The fall of 1978, West Covina Honda, owned by the Rice family. Fred Berche was the service manager and the one holding the tape measure while I snapped the shot with my Kodak 110. Fred insisted on the picture and I am glad he did.

I am not a fan of golfing, though I appreciate the art that goes into the sport. The title of this article seems appropriate word play however.

It was late 1978. I had already attended Honda's 79 model update class, and had prepared for new-bike delivery a few CBXs. Charming bikes, really. Everything the press had to say about the machine was true. It was a masterpiece, and exhibited a til-then unknown level of finesse and fitment from Honda.

One day a CBX appeared at the door of the shop, and I was asked to take a look at it. Looked normal, until I spotted the huge hole in the crankcase directly in front of the number one connecting rod. We called in Honda and the L.A. area rep, Fred Germaine, whom I had met before and with whom I had just the previous week studied under at Honda's L.A. training school, appeared and he said something I have never forgotten. He approved the repair and turning, he said to me, "Remove the float bowl overflow drain hoses. They're the problem." I clearly remember thinking, "Really?" But by then I had come to understand some of the workings of Mother Honda, and later, while working with Honda's corporate headquarters I would understand far more.

When the CBX is on the sidestand and one or more of the carburetor's float bowls takes that infrequent but inevitable dump, the escaping fuel that on other machines simply falls to the ground, on the CBX has to take a circuitious route to do so. Because the six hoses are tied together in a Y shape, any little bit that the other carbs might also spit is encouraged by capillary action, and if the rider has left the fuel petcock on this is even more likely, and soon there is a significant fuel load in the overflow system. The bike is on its sidestand, the number six carb is 3-4" higher than the number one carb, everything runs downhill, and the numbers one and two hoses get the load, but especially the number one. The fuel goes into the cylinder, whether the intake valve is open or not, and soon the number one cylinder is loaded with fuel. This fuel being incompressible and the connecting rods Honda made being fairly lightweight in construction, any attempt to start the machine results in a bent connecting rod. Most folks realized the problem before breaking anything, whether through the extremely slow starting and occasional kickback, or the rough idling and reduced performance. But others did not know anything was wrong until like our customer the rod let go and exited the engine cases.

Another job, another CBX connecting rod. Not the same as the engine above.

This issue was never publicized, just as there was never any public acknowledgement of the alternator clutch issue. No recall, no service campaign of any kind. But, the following year Honda did two things. One, they fitted the very first vacuum valve to appear on any U.S. model Honda motorcycle. This is significant. While Kawasaki and Yamaha and Suzuki were already manufacturing bikes having vacuum petcocks, 1980 was the first year Honda did so, and they did it to not only the CBX but also several other models. Honda went further and made available a retro kit for fitting this special valve to 1978/1979 CBX models, though it was a slightly different valve because the 79 models have only one fuel inlet as opposed to the 80-82's two inlets. When you see a vacuum valve ("auto valve," in Honda-speak) on a CBX that has only one fuel inlet, it is this Hondaline (factory accessory) kit valve. And there was no announcement, no service campaign, not even for the accessory valve.

The main issue, overflow hoses that promote loading up of overflow. The system shown, the 1979 6-1, existed only on the first, 1979, model year. If you have these, get rid of them.

I strongly suggest to my customers they do not reuse the 79 overflow system. That leaves three options. You can fit the 80 through 82 hoses, or you can fit individual hoses, or you can leave off any hoses at all. All are good choices. If you have the auto valve, make sure it works, as they fail after 20+ years. If the manual valve, make sure you shut it off religiously.