Vehicle Description
1980 Honda CX500 90-Degree Traverse V-Twin Rapidly Appreciating
Collectible Honda. Original Comstar Wheels Here's what Classic
Motorcycles had to say about these beasts.. Working from a clean
sheet, Irimajiri and his team came up with a machine that drew
almost nothing from the past and instead looked to the future of
motorcycle design. What they came up with was unlike anything ever
built by Honda: a water-cooled, shaft-driven V-twin. Water-cooling
was hardly new, but it had never been applied to a V-twin. The same
with shaft drive, but so far Honda had only used it on the massive
GL1000. Yet Honda had never produced a V-twin, and this was to be a
twin like no other. To begin with, while everyone was singing the
praise of overhead-cam engines, the 48hp CX500 made do with simple
pushrods. This kept the engine height low and dispensed with the
complexity of running separate cam chains to each cylinder. To make
things interesting, Irimajiri twisted the heads 22 degrees inboard
to pull the carbs in closer to the middle of the bike and out of
the rider's way. This had the benefit of splaying the exhaust pipes
out for a stronger visual statement of power. To help lower the
center of gravity, the counter-rotating (to fight the
longitudinally-mounted engine's twist under power) five-speed
transmission was located just below and to the right of the engine.
All of this was hung as a stressed unit from a spine frame,
supported by standard telescopic forks at front and adjustable
shocks at rear. Importantly, the CX500 was the first production
bike equipped with tubeless tires.
