The concept behind the CBR900 is nothing new, the only really interesting thing is that it's been applied by the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer. Almost as soon as the original Honda across the frame four was introduced, chassis manufacturers came up with frames that lost a quarter of the CB750's monstrous mass, most notably Dresda whose only failing was to inflict upon the world a cafe racer riding stance.
It's a pity that a company that came up with the gorgeous yet practical CBR600 had to go the GSXR route on the CBR. It either looks flash or horrible depending on taste, and the riding position is execrable in traffic, though nowhere near as bad as the nastiest boy in town, the GSXR1100. Were the machine anything other than merely borrowed I'm afraid that my first act would be to dump the largely useless fairing and put a proper seat on the thing. The pilot's perch might be tolerable but the pillion's pad is only of use as a means of rapid divorce (along the incredulous lines of, 'You paid £7000 for that....').
It is, of course, quite perverse to start this review on such a sour note, but more even than its fantastical power to weight ratio these irritants intrude to an extent that is quite incomprehensible. The CBR is so far otherwise ahead of the game that it's quite intolerable that it didn't serve as the base for the naked porky CB1000 instead of the colossal CBR1000.
This is a roundabout way of putting the CBR900 in perspective. Producing 120hp, the mere 410lb of chassis means that what would be normally a peaky unit can be used in softly, softly mode when necessary because there is so little mass to shift. Even more important, Honda have taken great pains to lighten unsprung weight to the largest extent possible without the bike falling apart when subjected to the usual road abuse (riding through roundabouts, up pavements, etc, etc). This minimises transmission rumble and wheel hopping whilst helping extend consumable life.
At least in theory. The most obvious piece of idiocy (re. running costs) is the use of a 16 inch front wheel and a special tyre section that is unique to the Honda, thus either impossible or extremely expensive to replace with other, superior makes. This might have been excusable if the tyre's performance was in some way revelatory, but the front end seemed less securely stuck to the tarmac than either a CBR600 or FZR1000. One of the first thing racers did with the CBR was to fit a 17 inch wheel so they could fit racing tyres with no apparent ill effects. Within 3000 miles the CBR's tyres were worn out. Gulp.
My tenure with the Honda coincided with the tyres wearing out. What had started out as extremely quick steering verged on the twitchy by the time the tyres were down to 1mm. The faster it went, though, the better it felt and the massive wrap-around frame ensured that no real wobbles developed. At times, the suspension felt quite harsh, the tyres a trifle remote and bike somewhat cramped but in truth I was doing nasty things with the throttle and enjoying immensely the remarkable rate of acceleration. It was all too easy to fall into wheelie mode or burn the rear tyre.
The gearbox was good for a Honda, almost up to the best Japanese standard. My only complaint was that there seemed to be too many gears, the way the tacho kept swinging around the gauge I had to keep clicking up the ratios like a lunatic and often lost any idea of which gear I was in. The motor whirred away smoothly, only a slight irritation at 7500 to 8500rpm. The chain looked like it had never been adjusted since new.
Riding along the motorway, with a relatively smooth surface, the CBR lost most of its uneasiness and I was able to get down behind the fairing, something that needed a certain amount of suppleness and a lack of a beer belly; those with long upper bodies will find the CBR a bit cramped. Top speed was theoretical, the glossies reckon about 160mph, but my licence was so near death that there was no way I was going to chance that. All I can say is that it'll bolt up to 125mph like most bikes will reach 70mph!
Fast A roads were great fun as it could be thrown about like an FZR600 yet accelerated better than a FZR1000. I could maybe have adjusted the suspension better to suit my weight but the owner would've knee-capped me. That might have helped damp down some of the twitchiness, as would've a new set of tyres, but after a day on the Honda I'd developed enough faith in the chassis to ignore the tyres' complaints. The footpegs touched down first, which is far enough over for me to start to look for a way to slow down.
Here the brakes proved brilliant. There was no way the twin front discs were ever going to fade, with the lack of mass they could lose 50mph in what seemed like an instant. Just as well, given the way the Honda made 100mph seem like 70mph. They worked nicely in the wet with plenty of feel at the lever, although I would have preferred a touch more pressure needed to lock up the front wheel. That's probably just a matter of being more used to old hacks than new cycles.
The rear disc wasn't so good, combining a wooden feel with a sticking piston. The minimal rear mudguard allows huge amounts of crud over the back end that soon gets into the caliper. It needed a touch of the rear brake to stabilize the 900 when using a heavy dose of the front discs. The pads looked about a third worn.
Doing more than 200 miles, about all the tank was good for, started my backside complaining. The footpegs were spot-on, not so high to be cramping, and once more than 50mph was up the handlebars were tolerable. The raised pillion perch meant there was a small bum-stop but the saddle foam eventually flattens out. I liked the reassuring feel of a huge hunk of a petrol tank between my legs. It made me instantly feel part of the machine, unlike some of its rivals where you feel perched way atop the reptile.
That 200 mile range didn't come from a particularly large petrol tank (it held four gallons) but from some quite remarkable economy figures (in the context of a 120hp race replica). I was getting 50 to 55mpg. It would do only 45mpg when full revs were used in the lower gears but the Honda was just as much fun using less frantic revs in taller gears.
Which was just as well in wet weather. Using all the revs in second, for instance, would have the worn back tyre squirming all over the road. Much better to use milder revs in fourth or even fifth to damp down the wildness of the power delivery. It would run down to 1500rpm snatch free, though it obviously needed a bit more rpm to accelerate hard. Even with the squirming back wheel I always felt that I was in control.
Honda claims a lot of the credit for the 900's chassis is due to their mass centralisation theory, where everything is kept close to the centre of gravity. This seems a bit dodgy to me, there's no way that the 70 to 100 kilograms of the rider is ever going to be anything other than high off the ground - to counteract that the mass of the bike needs not to be as near to the centre of gravity as possible but as low as practicable. Whatever, Honda should be applauded for getting the mass so low that it almost makes Bimotas look obese!
By the time I gave the Honda back to its owner, the front fork seals had started to weep very slightly. He'd ignored my advice to put gaiters on straight away but didn't seem too amused by my repetition of this hard won bit of practical advice. Just a mile or two in wet weather had covered the Pro-Link back end in muck that boded ill for bearing longevity. A few sensible touches would've been welcome on such an expensive bike, but the blistering acceleration and fast steering chassis will stay firmly planted in my mind for months to come. I can neither afford to buy one nor pay the running costs but that doesn't stop me yearning like hell for a Fireblade.
Dick Lewis
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First impressions were mixed. Speed and acceleration left my mind reeling. G-forces like a jet fighter and highly illegal speeds with just a twist of the throttle. In any gear and at any time. Excess power mixed with minimal mass. An old, old combination but one that many other bikes ignored. Old British twins used to do the same trick, but the vibes destroyed them before they got very far.
I was shocked by the amount of buzzing affecting the fairing. The noise seemed to thrum through the whole machine. Turning a sophisticated piece of four cylinder madness into an old rat. There was no way I would ever put my head down behind the screen. The buzzing caused massive distortion, like looking through dirty water in a storm. The vibes destroyed the pleasure of the speed and acceleration.
I read the tests again. Hardly any mention of vibration. A couple even reckoned it was a smooth mill. The clock read 3500 miles. Just one owner who'd seemed fairly sensible. He didn't wheelie the bike in my presence, anyway. I took the plastic off to check if the engine bolts were loose. They weren't but the plastic was very thin and flimsy. So much so that it cracked around the mounting holes when I replaced it.
Next day I had a look at a CBR in the dealers. Sure enough the fairing was much more substantial. Just to make sure I wasn't imagining things, I went home, tore the fairing off and went for a ride on the naked bike. The smoothness of the low mileage engine was brilliant.
That suggested the CBR had been dropped. As hard as I looked I could not find any sign of damage. Just a couple of screws that showed the tell-tale signs of being undone. As an interim solution I left the lower half of the fairing off. At the time, there were a couple of stories in the press of CBR's modified into naked machines. I slobbered over them but the cost of the bits was too high. Eventually, a secondhand fairing with some cracks was bought for £75. A GRP repair and some transfers put the bike back to its full glory.
I must admit that riding a bike that had been previously crashed, did absolutely nothing for me. On a normal machine it'd been bad enough. On a 175mph bike it was a peculiar form of madness. I was always looking for some sign of the chassis breaking up. A sudden shudder over a bumpy road represented the alloy frame failing from fatigue. The front wheel pattering when well banked over, accelerating hard out of bends, was the casting about to go.
The light mass and hefty frame, should've been the pinnacle of chassis technology. Should've been a sheer joy to hustle. But the thought of having the bike unravel under me held me back for a month or so. Then I decided, sod it. This was no way to live. If I was going to die I might as well do so at speed and in style.
Let's go wild. The major trouble with the CBR was that it went so fast so easily that it'd get you banned for life within days. I went from worrying about the machine breaking up to despairing of avoiding the cops. They were armed with radios, road blocks, helicopters and aeroplanes. Out on the open road a major effort was required to stay under 100mph. If I suffered from a nervous twitch the damn thing would have been running along at 150mph.
The totally compulsive nature of the power play made it difficult to ride in a sensible way. The excessive excitement of all the senses and pure glow of pleasure. The first time I ran the bike flat out through the gears I couldn't believe such sensations were available legally. The second time I thought too much, I'm going to kill myself. A heart attack in the exquisite arms of the Honda. By the third time I was an addict.
I started off hurtling down the straights, realising how fast I was going then panic braking for the approaching corner. The front end howled so fiercely under my desperate grip on the lever, I thought I was going to do a 100mph stoppie. What would've been a suicide trip on a Z1000, turned out to be easy-peasy as it rolled around the bend at an improbable velocity as if on rails.
I mention the Z1000 because that was my previous mount. Even with a much modded chassis it could still be called a rolling death-trap. But I'd become used to its wild ways to the extent that I usually rode it at CB400 Superdream speeds. My reactions were tuned to this massive beast with tractor-like controls. The CBR came as a complete culture shock.
The first thing I noticed, with 4000 miles on the clock, was that the tyres were worn out and the front pads rattled. What had been close to sublime became much closer to the devious Z1000. That infamous sixteen inch wheel, for instance, became very sensitive to road bumps. That doesn't sound too bad but one time it flew away from the bike. The bars twitched in my hands. With a cunning I didn't know I possessed, I grappled with the them and threw the machine back into line. Every muscle in my body strained with the effort but I won out.
Honda went to great lengths to explain that their unique section tyre allowed the low mass of the smaller wheel with the dynamics of a seventeen incher. For most of the time this seemed true enough but a worn out tyre will let go with a suddenness for which sixteen inch wheels are renown. The answer's to change the tyre before the tread goes below 1mm. Real hooligans have even fallen off under duress on decent rubber, but that's a feat of madness that escaped me. Thank God! It's possible to fit a seventeen inch wheel, from, I think, a VFR or NR 750.
The CBR900 looks as uncomfortable as most race replicas but looks can often be deceiving. Honda started to perfect the ergonomics of motorcycles in the mid seventies with the CB400F and consummated that art with the excellent CBR600. All that weight of design couldn't be totally submerged when they came to the CBR900. Obviously, it can't compete with a full dress Gold Wing on the long distance comfort front, but it's nowhere near as bad as an FZR or GSXR. The stretch over the tank was mild, my legs didn't feel cramped and I found the riding position good for up to 300 miles in a few hours.
The Honda could run along at constant speeds without any traumas. An 120hp motor it might have, with a violent, exhilarating output of power at the top end of the rev range, but it runs well from tickover, any lack of torque it might have more than compensated by the minimal mass. Honda have pared down each and every component and placed all the heavy stuff as close as possible to the centre of gravity. Both the dry mass of 420lbs and the way it's concentrated makes for an ease of use that grand tourers can only dream of.
There's so much raw power, though, that piling it on coming out of bends lightens the front wheel, which causes the bars to swing back and forth between the steering stops. The first time this happened I thought it was time to say my prayers, having experience similar wobbles on the Z that turned really nasty. The CBR became stable again by either backing off or picking the bike upright. These machinations could be ignored on smooth roads but if the front wheel hit a large bump coming out of a corner, the deflection amplified the wobble, made the whole bike feel very tremulous. I was never thrown off but it seemed a very close thing on several occasions.
The CBR had excellent steering accuracy (when the front wheel was actually on the ground) and easy steering, that allowed me to plot a safe course through the bumps. I took the intrigues of the front end as a sign of a thoroughbred motorcycle rather than a devilish swine that was out to kill me (as in the case of the Kawa Z1000).
I was less willing to forgive the gearbox action that needed the kind of concentration you'd have to give to sex for the first time. At times I just couldn't get it to go in. At others it'd downchange a ratio all of its own accord, as if complaining that I wasn't using the performance to the full. Honda gearboxes have always been less than perfection and it seemed that they'd taken out so much mass of the cogs and selectors to leave the whole 'box very finicky. 1000 mile oil changes certainly helped and were, anyway, necessary because excessive town use caused a lot of condensation in the oil.
Consumable wear was heavy but fuel varied from 25mpg to around 50mpg, the latter from just bumbling along at under 5000 revs. 40mpg didn't need much restraint to achieve, the legal limits could still be broken enough for instant loss of licence. One slightly worrying aspect was that really hard thrashing used up half a sump full of oil in about 500 miles. Normal riding didn't shift the level at all.
Finish was reasonable, there wasn't much steel to rust. A couple of fasteners were spotted with rust and the finish on the exhaust looked a bit dubious. The fit of the tank to the frame was poor, the seat plastic was bit worn where my leg had rubbed against it. The pillion pad was reported as being incredibly uncomfortable. One tall passenger staggered off the bike after half an hour, collapsed on to his back and waved his cramped legs in the air. The mirrors were useless at speed, blurred visions of white cars causing heart palpitations. The lights blistered a path through dark roads but the indicator switches had a very vague feel that I never really became used to.
These are minor quibbles, of course, but after a hard day's ride, when it's cold and pouring down, they can intrude. The plastic gave little protection from the rain; indeed, the screen funnelled it right into my jacket, and the throttle had to be treated with the gravest respect on wet roads. It can be a bit of a pain at times, even potentially dangerous.
Thus do many CBR's end up being dumped on the tarmac. That means a very close examination before purchase and not being blinded to everything by its stunning performance.
T.T.R.