The girl who was selling the CX500 Eurosport wanted £1200 in the beginning but I played the game out and bought it for £550. Things immediately went from good to bad. Roadrunners mixed with rain and diesel meant a visitation to the tarmac; but we were OK, I picked the bike up and got home in one piece.
The following morning the bike was dead. Swearing was replaced by joy as I found that merely one of the battery bolts had come out, earthed on the frame and drained the battery. The second problem was that it didn’t bump start as the CDI needed more voltage than could be produced by trying to push near on 500lbs of metal. An hour on the battery charger sorted that. Luckily, that was the first and only time it broke down.
For 3 months I rode the bike through snow, wind, rain and hail without a murmur of dissent. As a courier I covered about 1200-2000 miles a month and when Chernobyl blew its stack, I covered most of Scotland collecting samples of dead grass, cow, goat, milk and cheese.
I never got better than 51mpg out of the CX on a slow run (55-60mph) but averaged 47mpg even on balls out thrashes. The bike was easy to service, save for the mono-shock that had no grease nipples and has to come apart every six months or pay out a fortune on new bronze bushes. The camchain’s still good with 35000 miles up, and the valves haven't done the usual trick of disappearing into the head and closing up the gaps. Maybe I’ve just been lucky.
The original silencers were still on the bike when I sold it, though they were getting a bit rough after 5 years. The brakes were good for a laugh. The rear just filled up with gunge and secondhand discs are extremely rare. Even new pads, Goodridge hoses and rebuilt calipers failed to make the front discs firm up to my liking, but despite the spongy feel they still worked.
The handling was greatly affected by tyres. When I fitted a set of Metzelers (ME99 & 77) the handling went out to lunch in a big way. Anything over 85mph was suicidal and I had the most inspired case of tank slappers ever when overtaking some cars. Big whoopsies that time, at least the car drivers were amused. Around bends the Metz’s had good grip which helps to counteract the high centre of gravity, but even so, the tyres would suddenly break free - Pirellis slid earlier but more controllably.
I found the best combination a ribbed Pirelli Phantom 100/90 front and Metzeler ME77 120/80 rear. Good directional stability with good traction but still pricey for what you get. Anyway, I started to recognize my own mortality, packed in despatching and took up a nice safe factory job. I offered a colleague a run which resulted in collecting a VW under the front wheel, when it hit us while we were waiting to make a turn. The car driver wanted to move his car, but I told him to wait for the police who I'd sent my colleague to fetch. When they arrived, details exchanged, I went off to claim from NU.
This is where things turned really strange. The driver had given the police one set of details and me a false set. I couldn't claim off the insurance until the driver reported the accident to his insurers but the police wouldn't give me his true name. Only because I have access to friends with dubious reputations who do dubious things with computers was I able to establish that he lived in another county, had resprayed his car and re-registered it to his company. Only after I'd burst into his office and reminded him of the details he gave to the police did he actually admit to being involved in the accident...
14 months after the accident the insurance company finally coughed up some money, and I had a bike in a number of bits after the garage had become fed up of waiting for the money. The engine bars had taken out a large chunk of the engine rather than protecting it and put a large dent in one of the exhaust pipe. The horrendous cost of new spares meant many small bits were repaired rather than replaced and I got lucky with the fairing, a friend had a Windjammer he no longer needed.
When it was all back together, naturally it refused to start. Dismantling the carbs and cleaning them didn’t help. Desperation had taken hold and all my mates had deserted the deal for the local pub. I eventually realised that I'd swapped the vacuum and petrol pipes around, something he is never going to tell his mates. That night I got very drunk to celebrate.
I have lived with it happily ever after apart from the time some hoodlum tried to nick it from outside my front door. The Abus lock protected the bike, but the thief had ruined the lock so I had to get the lads from the fire station to come round with huge bolt cutters.
CX500s have come in for a lot of stick over the years, what with Plastic Maggot and such-like names, but the plain fact is that they do actually work. Despite the aesthetic attraction of things like British bikes, I want a bike I can get on and ride; the CX was just that type of machine. Initially as a working bike and latterly as a general runabout with occasional forays into other lands for holidays, the CX fitted the bill perfectly.
For the price, I don’t know many bikes you can decide to see get on and go to Holland on the spur of the moment and not worry about which bit is going to fall off and whether that relay held on by gaffa tape will last the deluge or not. I'm not one to buy a new model straight off, even if I had the money, but bikes like the CX or indeed the Goldwing have been around long enough to have most of the bugs ironed out.
The day I can realistically afford a Guzzi Spada is far off and until such time, I'll just have to make do with bikes that aren't fine handling thoroughbreds, but can still turn a crank when it’s demanded of them. I saw too many despatchers buy some phenomenal machine only to spend more time off work fixing them than earning a crust because of their temperament. I like riding but an inanimate bike has always seemed like so much metal. You wouldn’t say a singer had a good voice until you heard them sing, would you?
Ian Lindsay