Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1182254
1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500 RACER TEST P86 11,000 rpm ceiling I'd been asked to observe while those new Tech 3 pistons bedded in. Tantalizingly, that was just when the Honda engine wanted to really take off, after coming on strongly from 9500 rpm upwards quite fiercely, without the absent ATAC power-valves fitted to the works Honda triples and later customer bikes, which helped smooth out power deliv- ery on those so well. But for my last four laps on the bike, I revved it out to 11,800 rpm in the gears, and it made a massive difference to the Honda's acceleration, as well as making it much easier to ride. That's because it was now snicking nicely all through the gears on the one-up race-pat- tern left-foot gearshift to leave me still in the powerband as I hit each higher ratio, instead of having to work the light-action clutch to coax it back on the pipe. Yet the greater torque this also accessed didn't upset the sense of balance from the Che- vallier frame, and the easy way it steered. What a sweet little motorcycle, well, not so little, with 125 bhp delivered at 11,500 rpm, call it a bike that punched above its weight. The only pity is that Alain Chevallier is no longer with us, so he can't admire the won- derful job that Gull & Co. has achieved in restoring the Che- vallier Honda 500 mothership. Kudos, Gull, and thank you! CN much shorter than me, so I found the close-coupled riding posi- tion much too cramped to feel comfortable on the Chevallier—I couldn't move around on the bike very easily, and it was impos- sible to tuck my head behind the screen. That was a pity, as Didier de Radiguès and I are the same height, and it would have been nice to try it as he rode it. But what this meant was that I got a great sense of the bike's flickability, the way I could swap direction on it so relatively easily in Paul Ricard's copious chi- canes, without hanging off. But the Chevallier was super stable in fast sweepers, like the fourth- gear Signes right-hander at the end of the Mistral Straight, where that longer wheelbase inevitably came into play, compensating for the tight steering geometry. It wasn't remotely nervous-steering or twitchy, just felt planted with heaps of security. But it also braked well, with its light weight surely a factor as I found in a fascinating "battle" on the Sunday main event at Ricard with someone else whose name I never did discover on a stan- dard Honda RS500—you know who you are, so please write in! Thanks to the Chevallier's light weight I could gain many yards on him braking into the chicanes thanks to the ultra-effective AP-Lockheed brake package, or the tight right-hander after Signes, but then he'd get on the gas harder than me exiting the bend and pull those yards back, where I was constrained by the S P E C I F I C A T I O N S CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500 YEAR OF CONSTRUCTION: ................... 1984 OWNERS: .....Olivier Rietsch, Saint Laurent du Maroni, French Guyana ENGINE: ..............Water-cooled, reed-valve single-crankshaft 90o V3 2-stroke BORE X STROKE: ................... 62.6 x 54mm CAPACITY: ...........................................499cc OUTPUT: ..................125 bhp @ 11,500 rpm CARBURATION: ................3 x 34mm Keihin IGNITION: .................... Kokusan-Denko CDI GEARBOX: .................... 6-speed extractable cassette-type CLUTCH: ........ Multiplate dry (7 friction/7 steel) CHASSIS: ............ Cold-drawn chrome-moly tubular steel twin-loop frame FRONT SUSPENSION: ............. Fully adjustable 40mm Chevallier inverted telescopic fork REAR SUSPENSION: ................... Fabricated chrome-moly tubular steel swingarm with fully adjustable WP monoshock and variable-rate link FRONT BRAKES: .......Dual 310mm steel discs with four-piston AP-Lockheed calipers REAR BRAKE: ..............Single 220mm steel disc with two-piston Brembo caliper FRONT-WHEEL/TIRE: .......... 3.50 in. Marvic cast magnesium wheel / 120/70-17 Pirelli Diablo REAR-WHEEL/TIRE: .............. 5.00 in. Marvic cast magnesium wheel/ 180/55-17 Pirelli Diablo Superbike HEAD ANGLE: ...........................................23° WHEELBASE: .....................................55.9 in. WEIGHT: ...........................................244 lbs. WEIGHT DISTRIBUTION:.......... 52 front /48 rear percent