Oh, it's air!
This thing rotates a lot easier than I'd anticipated.
WARNING: This is an impression of the bike's performance capabilities from someone who has ridden sportsbikes and other types for 35 years. If you don't approve of this sort of thing on the street, you should stop reading now and go play checkers or something.
I've been keeping my throttle hand while in lower gears on a tight leash until I melded with the bike. I don't like road rash, and pushing a bike too hard too soon is a good way grab yourself a big ol' heapin' helpin' of it. But this past weekend the weather was nice (for Houston, anyway: 90F and lower humidity), and I had rolled 5,000 miles on the way home from work on Friday. I decided I had "melded" sufficiently and it was time for some teenager-ish hijinks. I'm 45, but don't let that fool you: my immaturity knows no bounds. Just ask the wife.
I launched off the driveway with appropriate noise and spectacle to annoy the old ladies -- then I hit the first stop sign a whole 200 feet from the driveway. We have a stop sign Nazi on our HOA board. The woman thinks putting red signs at every bloody intersection will make things safer. We don't do tea, needless to say.
Anyhow, at the first stop there was a car coming opposite me about 100 feet away with a cute-ish goil in it, so my immaturity immediately suborned what little higher brain functions I possess. Drop that clutch, and up she comes! (The bike, not the goil -- want to be very clear on that point in case the wife sees this.) It wasn't as quick as my old CBR, but it certainly didn't require any tugging; all torque. Unfortunately it doesn't balance very well, as there's quite a bit of iron up front. It was down again within 50 feet as I backed off just the tiniest smidge. Not that it matters; I wasn't interested in unicycling down the street, just showing the goil how dumb I am. Mission accomplished! I could tell she was impressed by the way she utterly ignored me. Oh well... Onward!
Hit some very familiar back roads with good twisties and quality pavement and I decided to knock some of that shiny off the peg feelers. She goes over further than I'd thought, as well. Points easily and tracks directly toward my visual hold at the curve apex with no wobblies at all. Very stable in 90mph sweeping curves, and responds quite predictably to trail braking, (much better than a cruiser, but that's not saying much). The front caliper has just the right feel for this size of bike, without the supersport twitchiness. Stands nice and smoothly on early braking in a high speed corner, as well. Better, in fact, than the 600 did. That thing tended to get a bit squirrely with late front brake, maybe because the front was lighter due to the fairing. Dunno, but the CB is quite stable.
Only thing I don't like about the cornering is that the bars aren't ideally situated for pushing it down. Bit too high. Consequently, I have to use more peg pressure than a sport would require. A set of low bars may solve this problem. I shall experiment.
Straight hard braking is good, but the rear does tend to lock rather more easily that I think it should. It's not a huge problem, as the frontal weight of the big power plant keeps the locked rear from getting really fishy, and the only time you should be on that rear anyway is for emergency stops, or possible light dragging in slow traffic for stability. But the bike came to a quick, controlled stop on three different attempts from 70 and I experienced no frontal lock up or even a hint of it. (Standard brakes; I don't do ABS.)
Power-on shifting at high rpms is very smooth, at least 3-4 and 4-5. I experienced a few no-shifts without the clutch on 2-3. 1-2 is a no-go; clutch only. Not a big deal, as I tend to clutch most of the time anyway. I've always maintained that any transmission you can shift clutchless from 1-2 probably isn't built very well. The trans on this bike is very solid and positive. Typical Honda quality in that respect.
So, my semi-official performance evaluation of the CB1100 to date is: Acceptable, With Perks. You're not going to beat a R-variant of any sort in a flat-out race, but that's not the point. She's sexy AND smart, without all the plastic nonsense.
Only thing I think will be a necessary accessory for performance riding at this point is some bar-end mirrors, because the Mickeys are completely useless when you're down over the tank. I fiddled with various positions, but they're just too high. Anyway, they're hideous. They'll be going bye-bye soon.
Gonna try an area further west with more vertical movement in the roads in a few weeks when the weather dips down from OMFG It's Hot! to Mostly Just Miserable. I'll let you know how she handles gravity games.
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What's that under the front tire...?
..ride safe though...!