The History of the Honda CR500 (Documentary)

Honda was originally famous for producing very reliable four-stroke motors and these are motors that you could let sit in your garage for a year pull them out and start them on first kick and Honda was very reluctant to get into producing two-stroke engines in fact back in early 60s when two strokes were starting to dominate the 250 class Honda produced a 6-cylinder 250 cc four-stroke to compete a long time ago about 1974 Honda invented a revolutionary dirt bike they called it the Elsinore that is what this video will entail follow me for this adventure it wasn't until 1972 the Honda finally gave in and decided that in order to be competitive they must build a two-stroke engine whether they call it the Elsinore named after Lake Elsinore Grand Prix race in California back in those days that race was for motocross as what Daytona is for race cars Honda did not initially release a five-hour CC class mass-produced two-stroke motocross machine that doesn't mean didn't race them the AMA rules were different back then and works bikes didn't have to be production bikes so in 1976 Honda made the very first Grand Prix motocross machine designed by Honda which was an RC 500 here are the original line of the Honda RC 500 bikes you notice the kick starter is on the left and remained on the left until around 1984 at least for production models here are a few of the RC 500 air-cooled machines that were available to on the factory racers back in the 1970s Oh we could actually just keep going here's the 1981 on the RC 500 however while factory racers got that bike the public got the 1981 CR 450 and 1981 was a year where Mako released the 490 KTM released the first 495 and Yamaha was releasing their last year of the yz4 65 before attending a copy mako and release a 490 in 1982 unfortunately all the reviews of the 450 have been pretty bad the 1981 Honda CR 450 is listed as one of the top 10 worst bikes of all time the main gripes with it was the engine had a four-speed gearbox that was space terribly and the power ban was extremely narrow they will either hit hard or hesitate the spacing was terrible and that low gear would take you out to 45 mile per hour and hide your out to 80 mile per hour here's an article on on the on the bike comparing the 81 CR 450 against the Mako 490 some of the relevant being the most horsepower is an honourable goal but making the best horsepower is the most functional idea either way Mako trumps all over the Honda that gigantic 4 88 CC piston port German engine has a piston that is only one and a half millimeters larger than Honda's but the Mako stroke is a massive 7 millimeter longer with a Torquay long stroke and 57 CC advantage over the 431 C Honda there is little doubt about the horsepower King make a five-speed and broader power band is much better match than Honda's zingy power and four-speed transmission amazingly the Mako was more reliable than the Honda Mako has poor chain rollers bad pipe mounting sticking gas cap and flimsy carb manifold care and setup and some knowledgeable Mako tricks will see the mega 2 through a racing season without major catastrophes clutches fry like eggs on a Phoenix sidewalk on the Honda CRF 450 our clutch plates couldn't hold up to the abrupt power on the 431 CC motor the clutch is identical to the 250 unit and wouldn't take the load a base gasket blew after several races and could be a big problem watch the air filters here closely to ensure maximum engine life the bottom line the Mako is several bike links faster to the turn and that is a big advantage while giving away very little in suspension reliability or handling to the Honda the Mako is the big bike that was designed to do the job and then some while Honda was designed to do the job but just barely fun to follow this up in 1982 in 1983 with the introduction of the cr4 80 the 1982 model had a 4-speed gearbox the 1983 model had a 5-speed gearbox and also had a removable subframe overall the motors are otherwise the same the handling is supposed to be a lot better on 83 and the 5-speed is supposed to be a lot better on 83 then the the 4-speed on the 82 whoever not too much is written about these there's a few people who have gripes about the 82 that I've seen mostly because the four-speed gearbox but otherwise the CR 480 is touted as being a very good motocross bike in 1984 Honda came out with the ping King which is the first 500 it was still air cold but it had serious problems unfortunately the bike had a Miss shaped dome in the head so it detonated like crazy this is where the ping King nickname came from bike would overheat it would ping and it was hard to start a lot of people try to solve this with an extra base gasket to make a base gasket thicker but it still didn't completely solve the problem I was actually thinking about buying one of these bikes so I did some research to figure out if anyone had figured out what the issue was and if it could be fixed initially I could not find anyone who actually thought that this was fixable but in the end I found Harry clumb had made a fix for it and this is what he said I am very familiar with the bike in the fix the problem was that the dome and the stock head had the worst imaginable shape for staving off detonation as well as a very excessive squish thickness I developed a modification for the stock head they completely reshaped the combustion chamber and dramatically reduced the squish clearance the end result was a total elimination of the detonation cooler operation and a bit more higher p.m. power like the bike NIDA anyways we can still do the mod for $105 it's a bunch of machine work respectively hairy club the years 1985 through 1987 are considered to be the most violent CR 500s the 86 and 85 still had front disc brakes and rear drum brakes just let you know KTM was the first to put front and back disc brakes in 1986 on to put front and rear disc brakes on the CR in 1987 if you read the rumors they claim that the 86 or 85 through 87 are the most violent years some say 87 some say 5 subs 86 some say they smooth out the power a little bit in 86 from 85 who's right well I know they're all pretty awesome bikes it's they're the best years of the serie 500 however I wanted to get to the bottom of this just a little bit at least generally these bikes will share parts across the ears so if they made changes I figured it would show up in the most prominent parts that would contribute to the most power differences that is the crankshaft since it could change the weight of it the cylinder since they could change the porting the piston since it could be lighter and finally the head since they could change the dome shape to produce different power curves I included the 1988 model in a search because it's generally overall considered to be toned down from the 85 to 87 models so if 88 and 87 shared parts it'd be a little suspicious the piston well they all share the same piston here's a cylinder well they all share the same cylinder which means that if they modified the head you get the meatus head for whatever year you haven't replace it the crank whoa 85 86 share same crank 88 and 87 both have completely different cranks find the head every single one every single year has a different head so this is possibly where the difference is unless the only difference is the head stay mounting or something else it's trivial but unlikely if we had all four heads we could pair the shapes and we could even figure out the volume by pouring liquid into these and determining how much different in volume each of these you're had this would be interesting indeed the bottom out on in 1988 Honda had begun to tone down the seer 400 so it become more rideable according to rumors the c-curve owner was continued to be in development until 1992 in 1993 the 500cc motocross class was officially killed only Honda KTM and Kawasaki were the last the top manufacturers developing a competing open class machine the bike remained unchanged until its final death in 2001 unlike the KX 500 the CFM honoured never received a power valve to wrap things up get a few extra things here so one is the sear 500 has been used a lot for dirt bike riding and off-road and so madman engineering is when the company's that does make a wide ratio ELISA used too wide ratio transmission that would increase 4th and 5th gear to be a little bit higher ratio than stock so that you could write it in the open another thing that is also certain become popular is converting this year 500 into a liger cylinder and they apparently are available anywhere from 540 all the way up to 640 cc so 500 CFM hundred isn't enough you can go up to 640 and the last thing is service honda service honda started taking sierra funded engines and putting them in aluminum frames so it's called the co 500 af a lot of people also do their own conversions as they can get junk bikes that have been jumped with aluminum frame and adding this year 100 engine so I hope you enjoyed this history of the CR 500 and thanks for watching Oh

Channel: Opferman Motors Dirtbiking

Views: 828,908

Rating: 4.7103553 out of 5

Keywords: Honda, CR500, CR 500, Open class, motocross, history, yamaha, kawasaki, suzuki, ktm, maico, maico 490, yz490, yz465, cross, riding, documentary

Id: E8hWaKOPHE0

Length: 17min 56sec (1076 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 10 2014