To increase off-road ability, there was an added feature: a 1.867 reduction spur gear that provided high/low ratios, in essence, giving the CT90 eight speeds.The same leading-link front suspension design that had been in use for years on a range of models was in use in improved form in 1968, which would change to a telescopic fork by 1969. To protect the head and cylinder cooling fins, a pair of steel bars on each side of the engine dropped down from the steering head and attached beneath the engine near the midships-mounted footpegs.The ’68 model had a four-speed that fed power through a centrifugal clutch, making navigating narrow trails and difficult terrain while managing engine output a lot easier. The engine was slung beneath a pressed steel frame in a nearly horizontal position. Its economy, simplicity, and reliability kept it in the line-up for 13 years when it was again bumped up, this time to 105cc for the new CT110 model. In 1967, it became the CT90 and the engine’s displacement was nudged up to 89cc and the pushrod was replaced by a chain-drive OHC design.That engine, which churned out eight horsepower at 9500 rpm was used in no less than five different models in the 1967 model year. You have to wonder what Soichiro Honda would have said if he only could have known! A new marketing slogan may have resulted: “You meet the nicest upland game birds on a Honda!”The Trail 90 has sold in the multi-millions since its introduction in 1964 as the CT200 Trail 90, when the engine was an air-cooled 87cc single-cylinder OHV pushrod four-stroke. He limbered up his 12-gauge and harvested the birds.It was then that he realized the “ thup-thup-thup” exhaust note of the bike without its stock muffler resembled the sound of a partridge drumming its wings as they do during the fall mating season and that is probably what brought the birds to him! Turns out the CT90 can double as a bird call deadly to lovelorn partridge.He added that it doesn’t always seem to work, but even a time or two is pretty amazing. Before he could draw his shotgun from the scabbard, he noticed another bird coming in hot from a different direction. He was riding the CT90 along with an abandoned railroad grade when he stopped to take a look around and left the bike idling.As he sat there, looking ahead for grouse moving along the ground or roosting, he was startled to see a partridge winging its way right toward him. He discovered the CT90’s deadly secret quite by accident on one of his partridge hunting forays. That’s mainly devoted to hunting the U.P.’s stock of partridge, but woodcock and other upland game birds are in season, too.He said the muffler had rusted out some years ago so its sound is a little louder than stock, but actually not much. The bike is equipped with a scabbard attached to the forks that he slides his 12-gauge shotgun into during “bird” season.
It seems he likes to use the little Honda to prowl the logging roads, fire lanes and tote roads of the U.P.
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