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1979 Honda XL185S Motorcycle Road Test - 9-Page Vintage Article
Original, vintage motorcycle advertisement / article.Page Size: Approx. 8\" x 11\" (21 cm x 28 cm)Condition: Good
• PRETEND FOR A MOMENT YOU\'RE RIDINGdown a piece of the old twisty-turny onyour Moto Morini 350 or Yamaha RD400.It\'s a beautiful spring day and you’re sim-ply out exploring. Suddenly, out of no-where, a gravel road intersects thepavement. It catches your attention, andyou turn from the tarmac onto the dirt.You follow the road a ways, and it be-comes a trail, punctuated by potholes androcks. It\'s no fun plodding ak»ng on thelow-slung street bike, so you turn back,daunted, wishing you were on yourpure enduro.Picture yourself on a Maico 250 Enduromount. You\'re fireroading along, having agood old time. Eventually, your fireroadintersects a stretch of pavement. Boy, areyou hot. You know there\'s a store downthe road a piece that can offer a nice cooldrink. Alas, you can\'t go unless you wantto risk getting a ticket. If your bike werestreet-legal, you could jam down to thestore and take care of that thirst.Get the idea? A dual-purpose bike hasthe latitude to provide more than one typeof riding. Traditionally, these bikes havehad tradeoffs: lousy street handling inexchange for good dirt manners, or viceversa. In fact, many dual-purpose bikeshave been permanently relegated to ei-ther the street or dirt. Even more bother-some than the bike with sub-par dirt orstreet performance is the on-off road bikethat never does anything right—it’s a lia-bility on the street and in the dirt.But don\'t worry; the dual-purpose Hon-das are all pretty good, and the XL185S\'sstreet and dirt talents are fairly wellmatched. It’s just slightly more at home inthe dirt than it is on the street Keep inmind that this is a playbike—it doesn\'thave the engine of a Suzuki motocrosseror the suspension of a BMW R1 OORT. Butits components are matched well for thecasual riding Honda designed it to do.Considering the suggested retail priceof the 185 is just a breath over a thousanddollars, Honda could not be expected toinstall world-caliber components through-out the bike. This isn’t all bad, however. Infact, the engine itself is a takeoff from thevenerable SL125 powerplant, which haslong had a reputation for stalwart (albeitmild) performance.The 185 engine has a 63.0mm bore and57.8mm stroke, and a single chain-drivenoverhead camshaft Unlike the four-valveXL250S and 500S, the 185 has but twovalves, and they’re every bit as big as willfit into the combustion chamber. The en-gine\'s 9.2 1 compression ratio can standunleaded, regular or premium gasoline.Fuel is atomized by a single 24mm Keihmcarburetor. Its airbox and easy-to-servicefoam filter arrangement provide clean airand keep intake noise to a minimum whilerecirculating piston-ring blow-by fumes Amechanism mounted below the carb con-denses oil vapors, funneling them into aclosed drain tube that can be openedperiodically to allow droppings to leavethe system. The remaining vapors aredrawn through the carb and into the com-bustion chamber. All US-market street-legal motorcycles manufactured sinceJanuary 1978 have had similar closedcrankcase systems.An aluminum three-ring piston com-presses the mixture and the 12mm sparkplug is fired by a capacitor-dischargesolid state ignition system The CDIpickup is mounted in the cylinder head, inthe same location as the old singles’ igni-tion points. For reliability and cost-effec-tiveness, a common centrifugal advanceunit is employed. A certain gap is neces-sary for the magnetic triggering system towork correctly; this is set during assemblyand can’t be changed. Likewise, the igni-tion timing itself, which is adjustable,should never go awry unless the camchain (also responsible for the ignition...16680
