Boy, was I off....
The now-infamous CBX I saw at Bandimere's is something of a legend around town, as almost every bike shop in town seems to have worked on it at one time or another. Lots of old guys like me, with old memories like mine, have seen it. Here's what it really was:
1. Not turbocharged. SUPERcharged. It had a blower! I thought the big shiny cover going toward the back of the engine was an exhaust pipe, but it was a polished aluminum billet piece (see below).
2. The original trigger wheel setup for ignition burned up, quit working.
3. The end of the crankshaft where the ignition used to be was modified and a billet piece made that wrapped over the end of the engine so a sprocket, added on, could bring out a chain to drive the blower. The new ignition, when I saw it, was another billet piece that mounted to the first one, above it, halfway up the cylinder. Three sets of points were installed there, on a cam that ran at crank speed, from the blower's chain. This arrangement was later abandoned in favor of a custom-configured 3-output CDI unit, with triggers installed on the alternator rotor side (inside, using the alternator bolt, apparently). A microprocessor in each CDI unit allowed custom timing delays for each of the 3 units, so placement in the alternator wasn't hard. Pretty snazzy!
4. The engine broke a rod in the late 1980s, on the street. Most of the rest of the bike was stock, and the owner sold it to someone who lives in Hudson, Colorado, according to a local "sage". No one has seen it since then.
Like I said, the guy had lots of cash. Probably bought a race bike or a Corvette after that...
Hudson's not very big. I might just have to cruise out there one fine summer day and go look for that thing.
