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Lungboy posted:Hills are bad here but the main issue is that I'm disabled, and cycling would be extremely difficult if not impossible, even on an ebike (although I've no experience of an ebike so that's just a guess). There is a cycle to work scheme but not all employers offer it so I'd check that first. Ok then it's scooter time, forget motorbikes. A cvt 50cc, preferably two stroke, is the way. If these aren't available where you were (amerikkka?) you'll be able to get a 125-150 four stroke which should do fine.
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Jan 17, 2022 20:13
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Sorry if the bike/ebike comments came off as ableist, I'm sure no one else in this thread meant it that way either but it's something we all should think more about. Sounds like a lil scoot would be the way unless an ebike fits with your disability and you want to also be able to ride on bike paths. I have a sneaking suspicion scoots might be cheaper than ebikes, which are super in demand right now.
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Jan 17, 2022 20:36
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Is an electric scooter/moped an option? That might solve the short distance heat cycling problem. Also I think a disability does change the equation. I live in a hilly area too, but I usually don't get on my motorcycle for anything less than 5 miles unless I'm getting groceries. But as a (pre-covid) bicycle commuter, I do understand the occasional desire to just get someplace without having to expend energy. Sometimes I'd ride my bicycle to work and then use a bikeshare ebike to go home after a long day.
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Jan 17, 2022 20:40
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Shower thought: Cars make you fat and angry Cycles make you fit and happy Motos make you fat and happy
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Jan 17, 2022 20:45
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My SV heats up quite quickly but i don't see that as the ideal city bike at all. It produces a shitton of heat idling on a warm summer's day. The lower the fuel consumption, the less heat it produces. Perhaps a CBR125rr would be both nice and smol for easy city use, as well as fun to use on your days off? Never tried one of those, no idea if they're manageable at all for commuting but they look fun. Or perhaps one of the A1 class supermotos? Scooters are indeed the ideal use case, but i'd personally would still go for a small bike rather than a scooter. Just because of the fun factor. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jan 17, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 21:16
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Thanks all, I didn't take it as being ableist at all, just genuine good advice that I just
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Jan 17, 2022 21:23
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Scooter all the way. Added bonus for the commutes is built in storage. Skip the 50cc 2-strokes they are miserable, just get a 125 four stroke.
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Jan 17, 2022 21:40
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An old co-worker bought a C125 super cub for roughly the same distance daily commute (included a Seattle ferry, where bikes get to skip the line) and really enjoys it. Does the UK have gogoro scooters? They’re essentially a standard in Taiwan now. BabelFish fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 17, 2022 21:57
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BabelFish posted:Does the UK have gogoro scooters? They’re essentially a standard in Taiwan now. No they are Asia only at the moment. Kymco are releasing a similar system shortly in Europe though.
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Jan 18, 2022 08:28
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I'd get an SV, at least you can enjoy it at weekends as well. Pretty sure it will heat up in 5 miles of traffic? Not everything has to be as small as possible and OP has experience riding.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:07
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knox_harrington posted:I'd get an SV, at least you can enjoy it at weekends as well. Pretty sure it will heat up in 5 miles of traffic? It absolutely will not.
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Jan 18, 2022 19:26
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Well how much city riding DOES it take to heat up a middleweight motorcycle?
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Jan 18, 2022 20:22
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If you go for a big bike, an SV really is one of the best choices. The engine has usable power down to really low revs. The carb'd bike also is impossible to make surge in low engine speed/low engine load conditions. It's so incredibly easy to ride that bike smoothly, whatever your speed or revs are. The newest version is childishly easy to ride in city traffic with pretty decent throttle mapping (though crank it open and it'll still be really fast in acceleration) However It does take some time to heat up simply because it's a big bike. On such short trips you'll effectively be riding half of the time with a lukewarm engine. Only at the end of the trip will it be close to thoroughly warm. But in winter you might not even reach that state. And that's just a bit sad. Conversely, if it's hot outside it will roast you. Not as bad as a ktm duke 790 does, but still, just because it consumes a lot more fuel than a small bike it gets hotter. Filtering is no longer optional if it's a nice sunny summer's day, traffic lights are hell. The bike can handle that just fine, i've never overheated mine ever, but it's really not comfortable. It consumes close to 6 liter per 100km in the city. For practicality and rationality, get a 125cc 4 stroke scooter. For fun, an 125cc bike. Perhaps a ninja 250 or similar if you also wanna occasionally traverse a bit of highway. But for city riding, i would kinda shy away from heavier stuff than that. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 20:33
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I've spent all day down the electric scooter/bike rabbit hole and it's hugely frustrating with outright lies over speed and range for nearly every bike out there. It's also not great how the latest and greatest models are largely not available in the UK. Combined with steep prices Vs an ice 125 I'm leaning towards a PCX or similar unless the Metacycle turns out to be real and shipping isn't too bad on it. I'd like an XMax but I'm guessing a 300cc scooter will still suffer from not getting warm enough over the 5 miles. I've read elsewhere that the problem caused by the repeated short trips (moisture in the oil?) can be solved by a longer ride of a weekend but that's not always going to be possible to do with kids and care responsibilities too, assuming it's even true.
Lungboy fucked around with this message at 23:01 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 22:57
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FBS posted:Well how much city riding DOES it take to heat up a middleweight motorcycle? How long is a piece of string? In theory with a water cooled motor, it's warmed up when the coolant temperature has reached about 90°c, however that doesn't account for oil temperature, which by far the most critical thing. The oil takes twice as long as the coolant to warm up and how fast it gets there depends on a bunch of factors. At five miles you'll be lucky to get a fortnight before it won't start from plug fouling because the plug tip probably won't get hot enough to self clean, especially on a cold day when the bike spends the whole journey on cold start mapping. Anyway none of this matters, lungboy already identified the correct bike for him and it is the Honda PCX, go get one.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:13
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Oh my god. This “short journeys will destroy your bike” rubbish is so ridiculous. Ride it occasionally elsewhere and it’ll be fine. I did 2 miles to my gym and back all of 2019’s winter daily in Scotland on my 1868CC Harley and it is fine.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:15
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Steakandchips posted:Oh my god. This “short journeys will destroy your bike” rubbish is so ridiculous. Remind me again, where is your Harley currently?
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Jan 19, 2022 00:22
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In the shop, needs some bits replaced as I had a small off a couple of months back!
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Jan 19, 2022 00:33
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lol. High strung poo poo isn't going to like being short cycled. Harleys and KLRs are not high strung things. op get a klr. it won't care.
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Jan 19, 2022 01:43
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Clearly the proper answer is a CBR250RR, turn your commute into a Moto3 course.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:00
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Plug fouling will be burnt off after like 30 seconds of running at about half throttle. The only way you'll get persistent fouling from repeated 5-mile rides is if you are also creeping along just above idle, o r leave the choke on the whole time or something.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:07
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I was googling to remember the name of the new mini moto that Honda released, the Navi that goes for like 1800 bux here when I stumbled upon.... Honda Scoopy! That's the greatest name for a little scoot and it looks classy as gently caress 
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Jan 19, 2022 02:22
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Sagebrush posted:Plug fouling will be burnt off after like 30 seconds of running at about half throttle. The only way you'll get persistent fouling from repeated 5-mile rides is if you are also creeping along just above idle, o r leave the choke on the whole time or something. Idk dude Lexus v6's did it all the time when I was there  Literally boomers driving 5km to the supermarket once a week and eventually the car starts taking ages to start and running like poo poo. The explanation I was given was that the plugs never had the chance to reach self-cleaning temperatures, and that's in a toasty warm engine bay pulling a two ton car. Pre-crossplane r1's are the first EFI bike example that immediately springs to mind; they have a questionably designed cold start system and that + babying the bike everywhere = bike won't start from cold. Many such cases. Let's look at this another way: How many miles could you do above and beyond your oil change interval before a. the engine sustains damage b. you the rider perceive something is wrong You'll find that there are many, many engines out there that still run but perform suboptimally because people don't do preventative maintenance. The only reason this is possible is because of the level of engineering excellence achieved in modern engines, you can be phenomenally abusive without destroying the motor but you can absolutely wear out rings and seals and gears etc without blowing up your engine. Repeated brief trips is a great way to accumulate needless wear without anything seeming to go wrong, until you dyno that engine against one that's actually been taken care of properly, or try to keep it alive for a hundred thousand km.
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Jan 19, 2022 02:44
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Slavvy posted:Idk dude Lexus v6's did it all the time when I was there Well just taking that example at face value, you're talking about a luxury car with a deliberately low-strung engine, programmed to keep its RPMs as low as possible for NVH, with a car-sized coolant reservoir, radiator, and oil capacity, driven cautiously down to the store for 3 miles a week. That's distinctly different from a motorcycle's operating conditions. When I'm flying a plane, part of the runup check is turning the magneto systems on and off to verify their operation, and sometimes the system will chug on one set or the other because the previous person was a dummy and they didn't lean it out properly at altitude or something. The fix is just as I suggested: lean it to the proper mixture, stand on the brakes, rev the engine up to about 50-60% throttle and hold it there for 30 seconds. 95% of the time that burns the crud off and you're set. I dunno, I mean you know a lot more about motorcycles than I do, but basically I haven't heard of anyone who rides their motorcycle so gingerly that they wouldn't hit at least half throttle on every ride. That's just...sad. Though now that I post that, it occurs that you might very well see that with squid bros who just bought an R1 as their first bike, lol, and that's the exact example you give of a bike that gets fouled plugs. So sure, I can see it happening if you're an incompetent rider. I don't think that taking repeated short trips will do it by itself if you know what you're doing and take care to exercise the engine when appropriate. In my experience, 5 miles is just enough time to hit operating temperature for the last mile or so, as long as you haven't been lugging it around. Gun it Sagebrush fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 04:04
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If your engine isn't up to operating temp at the end of the first pull from the front row of a stop light with an empty road in front of you, you're doing it wrong®
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Jan 19, 2022 04:41
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I’m actually thinking about a commuting scooter for a 3 mile commute. I bike it most of the time that the roads aren’t icy, usually dropping off/picking the kid up at school in a bike trailer. It’s just that on days where I’m not doing kid duty I sometimes want to have fun but not mess with the motorcycle. Scooters are just looking more and more fun to me. I like the idea of donging around parking lots and neighborhoods on a silly little 50-100cc thing with tiny wheels. Ruckuses look fun.
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Jan 19, 2022 05:44
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BabelFish posted:Clearly the proper answer is a CBR250RR, turn your commute into a Moto3 course. Ohvale GP-O could be fun....More seriously, a Grom or Monkey might be worth a test ride. Also the Super Cub which I just remembered exists. Lungboy fucked around with this message at 09:23 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 09:17
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Modern cars get up to temperature really, really fast. The reason is emissions - a cold engine puts out a lot of NOx when it's cold and that wrecks their emissions scores. Combine that with the extremely light weight oils used for the same reason (lighter oils are more fuel efficient), and you have cars that don't need to go more than a mile or two before being up to temp.
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Jan 19, 2022 10:15
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Lol if you don’t start your motorcycle at full throttle and never let go
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Jan 19, 2022 14:23
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HenryJLittlefinger posted:I’m actually thinking about a commuting scooter for a 3 mile commute. I bike it most of the time that the roads aren’t icy, usually dropping off/picking the kid up at school in a bike trailer. It’s just that on days where I’m not doing kid duty I sometimes want to have fun but not mess with the motorcycle. Scooters are just looking more and more fun to me. I like the idea of donging around parking lots and neighborhoods on a silly little 50-100cc thing with tiny wheels. Ruckuses look fun. I've been thinking about this too, but have been hoping to see more e-scooters like the ones that are all over Taiwan. <50 miles of range isn't an issue for running errands, short commutes, etc. Given that I'm in the US and there already aren't many ICE scooters available, waiting for e-scooter ubiquity is probably a pipe dream. May end up getting an e-bike instead.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:11
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Jazzzzz posted:I've been thinking about this too, but have been hoping to see more e-scooters like the ones that are all over Taiwan. <50 miles of range isn't an issue for running errands, short commutes, etc. Given that I'm in the US and there already aren't many ICE scooters available, waiting for e-scooter ubiquity is probably a pipe dream. May end up getting an e-bike instead. I think you can get brands like Niu, Sunra, etc in the US, they might be worth checking out. There's also the Sondors Metacycle but that seems a bit of a punt in the dark.
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Jan 19, 2022 16:34
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Yeah, I'm hoping that there will be some kind of electric motorbike available to me before too long. A scooter would be a fine platform for my wants. OTOH, I also want a little 50cc gas scooter just to gently caress with and learn about. Pointless tuning just for the sake of it, that sort of thing. I'd probably get a project as long as the engine wasn't grenaded. Seems like a good way to learn a full engine teardown and service.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:13
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In a similar vein i was considering buying a broken 50cc engine just to take it apart and put it back together again a few times. VVV No Trail 125s in the UK either. Lungboy fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 17:20
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If it was me, I'd get the new Honda Trail/CT 125. The main things preventing this are that 1) Honda doesn't sell them in Canada for some reason, which is weird. 2) I don't need 3 bikes. These guys took an 'original' one and the new one up the Dalton highway in Alaska, of all places. Captain McAllister fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jan 19, 2022 |
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Jan 19, 2022 17:30
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Lol if you don’t start your motorcycle at full throttle and never let go Use the clutch to modulate power. It's how bikes are supposed to be ridden. Also a little disappointed nobody posted this when we started talking about scooter possibilities. 
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Jan 19, 2022 17:31
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Do those fold up for splitting
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Jan 19, 2022 17:45
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Toe Rag posted:Do those fold up for splitting Ya. They just only do it once. Or you can flash your lights at them and they're just instantly incinerated.
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Jan 19, 2022 17:49
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:Lol if you don’t start your motorcycle at full throttle and never let go The sequence from about 22 to 42 seconds plays in my head nearly every time I turn the key https://youtu.be/pehEHD1n8hI
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Jan 19, 2022 18:08
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builds character posted:Or you can flash your lights at them and Ftfy
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Jan 19, 2022 19:04
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builds character posted:Use the clutch to modulate power. It's how bikes are supposed to be ridden. There’s a speeder scooter that looks like this in the new Boba Fett show and it made me chuckle.
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Jan 19, 2022 20:01
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