Any Motörbike riders here?

hollywoodrox · May 2023

Corvus said:

I was without a bike for 2 yrs which is a shit situation best avoided, rectified recently -

1340 Evo. Excuse the elephant's fiveskin seat cover, it's a temp one while I've been reshaping the seat in stages for fit.
It's an absolute splatfest on there from recent rides, needs cleaning but just keep riding.

Also re the Goldie & BSA stuff, here's an old pic of my A7SS with 60s Dunstall kit and ARE parts. The Goldie cans were glorious. Brakes were terrible, as were clutches, didn't live long. Had some brilliant rides on it, used it daily.

And @hollywoodrox pics, great stuff, love older bike pics especially with people. Reminds me of the AWOL era, I loved that mag and the bikes.
My chop, got as a non-running heap for very little money, sorted & painted out back of the house. When my other half went away I got it into the lounge it stayed there 2-3 weeks being worked on, was a novelty footrest, got fully rewired by Tea-Drinking Steve who appeared to survive on nothing but industrial amounts of PG Tips.

That’s awesome

p90fool · May 2023

Nice one @AK99 glad it's working out!

Dominic · May 2023

@AK99 ;
Progressive Shocks are the answer (that 's the brand name ).......lovely bike ...best riding/handling HD frame but get a Mikuni 42 slide carb on that thing or an Sand S .......huge difference
@Corvus .......that 4 pot chop .....hardtailed to death ....respect but do you have any kidneys left ?

Corvus · May 2023

Cheers @hollywoodrox . @Dominic I loved that bike, rode it minimum 5 out of 7 weekdays. It was OK in London at the time, like late 90s/early 2000s anyway. A few psi off the back tyre helped but most roads were pretty OK. Round here though not a chance - a lot of rough roads, crap repairs giant pot holes, fen roads subside and move, get rippled like a concertina. Bad enough in a car.

Dominic · May 2023

@Corvus .......You're a better man than me
I had a hardtailed bobbed Ironhead Sportster 1200......tried every trick in the book .....sprung saddle ,soft rear tyre etc
rode it London to Peterborough and back for a show .......never tried to do more than 10 miles on it after that.
I was 15 and a half stone at the time but I nearly bit the end of my tongue off 20 times on that journey !

Kittyfrisk · May 2023

^ I'm always surprised that Sportster owners haven't brought a collective action against HD for vibration injuries...

Dominic · May 2023

@AK99 ;
I like the pull back drag bars on your bike....they look really good in the chubby gauge ,nice and meaty

guitargeek62 · May 2023

I forgot to post that I flipped back to a Scrambler 1200 XE last month. I didn't quite last a year with the Speed Twin, but I'm glad to be back on this one.

As wonderful as the Speed Twin 1200 was on the road, it was almost *too* smooth and polite for me, and I also really missed having the option of going off-road. The XE is a bit of a beast, especially with those slash-cut TT pipes roaring away and waking up the neighbourhood, but it’s also incredibly capable and versatile.

This is pretty much my ideal do-it-all bike, I knew that when I bought my first one and I’m really not sure why I sold it!

After my initial tweaks already, I’ve still got a few planned changes:

- Tank & bodywork refinish, the white’s still not my favourite, but I’ve got something in mind that should look pretty swish
- Lose the Tourance tyres, bloody horrible things in anything but dry weather
- Iconic parts rad. guard
- Smaller and less vulnerable indicators for those inevitable off-road drops
- Re-upholster the seat and fit some medical gel (I'm doing weekly ~260mi day-trips back and forth to London for work on this)
- Apply yellow headlight film (helps you stand out in traffic and be less invisible to drivers)
- More that I can’t think of right now!

Haych · May 2023

hollywoodrox said:

Corvus said:

My chop, got as a non-running heap for very little money, sorted & painted out back of the house. When my other half went away I got it into the lounge it stayed there 2-3 weeks being worked on, was a novelty footrest, got fully rewired by Tea-Drinking Steve who appeared to survive on nothing but industrial amounts of PG Tips.

That’s awesome

That reminds me of my neighbour. He's a "unique" individual, lives on his own in one of the flats on the opposite side of the street. Doesn't work and spends all his time fiddling with old motorbikes.

He showed me round his living room last year. He has a small sofa, a TV set, a massive fricking metal turning lathe and some old BSA bike he's restoring from the ground up that nobody (including the council) knows about, and a sideboard full of parts and tools.

That's not casting any kind of dispersion on you, @Corvus, just when you said you got it into the lounge it reminded me of Nick - he probably has two or three in his lounge by now I reckon.

He rocked up last year on a newish Indian Roadmaster! Goodness knows how he does it, he doesn't exactly live like he has money, but the state seems to give him enough to live his dreams!

Corvus · May 2023

Dominic said:

@Corvus .......You're a better man than me
I had a hardtailed bobbed Ironhead Sportster 1200......tried every trick in the book .....sprung saddle ,soft rear tyre etc
rode it London to Peterborough and back for a show .......never tried to do more than 10 miles on it after that.
I was 15 and a half stone at the time but I nearly bit the end of my tongue off 20 times on that journey !

The ride wasn't that bad (like as bad as that), maybe smooth GS motor helped, dunno. The worst thing in the memory of it was the brakes, weak single pot CB750 + the drum that outdid the back tyre easily. Certainly not a chance I'd do it round here though, even when we got here like 17 yrs ago the roads were rough and much worse now.

@Haych no worries

hope you & bike are all good now btw. Your mate sounds a character having fun, good on him.

chris78 · May 2023

AK99 said:

Ouch. Tough to manage that kind of snow with existing ruts and tracks in it. Glad you're ok Haych.

Glad to see the weather's picked up a bit for biking again too.

Been working on the newly acquired FXR for about the last month. Got stuck into the wiring job from hell when I went to replace the bars and switchgear, and discovered 30 years worth of horrible bodging in the headlamp shell. Anyways, all sorted (mostly) now:

Need to reroute or replace the twin throttle cable, and also tidy up the brake-hose.
Not sure if I posted any pics before, but this is it with the new bars, and the mag wheels/disks on.

First run out with everything back together this morning. Shakedown run went ok, so in two minds now whether to carry on and sort out the shocks (it needs longer ones to sort the abysmal ground clearance, and improve the stance) and also get rid of that awful Roy Rogers studded seat-pad for something less carnival looking.

Either that, or might be wiser to just stall and ride the flipping' thing for a while first

That's going to be collectible - widely seen as one of the last great Harleys (maybe only the Fatboy as a great model after the FXR)

AK99 · May 2023

Guys - thanks for the comments on the FXR. Jz y'all know bikes.

@Kittyfrisk - I'd never seen that Pulp Fiction bike before, I do like it. Not sure I could live with forward pegs, but the colour and sissy-bar look a lot better than I imagined they would. Rake looks cool too. The trim on the engine and cycle parts is virtually identical to mine, Food for thought.

Had actually started out with every intention of turning the FXR into a Club-style bike, but as (a) I'm not a club-type guy, and (b) my kids started dropping the odd quip about SOA /Jax wannabe's when I had the Dyna, maybe better not to go there

I wanted to black it out, shed all the OTT chrome, but when I put the new bars on it, I thought they looked well with the chrome switchgear and controls - so have had a rethink. As you say, wise maybe to run it for a while until it tells me where to go next. There's wisdom there.

@Dominic - Yeah, Progressives seem to be the goto brand for those bikes. Hagon does a replacement, and there's also a company called YSS who do a large range of shocks now, that my local Ohlins man says are pretty decent. The Progressives look the part in black though (which shouldn't matter, but on a 30 year old Harley - it just does

) Well spotted on the bars - the cross-piece is the larger 1 1/4" diameter. A veritable pain fettling the area round the brake and clutch reservoirs to get them to fit when they were only designed for clearance on the 1" bars, but I think it was worth it. Helps the look.

And a big thank you to @P90fool who shared some of his vast and no doubt hard-earned experience of these bikes, and steered me well clear of a couple of earlier bikes I had looked at. As a genre, many FXRs seem to have quite a 'chequered' history at this stage

A genuine and heartfelt thanks for your help, advice, and patience, very much appreciated.

Dominic · May 2023

'Club' bike ......the dyna with the short rounded half-faired low screen and 10 inch mini apes ....all black matt .
Funny thing is I see /know quite a few 1% MC guys , go to a few of the clubhouses (of the right colour ) and I have never seen a member with a 'club ' style bike ......nor in my mate's workshop who does a lot of members work every week.
I see a lot of bikes like old dynas looking pretty standard and a lot of Street Glides .
Hardly ever see anything hardtailed , chopped, 'built' not bought ,raked,goosenecked or with big apes.
The 1% MCs aren't really like that now .......you have to go NCC to see the clever stuff.

AK99 · May 2023

^ Interesting. Probably reflective of changes in society as a whole where people don't really get hands-on with mechanical stuff the way they would have in (cough) 'our day'

gubble · May 2023

Anyone doing the distinguished gentleman's ride this weekend?

I'm doing the one in bournemouth on my enfield

Dominic · May 2023

I would but I'm neither Distinguished nor a Gentleman so I guess I wouldn't be welcome .

LastMantra · May 2023

My dad has been collecting velocette parts all his life. He's already got 2 built. I'm trying to get him to build something a bit more customised for me, but he's very much traditional and only wants original spec.
It's a shame as he's getting too old to do a lot of riding but tbh I think he enjoys working on them as much as anything.

thebreeze · May 2023

Haych said:

Had my first real crash last week, fortunately I wasn't going very quick. No damage to me and the crash bars on the bike took the brunt so no other damage on the bike, luckily.

This was the first of about four offs late last Tuesday afternoon, we were falling over like dominos. One guy, who fell off twice, hurt himself quite badly, but didn't know until he got home a couple of days later and went to A&E, where he was diagnosed with four broken ribs and a broken ankle!

Anyway, have a larf at my expense.

Glad you’re okay Haych. I’m always surprised by how bikes can get damaged from seemingly innocuous drops and falls, so I hope yours gets the all-clear too.

Haych · May 2023

thebreeze said:

Haych said:

Had my first real crash last week, fortunately I wasn't going very quick. No damage to me and the crash bars on the bike took the brunt so no other damage on the bike, luckily.

This was the first of about four offs late last Tuesday afternoon, we were falling over like dominos. One guy, who fell off twice, hurt himself quite badly, but didn't know until he got home a couple of days later and went to A&E, where he was diagnosed with four broken ribs and a broken ankle!

Anyway, have a larf at my expense.

Glad you’re okay Haych. I’m always surprised by how bikes can get damaged from seemingly innocuous drops and falls, so I hope yours gets the all-clear too.

Thanks bud. The bike didn't sustain much damage, thankfully. The engine crash bars took the brunt of this fall and the few more I had after it before we decided to abandon the bikes in Jalhay. They didn't completely prevent the cylinder head covers from being damaged though, annoyingly, but I've since replaced the crash bars with Machine Art X-Heads for a cleaner look and to cover up the damage to the cylinder head covers.

During that crash my bonce did bounce off the asphalt so I haven't used that helmet since I got back from the trip. I'm not too unhappy as it wasn't a great helmet (HJC RPHA 70), noisy, fogged up a lot in the damp weather, even with the pinlock, and not extremely comfortable. I've replaced it with an Arai Quantic which is much, much better.

When I got back from Belgium I took the bike for a bit of a once over at Stroud Motorcycle Company since somebody else on the trip suggested it wasn't running properly and that it might have contributed to the accident. The throttle has always been a bit binary at low speed, it's very difficult to smoothly roll the power on.

SMC did indeed find that the engine wasn't running right, one of the coils on the right cylinder had packed up and was making the throttle response unmanageable - it's been a completely different bike to ride since I've had it back.

So, in that sense I'm almost glad I crashed, I'd never have known there was anything wrong otherwise and would still be riding around on one and a half cylinders.

Anyway, I've gone on for far too long now so I'll shut up.

Strangefan · May 2023

Evening, I just sold my blade

.... To buy a super duke!

What a damn machine I am am used to very powerful bikes, had them all zx10, r1 x11 blades, for road riding this is the one which can't be beat. Absolutely brutal.

Image: https://tfb-user-images.eu-central-1.linodeobjects.com/60ad00a4f6a90d12c53b3af4362de04b1f2bc56ba8d62642a8

AK99 · May 2023

I'd send that back...there's a gap on the orange edge-binding on not just one, but both wheels

Cool thang otherwise! Does it have all the wheelie / stability control systems and stuff ?

thebreeze · May 2023

Haych said:

thebreeze said:

Haych said:

Had my first real crash last week, fortunately I wasn't going very quick. No damage to me and the crash bars on the bike took the brunt so no other damage on the bike, luckily.

This was the first of about four offs late last Tuesday afternoon, we were falling over like dominos. One guy, who fell off twice, hurt himself quite badly, but didn't know until he got home a couple of days later and went to A&E, where he was diagnosed with four broken ribs and a broken ankle!

Anyway, have a larf at my expense.

Glad you’re okay Haych. I’m always surprised by how bikes can get damaged from seemingly innocuous drops and falls, so I hope yours gets the all-clear too.

Thanks bud. The bike didn't sustain much damage, thankfully. The engine crash bars took the brunt of this fall and the few more I had after it before we decided to abandon the bikes in Jalhay. They didn't completely prevent the cylinder head covers from being damaged though, annoyingly, but I've since replaced the crash bars with Machine Art X-Heads for a cleaner look and to cover up the damage to the cylinder head covers.

During that crash my bonce did bounce off the asphalt so I haven't used that helmet since I got back from the trip. I'm not too unhappy as it wasn't a great helmet (HJC RPHA 70), noisy, fogged up a lot in the damp weather, even with the pinlock, and not extremely comfortable. I've replaced it with an Arai Quantic which is much, much better.

When I got back from Belgium I took the bike for a bit of a once over at Stroud Motorcycle Company since somebody else on the trip suggested it wasn't running properly and that it might have contributed to the accident. The throttle has always been a bit binary at low speed, it's very difficult to smoothly roll the power on.

SMC did indeed find that the engine wasn't running right, one of the coils on the right cylinder had packed up and was making the throttle response unmanageable - it's been a completely different bike to ride since I've had it back.

So, in that sense I'm almost glad I crashed, I'd never have known there was anything wrong otherwise and would still be riding around on one and a half cylinders.

Anyway, I've gone on for far too long now so I'll shut up.

That's interesting and it's funny how bad things can often bring benefits in the long run. Also, not only have we got similar taste in bikes but I've got that exact helmet too (the HJC one), I bought the carbon one because it was the lightest helmet I tried. I haven't found it too bad tbh but I haven't done loads of riding in bad weather either. Anyway, hopefully it will see me right for a few years yet!

Dominic · May 2023

i have been riding KTM a Superduke R
hooligan machine.....will lift the front wheel in 5th
its more useable on the road than Pannigale naked V4 S I was using last year

Haych · May 2023

Also, not only have we got similar taste in bikes but I've got that exact helmet too (the HJC one), I bought the carbon one because it was the lightest helmet I tried. I haven't found it too bad tbh but I haven't done loads of riding in bad weather either. Anyway, hopefully it will see me right for a few years yet!

I have quite a limited taste in bikes - I'm not really all that into bikes but I am into motorcycling, if that makes any sense.

It wouldn't take many fingers for me to list the bikes I'd have in my garage.

The RPHA 70 is a good looking helmet, I will give it that much, so long as it works for you then that's all that matters

Strangefan · May 2023

AK99 said:

I'd send that back...there's a gap on the orange edge-binding on not just one, but both wheels

Cool thang otherwise! Does it have all the wheelie / stability control systems and stuff ?

A full refund is needed! It has zero rider aids just how I like it!

Strangefan · May 2023

Dominic said:

i have been riding KTM a Superduke R
hooligan machine.....will lift the front wheel in 5th
its more useable on the road than Pannigale naked V4 S I was using last year

That's my next bike..... When I can afford it

Dominic · May 2023

It's a great bike .......fantastic torque ,so punchy and yet so easy going but ferocious if you want . In normal road riding as opposed to a track day it's so tractable and easy to live with that you just don't need to keep it humming to get a snappy reaction and you don't need to keep it bubbling at 6-7000 rpm to get the best from it.
As opposed to previous Dukes and Superdukes the frame is finally properly sorted and it handles so politely as sharp as a razor,great feedback etc .I really do ride quite hard( front wheels are fully scrubbed out to the edges ;not just the back ) and it just keeps it's line in the carve .....never runs at all wide at the front and there's always another 10% to give without murmer when you need to lean in a bit further to tighten the line .
On the road it's the best bike I have ever ridden which includes Pannigale V4 , V2,'Blade,RC45 etc etc .I have done a few track days on a Pannigale v4 which is quicker but I still actually prefer the KTM on a track even though the 6th gear is too tall .

AK99 · May 2023

Strangefan said:

AK99 said:

I'd send that back...there's a gap on the orange edge-binding on not just one, but both wheels

Cool thang otherwise! Does it have all the wheelie / stability control systems and stuff ?

A full refund is needed! It has zero rider aids just how I like it!

Proper hooligan machine then

Nice.

AK99 · May 2023

Btw - and apologies if this has been asked before - but what kind of boots / shoes do y'all wear in the warmer months when you're not kitted up to the nines with track-type gear ?

I'm normally one of your ATGATT types, but full track-type kit and interlocking boots/leathers feels a bit like overkill at times, especially when running around taking in the sights and sounds of the world at 55mph on the new acquisition.

Are there any other alternatives you'd recommend ?

p90fool · May 2023

AK99 said:

Btw - and apologies if this has been asked before - but what kind of boots / shoes do y'all wear in the warmer months when you're not kitted up to the nines with track-type gear ?

I'm normally one of your ATGATT types, but full track-type kit and interlocking boots/leathers feels a bit like overkill at times, especially when running around taking in the sights and sounds of the world at 55mph on the new acquisition.

Are there any other alternatives you'd recommend ?

Just make sure that the crossbar of your flip-flops coincide with the gear lever, or you'll end up with terrible blisters.

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