I bought the Brazil one with about 1800 miles on the clock and now it has about 10500 miles. I bought the Jap with 600 miles and part exchanged it for the GT550 about 12 weeks later with about 4500 miles on the clock, having set the tests on it.
The clutch on the Jap bike proved rather stiff. Alright for normal use but impossible to get any gentle control during manoeuvring such as during the figure of eight in the old part one test. This proved to be due to the cable drying out due to lack of use and some 3-in-1 had it as smooth and easy to use as the Brazilian one. The bike had two previous owners in two years and had only done just over 600 miles.
Though the two bikes are the same model, there is very little that is completely the same: the engine is about it, really. Even that is quite different, the later bike having the advantage of hexagonal bolts holding the engine together instead of the usual cross-headed screws. This makes access to the points easier, any help in this department is good as the points live inside the generator behind the flywheel and a puller is required to change them.
One of the biggest differences is the electrics, the Jap being the usual 6V but the other having 12V. When I first rode at night on the Brazilian I thought the lights were not very good, but that was before I tried the Jap version, which had only a 25W light. The switches on the newer bike were well designed, laid out and easy to use, the Jap ones on the other hand are small, badly placed and therefore difficult to use. especially when wearing gloves - the main light switch is a real pain as it has a blank spot in the middle which results in total darkness.
The later bike looks bigger and is in fact, but only to a very slight degree. The seat height remains the same but the seat is larger and more comfortable, it also comes off to reveal the toolkit. The bars are higher which makes the riding position more upright, but this extra height greatly improves the view in the mirrors - you see less of your arms and more of the maniac car drivers looking for a bad place to overtake. It seems to me that a bike with L-plates is an open invitation to all car drivers to overtake, which they usually struggle to do before cutting in wildly.
The wheels on the Brazilian are wider and the rear is an inch larger, but this doesn't seem to improve the handling, and I would say that the Japanese is better. The former has an annoying habit of skipping over the lines of black tar used to stitch bits of road together when they can’t be bothered to repair them properly. The Brazilian's front brake is also larger and more effective, the Jap version being pathetic by comparison.
Fuel economy couldn't be better, any time I've bothered to work it out it has always been over 120mpg. This holds true for a mixture of town, country, dual carriageway and twisty road riding. The newer bike has a larger 2.6 gallon tank, compared to 2.2 gallons. The shape is different, the Jap more tear dropped than the square tank of the newer bike.
Weather doesn't seem to worry either bike, crawling around town in a heat wave or flat out in a downpour, it’s all the same. The only thing they don't like is wind, but then who does? The thing I hate most is cars overtaking too close when there is a cross wind from the right as the bike tends to leap sideways due to its light weight making the bike unstable in winds. Maintenance consists of changing the oil every 1000 miles and adjusting the brakes and chains.
Riding through a flood eight inches deep and 30 feet long then leaving the bike sitting in the rain for a couple of days resulted in an elastic chain that needed constant adjustment. So one Saturday when the chain ran out of adjustment a new one was bought with the intention of fining it on the Sunday but before this could be done the bike started behaving strangely. vibrating badly and dropping top speed to about 15mph. This happened during the last of six lessons in the Star Riders Silver course and so it was some time before the fault was traced and found to be a cracked crankcase, the bike having lost most of its oil by then. The Jap bike was bought at this point as a temporary replacement until the other one could be fixed.
The Brazilian would do 70mph when wound up on a good flat road and could reach 75mph if pushed beyond the bounds of sanity, but even a slight hill would soon reduce this. The Jap, on the other hand, was 10mph slower but less sensitive to slopes.
I do a fair mileage, most of it quite fast and this has caused a few things to come loose, the first thing to fall off was the helmet lock and the steering lock is now loose; so much for security. The front guard then started to disintegrate, one strut at a time until the last went and it started rubbing the wheel whereupon it was ditched and a new one ordered. The bike was ridden for about a week without the mudguard and needless to say it rained, but what really annoyed me was the fact that no matter what speed I travelled at the front wheel would pick up water and as much dirt as it could find and throw it right in my face. A steamed up visor in town resulting in a very dirty face.
The new mudguard was bought from a shop in Cambridge and fitted before setting out for Ipswich. By the time I got there the first strut had already snapped and so it was returned to the shop and another ordered. This new one has not really been tested as the bike is now laid up awaiting repair. Newer bikes have a plastic guard with no stays, the idea being that what isn't there can't break.
A recurring problem I had was that the rubber O-ring between the carb and the head dissolved and oozed out sideways; on removal it looked a bit like a fried egg. This resulted in an air leak and so reduced the already low power output. Once, while waiting for a new seal, I stuck the old one back with some Blue Hylomar and this is still there. I never had this problem with the Jap machine.
I never had the Jap bike long enough for anything to wear out, but the flasher unit and a fuse had to be changed when one of the wires came adrift from the battery and I rode on without knowing. When the Brazilian one went for its first MOT it failed for having a bald spot on the rear tyre. This was at about 10000 miles and was probably caused by locking the back wheel up repeatedly while practising the emergency stop. No doubt without this abuse the original Brazilian Dunlop would have lasted much longer.
I have done over 300 miles in one day on the Brazilian, which took about eight hours and there was a long stop in the middle, the last forty miles were a bit painful but that's not bad going for such a small bike. The most I've gone on the Jap version was about 250 miles with similar results. On the GT550, however, I've done over 400 miles in a day with no real discomfort, definitely a more suitable bike for my type of riding.
Either CG makes an ideal learner or commuter bike and long journeys are possible with patience and determination. Though riding flat out over bumpy roads can put excessive strain on the crankcase of the Brazilian bike leading to a cracked engine, at least that’s the only reason I can think of for its demise.
Norman Smith