The long and short of it...

[pdedse]

As a few of you here are aware, I finally have my '17 EX back, and everything is now working correctly. No more brake squeals, floppy taillight housing, or backed-up vent hoses. Zero issues.

A few of you are also aware that today I was able to take her on her first trip over the Sierras, into Nevada, and up to Lake Tahoe. In taking this ride, I've now completed all the types of rides I'm ever likely to do on this bike, with the lone exception being a Death Valley run. I've never been to Death Valley, car or motorcycle, and I definitely need to scratch that one off my list.

Maybe this fall.

Anyway, the point being that with today's 500-mile Sierras ride now in the books, I think I have a pretty solid handle on this bike as a whole.

Likes...

Appearance: Well, duh. That's a given. She's a CB1100.

Suspension: I can't believe that I'm placing the suspension at the top of my 'likes' list, but there it is. As I was riding today, I reminded myself that I'm on a retro bike, and I tried to imagine how this same ride would feel on a vintage CB. "The suspension sure wouldn't work like this," is the first thing that crossed my mind, followed by, "The XSR's suspension doesn't work like this, either."

The suspension on this EX is truly remarkable. It's plush without being soggy/sloppy/wallowy/floaty, and composed without being harsh. For this type of bike, it has Goldilocks suspension.

Brakes: Even with the stock rubber lines, the brakes are just stupidly excellent. That's the second item I figure this '17 EX has in spades over any vintage CB.

Throttle response: Bar none, the best I've ever experienced on any bike. No need for qualifiers. It's simply the best.

Drivetrain: Ditto. Zero drivelash. A perfectly smooth, seamless pick-up off the throttle, at any opening. Remarkably, it's the same with the brakes. Getting on and off the throttle and brakes results in absolutely no pitching, bucking, lurching, snapping, hesitation, or anything else. It's just a monorail of seamless locomotion.

Sound: She's mostly quiet, which I prefer, but when she does make sounds, they're really good sounds. High quality. Characterful. Authoritative. Expensive-sounding.

Mirrors: Coming off of a slew of bikes with crappy mirrors, the mirrors on this CB are so good, I take an almost deviant degree of pleasure in checking out those crystal-clear rearview images, at any speed or RPM. Perhaps the mirrors on my ST1100 and ST1300 were equally excellent, but it's been so long since I owned those bikes that I can't really say. I assume they were just like these, only lower, below the elbows. Whatever. These mirrors are sooooo satisfying.

Transmission: It has a transmission? I suppose it does. It must have one, right? I can't tell. The next time I have to think about the transmission on this bike will be the first time.

Fuel mileage: 58.3 mpg on the one tank I bothered to measure today, which covered the run from Gardnerville, in Nevada, to Downieville, on Hwy 49 in California, about forty-five minutes east of Grass Valley. Meaning, up and over the Sierra Nevadas, and a lot of it was fairly aggressive. More and more, I keep getting these freakishly high fuel-mileage results. Outstanding!

Switchgear: Yes, whenever I hop onto the Honda after spending time on the Yamaha I tend to hit the horn instead of the turnsignal. I do this maybe once or twice before getting the hang of it. Regardless, the switchgear on this bike is so rock-solid, I won't fault Honda for the location of the horn switch.

Headlight: LEDs? Big fan. I'm sold. I actually look forward to night rides now.

Ground clearance: Considering everything I read and saw regarding the CB's relatively limited ground clearance, I've been pleasantly shocked to discover that those people don't know how to ride, or their roads are all extremely off-camber, or mine are extremely awesomely cambered, or I totally suck and just never knew it. Whatever the reason, ground clearance has never been a problem with this bike.

Steering: See 'Throttle response' and 'Drivetrain.' This bike's steering is nearly telepathic, dead neutral, and as solid and consistent as all get-out. In combination with the perfect throttle response and lack of drivelash, or any other form of chassis-upset, the liquid ball-bearings steering is the final touch in forming the easiest to ride literbike ever created.

Dislikes...

Handling: Notice that I mentioned the steering, and suspension, and lack of drivelash, but I never referred to any of it as "handling." I'll go ahead and make that subtle distinction. The bike does turn exceedingly well, and the chassis soaks up bumps like a champ even while returning a plush, stable ride, but, well, come on, physics are still physics. She dances well...for her size.

Yep, it has to be said. She does very well, all things considered, but one real rip from Downieville to Nevada City on the XSR will quickly put paid to any romantic notions that the big CB is in that same league, in terms of overall handling.

Not a problem, though. Anyone with two brain cells to rub together would know going in that the math simply doesn't add up in the big Honda's favor, in terms of tack-sharp handling.

Seating position: It's taken me until tonight's ride home to figure out why I'm so much less comfortable on the Honda than on my bar-risers-equipped XSR, and, as it turns out, it has nothing to do with the bars, or even the seat. It's the relatively high location of the footpegs. For all you people who think the stock seat sucks, well, simply try this one test. The next time your rump is starting to get sore from riding the CB, simply remove your feet from the pegs and let them dangle down below the pegs, with the back of your calves resting against the front side of the footpegs. This is essentially the seating position I have with the XSR. Once I do this, I instantly notice that the Honda's bars are plenty high enough. The problem is the slouching position that the Honda places us in, and it's not the bars, nor is it the seat. It's those high, center-mounted footpegs. They force the hips to be rotated in such a way as to place undue weight and stress on your butt. As soon as you drop your feet in front of the pegs and let them dangle, you feel immediate relief. You can feel how great the seat really is, once it's allowed to do its job properly.

So, problem solved. Whenever I'm traveling in a straight line, I simply dangle my feet every so often, and the slouching (and accompanying sore backside) is immediately alleviated.

The thing is, Honda gave the bike a nice, low seat height, which is important when it comes time for us shorties to get our feet down, or during slow-turn maneuvers. In order to maintain sufficient cornering clearance, however, Honda had to give the bike fairly high pegs.

And that's where we are. Low seat height, high pegs, high bars: easy to handle, but not the most comfortable position, plus it forces us into an unusual slouching posture. Other bikes with similar or greater ground clearance have higher pegs, but much taller seat heights, too. See: my XSR, or the Z900RS.

Can't have everything, folks. If you want a low seat height and sufficient ground clearance, you have to pay the piper somehow, and payment comes in the form of those high pegs.

I'm pretty jazzed to have finally sorted this out for myself. Long trips will be a breeze now.

There is one other item, however...

Power: Yeah, yeah, the power is plenty sufficient for most anything within this bike's basic design parameters. She scoots along very nicely, most of the time. There's just one problem, though, which I finally unearthed during today's ride.

While our bike certainly has sufficient power, no one will ever argue that she has plenty of power to spare. Nope, she has just enough. That is, until you mix in 6-9,000' elevations, at which point she simply can't muscle her way up a long grade, particularly in sixth gear. Try as I might, sixth gear proved utterly useless as I tried to power my way up the hill during the long straight that leads into Markleeville, and this issue became even more glaring up on Monitor Pass. For the first time since I've owned her, I had to downshift just to accelerate.

Now, sure, those same hills and elevations sapped power from my XSR during an identical ride through Monitor Pass I took just a week ago, but the XSR could still pull those hills in sixth gear, no problem. The Honda simply wouldn't accelerate, or gain RPM at all, not unless I dropped down to lower gears.

Once I was back down into lower elevations, I ran the same test, and she pulled sixth gear no problem, right up to the cut-off point. She revved fairly quickly, too. At serious elevation, she became a liability. I can only imagine how bad it would have been if I'd had a passenger and luggage aboard. I had the same problem with my old air-cooled BMW R1100R and R1200R Roadsters, but not to the degree that I experienced today with my CB1100.

Yep, high up in the mountains, this bike seriously needs more steam. Today's ride brought me back to my longstanding wish for a CB with 70+ ft-lbs of torque and 110 rwhp.

Oh, well. So she has one major, uncorrectable flaw. At least it's a flaw that only shows itself under very rare, specific conditions. I guess I'll just have to drop down into fourth and accept that I can't go very fast when I'm crossing Tioga Pass, or wherever.

In the grand scheme of things, considering how ideal her power feels on so many other—and much more frequently traveled—roads, it's truly not a big deal.

Anyhow, speaking of Monitor Pass and whatsuch, here she is at the 8,314' summit...



...and at the crazy-epic vista towards the end, with the edge of California in sight, Nevada lurking on the other side of that mountain range...



Here's the same shot, only looking up the road rather than down...



Finally, here she is at the lookout point on Hwy 49, between Sierraville and Bassetts...



None other than King Kenny Roberts hisownbadself has described this stretch of Hwy 49 from Downieville to Sierraville as one of his favorite roads in the world. I used to ride this one a few times per month, but in recent years I've slacked off. Having now ridden it again twice in the past week, I don't know why I ever stopped. That road is nigh on perfection.

Okay, that's pretty much it. The 2017 CB1100 EX has about eight million killer qualities, and her only real negative is a relative lack of power, which only comes into play at exceedingly high elevations. The size/weight/handling thing? It is what it is. It's part and parcel of a truly authentic, real-steel retro.

Everything else about her is simply sublime.

So, here we are. She's taken all the tests I needed to give her, and passed all but one with flying colors. She's a keeper.

I doubt I'll have much else to report. I'm sure I'll keep reading, but I probably won't have anything more to post.

Be safe, and enjoy your ride.

An enjoyable write-up, VLJ, you always manage to point out cb1100 subtleties that allow one to enjoy the bike even more.

The one issue I'd comment on is the "lack of 6th gear power" on long uphills at elevation. I have experienced this on my '14, but haven't had the chance to test this out on the '17ex. My initial thought is that I would never expect a bike at this weight to pull away in 6th gear going uphill, that 6th is designed as an overdrive for gentle slopes and flats. Yet you have experience with the xrs that is capable of doing so--perhaps that is the problem, the comparing the cb1100 to the xrs, a much lighter bike.

I can imagine that the cb1100 could have been geared so that it could accelerate uphill in 6th, but then perhaps such gearing drops overall mpg?

So, the only thing I would disagree with is when you say "she has one major, uncorrectable flaw"; is it a flaw if the design was purposeful? If it is a flaw the solution is, as you note, to simply drop a gear (or two).

Beautiful photos, I must get back to this area. It looks like you got your rear wheel all cleaned up!