• PRETEND FOR A MOMENT YOU'RE RIDING

down a piece of the old twisty-turny on

your Moto Morini 350 or Yamaha RD400.

It's a beautiful spring day and you’re sim-

ply out exploring. Suddenly, out of no-

where, a gravel road intersects the

pavement. It catches your attention, and

you turn from the tarmac onto the dirt.

You follow the road a ways, and it be-

comes a trail, punctuated by potholes and

rocks. It's no fun plodding ak»ng on the

low-slung street bike, so you turn back,

daunted, wishing you were on your

pure enduro.

Picture yourself on a Maico 250 Enduro

mount. You're fireroading along, having a

good old time. Eventually, your fireroad

intersects a stretch of pavement. Boy, are

you hot. You know there's a store down

the road a piece that can offer a nice cool

drink. Alas, you can't go unless you want

to risk getting a ticket. If your bike were

street-legal, you could jam down to the

store and take care of that thirst.

Get the idea? A dual-purpose bike has

the latitude to provide more than one type

of riding. Traditionally, these bikes have

had tradeoffs: lousy street handling in

exchange for good dirt manners, or vice

versa. In fact, many dual-purpose bikes

have been permanently relegated to ei-

ther the street or dirt. Even more bother-

some than the bike with sub-par dirt or

street performance is the on-off road bike

that never does anything right—it’s a lia-

bility on the street and in the dirt.

But don't worry; the dual-purpose Hon-

das are all pretty good, and the XL185S's

street and dirt talents are fairly well

matched. It’s just slightly more at home in

the dirt than it is on the street Keep in

mind that this is a playbike—it doesn't

have the engine of a Suzuki motocrosser

or the suspension of a BMW R1 OORT. But

its components are matched well for the

casual riding Honda designed it to do.

Considering the suggested retail price

of the 185 is just a breath over a thousand

dollars, Honda could not be expected to

install world-caliber components through-

out the bike. This isn’t all bad, however. In

fact, the engine itself is a takeoff from the

venerable SL125 powerplant, which has

long had a reputation for stalwart (albeit

mild) performance.

The 185 engine has a 63.0mm bore and

57.8mm stroke, and a single chain-driven

overhead camshaft Unlike the four-valve

XL250S and 500S, the 185 has but two

valves, and they’re every bit as big as will

fit into the combustion chamber. The en-

gine's 9.2 1 compression ratio can stand

unleaded, regular or premium gasoline.

Fuel is atomized by a single 24mm Keihm

carburetor. Its airbox and easy-to-service

foam filter arrangement provide clean air

and keep intake noise to a minimum while

recirculating piston-ring blow-by fumes A

mechanism mounted below the carb con-

denses oil vapors, funneling them into a

closed drain tube that can be opened

periodically to allow droppings to leave

the system. The remaining vapors are

drawn through the carb and into the com-

bustion chamber. All US-market street-

legal motorcycles manufactured since

January 1978 have had similar closed

crankcase systems.

An aluminum three-ring piston com-

presses the mixture and the 12mm spark

plug is fired by a capacitor-discharge

solid state ignition system The CDI

pickup is mounted in the cylinder head, in

the same location as the old singles’ igni-

tion points. For reliability and cost-effec-

tiveness, a common centrifugal advance

unit is employed. A certain gap is neces-

sary for the magnetic triggering system to

work correctly; this is set during assembly

and can’t be changed. Likewise, the igni-

tion timing itself, which is adjustable,

should never go awry unless the cam

chain (also responsible for the ignition...