CB13S' new look & sound

Our long term test CB1300S has a new look and a new sound thanks to a series of bolt-ons we’ve now added.

Blue Flame supplied us with a choice of three cans (check out Blue Flame options here) but we settled on the plain titanium single port option. It felt the lightest and seemed to best suit the retro look of the bike.

We’re running it with the baffle in – so it’s perfectly road legal. Download the video clip below and you can hear how it’s improved the standard muted tones of the big CB into a much richer burble. A dyno run at BSD, Peterborough, revealed a 4bhp power gain, too. It’s now making close to 110bhp. Click on the image right to see the dynograph in detail.

The Ermax bellypan is a good colour match in plain white. It was a bit of a fiddle to fit but the result looks neat.

Honda’s own rear carrier requires some cutting away of bodywork (the places to cut are essentially marked out ready for you) and it doubles as a back support for your pillion. Download the video (below) to see how it works.

Honda crash bungs complete the cosmetics.

One other essential change was replacing the OE Michelin Macadam tyres with Bridgestone 020s. We’ll let you know how they compare when they are scrubbed in.