank.

The rust wasn't too bad. It certainly wasn't as bad as the rust in my spare Honda tank, and had no sludge or crap at the bottom. After looking at a few different solutions to a rusty tank on the internet, I decided to go the "BB-and-alcohol" route. Remove the petcock and seal off the hole, take a container of about 300 steel BB's, pour them into the tank, and shake the hell out of it. This did loosen up a good amount of the rust inside it, but also created this huge cloud of 30 year old rust particle when I opened the gas cap.

Steel BB's, alcohol, and mandatory Bloc Party.

The Michael Westen approach to gas tank cleansing:
Shaking a gas tank full of BB's is like shaking a guitar to retrieve the pick you dropped in the soundhole. You're never going to get it right the first time; you'll get it back in a few shakes if you know what the inside of your guitar looks like so you'll know exactly how to shake it. However, I don't know what the inside of my tank looks like, so it took me at least two hours to get all of the BB's out. Using a rubber mallet to tap the corners and edges of your tank for an hour will eliminate the 30 BB's in hiding you thought you got out the first time you shook your tank to death.

Oh, and magnets don't help you retrieve BB's unless they're on a flexible hook.

After wearing my arms and back out from all the shaking, I planned to run a hose through it to flush out any remaining crap...which turned out to be a bigger challenge than getting the BB's out. So like I mentioned, I live in Iowa where it gets pretty cold in the winter. I brought in a frozen hose from outside and let it set in my warmed basement for about 4 hours, thinking it would thaw in that amount of time. Well...it didn't. So, I took it upstairs to the garage and hit it with a heat gun in a few areas to loosen up the ice inside...That didn't work either. I gave up on the hose and went out and bought a garden hose the next week. Lesson learned: Garden hoses are still full of water when they freeze, and will not thaw until April. I spent an entire day trying to get that hose to work. Hey, I was desperate.

After successfully flushing the tank with water, I gave it a good flushing with alcohol to further clean it up and vacuum dried it for a day, so it shouldn't be too bad when we fill it up in the spring.

What's next?

My First Motorcycle.

In August of 2008 after an extensive (and exhausting) search for an old bike, I came across a 1980 Honda CX500C about 45 miles north of my current location advertised in the local paper. It was in pretty rough shape; the bike was painted in an awful metallic dark blue and featured cheesy magnetic flames on the tank. The left sidecover was missing, exposing the unsightly battery and wiring. The original seat was replaced with an awful "custom" seat that the previous owner was pretty proud of. Signals and lights were changed, and the handlebars were swapped for mini ape-hangers. Both tires were pretty low on tread, and the rear tire liked to go flat a lot. The stator had it's classic CX500 problem, but it ran. We recieved an identical parts bike with the purchase, which was 100% original, but about 80% usable. At first sight, the first CX was ugly. The owner tried to make it look like a Harley...he ended up making it look like it belonged in a 6 year old's HotWheels collection.

So, I was pretty turned off to this bike. It looked like nothing I wanted. I was in the market for a UJM ("Universal Japanese Motorcycle") and was looking at a mysterious funny-looking bike from the 80's. I had never seen a CX before, let alone a transverse V-twin. I hadn't even seen a MotoGuzzi before.

We set to work on the bike as soon as we got it, and eventually got what we needed to have done by late September. Here's a few pictures for comparison.

Honda in August '08, with decals removed. Note the turd-shaped seat, mini apehangers, missing sidecover and tiny signals.

Honda in late September 2008. Note the stock headlamp, handlebars, seat, blinkers, taillight and grab bar.

My first trip on the semi-finished Honda was up to Maquoketa, which was about half an hour's worth of riding. After that, my dad and I attempted to attend a rally in Wisconsin, but only made it to Northwestern Illinois and camped there, due to stator problems on my bike.

During Winter '08/'09, I was able to squeeze in a few rides in December, January and February. My dad and I planned on fixing up the bike more and taking it on a trip to Colorado Springs, where his riding began. Ironically, our motorcycle club was having their national rally in Colorado Springs at around the time we planned on going. So, we took the next two months to fix up the Honda and fix the stator and tire problem and geared it up for a long tour. A new trunk, luggage rack, rear tire, stator, battery, windshield, and other parts were purchased to get it ready. We made the 2,500 mile trip with only a starter problem on the return trip.

I continued to collect more states through the summer and eventually claimed IA, IL, WI, MN, MO, KS, CO and NE. I attended another rally in northern Iowa and was able to cruise around and collect IA, IL, WI and MN in about four hours, which was pretty cool.

The riding season ended pretty early for me, having put the bike away just a week after Thanksgiving. For Christmas, I recieved a set of new Harley pipes to replace my rusted through stock ones, which should sound great. I also recieved a new front tire. Haven't touched my CX yet because it has a new friend in my garage stall that's been recieving a lot of attention lately. Hope it doesn't get jealous ;)

Oh, and I now love the CX500. It's such a unique bike with a very strong cult following all over the world. My feelings for my bike have changed a LOT since I saw it sitting in some dude's front lawn in 2008. All it needed was a lot of love, an organ donor, a few dozen Brillo pads, and a new coat of paint.