600 Miles

[TeeMon]

Just returned from a ride on the local roads and my odo hit 600 miles.

I passed 500 miles on Dec. 18, 2012, so that means only a hundred miles in one month.  But then it's winter and I am also riding my Burg 400, plus I was sick for almost two weeks this month.

The ride was rough and my low back hurts.  Even with a nice pad on the seat, the suspension is too firm for me on these beat up roads.  My Burg does much better in handling the torn up roads in our area.

If some company ever wants to install large wind turbines in your area, get out there and protest their plans.  Their heavy equipment, trucks, etc, really tear up the roads.  And the patch jobs the company does on the roads make them worse.

[Punk052]

funny, the places I have ridden where they were installing turbines they inproved the roads.... of course thats western Kansas where a "road" is up for debate

[MotoRandy123]

 Well at 600 miles time for the first service! I find most motorcycles and scooters
have horrible suspension. The only one that was good was a Ducati Multistrada
"S" model with Ohlins.

The aftermarket stuff is a lot better. I wonder why? Part of it is they don't know
how much you weigh and so don't want you to be able to ride into trouble. Cars
are not much better, they have all sorts of electronics in the seats now and are
hard as a rock!

[TeeMon]

The roads east of town are built on levees and I guess the movement has a tendency to undermine the road surface.  South and west of town are the roads that I prefer but that's where they are building hundreds of the huge wind turbines.  As the work continues (indefinitely?), the large trucks & trailers and equipment tear up the roads.  They only "patch" the roads and have "assured" us that once the have finished installing the turbines, they will repair the roads.  We'll see......

I actually do not have a problem with the suspension on my Burg 400 and the 07 Silverwing that I traded in for my Burg.  Both were quite good for my purposes.  Some of the many, many motorcycles that I've owned since 1962 have suffered from bad suspension but others were just fine for me - no complaints.  After all, they aren't Cadillacs.

And I am probably more sensitive to road roughness because I have a very bad low back.  I've had two surgeries so far.  I can definitely tell the difference in the suspension between the S250 & my Burg.  The SH150i that I had was even worse!

[MotoRandy123]

Well scooters are a bit different in the suspension department. They usually have the engine on the
swingarm so it affects the rear a lot! They best way to over come this is by adding weight or moving
the engine off the swingarm (Burg + Swing do these). My Yager seems fine up to a point then gets
very harsh. I loosened the engine hanger to get better compliance in the rear. That helped but the
shocks really need multistage damping. I found some shocks for $99 that I will try to help the rear;

http://www.newmotorcycleparts.com/chassis/suspension_parts/rear_shocks.html

The front needs some tuning and possibly a cartridge emulator to get it working over all size bumps.
You see it is a damper fork which can be tuned to one size big or small. The emulator will tune to 2
(or more) sizes. All this stuff costs money though so have to wait till I'm back to work...