1987 honda cb 125t deluxe

[ragnahr]

just bought this bike very good condidtion absolutly nothing wrong with it, just wondered if anyone knows anything about this bike in general, seems really nice, except for it tops out at 60mph at like 12,000rpm, is this right or could there be something wrong


thanks

[base]

I had one of these, 19 years ago feck i'm getting old can't remember the top speed but i would of thought it was 70mph i seem to remember 50mph used to be ok then anymore and the engine was working hard, it was a great oil burner, but always reliable, used to get through foot pegs like no tomorrow, due to scrapping on the ground round corners.

for me this bike holds great memories it rocked.

[pinkyfloyd]

60 sounds about right. Its an old 125 remember. When the bike was new the chances are it would hit 70 but as the years go on the power does dwindle a little at top end.

As for the bike. Bulletproof engine and cheap as chips for parts and insurance. Great little bikes.
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[Teflon-Mike]

Bit like this one?
https://i178.photobucket.com/albums/w269/teflons-torque/Little%20Dreams/XLD02_01.jpg
That'll be a Honda CB125TD-E
If its toping out at 60, there IS something wrong with it though. Should do a good 70 on the flat, maybe a tad more, but the speedo's are pretty optimistic, so should be showing more like 80!
And it wont be doing that at the 12K blood-line!
I've just gone & done something I've been meaning to do for a while, & work out the gear ratios from the book & translate to road-speeds. It has a five speed gear-box. It revs to something just under 13,ooo rpm if you really kane it past the blood line, and makes its peak power at 'about' 10K.
If the final drive gearing is standard, then at 12K red-line, 1st should take you to about 30mph, 2nd, to about 45mph, 3rd to about 60....
(... so if you are getting 60mph at 12K, suspicion is you aren't getting out of third gear!)
4th & 5th, if it had the power to pull to the red line in them cogs, you'd get, 70 & 80mph out of it.. but it dont, so practically it'll run out of puff at about 65-70, and in 5th top out at around its peak power rpm between 10 & 11K, where the bike'll be doing about 70-75mph.
Stuff about these bikes in general? well blog site for the ones I'm renovating, linked in my sig line, may be of interest to you.....
As for the speed problem.... gear-box problems aren't unheard of on these things. Learner abuse, can see selector sorks bend or break, so there's the pottential its not engaging 4th or fifth, though usually if they lost a cog it was 2nd... they sometimes loose 5th too... but thats a bit harder to achieve... needs the engine blowing up and replacing with one from a CD or CM variant... identical castings, but those motors only have 4 speed boxes and a single carburettor... not unknown for them to be dressed up as CB engines though, BUT pretty hard to hide a missing gear... though you would be surprised at how many people dont realise its gone AWOL!
But first things first, look at the gear-linkage. It has a propper rear-set linkage, with a lever mounted on the foot-peg, and another on the selector shaft, and a rod between the two.
Again, learner numptyness, age and neglect often sees the linkage wear badly. There's little cup & ball joints on the ends of the rod and they take a lot of load and can wear very badly, making the linkage very very slopy, which combined with a bit of play in the pedal shaft means that you can easily miss changes or fail to select gears.
New linkages are expensive. Honda list the pedal, and the shaft lever with the ball joints on them as seperate parts, and then you need the double ended rod that goes between them, and all in they cost about £80... so few get them! Consequently 2nd hand links often in not much better shape go for silly money on e-bay, BUT if you hunt hard enough you can find new ones for about £25-35ish, complete.
Next potentiality is that the clutch is slipping.
If you ARE in top, and its maxed out at 60, pulling 12K revs, then it must be. Would make sense too, if the bike is starting to peak at 60, and the clutch force is less than the drag at that speed.
again, learner-numptyness, age and neglect would contribute to see that an easy fault.
No idea how much new clutch plates are. Just bought a set for the 750, and they were about £50, I'd expect the ones on the 125 Super-Dream (Thats what it is BTW, they just changed the badging for that year!) to be about £30ish. would have thought you'd you'd feel clutch slip under acceleration too, as you accelerated hard, the force on the clutch would be more than it could take and the engine would rev out, without you actually going any faster... but as a new rider, possible you'd not conciousely notice it.
But again, basics first, change the oil; too little or too thin or too old oil can give clutch slip, as can a badly adjusted clutch cable.
Haynes manual is a god-send for these little bikes. Routne maintenence is very helpful. They need thie cam-chain adjusting periodically as well as teh tappets, & frequent oil changes, for best performance & reliability.
Well looked after they are a great little bike.
For a four-stroke learner legal they are pretty spritely. They have a lot (reletively speaking!) more performance than the commuter 125's like the CG or YBR, curtecy of a full compliment of 12.5 learner-legal bhp, compared to the 9 or 10 or so a CG or YBR offers.
Often critasised for being 'heavy', they are actually the same weight as a YBR, and only a few bags of sugar different to anything else in the class! They do feel solid though, and much more like a 'propper' motorbike for it. And the weight is mainly in the VERY good front brake thats still as good as anything else on a Learner-Legal, and the mono-shock rear suspension, which is a bit of a double edged sword. New and or well maintained, that suspension was as or more sophisticated than any of its contempraries and still as good or better than most modern 125's. In the twisties the Super-Dreams handling was pretty good, and reasonably well ridden, one could live with just about anything else legally wearing an L-Plate. Only thing that let them down against the two-strokes of the era, apart from not being very easy to tune for more power & speed, was that they dont have 'quite' the throttle response or acceleration, though that little twin's 12K red line goes some-way to making up the difference. (RD's & the like peaks at little over 10K)
However, that rear suspension linkage has a lot of joints in it, few of them with grease nipples, and on a learner-legal / commuter, which tend not to be well maintained, either becouse owners know no better, or simply peny-pinch, they do go sloppy, and a bike with a sloppy back end will handle like a barge, and wallow all over the place, especially if the shocke absorber is past its best too...
Again, shocks and linkage bushes are expensive, so few get them if it can be avoided! Rear shocks are about £80 for a 'cheap' pattern replacement, and total all the bushes in teh suspension linkage that works it, and without new pins or roller, comes to about another £100!
So, badly looked after, neglected or abused, and these things can be horrible, with bad handling, poor performance and dire reliability.
So if you have agood'n, pays to look after it.
Fundementally they aren't a bad design, its simply the nature of a learner bike, and the unfortnunate circumstance that the CB125 Super-Dream, when concieved, was as a Learner-Legal sports-bike, to go head to head with Yamaha's RD125 or Kawasaki's AR125 two strokes. It just failed to inspire in a youth market, due to its lack of tuneability and concervative styling, other wise it was no worse for reliability and durability, in fact in many ways probably better... testimant to their durability is probably the fact that so many 125 Super-Dreams are still in regular service, compared to RDs or AR's, which were veritably thrashed to death and now remain as rarities and museum pieces.
So, apreciate what you got. Its not a 'Cheap' 125 by any means. New I seem to recall they were actually more expensive than an RD125LC or AR125LC, the RS125 & Mito of thier era, it was a 'flag-ship' Learner-sports bike, like the CBR125, and comparitively speaking it was a LOT more 'avante guarde' for its day than that is now, and a good one is probably still a more inspiring bike to ride.
So, if you haven't already got one, get a Haynes manual for it, give it some tender love & care, sort out why its not as fast as it should be, and enjoy.
If its not as sharp as you think it out to be, a lot can be sorted with basic maintenence.
Rear suspension will love you for a strip clean and grease. Forks will apreciate new fork oil, if not new seals, and possibly a couple of 2p shims on the springs to increase pre-load. Brakes will benefit greatly from new fluid, and the claiper float pins greasing. And the ride will probably be transformed by a new shock, if you can stretch to it.
One weak-point though, the centre stands are a tad 'weak' and are prone to wear in the pivot and rot in the legs.
AND there should be a bit of brake cable between the seat and the hinge to stop the seat opening too far. If its not there it bends the left hand side panel, and often the lugs crack!
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[stinkwheel]

Nice wee bikes. I had one. They feel very solid and substantial compared to most 125s of that era. I suppose that's one drawback in that they are a bit heavy. I used to get 65-70 out of mine.

As they get older, the twin carbs tend to go out of synch and can be very difficult to balance properly. This tends to leave them down on power a bit.

Giving it a good service is not a bad plan. Check the air filter element for one thing, they don't run well with a clogged air filter.

Couple of other things worth checking.

They have a super-basic oil filter which consists of a guaze screen over the inlet to the oil pump. You have to take the right hand side cover and the oil pump off to get it out and clean it. As a result, nobody ever cleans it. Clogged oil screens and subsequent oil starvation lead to the demise of quite a few bikes of this type.

The camchain tensioner is supposed to be automatic. You undo a nut on the back of the engine (between the two carbs) which allows the tensioner blades to spring down and take up any slack, then tighten it again. In harsh reality, the spring is a bit weedy and the blades can stick leaving the camchain flapping about. The best way is to remove the rocker cover (two bolts), loosen the nut and press down on top of the tensioner blade with a big screwdriver while you tighten it again.

If I bought one of those for myself, the first things I'd do are an oil change, clean the air filter, clean the gauze oil screen and manually tension the CCT.
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[ragnahr]

thanks for all your help has come in very handy, i will be sorting the bike out today, i thought it might of had something to do with the new clutch that was fitted a month before i bought it, will be tightening it also cleaning filter etc thank you all again.

[owdamer]

I spent my first couple of years biking on one of these back in the 80's. Great little runabout until some lowlife nicked it. probably in the bottom of a canal or something now. Never heard of it again.
Has to be the hardest bike ever to get on the centrestand. It felt like a bloody goldwing or something. Obviously some design issue as it used to wear out the top of the stand which caused to to lean back too far. well worn ones are almost like 2 sidestands now. lol.