Xovaan posted:

I honestly want a Ruckus so I can zip around my neighborhood and its parks for entertainment. What have I become?

TheNothingNew posted:

But when there are 20 of you stretched out over half of a mile of interstate, you need to make some concessions. Namely, you need to loving break the gently caress up and let me in. Like, legally. You have let me merge onto the freeway so I don't end up on the shoulder like almost happened today. Even if it means breaking formation for a couple of minutes.

HNasty posted:

I'm #90 but #1 in your hearts, right guys. This conversation reminded me that this poo poo never happens to me. I've been riding for over 14+ years and I've never had anyone try to purposefully run me off the road, well maybe I have and just don't remember but it seems to be a daily occurrence with some riders. I've never crashed cause of gravel in a corner, or oil or diesel (which I know is euro problem). I'm not accosted by stories of uncle's neighbor's brother dying at 200mph when people find out I ride a motorcycle. I mean I've heard those stories but not enough that they're any sort of problem. People don't merge into me all day long, I don't know I'm sort of statistical mutant.


*edit, just remembered I crashed n8r's bike cause of gravel, but that was a gravel road not a few rocks in the road.

Linedance posted:

yeah, it really is mostly that. Ages ago I caught myself doing the same thing in my car, just sort of cruising down the highway, not paying attention to my speed. Someone would draw alongside and pass me, and I'd subconsciously think 'oh man I must have zoned out there and dropped below the speed limit' and gradually increase my speed to match. That's when I realized I was doing exactly the same thing that I'd witness other cars do while I was passing them that made me think 'what the gently caress is this idiot trying to prove? Why won't he/she let me pass him?'. It doesn't excuse the behaviour, but at least know that people generally aren't doing it out of spite or vindictiveness. You're still gonna get some kid who thinks you want to race when you pass him, but the speed creepers are just people who aren't watching their speedo.

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

People have different definitions for words. We had someone bring in an old Vespa to have a "restoration" job polished up, finished off kinda. They thought it was mostly rebuilt and ready to go. Maybe just needed some rubbing compound and new grips and a seat, right? Among the things wrong with it were a number of the cables installed with NO OUTER CABLE. Inner cables with no outer cables that were just run through the cable slots in the body. I mean holy poo poo.

The Royal Nonesuch posted:

Get a GoPro, smile to the camera/show that day's newspaper before each leg of the commute, and mount it aiming at your speedometer especially in your neighborhood. It'll be a boring month of riding, but video evidence is king.

The_Raven posted:

the PNW would just depress me to the point of suicide,

Coredump posted:

When the hell is the KTM Duke 390 going to come to the US? Will we ever get a KTM 390 SMC? Will the fact that the bike is going to be made in India mean it will suffer quality issues? So many questions!!!

Jim Silly-Balls posted:

Do cops actually enforce the "left lane is for passing only" thing where you guys are? I have never heard of anyone getting ticketed, pulled over, or even warned for that around here.

Nate Falls posted:

God drat it, finding scooters on Craigslist is so much harder than it needs to be because the site is flooded with dealers spamming their lovely Chinese Ruckus clones like 20 times a day. I just want to see a listing of the reasonably priced Japanese scooters with actual brands that people have heard of.

Also, everyone in this town seriously thinks their Ruckus with a Chinese motor swap is worth 4 grand. What the gently caress.

Collateral Damage posted:

Hm, I've been riding some dirt roads recently so it's very possible that there's crud stuck between tire and rim. Gonna paint the edge of the rim and the valve with soapy water and see if I can find the leak.

Z3n posted:

This is pretty standard for all Japanese brands in the Godlands out here - they almost never do test rides.

MoraleHazard posted:

I've seen hard core scooterati wear gear, the people who make scooters a lifestyle. That gear is usually jacket, helmet, gloves, and tall, non-motorcycle boots. The average rider, no.

HenryJLittlefinger posted:

This is a really broad generalization. I've never lived anywhere that the interstate/high speed highway was the only real option, except in the more rural areas. The interstate highway system is new enough that it usually follows regular highways or roads that have existed for a lot longer. Unless you're traveling long distances, like all day, interstate doesn't seem to make a really big difference in travel time.

In Front Range Colorado, it's usually a lot faster to use the older highways to get between towns rather than I25. Definitely safer, too. Once inside Denver though, there isn't much can option than the interstates. I agree that that's the case for a lot of bigger US cities, but I've never found a big enough time difference traveling on 55 mph highways between towns and in all but the biggest cities.

So my point I guess is that 250ish bikes are perfectly suited for the majority of US travel, except in those cities where interstate is a daily necessity. And those cities are a minority of the miles of road in the U.S.

Yerok posted:

lovely trash company that makes "full face" helmets that are basically a 3/4 with a worthless chin bar producing a shameless copy of the Simpson Bandit.

clutchpuck posted:

I am terrified of scooters. Those tiny wheels and that instability. Grip the tank with your kn- what?

Every time somebody tells me they can't imagine being on a motorcycle but were thinking of getting a scooter, I explain to them my terror.

Rev. Dr. Moses P. Lester posted:

I have a 77 Vespa moped whose ignition source coil is grounded through the brake light. When the brake light goes out and you grab the brakes, it kills the ignition. This is by design.

I have a 69 Ducati 160 which has some of its lights running off moped style AC current from the magneto and some of the lights running off the DC 6v battery. And the tail light will get DC sometimes and AC sometimes, depending on which setting the handlebar light switch is on. And the ignition runs off the magneto. What's the battery for? Just to take up space, apparently. This is by design.

Finger Prince posted:

I got a flip down internal sun visor in mine because I'm that cool.

Renaissance Robot posted:

Explaining what my Sena unit is to someone at work: "is it safe to be listening to the radio while you ride?"

I don't know, is it safe in a car? I get the same reaction sometimes when I tell people I use earplugs, they don't seem to understand how much more noise closing their doors and windows shuts out while driving.

Mirconium posted:

That says up at the top that this is a Ranting Echo Chamber so I'm gonna put this here instead of in its own thread:

Suppose you see some guy in a lifted truck on a highway onramp. He mashes his pedal and you realize he is "rolling coal". You can see plumes of inky soot owning the libs. You feel so owned your lungs cramp a little. Then the truck's rear promptly steps out under load because duh and it goes off the ramp and into a ravine.

I'm sure the STRENGTH of the sentiment varies, but I personally would think 10 times before calling an ambulance to pry his bleeding body out of the wreck. I'd do it. But I'd REALLY doubt the decision. I'd be on my deathbed like "maybe I should've left that guy there, I don't really think I did the right thing" Most in the audience should probably agree that rolling coal is incredibly idiotic.

Then you go on your merry way to your buddy's garage. He shows you his shiny new full exhaust system on his R1. That new exhaust system is on a similar scale of terribleness for the environment to rolling coal.

STOP DECATTING YOUR EXHAUSTS YOU DUMB SHITS

The common refrain for this is usually "It's only a 600 CC engine, it's fine, stop being such a prius driver."

a) wrong
b) gently caress you
c) you piece of poo poo

Good published research from the US on motorcycle emissions that is not sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere in the EPA isn't that easy to find, but like most motorcycle research, we can usually find helpful analogues from Taiwan and other east asian countries.

So, how bad are the emissions from a decatted 125 CC Sym made in 1992?

Chan, Chang-Chuan, Chiu-Kuei Nien, Cheng-Yuan Tsai, and Guor-Rong Her. "Comparison of tail-pipe emissions from motorcycles and passenger cars." Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association 45, no. 2 (1995): 116-124.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10473289.1995.10467347



(Cars 1, 2, and 3 are various 90ies vintage engines I4s, 1.6-1L in size, study was from 1995 so the cars and bikes are both newish and in good working order)

Headline numbers? An uncatalyzed 125 CC 4 stroke scooter produces ~double the NOx, 3-6 times the carbon monoxide, and 6-20 times the unburned hydrocarbons. The only metric where motorcycles are better is CO2, and here it is not by as much as you'd figure.

(California numbers btw, and California is a state with unusually onerous motorcycle regulations, show that motorcycles drive 1% of the vehicle miles and produce about 10% of the smog-generating chemicals https://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle11-2008jun11-story.html, so this isn't some weird asian problem, this is YOUR problem)

Keep in mind this is a comparison of 90ies car tech to 90ies motorcycle tech. Catalytic converters have gotten MUCH BETTER SINCE THEN. Euro 4-5 will make these numbers drastically worse in terms of a pound-for-pound comparison both of a decatted vs catted motorcycle and of a decatted motorcycle vs car. Keep in mind also, a 125 sym from 1992 is going to be one of the least noxious types of engine in terms of nitrous oxide emissions because it's tiny and compression is low. The higher the compression of an engine, the more NOx you should be expecting. And everybody who puts a full exhaust system on a motorcycle obviously also does a power commander to richen the fuel-air mix, skyrocketing the unburned hydrocarbons. Plus consider the engine size, 5 x for a 600, 8x for a 1000.

A liter bike with a full exhaust system and a power commander is something nobody has researched, as far as emissions go. But let's be honest with ourselves and say that it producing more than 20 times the emissions of a car in terms of NOx, 200+ times the unburned hydrocarbons, and 50+ times the monoxide is not an unreasonable estimate. 200 times. God loving forbid you take the cat off a two stroke.

The more contrarian among you in the audience may be saying: wull... wull... the 2 stroke still sucks poo poo even if has the cat on! Yeah. No poo poo. Stop riding two strokes, they're really bad for the environment. But also, yeah, no poo poo. That's why euro 5 is A THING. All those bigass catalytic converters that you're so happy calling ugly and heavy ARE MORE EFFECTIVE THAN THE ONES FROM THE 90IES. THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT. THAT'S WHY THEY ARE HUGE.

So the next time some BikeBandit cautionary tale swaggers up to you with his noise-violation-mobile and takes another 5 years off the lifespan of your eardrums, here's a helpful visual:

This man stands in a football field. Parked on the football field are 200 mid-range American sedans. He bought them, parked them, put them in neutral, and turned them on. They're idling. When he walks over to his bike he explains to you that he's rigged up a clever system. Every time he revs his engine, the engines on all 200 cars also rev. IT GOT HIM A WHOLE 10 HORSEPOWER. EVERYWHERE IN THE REV RANGE! He's going to leave them parked here, and go for a nice ride. See you later breh.

Get hosed

Edit/PS: I would only think twice, not 10 times, about calling an ambulance for a full exhaust bro though. Full exhausts are callous child-like indifference to the welfare of yourself and others. Rolling coal on the other hand is malice aforethought.

Elviscat posted:

Do they make 2-strokes with catalytic converters? How many miles until you have to replace them, like 100?

It is possible to make really awesome stock exhausts that sound great, my 250 Husky is amazing, and my FZ6 really isn't bad, little sewing-machine esque, but not bad when you step on it, plus it let's you sneak out of the campground at 5am to hit the road.

Beach Bum posted: