The Honda CL77 or Scrambler 305 is the
off-road
Off-roading is the activity of driving or riding in a vehicle on unpaved surfaces such as sand, gravel, riverbeds, mud, snow, rocks, and other natural terrain. Types of off-roading range in intensity, from leisure drives with unmodified vehicl ...
or
scramble
Scramble, Scrambled, or Scrambling may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Games
* ''Scramble'' (video game), a 1981 arcade game
Music Albums
* ''Scramble'' (album), an album by Atlanta-based band the Coathangers
* ''Scrambles'' (album)
...
r version of the
Honda
is a Japanese public multinational conglomerate manufacturer of automobiles, motorcycles, and power equipment, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan.
Honda has been the world's largest motorcycle manufacturer since 1959, reaching a product ...
C77 Dream and the
CB77 Super Hawk of the 1960s.
Scramblers, designated CL by Honda, differed from the sport bikes (designated CB) to allow for some off-road riding. The CL77 differed from the CB77 Super Hawk in a number of ways. To increase ground clearance, it had upswept exhaust pipes running along the bike's left side. A bigger tube frame with a front downtube gave extra strength and ran through the space where the electric starter was mounted in the CB and CA models. Eliminating the starter gave clearance in the frame, and lightened the total weight of the bike. It had a small-capacity painted fuel tank, fork boots, 19-inch front and rear wheels, coarser-tread tires (called universals), a taller handlebar with cross-brace, and abbreviated fenders. Early models had painted aluminum fenders.
The
overhead cam
An overhead camshaft (OHC) engine is a piston engine where the camshaft is located in the cylinder head above the combustion chamber. This contrasts with earlier overhead valve engines (OHV), where the camshaft is located below the combustion cha ...
engine had a redline of 9000 rpm and contrasted sharply from the low-revving European and American bikes of the day. Running straight pipes with small internal baffles, CL77s featured a loud and very distinct sound from the 180 degree firing order of this parallel twin. Many of these motorcycles featured aftermarket snuff-or-nots (commonly misspoken as "snuffer nuts"),
[ which featured a flat washer like piece of metal which pivoted just inside the tips of the exhaust pipes to quiet or increase the sound of the exhaust at any time during operation simply by twisting the external knob.
In later years Honda joined the end of the exhaust pipes with an external factory installed muffler to control exhaust noise. At first it was slipped on and clamped. Later models came with only one of the twin side pipes welded onto the slip-on muffler. The last version came with both pipes welded to the slip-on muffler.
In 1962, Dave Ekins and Bill Robertson Jr. rode two CL72 Scramblers the entire length of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, in a PR effort for Honda; the feat would also effectively serve as a pioneering run for the Baja 1000 off-road race. That race's first official running was in 1967, and in 1968, Larry Berquist and Gary Preston won the second official ]Baja 1000
The Baja 1000 is an annual Mexican off-road motorsport race held on the Baja California Peninsula. It is one of the most prestigious off-road races in the world, having attracted competitors from six continents. The race was founded by Ed Pearl ...
race on a cl350 to give the model off-road credibility.
References