It occurred to me while writing the first article by this name that I have had much less mechanical drama with my various bikes over the years than I have with the multitude of cars that I have owned. It then follows that that is as good a commentary as you are going to get on why the Japanese took over the market in both cars and bikes and made the old guard in both areas redundant. That one word, “Reliability” sums up the reason why most of us drive Japanese cars and ride Japanese bikes rather than those from England. And it is the sole reason why the car and bike industry in Britain died in the 70’s and never revived.
All of the bikes that I have owned have been Japanese and all of them have been models of reliability, exactly as you’d expect. There have only been two occasions where my Japanese bikes have let me down out on the road and one where a lesser bike WOULD have but the Japanese bike didn’t. Since the instances ARE so rare, it is worth recounting them.
The first instance was when I was riding my 500/4 (pictured above). Yes, fitted with the Suzuki GT750 front end and with drilled disks, reversed fork legs so that the calipers were behind the legs not in front of them and sporting a driving light and bar end mirrors. Those who know will tell you that the 500 engine was the sweetest of the DOHC Honda mills and it isn’t surprising that even middling examples of the model are fetching premium prices on the 2nd hand market today. I loved my 500/4 and should never have sold it.
One weekend I was riding down from Sydney to Canberra, for reasons that I don’t recall. I was living in Sydney so it must have been 1982; not long after moving there I sold the 500 and bought the first of my 3 CBX550’s. Dropping down the slight hill that led to the flat run alongside Lake George, just adjacent to the winery there, the bike coughed, spluttered and died. After recovering from the shock, the usual troubleshooting was applied to no avail. The bike would crank but wouldn’t fire. There was plenty of fuel in the tank but there was no indication the bike was going to proceed. No mobile phones in 1982, no roadside emergency phones and no backup. What to do? The afternoon was moving on and I was faced with the problem of being caught out on the side of the road in the darkness and it was winter, not a great prospect.
So I did what I thought best. I pushed the bike to the opposite side of the road (it was just a single carriageway at that stage), continued pushing the bike into the undergrowth on the side of the road and kept going until I was pretty sure that the bike was well hidden in the bushes and not visible from the road. Concealing it further with some small branches and twigs I hoped that my efforts at camouflage would be successful and I made my way back through the bushes and onto the side of the road. I crossed the road and began hitchhiking into Canberra. I had dozens of friends in Canberra who I knew I could rely upon to help me once they became aware of my plight, it was just a matter of getting to town as quickly as possible and getting back to the bike with a trailer before it got dark. I took the precaution of marking the spot both mentally and with a small pile of stones on the side of the road in case we had to do the rescue in the dark and I set off.
When I had been living in Canberra I lived in Wanniassa, at what was then the bottom of the Tuggeranong Valley, as far south as you could go. But my intention was always to get to Kambah, the next suburb and see if my good friend and clubmate, Dave Bailey, could help. I really don’t remember how many lifts it took nor how long it took to get there but it certainly was almost dark by the time I got to Dave’s. Once I had explained my predicament it hardly took any time to load up the trailer, get some tie-downs and set off back across town. By the time we arrived at the bike it was completely dark. Mindful of my OTHER “breakdown” a few years before when I had dragged my wife with two little children out of bed on a dark winter night to come and rescue me at Collector only to find out that the bike was fine but the rider was a klutz, (see NRMA) I was tormented by the prospect of Dave hitting the button and the bike starting immediately with the associated embarrassment that that would bring.
There was no such miracle. Despite applying pretty much all the same methods that I had applied, the bike still refused to fire. I never did ask Dave what he thought about my attempts at camouflage, but I think he was just keen to get the job done. Of course the rest was easy and it wasn’t that much later that we pulled into Dave’s place and put the bike in the garage. I stayed the night at his place and hitched home in the morning. And the problem? Well, for reasons that were unclear to both of us, the float bowls in two of the carbies had become stuck, the mixture had richened up and the engine simply flooded itself. An easy and a cheap fix and I came back on the weekend and picked the bike up.
My other roadside breakdown was later, probably the late 1990’s. we were living back in Canberra and I had the last of the 3 CBX550’s that I owned.
I had been over the northside of town at a CRRC club meeting. As was my usual wont, I took the interesting way home. Instead of trundling down the Tuggeranong Parkway, I took the Uriarra Crossing road, a lovely twisty little backroad that was customarily deserted by that time of night.
Murphy’s Law says that, if something can go wrong, it will. Sod’s Law says that Murphy was an optimist. I fell foul of both laws. At the bottom of the hill before the long climb up to the Cotter Road, the bike suddenly stopped. But it didn’t just “stop”, it died. Not only did the engine stop running but the lights went out and all other auxiliaries as well and I was plunged into total darkness. Despite being only a few kilometres from major areas of housing, the Uriarra Crossing road was out in the sticks with no lighting of any kind and, as luck would have it, there wasn’t even any moonlight. After checking the usual stuff it became clear that the main power fuse had blown, hence no light, power or anything. Hey, no problem, I had some spare fuses taped inside the side cover, AND I even knew where the main power fuse was located!
As if that was any good to me. By feel I could locate the spare fuses but the darkness was co complete that, even after my eyes had become accustomed to the lack of light, I still could not select the correct fuse and I still could not locate the fuse holder and work out how to open it. After struggling for several minutes I came to the conclusion that, if the light wouldn’t come to me, I would have to go to the light. I am reminded, incidentally, of one of my dad’s favourite jokes at this point. A policeman comes upon a drunken man grovelling on his hands and knees at the base of a street light. He asks the man what he is doing and is told that he is looking for a ten pound note that he has lost. “Well, where did you lose it?” the policeman asks. “Oh, up the street there a way,” the drunk replies. “Then why are you looking for it here?” the policeman asks. “Well, the light’s better here,” the drunk replies.
So, I proceeded to push the bike. Now the CBX550 is a middleweight bike and it should have been easy to get it to the Streeton Drive intersection where the street lights started. The problem was that it was all uphill from where the bike had stopped to the first lights. And even a LIGHT weight bike would have started to feel like a Gold Wing after a few hundred metres of that. It took well over an hour for me to urge the bike up that long gradient and onto the Cotter Road. I stopped a lot during the time that I took and even though it was a winter night, I was sweating like a racehorse by the time I reached the road. I got a small respite as the bike coasted down the first part of the road but then it levelled out and I had to keep pushing until I got to the street lights. All up I guess it was three kilometres or so but it felt like 100. Once in the light it took about 2 minutes to fix the dead fuse and ride the rest of the way home. Needless to say my wife was more than just a little worried, but I just wasn’t going to leave the bike out in the open on a dark road.
Do I love my reliable Japanese bikes? Too right I do. So much so that I can forgive the occasional “glitch”.