Mate of mine had one of these for years, loved it. 250 cc 2-stroke beast.
I can't understand why in the US people need such huge engines. 250cc is pretty good for getting around. I might not choose one for a road trip, but for every day stuff I think it would be just fine. Do a lot of people ride in NZ? Seems like a nice place for it . . .
…because going uphill at 80mph requires at least 800cc. I used to ride a KLR650. And it was mostly okay. Probably put 30,000 miles on that bike. But going up Sepulveda Pass you have to open the throttle wide and even then you wish you had more. And my KLR was actually a KLR720 because of the piston kit. You can get around town on a moped, that's no issue. But if your life regularly involves freeways and 80mph, you need some beans.
…and that "800cc" thing is a reflection of me on my KLR, which probably made 60hp on a good day. Piaggio does make freeway-capable scooters, but I think I'd rather have a little more geometry to my suspension if we're going to make that sort of rate. 125s and 250s are absolutely awesome up to and including about 50mph, in my experience. Once you get up into the realm of "crazy American speeds" it helps to have some reserve. I had to push my KLR to 95 in order to escape a homocidal semi driver and it was an "engines canna take much more'o'this captain" experience. On that Benelli? "BLLLLIP you're doing 130 mutherfucker."
Spot on. My bike back in the US was a crappy old Yamaha Virago 920, v-twin (basically a bored out 750 for the extra cc's), and the extra power is so nice on the highway. Mine had a digital speedo which wouldn't go above 85 mph (by design), which I thought was a smart idea - going any faster than that, you got no business looking at it anyway, and it prevents you from pushing up to triple digits to see it tick over.
I've got a digital speedo on the Benelli and it has the drawback of demonstrating exactly zero of the drama you're incurring by leaping off the onramp at 7000RPM in 3rd. The digits just sort of blur; "68" and "98" are placidly similar enough that you're like "whatever" but the reality of the situation is YOU ARE ENTERING THE FREEWAY AT DAMN NEAR 100MPH AND YOU HAVE THREE GEARS TO GO. The tach, on the other hand, does a great job of saying "hoo boy we're having fun now. VROOM VROOM VROOM"
I had heard about those. I was making a bit of a joke though. They call these things "rascal scooters" where I'm from: Geez. The attitudes that motorists have about motorcyclists is really terrible here. Of course, some of that might be a little bit attributable to the douchebro attitude of many motorcyclists in this country too. All I can say from personal experience is, getting run off the road on a bike by a huge bus is a pretty pants-shitting experience that I think a lot of drivers of larger vehicles might benefit from.Piaggio does make freeway-capable scooters, but I think I'd rather have a little more geometry to my suspension if we're going to make that sort of rate.
I had to push my KLR to 95 in order to escape a homocidal semi driver and it was an "engines canna take much more'o'this captain" experience.
It's well-earned, though. There are a lot of terrible motorcyclists. I ride in LA and I can say with no quaver in my voice that every paranoid angelino who fears for my safety while I commute has a well-founded basis for that fear based on watching my compatriots demonstrate the low value they assign their own survival. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is. The stories I could tell…
I still remember as a youth what it was like to travel in a car and be able to see the highway and horizon before you, even though the roads were filled with other cars. I remember when SUV's started becoming a "thing" in the nineties because of the number of times I was suddenly found myself strikingly aware of the fact that I was sitting in traffic, just looking at a wall of steel rising up in front of me. To this day I still resent SUVs on that level. They just block too much stuff.
I wanted that thing to be awesome. I really did. Instead we got a Razor with the wheels on sideways and a Celeron to keep it from tipping over. I'm ungainly as fuck on my longboard. I am not a graceful man. But even I look down my nose at the German tourists on their "people movers."
Not a lot of riders here, but it is a fantastic place for it. I used to ride when I lived in OK, but I haven't owned a bike since I moved here, 15 years now. I miss riding a lot, now and then.
I almost bought an Aprilia Shiver. They've got the reliability of a BMW (they actually make the F650) but the flair of the Italians. I thought it was an Aprilia story but it isn't, but I'll tell it anyway: In July of 2008 Harley Davidson announced they were paying $109m for MV Agusta and Cagiva. In October 2009 Harley Davidson announced they were selling MV Agusta and Cagiva back to the Castiglioni Brothers for $1. I love that Harley Davidson paid two charming old Italian gentlemen a little more than seven million dollars a month to mis-manage their company for five quarters. …and then of course they killed Buell. Fuckin' Harley.
In NZ, you're restricted to 250 cc or smaller bikes for something like 2 years, before you can get your unrestricted license - so the Aprilia is a great bike for meeting the letter of the law, while blatantly violating its intent :-)
Sharing just to annoy my 800-odd followers into ignoring #motorcycles, and then griping because this list is kinda dumb. 1) they're all Japanese. BAH! 2) yeah, you can't buy a Yamaha XT660 but you can buy a Super Tenere for like, 14 grand. As in, "you'll pay more for a Yamaha than you will for the equivalent BMW or Triumph." I got to imagine the 660 would be stupid expensive once imported, too. 3) You can buy a Versys 650, but nobody does, because they look like a Krell toe from Forbidden Planet: http://www.hooverae.com/upload/files/220210/3952088.jpeg 4) MY BIKE IS NOT ON THIS LIST AND IT IS WAY MORE AWESOME THAN ANYTHING LISTED (especially once you clean the tail up - yikes dat fender) 5) Fuckin' Vyrus 985 Questa la Vyrus! Solo questa… e la Vyrus! Buono?
I was surprised that all the bikes on the list are Japanese, for sure. I do like Honda, but that's because I learned to ride on one. I'd really like to try riding BMW, but I hear that service is kind of a bitch. I'd really like to try some of those Italian bikes too, but it looks like my options for the foreseeable future are learning how to rebuild bikes from the '80's and '90's, which I guess I'm ok with. I don't get why the CBR 1300 isn't available here though. It seems like the styling would be popular here and as far as I know about CBRs, they're very reliable and easy to ride . . . Anyhow, how did you decide on your bike?
Living in Los Angeles has convinced me of one unassailable truism: I will never own a German vehicle. Period. End of line. I just don't want to associate with the flagrant douchebaggery I see every day. As far as the CB1300 (not CBR1300), I would guess it's because Honda knows that market is niche at best and the people who haven't bought a V-max already are probably buying a Diavel or a Thruxton. How I decided on my bike So the KLR cracked its frame somewhere between LA and Taos. This was (and is) a severe Party Foul in my book - I mean, I rebuilt the wiring harness on that piece of shit at least three times, molycoddled its stupid little Keihin, tightened its goddamn elephantine gas tank every six months, changed out its goddamn ignition switch, you name it. But if the fuckin' frame is gonna crack, who knows what's gonna do next? So I set out to see what the hell else I was interested in riding. And the hell and gone out in Simi Valley, there was a thrashed-out '98 Triumph Tiger and a thrashed-out Aprilia Caponord. And I figured what the fuck, I'd go ride out there and give them both a try. So I get there and the Triumph won't start. The Aprilia won't start (and they're ridiculous - you ever been next to one? They're like Goldwings on monster truck suspension) and it's banana yellow besides. And they had a bunch of brand new Teneres for a gajillion dollars, and a bunch of brand new Tigers for a gajillion dollars, and over there, neglected, where nobody could really see it, was a goddamn unicorn. And since I couldn't test-ride the triumph, and since I couldn't test-ride the Caponord (and didn't want to any longer), let's test-ride the unicorn. Because you'll never so much as see one ever again, let alone ride one, and if someone is willing to give you the keys to a Maserati, take 'em, son. And oh my god. Dat bike. One would think that an 1100cc Italian pretend-dualsport would be unholy and frightening. One would think that such an odd and exotic monstrosity would emphasize with its every move just what a radical and dangerous possession it truly is. One would think that a vehicle rarer and less-known than a bloody bimota would have all sorts of characteristics that would make it clear in no uncertain terms why it was sitting, alone and forlorn, at a used bike dealership in Simi Valley with less than 1500 miles on it. HOWEVER: It's a peach. It's stupendously well-behaved. It's the most predictable, stable, benign motorcycle I've ever sat on let alone ridden. And oh god. The sound. It has a sound unlike any other. Aspects of a pure, uninsulated race triple with few concessions to reality. It was kind of terrifying at first - the idle was set too low so it sounded remarkably like a garbage truck at lights, then you'd put your wrist in it and HOLY FUCK I probably spent a solid month in intense research to try and figure out if I actually wanted to be responsible for the care and feeding of a 1-in-7 Italian exotic so far from home. The local Italian bike specialists won't touch it. You have to get parts from a guy named Steve in Philly. But there's a friendly and thriving internet community in the UK (where they're still available) and the same insane shop that tweaks Vyrus and Bimota (maniacmotors.de) tweaks the fuck out of Benellis, too. Best part is that it's got an Athena ECM, the same one Bimota uses… which means you can plug into it with your laptop and change whatever you want. Even better, it's got a big stupid button on the dash labeled "Benelli" that when you press it, flips fuel maps on the fly. So you can have your nice, conservative saves-gas and idles-appropriately map on one setting, and your 15mpg-idles-like-crap-but-holy-fuck-get-it-above-5k-and-it-will-tear-your-face-off on the other and you're in for a treat. It really rewards riding like a jackass. That bike is capable of so much more than I am. But it also rewards riding like a citizen. It's got ridonkulously stupidly big Brembos in the front and it's just a joy in traffic. I was astonished at how much safer I feel on 130HP of italian insanity than I did on 650CC of conservative Kawasaki. I ended up getting it for $200 more than the shop had taken it in on trade six months earlier… and approximately a third the asking price when it was still being sold by dealers. In other words, I paid less for it than I would have for a late-model CBR600. One of my least-regretted decisions of my entire life. Only downside is once you've acclimatized to owning a Benelli you start thinking that things like a Vyrus or a Bimota might not be so crazy. Not gonna lie, seriously thinking of building one of these.
Wow, that's some serendipity right there. Ever find out why it got sold in the first place? Your story made me realize that maybe another reason I appreciate Honda is that I don't know the first thing about mechanical engineering. I'm at about the level of Lego Technics/Erector Set. Break something on a Honda? No problem. I've heard people say this kind of thing in a lot of scenarios, kind of a "you don't know how good things can be until you've had a taste of what good really is". I can see that. Anything in particular that's stopping you from building that thing? I bet that building it would be tons of fun, especially if one had some idea of what one was doing! I would like to learn more about mechanical engineering for the sake of riding and knowing how shit works in general. I was talking to a lady not long ago about whatever and she mentioned that her son was attending MMI which is much more full on than what would suit my needs, but it's cool that it's out there and that the graduates are well-regarded. I guess I could ask various friends who are engineers to give me a hand if I run into problems at some future time, but then again, my friends with engineering backgrounds seem to think they can take just about anything apart and put it back together the right way, whether or not that's really the case.Only downside is once you've acclimatized to owning a Benelli you start thinking that things like a Vyrus or a Bimota might not be so crazy.
Fear. There's a certain amount of "oh shit if it breaks I'm fucked" that I, too, suffer from. The beastie did 5,000 miles in three months back and forth from work so when I was done with that gig, I parked it and vowed not to ride it again until it'd had its oil changed, its chain tensioned and its fuel injection rebalanced. Then, of course, I also changed out the pipe, put crash bobbins on and gave it heated grips so right now it's suffering from some serious I-don't-have-time-to-finishism. Benelli, in their infinite kindness, put up the shop manuals as PDFs. I printed mine full color using my wife's discount. It's an impressive document - a 3" binder of tweaky Italian Engrish. But it also gives you the fortitude to do obnoxious things like exchange the fuel injectors for Densos. The 25,000 Euro price tag (without engine)? The lack of a garage to build it in? Lots of things. Besides, I can't ride more than one motorcycle at once and the one I have is a peach. Engineers, as a general rule of thumb, know fuckall about taking things apart. I was stunned to learn that of the entire UW department of Mechanical Engineering, I was the only person in my graduating class that had ever repaired a vehicle large enough to ride in. In my opinion, the best way to learn how to wrench is to own a VW Bug. The parts cost nothing, you can take the whole thing apart with a Leatherman and there are enough gotchas in the design that it will not instill you with a sense of awe for "superior German engineering." Build a dune buggy or sand rail. You'll learn. ALL HAIL CHENOWTHEver find out why it got sold in the first place?
I'm at about the level of Lego Technics/Erector Set. Break something on a Honda? No problem.
Anything in particular that's stopping you from building that thing?
I guess I could ask various friends who are engineers to give me a hand if I run into problems at some future time, but then again, my friends with engineering backgrounds seem to think they can take just about anything apart and put it back together the right way, whether or not that's really the case.
That is seriously shocking. Was that unusual at the time? I wonder what it's like now across the US . . . Now there's an idea. My car is just about to die on me and this "cold-spell" isn't helping things at all. I really, really hope I can sell it to some parents looking for a first car for their kid, come spring. I really, really, really hope I can sell it for close to what I spent on getting it to pass inspection.Engineers, as a general rule of thumb, know fuckall about taking things apart. I was stunned to learn that of the entire UW department of Mechanical Engineering, I was the only person in my graduating class that had ever repaired a vehicle large enough to ride in.
In my opinion, the best way to learn how to wrench is to own a VW Bug. The parts cost nothing, you can take the whole thing apart with a Leatherman and there are enough gotchas in the design that it will not instill you with a sense of awe for "superior German engineering." Build a dune buggy or sand rail. You'll learn.
Dunno. Gotta keep in mind: when I started in college, "fuel injection" was something that you didn't mess with. You could chip a modern car and make it go faster but a 350 with TPI was pretty much the shit. Fast forward 20 years and a buddy of mine is reliving his Landcruiser fetish and he's got yet another with a 327. Lo and behold, a 350 with TPI is still the shit. It's like car culture hit 1992 and just sorta stopped. I mean, even the ricers don't really go for modern rides anymore. The stupid stereo twits will buy something new and put eleventy seven LCD screens in it, but if you're actually dealing with the mechanicals you're probably working on a '98 Prelude. Presuming you're working on it at all. The kids aren't buying cars, and they aren't driving anywhere, so why would they give a shit?That is seriously shocking. Was that unusual at the time? I wonder what it's like now across the US . . .
I have noticed that I meet more and more people who say they don't drive, though I've wondered if that was merely an effect of meeting people in large cities. The concept of the self-driven car is appealing, especially if it could work as a kind of modular public transit, but I've got a feeling that such cars are a bit further off than the articles suggest.
I don't think it's the "driving" aspect so much as the "$20,000 and $400/mo in insurance just to be allowed to legally put the keys in" aspect. That and it's so much less of a tribulation to be stuck at home. Backintheday we found new bands by reading about them in magazines, then driving an hour to the music store to make a deposit, then driving back two weeks later to pick up our CD. Youtube is a definite improvement.
The laws are not so strict where I'm from, but I take your point. I love Youtube, but it bums me out that there are so many things that get in the way of frequent social interaction between people here. Plus, I always enjoyed going to the record store and just digging for whatever. I guess I don't have to deal with "holier-than-thou" record store employees anymore, just those bonkers comments sections.
The most desirable bikes to me are readily available right here. My *actual bike: And the Hyperstrada, a new bike Ducati calls (with a straight face) a touring bike: From the article though, that Honda FTR I dig. If I lived in a denser urban setting I wouldn't mind hopping around on that: There is a definite aesthetic that is present in all three that I like. *That first pic is not my actual bike, it is merely the exact same model, paint job, year, etc, with a single after market mod (addition of the backrest aka: luggage rack) that I also happened to place on my bike. Just got lucky and found the pic online.
Well, kind of a funny store on that. My boss had gotten a bike a couple years before. He used to race motocross in his youth, but he'd gone essentially his whole adult life without owning a street bike. So he got one. And you know what happens when someone gets a motorcycle? They not only wanna ride it, but they want get people they hang out with to ride with them. At least he did. Every other day it was "Dude, you gotta get a bike" and such. So anyway, I like bikes and I wasn't opposed, nor was I gunning for one, but that spring I started going with him to his dealership whenever he would pick up a part for his bike and I'd check them out. I discovered that I don't like most Harleys, but I really love the Custom Sportster. It's narrow, light for a Harley, has awesome retro styling, had the 1200 cc engine so it wasn't a total dog on the highway, etc. If I picked up a Harley, I was only interested in a Sportster. Every other bike they made could suck it. So fast forward a few weeks at my job where I'm an estimator/project manager. I do a lot of public bid work, and I'm putting together a technology bid for a brand new Coast Guard facility out in Galveston, TX. It's out of state for us, and the margins on public bid work are notoriously bad, so I didn't have high hopes, but somehow I win it. Fairly decent size, about a quarter of a million dollars, so I walk into my boss's office and tell him I'm going to call up our main distributor and order a shitload of cable because I won the bid: Boss: NO NO WAIT! Don't order from them. Me: Why not? Boss: Because we're ordering from [competitor]. Me: Why are we ordering from them? You told me that all major cable orders have to go through [current vendor], and that we needed to maintain our relationship with them above our second tier suppliers. Boss: I know I said that, but we're gonna win a Harley. Me: ... So it turns out that a competing distributor was offering an OEM promotion where if you, at the end of Summer, were one of the top 10 purchasers of product, you received 1 of 10 keys that would start the Harley. Me: So you are basically selling out our main distributor for what is essentially a chance to win a scratch ticket. Boss: Yes. Exactly. Long story shorter, that job and a couple other large ones landed us in the top 10 purchasers in the region, and we went down to the distributor's company picnic to see what we could see. Had a drawing, got picked to be first up, and it was that key that started it. The bike I was looking at all Summer was the precise bike that was the prize, and is the bike I'm driving to this day. So the biggest thing that sold me on it was that it was free ;) but outside of that, I would have bought it for it's mix of affordability, aesthetic beauty, and performance for what I wanted it to do (cruise).What was it about your bike that sold you on it?
Great story, I enjoyed reading that. Have a badge.
And not just any badge but my 100th badge. You win a brand new this:
noeatnosleep -You can click on a tag and see past submissions. For example, I clicked on the tag #motorcycles and found this old post by humanodon. You'll find a number of motorcycle enthusiasts in this thread. Cheers.
Yep; I'm mostly wondering if people are watching the tag or not. There's only a couple posts for #motorcycles.
Click on the tag and you'll see that there are 4 people following it. -So not a ton. You can see who they are too. That said, if there is interesting content in a tag being put forth, more people start following it. That would be a good way to build up the following of the tag. I hope this helps.
It was in 2002. I crossed in New Mexico. I traveled in Chihuahua then headed west towards the Pacific. I crossed the mountains through Durango, MEX. Then down along the Gold coast including Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, and a bunch of smaller towns like Playa Azul. Puerto Escondido was still cheap with just the first fancy-pancy condos going up. The truck-drivers in MEX and Central America are insane. I had all lanes on a four lane highway full of 18 wheelers coming at me so many times. Iguana are dead all over the roads. And huge, dumb, slow buzzards eat them on the road. When they see you coming they jump start fly up and fly in the same direction that you are traveling. I was literally swatting buzzards off of my helmet. Everyone that walks on the side of the road has a machete. Eventually I lashed one to the side of the bike with a suvionior grade sheath. Many Mexicans are rather sick of dealing the US Americans. If you are Danish, or German, or Aussie (some folks I traveled here and there with) they love you. Most other Central Americans love you even if you are US American. Travel on motorcycle is the biggest laugh you ever have. You get off the bike NOT BELIEVING you are still alive. I mean ... I didn't tell you about the border crossing fun. Or dealing with take the bike apart looks for armas. Or the plank ferry operated by a yamaha 125 on the other side. Or the Mayan temples I saw from Return of the Jedi. That was only the first few weeks. That trip lasted about 11 months.
I have heard about the Mexican roadkill, though I've heard mostly about armadillos and tarantulas, not iguanas. Poor iguanas. That sounds like some adventure. Did you have any kind of plan for your trip? I've heard that border crossings in that part of the world can be a big deal. Any advice, or ideas on what to do/not to do when crossing the border (other than not carrying weapons or drugs of course!)? I'd love to have 11 months just to travel around on a motorcycle. If you had the chance to do it again, would you do anything differently?
Differently? Nope. The 750CC twin with a radiator is a great bike for single person road trip. I had done a bit of travel on moto in the US. The border between the US and MEX is pretty straight forward. Get copies of everything. Be patient and kind. Speaking Spanish helps avoid the mordita or at least deal with it. Borders between MEX, Guatemala, Honduras varied. Completely packed chaos led through the town (Tapacula?) into the border crossing by a gang of homeless children; to sitting and waiting for the right stamp to drop. I wouldn't prolly go through MEX right now. I had plans to visit old friends this year by truck. Everyone told me not to go. My Mexicans friends, my Guatemalan friends, my Honduran friends. SO I would love to do it again. But next time I want a sidecar to carry spare tires, more gas, and my dog.
Nice. I'll keep this in mind for the future. In Vietnam I taught my dog how to sit on one of those 100cc scooters so I could take him to the beach. He absolutely loved it and the step-through (cut out part) was perfect for him to put his back legs on. I've thought about the possibility of training him to lie flat on the tank of a motorcycle here, but since we'd be traveling so much faster here, I don't think it's a great idea. Maybe in a backpack or something.
kleinbl00 you still have your motorcycle? It's not available in the US, is it?
They show up on eBay occasionally but yeah. There are only seven to choose from. They were imported for six months in 2008, were sold at Harley dealers and cost $18,000 so they weren't particularly popular.