Tell me what bike to buy-I wanted something that didnt empower me to be such a dong

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Cycle Asylum > Tell me what bike to buy-I wanted something that didnt empower me to be such a dong

«‹›8 »

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

These are actually really good after you throw the entire fuel system in the bin and fit some ordinary stuff from a monster.

What's the fuel system? Ducati didn't have any EFI at all in 1990 did they?

# ¿ Oct 4, 2019 17:58

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 09:22

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

So what you're saying, Slavvy, is that actually, it's about ethics in bike journalism?

# ¿ Nov 14, 2019 02:58

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Razzled posted:

rotax aprilia is superior to anything honda has ever and will ever put out

Shameful Austrian propaganda (Hitler was from there by the way)

Rotax makes some real turds, and many are in Aprilias. Their scooter motors are total poo poo, they routinely blow parts like coolant impellers that I don't think I've ever seen go bad on any other bike.

Disturbing that such a fraudulent company should also manufacture aircraft engines. Never trust an Austrian

# ¿ Nov 21, 2019 07:00

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

The shape of that looks like a Norton featherbed, but I dunno how many other frames had a similar shape back then

# ¿ Apr 19, 2020 13:41

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Yeah looks like someone set it up to start welding a modified subframe on but never welded it

# ¿ Apr 19, 2020 22:15

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

I work at a shop and I've been amazed to see that this springtime is going almost totally as normal, in terms of service and sales. It's been a bit delayed relating to the weather, but that would be normal in any other year too. Bikes are selling and our board is basically full as of today with bikes to work on. Only side effect is of course we're not really selling any smaller items like helmets, since no one is allowed to come in the shop and check things like that out. But that wasn't a big part of our revenue anyway since we have minimal floor space in the lobby.

# ¿ May 8, 2020 09:09

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

XVS250s are nice bikes that benefit a lot from taller gearing. They'll do interstate speeds that way.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2020 02:53

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

Ok clearly I wasn't obvious enough but: Chinese bikes are terrible beyond belief, only buy one if you consider it a totally expendable, disposable way to ride a bike for 6-12 months.

I'm always surprised/confused when I see discussion on a Chinese bike that doesn't begin and end with "total irredeemable piece of poo poo." If you've sat on, ridden and looked at more than a few bikes of any make, you'll see a noticeable difference with Chinese stuff that no other quite comes close to, although some models from other brands stray in that direction. (Virago 250, BN125...) The all-encompassing world view of "don't give a poo poo" of the designers, manufacturers, engineers, QA people etc. is tangible, visible, almost an odor. The bikes themselves, and every component therein, are the cheapest, least innovative or reliable or thought-out devices, assembled and looked over by people who only wanted to get their poverty level wages and go home. It is thoroughly depressing to ride and work on them because of this. Nobody gave a poo poo anywhere along the way, from the petroleum that got refined into the cheapest plastics (yes there are different qualities of plastics, and Chinese bikes have the shittiest strain of them) to the thing that rolls down the street emitting carbon monoxide. Everyone involved only wanted to make as much money as possible or pay as little money as possible and had not even a concept of pride or integrity in their work or business practices. The number of Chinese scooters with "ABS" written on the brakes which do not have Antilock Braking Systems (none of the ones that say "ABS" have ABS) speaks to this. I don't know how these things haven't been banned from import and sale as fraudulent and criminally dangerous.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2020 05:39

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Jim Silly-Balls posted:

the castings are terrible,

Did I mention the Royal Enfield I worked on a few years back, I think it was a 2008ish 500 single, where you could see part the outline of a bolt cast into the body of a fork leg. I take it they were recycling metals and accidentally got a steel bolt in the aluminum slag they cast the fork leg out of and just left it in there. Cause who cares? It was on the outside which is only cosmetic. It's fine.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2020 04:05

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Glad to see more fat front tires in the world. Wide tire good, tall tire bad

# ¿ Nov 16, 2020 17:06

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Jim Silly-Balls posted:

Instead of being called what it is, �stagnation� or an unwillingness to innovate, it�s spun as �heritage�

I've read a bunch of good books about exactly this business philosophy in the British motor industry in the 1960s

# ¿ Nov 27, 2020 17:27

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Sagebrush posted:

Yeah my favorite part of the whole series is when their cameraman Claudio breaks his bike somehow in the middle of Mongolia and it has to be shipped back to a BMW mechanic somewhere. To keep on schedule they go to a local dealer and buy a Russian Izh Jupiter-5 2-stroke for 1000 bucks, still in the crate. They take their bikes up to Siberia, and Ewan and Charley spend a week falling over in the mud and screaming as they try to push their huge behemoths forwards at like 20 meters an hour, while in the background you can see Claudio ripping around on his lovely red Soviet dirt bike having a hoot of a time.

I'd like to bitch about Ewan and Charley on two points here, although I like LWR.

For background on this incident, it's worth noticing that they had those bikes stupidly overloaded, especially considering they had a support truck close behind. Close enough behind that Claudio was able to buy a Jupiter 5 and put all his luggage on the truck and then enjoy riding the tiny 2t. They should have just put all their poo poo on the truck from the start and ridden DR650s.

So Claudio cracked his subframe. Then they got a local guy to weld the subframe. They didn't disconnect any of the electrics on the bike to do this, presumably, because the welding electricity damaged one of the very complex computers on the bike, namely the ABS pump computer. Those bikes had a stereotypically German insanely complex braking system which was operated by a computer controlled electrical pump. This system was a bad idea and BMW dumped it a couple years later and nobody else before or since has tried anything like it. If the pump isn't working the brake system feels totally different. Important note: the system still works, you just have to squeeze the lever harder. It doesn't feel nice but it works ok. They didn't have to ship the bike to Anchorage or wherever, they could have ridden it.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2020 20:37

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Sagebrush posted:

I didn't really like Long Way Down, don't think I even finished it. In that one Ewan's wife was pissed off that he was going to spend another couple of months riding motorcycles with his j/o bro, so she nagged him into coming along, but the big takeaway was that she just sucked at riding and kept wiping out in light sand and should have stayed home. It wasn't as fun as the first one.

I disliked LWD too but I gotta white knight for Ewan's wife here, she takes a completely unreasonable amount of poo poo for her appearance in there. She was only in it for like one episode, and yeah she falls over a bunch, but what's more fun to watch? Expert riders cruising along without incident? She didn't make the series bad in my view, the problem with the show was it was even more obviously a stage managed convoy than the original. Armed guards traveling with them, etc. They mostly looked like they were in a rush. Aside from their guards killing a goat to eat, I don't remember them meeting a lot of local people doing local things.

# ¿ Nov 28, 2020 22:44

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

I worked on one once and I liked it.

I've worked on several many times and not liked any of them. They approach Chinese scooter levels of build quality. And at least Chinese scooters are all copies of decent Japanese engines. Urals are STILL a copy of a pre-WW2 BMW with a couple minor updates. To be fair that BMW was decent for its time I guess. For 1937.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2021 05:40

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

gently caress that, I can barely look at an amal, let alone something with a remote bowl, let alone a loving wick carb.

Let me tell you about the 1925 Binks 2-jet I am working on, with an evenly-sized two piece split round throttle slide...

# ¿ Feb 10, 2021 03:57

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

RightClickSaveAs posted:

SUPPOSEDLY dealers have a pretty low margin on actual bike prices, especially normal bikes in the $5k-$15k USD range,

I can weigh in on this, our owner talked to a Triumph rep about becoming a dealer a few years back. We decided not to. If I'm remembering my numbers right, the profit margin on a $9000 Bonneville was about $1000. That's almost the same as what we make selling one of the fancier Genuine scooters we carry, which is just over a third of the retail cost and which basically sells itself. And that's on top of the fact that they expect you to make contact with a customer something like 30 times to make that sale. I can't even imagine how many hours of time that would work out to. Maybe not that much time if you're a coke addict? Oh, and we'd have to buy a building 3x as expensive as the one we're in and spend $150k on upgrading it to a layout Triumph requires and stock every single model they make (only 3 of which will sell reliably) and then make all the actual money on selling Triumph brand leather jackets. We're a small shop, we make most of our money from service, everyone who works at the shop including the owner is a mechanic, so none of this sounded plausible to us.

The more I learn about mainstream car/bike dealers the less I understand how any of them stay in business. It seems like a 100% broken system that only works by exploiting various tiers of employees and customers.

# ¿ May 1, 2021 02:31

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Jazzzzz posted:

The K1300 has always been a favorite of mine too, wonky headlight and all. I never realized it had a telelever front end though; thought there were conventional forks hiding behind those giant plastic guards, but you can clearly see a shock up front in that picture.

I think it's actually a duolever, which is sort of a parallelogram thing which is even less like telescopic forks than the telelever is. It feels like poo poo when pushing it around and at low speed but feels great when cruising.

# ¿ Jul 18, 2021 03:50

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

On the topic of buying and selling, got a weird one I'd like some opinions on because I'm worried about a sticky situation here. I'm currently manning the shop I work at alone as the owner is off camping with his kid and has no cell signal.

Guy calls me up the other day wanting to buy a bike and have it delivered to another state, 4-5 hours away, because that's where he's at right now, although he does live in our area here. I look at the map and tell him ok but I think we'd need like $900 to trailer it over there, it would take one of our guys more than 8 hours to do the job. He says yeah and gives me a deposit over the phone on an 83 CX650 sight unseen. Thing is we might have trouble reaching him because he tells me he's in a psych ward (his words) at the moment. Because he had a "collapse"(???) while vacationing which was not mental health related but he had a history of some kind that motivated them to check him into that facility.

I tentatively agree to all this thinking none of it is gonna happen before the boss gets back anyway and we can discuss. Then an hour later the same dude calls back and asks some more questions and finds out we have a 2002 BMW R1200CL also for sale and decides he wants that instead. And even though it needs a battery and won't start at the moment he wants to take it and he'll do the battery himself. Those bikes are enormous, if you're not aware, and it's like a 1-2 hour job to replace the battery if you're not intimately familiar with them. He did say he was an electrical engineer and built bikes himself before so he can handle things like that. He offers me less money than we were asking, since it needs the battery, and I agree to it and he pays me the full price over the phone on a card. Oh and the card belonged to his...significant other? I think?

So like, I've known this guy in a very mild way for several years now, he's been by the shop several times before, he's not an unknown quantity. He's always been an odd dude but he never seemed like, unstable to me. But I'm having second thoughts on the whole thing for obvious reasons because I'm not sure that everyone is in their right mind here. I don't want to end up facilitating a manic episode or whatever, and I'd rather not have the hassle of doing and then undoing the paperwork of a sale, and pushing the 700lb bike out front for him to fix in our parking lot. I don't really know what I can do other than refund him and refuse to sell him anything, though, and that seems extreme. He wasn't like, slurring his speech or forgetting what state he lives in. He's just weird I think?

# ¿ Aug 21, 2021 03:58

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Yep! The situation is now clear, the actual significant other of the "significant other" called and said "no the guy is a bit nuts he was only supposed to use that card for gas and a hotel so we cancelled the card." Seems a bit obvious in retrospect, if a guy calls up and says he's in a psych ward and doesn't have his own cell and is using someone else's credit card, the answer should be "yeah maybe not"

# ¿ Aug 21, 2021 17:39

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

AT is a pretty fantastic bike actually. A more reliable Multistrada.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2021 01:40

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

The name V-Strom combines V, referring to the bike's V engine configuration, with the German word strom, meaning stream or current.

It's the Czech word for "tree"

# ¿ Oct 20, 2021 04:41

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Tell me what bike to buy: The KLR is not 'new' this year, that is a delusion

# ¿ Nov 1, 2021 01:48

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Transalp is what the KLR should have been. Long live Transalp.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2021 02:07

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Yeah I wouldn't try that on most bikes actually. Not that many bikes have kickstands beefy enough to survive that.

# ¿ Nov 9, 2021 04:26

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

I too think of "breaking performance barriers" when I think of KLRs

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Nov 10, 2021 02:20

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

HenryJLittlefinger posted:

One of the most valuable things about ADVRider

Wow, mods?

# ¿ Nov 12, 2021 03:47

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Finger Prince posted:

Underestimating your turning circle into a ditch, understeering/target fixating into a ditch, dropping your bike on its side at an oddly cambered stop sign, or on a bit of gravel, or when you forgot your kickstand, doesn't make for good GoPro footage, it just makes you do the Spongebob Squarepants kid face while your visor is still down and then have to strip out of your jacket and give your buddy a hand pushing his 600lb piece of poo poo Vulcan 900 out of said ditch, or back upright.

I must disagree here, target fixating into a ditch is the best part of any No Prisoners video

# ¿ Nov 14, 2021 16:56

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

cursedshitbox posted:

E: 80s BMW K bikes are efi. There's gotta be a few example with enough miles that the harness and sensors start flaking out.

It is always a surprise to me how few of those I see. I work on a decent number of older BMWs, and while the ABS systems on the 80s bikes are almost always dead, the Jetronic/Motronic EFIs like never fail.

Also to everyone saying just ride the bike and you won't have a problem: yeah I agree but I think you underestimate how much of an issue this is for many many bike owners. For reasons I don't quite grasp myself, it's not easy for the average bike owner to just ride the thing often. Regional climate factors into it in a big way potentially, also.

# ¿ Nov 14, 2021 23:16

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Slavvy posted:

3. EFI prevents fuel starvation in negative G dives, it's a big advantage if your messerschmitt is up against a spitfire

I thought what's her name's orifice nullified that advantage?

# ¿ Nov 16, 2021 00:07

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Vespa puts this in their under-seat storage bin

Only registered members can see post attachments!

# ¿ Jan 10, 2022 01:20

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Yeah we've worked on a lot of Aprilia scooters, I don't have a high opinion of them. They are stupidly complicated and blow out parts that no other bike does. I think we've seen multiple water pumps gone on Scarabeo 150/200s.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2022 01:43

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Toe Rag posted:

My Aprilia dealer is also the KTM, Vepsa, and Royal Enfield dealer. It is also 2 blocks away which is good news for my eventual ill-considered purchase.

I like to imagine the Vepsa is a Latvian copy of a Vespa from 1972. Not built under license. You will scoot stylishly on the revolutionary Vepsa, Comrade.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2022 01:57

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Guzzis are good. If you mean the vintage ones. And by vintage I don't mean 80s.

# ¿ Mar 1, 2022 04:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 16, 2024 09:22

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester: Oct 3, 2000

Not sure where to post this but I have what looks like a KTM manufacturing story here. I wanted to see if KTM's biggest fan in NZ or anyone else thinks this is a common problem. I don't work on many KTMs. Got an 08 690 Enduro in the shop which I assume was ridden hard given that the owner travels to Africa in his free time to do rally races (not on this bike though). Barely ran at all. Had low compression even after I disabled the decomp thing on the cam. Pulled it apart and couldn't find anything wrong but then noticed the cam chain tensioner didn't work correctly at all. Seems to be messed up internally, very sticky, doesn't ratchet the way the book says it should. I'm assuming this caused the cam chain to jump a tooth. Is this a thing?

# ¿ Jun 18, 2022 02:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Automotive Insanity > Cycle Asylum > Tell me what bike to buy-I wanted something that didnt empower me to be such a dong

«‹›8 »