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/126042
(above) Eccentric cam chain adjuster is secured by an Allen bolt. (below) Dual gas Girling shocks hide under the seat, and peek through the fender. The best four stroke ever By Jody Weisel Eric Cheney is a motorcycle designer p ar excellence and not " businessman. Which means that he has been builda ing quality racing machines from the deck of a sinking ship. Earlier this year the ship silently slipped under an ocean of financial problems. Perhaps the last design venture of Cheney Racing Products would have been the most successful, but we'll never know. Doing business with an English firm is similar to going to the den tist ; it is a long and painful project. Cheney released press photos of his cantilever Che ney / Honda 250 over a year ago and the public response was ecstatic, but the producti on output was.simply static. No bikes, no satisfied customers, no return orders, no back ordered parts, no parts, no money and soon no Cheney Racing Products. But the good ship Cheney didn 't go down without leaving a legacy of a few grand old singles, in a new form , on the American shores. A number of the cantilever Cheneys came to America to he matched up by that elusive breed of four-banger fanatics . The Cheney/Honda is a versatile, multi-faceted piece of equi pment that comes in a kit. For $700 you get a single loop nickel plated frame constructed o ut of Reynolds 531, aluminum alloy gas tank, seat, rear fender, aluminum side panels, exhaust pipe, airbox, steering head hearings and engine mounting plates for either a 250 or 350 Honda XL engine. The frame At first glance everybody we came in contact with thought the Cheney Honda was a monoshock, while in reaIi ty tucked up under the seat were two Gas Girling shocks (11.9") connected to a lightweight, triangulated rear swingarm. The Cheney kit will accept any type of fork . Where ours was mounted with eight inch travel Betors longer travel Marzocchi or Ceriani units will also fit , as will stock XL Honda items. Any time you purchase a frame kit there are a multitude of associated problems with finding the right components, accessories, and worst of all making them fit. Cheney has alleviated most of these problems by making all the assorted foo-foo-raw from the best materials. Testing of Cheney products over the past five years has been carried on by Grand Prix motocrosser John Banks, and if John can't break it t hen Cheney uses it. The items the buyer is required to buy to complete the machine are ; tires, wheels, hubs, forks, shocks and engine. The latitude of this system allows the prospective buyer to pick and choose components tha t he has trust, knowledge and access to. As our 250cc Cheney/Honda sits it weighed at under 220 lbs. (wet) . At this weight it is clearly competitive with a large n umber of production 250 and Open twostrokes. T he machine is strikingly beautiful with every detail on the frame carefully thought out and artistically finished. The chain adjuster is a machined multi-hole eccentric cam of dural alloy . This one piece of design is foolproof and exceptionally sturdy. A few frame kits remain in this country, available to those of you with the desire to have something unique and yet functional. Cheney Products America, 21 5" Highland Ave., Burlingame, Calif. 94010 , are the west coast distributors. The engine Take your pick from either an XL 250 or XL 350 and then truck it down to your local tuner and buy the kind of power you want. Cheney supplies the exhaust pipe, which runs down under the frame . The airbox connects to the diagonally mounted carb through a sanitary and tucked in alloy /rubber extension. Our engine was a stock XL 250 engine with high compression piston, a mildly tricked-out cam, 34mm . Mikuni and an internal rotor ignition built by Cheney Products America. Silencing of the thumping report was accomplished by a Super Trapp silencer. The mel low bellow can only be describedas a pleasant change from the shriek-and-scream valveless oil burners. The engine sits low and to the rear of the nickel plated frame to negate much of the expected topheavy awkwardness. It is a tight, but good fit . The man planning on dropping one of these four-bangers together had better bring a friend along to lend a hand. The hand ling Having watched John Banks boorn-ba along to a third place in the USGP two years ago on his big fourstroke we were heavy in to an emulation trip when we kicked the cold blooded 250 off. After a rather lengthy warm up period we prodded the shifter and startled ourselves with rapid acceleration and even more rapid deceleration. Without a big bucks breathed-on engine the bike was deceptively fast . Cruising down the short straights the rider was left with a feeling of plodding along based on sensory input. The noise didn't sound fast, the vibrations came in big slow throbs and the bike