I guess I do have to come inside SOMETIME. Which means parking the bike for the night.
Rode the Burgman 650 down to Moto Italia at Edwardsville, IL and met Russ (a friend and rider from ST-Owners who lives in Eastern Iowa) at the first gas stop along the ride and he accompanied me the rest of the way around. He has accompanied me on rides to riding/camping events several times.
The trip down was faster than the trip back. Went 364 miles to get there. Spent entirely too long at the dealership but I was going over things on the new 2022 Kymco AK 550 and setting up the Noodoe app and connecting that to the AK for trying out the navigation on the way home. Ended up that the navigation took longer than I thought to update all the mapping to enable it to work well on that first trip. I didn't plan to go all the way home the same day since I knew I'd be at the dealer at least a few hours. We ended up taking nearly 5 hours to get to our motel after leaving the dealer sometime around 4:30. Part of that was taking it extremely easy on the new bike for the first 100 miles keeping the speed lower and varying the RPM as was required by the mfr. and recommended by the dealer. Should have stayed at a motel closer to the dealer. The navigation really didn't work well at all on the way to the motel. It kept trying to get me to turn around or take side streets/roads to get back to... somewhere else than where I was headed. So I ended up ignoring it and going by instinct.
This is a small dealership and one of very few where they actually do repairs to bikes rather than just replace modules that the computer diagnostics say to replace. This is one BIG reason many dealer shops don't work on bikes more than 10 years old.
Dealer looked over my Burgman and I showed him about the farkles that were added. One big reason I decided to bite the bullet with this dealer is that they offered more for my Burgman in trade than anyone had actually offered for a sale price from my advertising. Plus, they were willing to deal on the price a little. Ended up with a better deal than if I bought a 2021 model at a lower price but more up-charges tacked on and no trade. Everything went as expected financially.
The ride back to the motel the Saturday night was long but the AK performed wonderfully. The engine revs a little higher than my Burgman did for the same speeds but that just enables it to out perform the Burgman. It accelerates faster. Smaller engine (550.4cc vs. 638cc) and about 130 lbs lighter than the Burgman with about the same torque and HP. The seat is comfortable. The slanted foot board is a little closer than on the Burgman, but that's good since I always felt it was too far away. The level foot board feels a little lower than on the Burgman, but that's due to the seat being a little bit higher. Both foot boards were more comfortable to use on this bike. The seat height is actually 1 inch higher than on the Burgman 650. The all LED lighting, including headlights, worked really well. I was able to clearly see way down the road with those, especially on high beam. Russ was following and told me the tail light showed up really well. But that while the brake light was rather small it was very bright. I've intended to add a flashing brake LED bar similar to what I have had on all of my last 4 bikes. There is a bracket for the rear reflectors that will work well to mount that LED bar.
The dealer had filled the gas tank and ended up with 6 miles on the bike when I arrived. Now it has 412 miles on the odometer. The trip home from the dealership was 406 miles. I was able to get the maps figured out for the connected navigation and that worked well today on the rest of the way home. I think I figured out that the selected maps just didn't completely download to the bike before we left the dealer and then were not able to do so while on the road. That did complete while we were at the motel so today the navigation worked as well as any other navigation system. I want to try it out a lot more before I decide if I even want to mount my phone, or any other device, on the dash. I am thinking right now that I won't have to. I'm very good with that idea since the only reason I would have my phone mounted on the bike is for navigation. I can still have Google Maps running and giving me voice prompts while the bike navigation is showing on the center screen with the phone sitting in the glove box plugged into the USB port, which is what I was doing today. That worked out rather well. The Noodoe system on the AK 550 already handles showing me if there are text messages or phone calls I missed while riding, but this ONLY shows up when I am stopped and does not interrupt anything while riding. That part was working fine yesterday since there were a few text messages and a phone call I missed but the screen didn't show that to me until I stopped at the motel.
BTW- The "AVE MPG" display on the dash was showing around 65-66 mpg for every tank of gas I used. That display resets when I reset the A Trip meter, which I do every time I fill the tank to keep track of miles run since last fill. I haven't yet calculated the mpg based on miles traveled between fill ups yet so don't know how accurate the reading is on the dash. I do know that the gas gauge has been severely criticized for dropping to the flashing last bar rather fast. Some have said only half a tank is used to get to that point. I only saw that last bar start to flash once on the way home and for that tank it started flashing at 134 miles. And then I added just over 2.4 gallons when I stopped a few miles after that. My impression is that it really is not that much different than the gas gauge on "my" Burgman 650. (quote marks added since it is no longer mine now).
This bike has a "welcome" feature that I ended up turning off. That causes the Noodoe screen to light up and pulse a few times when I approach the bike even when it is turned off. Some owners on forums have said this is the bike sensing the remote fob but I found that not to be the case. It was doing that when it sensed my phone if BT was still turned on (and both fobs were in Faraday pouches in the motel room). I turned off the welcome sensing and also will make sure to turn off BT on my phone... which I usually do anyway when I'm not using my Sena. Turning off the BT on my phone stopped that welcome feature even before I disabled it.
A few more photos below. I bought a few supply things... a few oil filters (dealer has a real good price), an air filter, and a CVT gasket. That last item could not be bent, obviously, and was packaged on a stiff cardboard. I was able to bend the corners of the cardboard that were clear of the actual gasket so it would fit in the storage under the seat without being damaged. That is what I planned for by bringing my clothes in a small dry bag that I put under the cargo net on the passenger seat.
I used soft ties around the passenger hand grips to prevent marring the finish
I want to get more riding in, which I will be doing in the next many weeks I hope, before I give more of an evaluation of this scooter.
Link to some photos. Some taken at the dealership and some after leaving there:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iuu4PzwMHfXt6uuu9
