Honda CX500 Turbo Motorcycle
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|Honda CX500 Turbo Motorcycle|
In 1982 Honda introduced the first production turbo motorcycle, the CX500 Turbo (also known as CX500T). The CX500T was based upon the Honda CX500 and, along with the turbo, also had a very complex fuel injection system with multiple redundant fail-safe systems.
How it works
The Turbo's powerplant was based on the water-cooled V-twin with four pushrod-operated overhead valves per cylinder used in the shaft-drive CX500 introduced a few years earlier - itself a groundbreaking design. The engine case was retained nearly intact from the original CX500, having been designed from the outset to accommodate turbo-charging. The turbocharger, at peak boost providing approximately 19 psi of over-pressure, nearly doubles the power output of the engine when on-boost (the CX500 Turbo produced 82 bhp, compared to the standard CX500's 50 bhp). The engine case is one of the few items carried over from the original CX500; the suspension, brakes, frame and fairing all differ significantly from the earlier CX500.
The CX500 Turbo, although capable of superb acceleration when on-boost, suffers somewhat from an abrupt and large step in power when transitioning from off-boost to on-boost. Furthermore, being the first production Honda motorcycle with fuel-injection, the engine control system is complex and, by current standards, was quite bulky.
Although a good example of Honda's engineering capabilites (as turbos are more ideally suited to large, multi-cylinder engines that give a smooth exhaust flow), factory turbos fell out of favour with the motorcycling public for various reasons, causing Honda to cease production of the CX Turbo after the 1983 – in total, there were only approximately 5400 CX500T’s built.
||Do you remember stories about the Honda CX500 Turbo Motorcycle?? Add your memories.
In the Science Museum's Records
Inv. No: 1982-1069