Ping TOG

May I ask your opinion of CX650 Turbo please? Just that I know someone who
is just putting his up for sale plus a second one which is 95% complete (83
& 86 I think)

 

It's collectable, for sure, but that's not the same as desirable.

Champ puts it well. It's a landmark of some sort. A landmark in a blind
alley, maybe.

They don't fetch that much, because there's no real reason to own except
except for the curioisity and odd engineering - a bit like the Suzuki
RE5. I have no desire to own one, and I am willing to buy just about
anything made in the 1970s and 1980s.

Again, as Champ says, if you want a good turbo bike, buy a Kawasaki.

 

My thanks to both you and Champ.

It's a little weird 'cos I can recall the CX500 but not the 650 turbo. I
didn't like the 500 at the time anyway as it just seemed to me as mediocre
and boring plus I thought it sounded like a sowing machine. Anyway, when I
saw these 650 turbos back last year, I was a bit dumbstruck at the time as I
just couldn't remember them in production. I was beggining to think I had
some sort of selective dementia but considering your comments, perhaps it's
just they were nothing special?

 

They weren't. I mean, they were powerful and torquey, but you could get
just as much power by showing a bigger normally aspirated engine in.

As long as bikes were insured by cc capacity, they made some sort of
sense, but the turbo bikes hastened the switch to car-type insurance
groups.

I'd still like to see some form of really small fiery turbo bike: maybe
400-500 cc, probably a triple....

 

In communiqué <1iwdnxl.1lmdag519w46kgN%>,

A pity the Morini 500 Turbo didn't see the light of day. I know a couple
of people who saw it running on a test bed at the old Bologna factory.

http://www.motomoriniclub.nl/turbo.html

Only 70 BHP though. An Aprilia SXV550 gives that already and weighs
less, so obviously we need an SXV550 Turbo. The servicing regime would
have to be even stricter though, so hardly a practical road bike.

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pete Fisher at Home: |
| Voxan Roadster Gilera Nordwest * 2 Yamaha WR250Z |
| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+----------------------------------------------------------------+

 

I quite like the idea of running something like a pre-VTEC VFR lump,
with a low pressure turbo, in a touring-ish chassis.

You'd be looking at around 130bhp and huge amounts of torque.

(One of my favourite car engines is a low pressure turbo - the VW 1.8T -
not much more powerful than the n/a version, but combined the
flexibility of a TDI with the rev-happy nature of a petrol.)