#22 PostAuthor: Mr Bump » Wed Aug 19, 2020 8:08 am
I never quite saw why they have a sort of legendary 'couriers choice' status. Admittedly I was a courier in the late 90's so most 'working' CX's had died by then, but anybody I knew who'd used them for dispatching didn't like them much.
I think they were just cheap, available and easy to put a top box on.
They weren't notably reliable either as far as I know (BMW's aren't all that they're cracked up to be either), and a stator change was an engine out job. Frame rot finished them off if they lasted long enough - if you saw a CX parked outside a post room on its mainstand that meant the sidestand had pulled out of the frame, if you saw one leant against a wall the mainstand mounts had collapsed too and it only had a couple of weeks left before it was going to the great bramble patch in the sky.
I'm biased, but the most stubbornly reliable bikes Ive ever owned (including a bmw r1100gs that was a pain in the arse) have been aircooled 550 and 750 Kawasaki. The brakes were annoyingly keen on corroding, but otherwise they never really died, they just sort of deteriorated into a smokey-rotten-exhaust-bald-tyred mess that just wasn't worth pushing through another mot, even though it still started on the button and ran quite well.
'In your twenties you think you are immortal, in your thirties you hope you are immortal, in your forties you just hope it doesn't hurt too much'
Lemmy