Post by Big Blue on May 11, 2019 23:12:25 GMT
.....a Ducati 959.
I’m putting it down to experience. In 34 years of motorbike riding I reckon I’ve never made a bad choice. Until now.
Firstly let’s clarify something: it’s not a bad bike but it’s not a nice bike to ride. Sure it’s got loads of legroom, is comfy enough to ride for longer than most sports bikes but there are things that cumulatively make it not nice to ride.
I’ve mentioned the brakes before and even after me bleeding them, a workshop bleeding them and me swearing at them they never ever inspired the confidence one expects from a sports bike. Neither did the handling.
Early on I threw the bike left on a road I know very well and fuck me if the front end didn’t fold up like a pair of scissors. I put it down to the utterly desperate suspension settings of the previous owner but after changing them almost weekly I could make the bike ride better but not handle like I wanted it to. It tucked the front again on another occasion and that was the beginning of the end as far as I was concerned.
Another thing that stuffed its handling up was the engine. Now I’m sure there are Desmo riders the world over that love the thumping warble of the power delivery but I’m not one of them. It never felt like anything other than a bag of spanners and when it’s being delivered cranked over the whole bike felt out of sorts.
The bike DID handle nicely but I couldn’t take it out of my own comfort zone and into the place where other bikes could laugh at me when I thought I was riding like Rossi when in actual fact the bike could have gone much harder. So that meant I only ever rode it within what I felt it was capable of which was not anywhere near the capability of the R1, the GSX-R, the ‘Blade which were its (much older) predecessors.
That power delivery was behind one other thing I disliked: it was very awful at low speed meaning the act of pressing the button to open my garage door as I arrived home was nigh on impossible.
Ergonomically it was wank. Pretty typically Italian I suppose, but these things are made by Audi now - which explains its reliability and finish being so good. The indicator switch was slightly out of place and to engage the hazards you held the left turn over. This was due to the switches for the onboard computer taking up space on the bars.
Similarly the headlamp flasher was too long, was impossible to flash without leaving the main beam on and cancelling the indicators often resulted in turning on the main beam due to the aforementioned shit position of the indicator switch and the overly long pass switch (which is what the main beam switch is called on bikes as we’re going to pass your car
.
So the replacement. A BMW S1000RR. As an immediate comparison I took it for a test ride last week and before I left Vines of Guildford’s forecourt I’d made my mind up. It’s like being on a magical telepathic carpet by comparison. Yes it’s got 199 bhp, cruise control and active suspension but bollocks to that. I got to the parabolic turn that leads on to the A3 to Ripley and it was on rails. In Ripley at the Shell roundabout I tipped it in and hey: it laughed at me like a proper sports bike should on the road with a 50 yo rider in a Rukka suit trying to look cool.
Looking forward to the summer like you wouldn’t believe.
I’m putting it down to experience. In 34 years of motorbike riding I reckon I’ve never made a bad choice. Until now.
Firstly let’s clarify something: it’s not a bad bike but it’s not a nice bike to ride. Sure it’s got loads of legroom, is comfy enough to ride for longer than most sports bikes but there are things that cumulatively make it not nice to ride.
I’ve mentioned the brakes before and even after me bleeding them, a workshop bleeding them and me swearing at them they never ever inspired the confidence one expects from a sports bike. Neither did the handling.
Early on I threw the bike left on a road I know very well and fuck me if the front end didn’t fold up like a pair of scissors. I put it down to the utterly desperate suspension settings of the previous owner but after changing them almost weekly I could make the bike ride better but not handle like I wanted it to. It tucked the front again on another occasion and that was the beginning of the end as far as I was concerned.
Another thing that stuffed its handling up was the engine. Now I’m sure there are Desmo riders the world over that love the thumping warble of the power delivery but I’m not one of them. It never felt like anything other than a bag of spanners and when it’s being delivered cranked over the whole bike felt out of sorts.
The bike DID handle nicely but I couldn’t take it out of my own comfort zone and into the place where other bikes could laugh at me when I thought I was riding like Rossi when in actual fact the bike could have gone much harder. So that meant I only ever rode it within what I felt it was capable of which was not anywhere near the capability of the R1, the GSX-R, the ‘Blade which were its (much older) predecessors.
That power delivery was behind one other thing I disliked: it was very awful at low speed meaning the act of pressing the button to open my garage door as I arrived home was nigh on impossible.
Ergonomically it was wank. Pretty typically Italian I suppose, but these things are made by Audi now - which explains its reliability and finish being so good. The indicator switch was slightly out of place and to engage the hazards you held the left turn over. This was due to the switches for the onboard computer taking up space on the bars.
Similarly the headlamp flasher was too long, was impossible to flash without leaving the main beam on and cancelling the indicators often resulted in turning on the main beam due to the aforementioned shit position of the indicator switch and the overly long pass switch (which is what the main beam switch is called on bikes as we’re going to pass your car
.So the replacement. A BMW S1000RR. As an immediate comparison I took it for a test ride last week and before I left Vines of Guildford’s forecourt I’d made my mind up. It’s like being on a magical telepathic carpet by comparison. Yes it’s got 199 bhp, cruise control and active suspension but bollocks to that. I got to the parabolic turn that leads on to the A3 to Ripley and it was on rails. In Ripley at the Shell roundabout I tipped it in and hey: it laughed at me like a proper sports bike should on the road with a 50 yo rider in a Rukka suit trying to look cool.
Looking forward to the summer like you wouldn’t believe.
