Legendary Bike, but not the Rider.

V

Vince

Hero member
https://www.visordown.com/reviews/used-bike/classic-scrap-class-1981-laverda-jota-v-honda-cb1100?fbclid=IwAR3jFBgyhzsIVYNBgAnLyhZ6cVQYK8_UQOqZ2T0wdx4PNbTbcc3ox6ZBqtI

This reminded me of a ride I did years ago. I was doing the Spencer ride out beyond Wisemans Ferry and mid-ride we were having lunch when a couple of bikes turned up, one being this Honda in the above test. They left Spencer a good time before we did heading toward the fantastic tight bit on the way to Womembi. I had a good look at the bike before they left as I hadn't seen one before. Time had passed and I hadn't given it much thought till we arrived at the end of the river valley where the road tightens a lot into a series of connected 35k bends and what do we see but surprisingly this Honda and his mate. I couldn't believe we had caught them up so quickly as they had left ages before us. And then it began, this is a great bit of road but not at 35ks. Yep, that was the speed they stuck at and with plenty of cars heading the other way and this Honda accelerating hard out of the bends and then almost stopping at the next bend it was impossible to get past it. It reminded me of a few rides I had done with blokes I know who own Hyabusers who used the same style of riding. Both bikes are obviously capable of way more than these blokes use in the bends. So by the end of this section, I was royalty pissed off, ok if you want to ride like this fine but don't block those who don't. The road then opens up into open fast sweepers and suddenly Mr Honda has found the other half of his throttle that works and he is off. At least I can now see to pass him even if its faster than I am comfortable with, 80k zone with Mr Honda doing 100ks and more. They do get cops out there but I was that pissed off having my ride ruined that After a while I managed to get around him but well about the go-to jail speed. I guess it takes all types, I would have expected more from someone riding this legendary bike. It has stuck in my memory though.



 
The author seems to have been under the impression that the Jota's redline is 6500rpm. May have coloured his impressions.

Also my recollection is that the first CB1100Rs were unfaired. Although perhaps that was due to the 6 Hour regs not allowing fairings?

cheers,

bazzee
 
A close friend has a CB 1100R. The steering geometry is piss poor, but the engine has a lot of grunt. Ideal for long, wide country road sweepers or fast Autobahn rides. In the area where  we live he has a hard time keeping up on a ride out, road bends are very tight.

Gerald
 
bazzee said:
The author seems to have been under the impression that the Jota's redline is 6500rpm. May have coloured his impressions.

Also my recollection is that the first CB1100Rs were unfaired. Although perhaps that was due to the 6 Hour regs not allowing fairings?

cheers,

bazzee
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First ones had a half fairing then they moved to a full fairing fur the later models - awesome piece of kit
 
Gerald said:
A close friend has a CB 1100R. The steering geometry is piss poor, but the engine has a lot of grunt. Ideal for long, wide country road sweepers or fast Autobahn rides. In the area where  we live he has a hard time keeping up on a ride out, road bends are very tight.

Gerald
Click to expand...

Are you talking about Laverda triples?

Paul
 
Sir Sidney Ruffdiamond said:
First ones had a half fairing then they moved to a full fairing fur the later models - awesome piece of kit
Click to expand...

That may have been the case in the rest of the world. But not  in Australia.

Somewhere I have some black and white photos taken at Amaroo Park on a Len Atlee rider training course, Two guys on CB1100Rs turned up and did a few laps. No fairings on those bikes. I will see if I can find the piccies.

Cheers,

bazzee
 
Just found Motor Cycle Weekly road test of the CB1100R (2 May 1981) and that bike was half-faired.Over 1 mph slower on mean top speed and just under 2 mph slower than the Jota they tested 4 years earlier (warm dry track,still air,but different rider).Mind you,the Jota they tested was a Slater bike still fitted with KR91 race tyres which Pete Davies had used to come second at the Hutchinson races......
The trouble with the CB1100R is that it killed off the Jota in production racing here in the UK,in the hands (I think) of Ron Haslam and Joey Dunlop.The GSX1100 didn`t help either.
If I remember correctly Cropredy Motorcycles fielded Pete Davies and Lennart Backstrom in 1981 on Jotas,but by then really it was all over.
 
Who finds a mistige may keep it,
specs of fork dia and breake are wrong. diameter may be 280 and not 320 and no 4 pot caliper. Both together have 4.
But I put the mistakes in my drawer.
Journalists....
Andre
 
Nicely written but a shame they got the specs so wrong - and PARTICULARLY the redline! It always annoyed me the 6500 redline on all Lavs.

Too true about the 'passion' factor vs 'wonderfully capable'. If it didn't exist there would be a lot of special cars and motos mossing from history's inventory!

As for the mobile chicanes, Vince - you see a lot of that these days with hypersports bikes ... i always have a chuckle when you see the rider hanging off, but they're actually crawling.
 
I am thinking its an ego thing, get a full bike licence and buy the fastest thing around when it's way more than you could possibly use. It happens in the offroad world as well. A mate used to trail ride on an ex Fink Desert Race MX 550 KTM 2 stoke. It was crazy fast, the trees next to the trail would blur when fully open. But it was virtually useless for 80% of the time.
 
"Just ?cos you've got the bike doesn't mean you are the rider".
I was at TTM when Pete White raced the Jota in ?81 and at the Queensland tracks he was very close to the local Honda team CB1100Rs with top A grade riders aboard, Pete was a C grader but he really clicked with the Jota. The previous rider, an A grader flown up to race it, never clicked with it and reckoned it just wasn't competitive and wanted Ted to cheat it up which he never did (other than fitting a one handful throttle). On the straight at these tracks there was nothing in it between the Jota and the Honda. Journalists just write their own subjective impression. I was practising at V?ler track here on my classic race SF2 on an open day and was stuck behind a Honda 1000 Fireblade for many laps as you can imagine what happened on every straight, eventually he went a bit wide and I got past and never saw him again, found out he was a visiting American bike mag journalist, but I doubt he put down that the Honda couldn't beat an old Laverda twin.
 
Tippie said:
"Just ?cos you've got the bike doesn't mean you are the rider".
I was at TTM when Pete White raced the Jota in ?81 and at the Queensland tracks he was very close to the local Honda team CB1100Rs with top A grade riders aboard, Pete was a C grader but he really clicked with the Jota. The previous rider, an A grader flown up to race it, never clicked with it and reckoned it just wasn't competitive and wanted Ted to cheat it up which he never did (other than fitting a one handful throttle). On the straight at these tracks there was nothing in it between the Jota and the Honda. Journalists just write their own subjective impression. I was practising at V?ler track here on my classic race SF2 on an open day and was stuck behind a Honda 1000 Fireblade for many laps as you can imagine what happened on every straight, eventually he went a bit wide and I got past and never saw him again, found out he was a visiting American bike mag journalist, but I doubt he put down that the Honda couldn't beat an old Laverda twin.
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I've not ridden a CB1100R, but I have my Dad's 79 CBX and the 79 Jota (standard Oz trim with 4C's etc).  The CBX is a good original example with only about 40,000km, stock other than a dyna ignition.  The Jota got a freshen up a few years ago with Red's work, but generally stock standard other than a rebore straight to 77mm and an Ignitech.  So the CBX is the original 1050 or so, and my Jota 1038cc, otherwise both pretty much stock.  I don't think the CBX could even beat the Jota in a straight line, let alone with some corners thrown in.  Compared to the Jota, the CBX feels incredibly heavy, ponderous, and while the gearbox is more definite and you can't really miss a shift, it's horribly clunky and unpleasant.  Brakes and suspension, forget it, the Jota wins by a mile.  The CBX is still hugely fun, but like for like the Jota is a clear winner even without my one-eyed Laverda hat on.
From what I can observe, the CB1100R seems to use much the same kit as the 82 CBX, same wheels, brakes and fairing - having worked on an 82 CBX they all seem to be made of Tungsten they are so farken heavy!  Lift up a pair of those 82 CBX front disks and fathom the weight!  So I'd love to see a CB1100R and a Jota  both on the same set of scales and Dyno.
I remember a similar experience riding a mate's GSX1100 Katana (a decade or so ago) - just felt like a heavy blob and not particularly quick against my pre-rebuild clapped out Jota.
Now a lot depends on how each bike has weathered the last 40-odd years, is it even as good as it was when it left the factory or is it better?  And it is quite accepted that cheating was rife in the 6-hour in it's heyday, but still, my limited experiences riding the Jota's contemporaries suggests to me the main difference was that Laverda did not have the money to field a rider/team combination sufficient to rival the blank-cheque Honda / Suzuki / etc offerings in the 6-hour at the time.  Other than the limitations of the RH cornering clearance at Amaroo park, it surprises me that the Jota was not competitive even up to 81 or 82.

Then again, perhaps the Jota spec was not allowed to race, and it could only be the 3CL spec?  Anyone remember?  I know for sure that when Vic raced the original SFC in 'improved production' (precursor to superbike) in 1972, in some races he wasn't allowed to use the fairing because it was deemed to be illegal since only "race bikes" had fairings.  Strange says but not so strange as right now.  :D
 
They would have been allowed to race Jota spec for sure, they were a showroom sale bike but Stanco only raced 3CLs as far as I know, and stopped even that just after I left when a staff member crashed the race bike while out shopping on it. The new manager there came from the Honda importers. They didn't want the WA distributor to race the first 1200 in the 4 hour that Quentin kept with the pack until the LH gear linkage broke and he finished the race in 3rd gear. They weren't remotely interested in the success of the ?81 Jota raced by TTM in Brisbane which was very close to the Honda dealer CB1100R bikes it was up against in production class, with Pete White, a C grader, aboard it. When I worked for the new importers Eurotred for a bit, they laughed at me when I told them a Jota was competitive with the Honda. Australia needed a Slater?s.
 
The Jota would certainly have been a different story to the 1200 in the WA 4-Hour. The winners were the XS1100s with Australia's top riders aboard, and they would just walk away on the straights. Lap times were probably 2 sec off frontrunner pace IIRC. I'm sure there would have be howls of protest if we'd entered a Jota, because it would have reversed the tables - and who knows what chicanery the top teams got up to in terms of 'secret prep'. Bruce was so freaked out about scrutineering he even reversed the simple seat recut he did on the 1200 ... it couldn't have been more stock.

He (ie the owner of the agents, Hartley Motorcycles) wanted to showcase the bike, no intention of challenging for a podium ... it worked in as much as the bike finished, but the broken gear linkage and collector didn't look ideal!
 
The buzz when that SS Bevel was pushing for a win in the 6 hour must have had an effect on sales till it blew its engine in the last hour, same when that Pantah did so well in the rain in that Coke 8hr. Just imagine what effect a Jota winning would have had. If only.
 
Vince said:
The buzz when that SS Bevel was pushing for a win in the 6 hour must have had an effect on sales till it blew its engine in the last hour, same when that Pantah did so well in the rain in that Coke 8hr. Just imagine what effect a Jota winning would have had. If only.
Click to expand...

Was that blowup the one rumoured to have resulted from running GTX in it? Some vague memory back there in the recesses ...
 
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