Honda CR500

King of the open class two stroke motocross bikes – The Honda CR500 might be consigned to the annals of history since Honda stopped producing an open class two stroke motocross bike in 2001. But fear not young Skywalker! for there are a lot of these beasts roaming the universe! It all began back in 1981with the release if the CR480 which ran (not real well) until 1983, in 1984 Honda released the… Read more

first CR500 known for ever as the 'ping king' this air cooled beast was not very rider friendly with spindly suspension, no brakes worth mentioning and a cantankerous 'air cooled' or lack of as it overheated and altered the jetting resulting in a varying power delivery. But Honda preserved and every model year got better by 1985 the first water cooled 500 was released to a power hungry public, this was a ground breaking model.

It was the start of what is now known as the 'evolution' era where every year manufactures made huge development improvements in chassis, engines, suspension and brakes resulting in cutting edge bikes being made available and selling as fast.

1987 saw the first rear disc brake and the engine was changed to the long stroke engine to make the bike more rideable.

1989 saw USD (up side down) forks fitted (known as the worst forks ever) and a switch to the low exhaust pipe that would continue to the end of production.

From 1990 on saw minor chassis revisions with some basic engine configuration and suspension updates right up until the end of production. The plastics were updated along the way.

Any year CR500 will kill you but there is plenty of information available through foums on tuning / taming these beasts. They are getting expensive to buy now as people are collecting then or gutting the engines to fit into CRF alloy frames.

I am the proud owner of two of these beasts 1987 and 2001 models and have ridden other model years.

Make riding a CR500 wide open a bucket list wish before you die! That's if you can start it!