Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

By Lane Campbell When Honda quit making Super Hawks and started making CB/CL350s, something died. Those over-carb ureted, coldblooded CB72s and CB77s taught a whole generation how to ride fast , ready or not. The succeeding generation got from Honda a suc- 6 cession of road bikes, both twins and fours, that were consumer articles first and motorcycles second. And something was de finitely lost in the transformation ... Enter one well-thrashed CB 400 with 5 ,000 m agazine test miles on the clo c k. Some folks cal l it a ca fe racer, even though Honda's official word for it is "Road Sport. " (Cafe ra cers being a n irrespons ib le bunch and bad for co rpo ra te image, y'kn ow. ) Yet with certain concessions to creature comfort, the bike is obviously styled in the SoCal road rasher id io m, as the distinctively different four-into-one collector exhaust fairly screams at the intended market. Preconceptions can be deceiving, or else an earlier ge ne ra t ion of riders were cafe racers without knowing it. That first rid e on the test b ike brought back t he nostal gia in waves - the feel of the narrow flat bars, the slightly rearse t foot po si t ion, t he easy familiar ity th at im mediately established itself between m ach ine and ride r - he ll, th is thing is a second-generation Super Hawk! Once se t, that do minant first impression remained througho ut the test . Oh, on spec the CB 400 is simply a p un ched out, resty led CB350 F with an extra cog. As such, it 's every bit the co ns umer article its predecessor was. It fires instantly at a touch of the starter, and the re's a choke/throttle in tercon nect for hands-off fast-idle warmups. It is so well muffled that the loudest engine noise comes from the cam chain. All the foo-foo Honda stuff is there, the standardized controls, the lockable sea t with two hel met holders, the push-button gas cap (that still opens in the w rong direction), and the instrument panel full o f tell-tale lights (including one for oil pressu re ). The head and taillights c o m e on auto matically with the ignition, and burn co ntinuously. The CB 400 inherits a general smooth ness a nd tractability fro m the rest of the Honda fours. You ca n 't real ly say it vib rates, in stead the engine makes a vaguely ero tic tin gle that co mes and goes. It will i d le do wn to 2500 RPM in to p gear, wh ich wo rks out to a bare ly l e g a l s peed for u r b a n t horoughfares . T he C B 400 can poke along in t hat m ode on level gro u nd, ba re ly sip ping fue l/air m ix . If you gently crack the t hrottle, the engine will lug away smartly, allowing a lim it ed ability to blend wi th traffic flow without a lot of gear-banging. But if you get i mpatien t and snatch a whole handful at anything below 6000 RPM, it.'s _t~c:. . §uper Ha wk a ll . n er . ~~ain-, Instant "bluhh." Tho ugh it s idling and luggin g characteristics reveal basically mild cam timing, the engine is tuned to hit its real stride from 6000 to its 10,000 RPM redline. And it loves to sing. The six ratios get progressive ly more close-spaced as you go up the scale to yield less than a 2000 rev drop shifting from fifth to top. It is a fun powerplant to work with , and uncannily quiet, eve n at full so ng. The ghostly quiet tends to underline the bike's speed with the surprise of discovery. Like, it's always a surprise to discover how fast you're going. The optomistic speedometer overstates reality by 5 % ·10 %, whi le dead-reckoning generally underestimates by the same amount. (Engine and gearing combine to make 75-80 mph a subconscious cruising range.] Our silent Honda taught us something very important - that police, even whe n eq uipped wi th rad ar , p lay m o to rcycles by ear. Or so it would seem, as we came upon m ore than o ne gu m -ball mach ine at a paten tly illegal velocity, sweated bu llets an d the n realized the cop hadn 't batted an eye a t o ur sile nt p assage. T al k about cheap rapid tra ns it - we figu re the CB 400's muffler saved us abou t S150 total in three weeks. In traffic, yo u are a sle nder, powerful trout that cuts through schools of lesser fish, leavi ng scarcely a ripple in you r wake. The CB 400 has all the q uic k reflexes of brake, steering, and th ro ttle (provided you keep it boiling) to su rvive and even flourish in the urban jungle. Largely oblivious to rain grooves, a nd precise i~ its responses, the chassis is a rare blend of stability and agility. The ride is firm in the sense that the old Super Hawks were firm . Honda has not deliberately designed a chassis like this in almost 10 years. What's crazier, most of the parts they needed to do it , fell right t o hand off the shelf. The rear dampers are the same part number as for the late CB500, as are the two-stage rear springs. The forks share common design with the CB360, including a 360 spring, with rearranged damping characteristics. Couple the CB 400 's weight distribution of 1 92 F /2 1 2 R wit h a II these p ieces borrowed fro m other models, and so mehow it all works out to short-lived perfection. We say "sho rt lived" because the rear dampers begin to go a way from d ay one, slo wly and im pe rcep t ibl y. Th ree weeks an d so me 1500 m iles d own the road yo u dis cover with a shock (so rry abo ut the pu n) that the sweet thing has acquired an un settling nervous twitch. For the enth usiastic rider, the shocks will be the second thing t o go . After the tires. Yes, f 01 ks, the tires that were adequate for bikes _that dragged pipes ... .. ~_ . ~ ~--- and stan ds well ahead o f the ultimate limit are m ar gin al at best fo r a bike that has co rnering clearance in spades. Fo r the rec ord, the ex haust co llector will drag on the righ t, while the footpeg o r the ce n terstand ex te nsio n will drag o n th e left. (Both footpegs have little ball-shape d steel d rags under th eir t ip s an d hinge back at a n a ng le - a n ice to uc h fo r safety.) Dra gging th ings with th e st oc k tires is not recommended for one 's he alth. Sooner or later, y o u 'll hit th at h id den wet or cobby spot and won de r of wo nders, you 'll fall off. Again fo r t he reco rd , it 's cheapest to fallo ff to t he rig ht. Exhaus t system, tu rn signals, bars and fen de r b race work t ogether to keep the r e a lly expensive parts off the ground. On t he other side, t he cases are pretty vulnerable. For the consu me r 's sake, Hon da e ngi neering could m a ke a detail change in the exhaust system and save a lot in repair costs. The "one and "three" headers are separate parts that slip fit into the collector. The "two" and "four" headers are welded in u ni t with the collector, placing one of these pi pes o n the o utside, right. If the order were swapped on this assembly, p lacing a bolt-up header on the o utside, a clumsy owner would only have to replace a header, instead of a whole exhaust sy stem, the way the p ar ts book is set up, now. That's the o nly m echan ical de t ail we really objected to. The plusses are numero us: the neat ly rubber-booted spherical j oints in the shift linkage, th e wi re guard o n th e rear b rake ped al th at keeps fe et o ff the exhaust co llec tor (sneake r so les, fo r ins ta nce , wo ul d fu se to it o n con tac t if no t guarded ), th e excellent bar-seat-peg rel at ionsh ip that l en d s i tse lf to easy c ruising or full-crouch scra tch ing with eq ual grace . It 's becoming almost repeti tious to say that the e Ie c t r i cs were faultless throughout. As to other m ain tenan ce, we was ted a set of plugs in about 1500 miles, no surprise considering t he way we'd been redlining it. O il level sank a bit, as either ri ngs o r valve gu ides we re letting a trickle slip by, but not enough to require topping up in the same 1500 miles. We hazard a guess that, u nless Honda has rustproofed the interior, the muffler may eve ntually rot out fro m the inside, especially if the bike is used for a lot of short trips. This is because the super-effective muffler works by fully expanding th e exhaust gasses wi t h in the system, accompanied by a substantial cooldown (laws of the rmody namics an' all that). Resul ts: lo ts of co ndensed water in the system, u ntil the whole system heats u p beyond boiling. Still , at 7000 odo meter miles, ours re mained so und. Final criticism : the off-shelf mirro rs (designed fo r normal street bars) consistently give o ne a slig htly fuzzy view of one's own arms. Bar-end m irro rs are m o re of a " nat ural " fo r the li ttle Euro-to uri ng bars. Middle left: The iii' bitty parts thoroughness which Honda is famous for. Shifter linkage was faultless. "Safety tip" sidestand, of course. Middle center : Powerplant - everything the 350 was, only more so. The wire thingie on the brake pedal really keeps feet off the header, and the peg displacement seems about right for a compromise sporting bike with room for two. Middle right: Dashboard layout contains, hurray, the key switch and many b1inka·b1 inkas. Lower left: In repose. It 's really trick what you can make from off-shelf Honda parts - especially if you're the factory. Lower right: At about this angle, the co/lector starts to drag, unless you reo sourcefully jack it up and in about an inc h. U Feelings It's one of the sweetest m id -size b ikes our s lightly over-the-hill tester has thrown a leg over in 12 years. Not as fast, say, as an RD350 Ya maha, still fast enough to have the Griffith Park crowd wis tfully ta lking about so me club stretching the 350 Production class to incl ude th e Honda. One of the m quit talking about it and entered a 500 Productio n race, finishing about mid-pack first time ou t. No, you don't have to race the 400 to ap p recia te it. You don't even have to ride fast , for it is that m uc h of a "have you r cake and eat it, too" motorcycle. And yet, wit hin the limit s o f pro du ction suspension and tires, the mach in e is thought p rop ulsion itself - ligh t an d air an d freed o m. Dro p a kn ee, hang o ff or stay p u t , wish it over, wish it bac k up, rid e and never wan t t o stop. To a generatio n t hat re me mbers, it's a time trip, back be fore "cafe race r" was a part o f the workin g lan guage, wh en Honda was laying wast e t o Eu ropean road racing and a legion o f borderline sp orts car frea ks were d iscoverin g th at a ny th i ng a raspy, c o b b y , su p er -ex pen sive Euro-car could do , a m o t or c y cle could d o for u nde r a thousand b ucks if you di dn 't m ind ge tting we t when i t r ai n ed (a nonsensical q uestion t o an MG o wner) or bloody whe n you fall o ff (so methi ng no t all the car guys could swallow, what with the roll-cage me ntality that was developing even then). If, instead, you can't remembe r a time when t he re were no Fed eral sm o g controls, no D.O.T., BLM, or E PA, a time whe n people we ren't scrambling like r a ts to stay ahead of the government, the CB 400 is a cleverly dis guised, sligh tly subversive history lesso n , ye t so blatantly legal the iro ny of it blows us away. We were genuinely sorry t o give it back. • Specifications Wheelbase Seat height Footpeg height 53.3 in. 31.1 in. 13.0 in. Ground clearance .• . . . . . • . ..• . .. . .5.9 in . Dryweight Weight d istribut ion FIR (dry) Fuel ca pa cit y Transm ission o il capacity 374 .8 lb. 191.8 Ib.l 211.6 lb. 3 .7 U.S. gal. 3.7 U.S. qt . Steering rake Trail Engine 26.5 dog. 3 .3 in. Ai r co o led, a-stroke a .H .C. vert ical fo ur parall el Bore and stroke Disp lacement Compress ion rati o Carb uretor. vent uri dia S1.0mm x SO.Omm 408cc 9 .4 : 1 20mm Engine dry weight (w/carb.l 141.1 lb. 1

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