Any Motörbike riders here?

AK99

p90fool said:

Kittyfrisk said:

^ You seem very taken with the Interceptor, it would be good to hear a review of your experiences with it.

Although the majority of my holidays and camping trips have been on a Bullet for the last 18 years or so I always keep a modern push button bike alongside it for long, faster day trips. Most of these bikes come and go and I rarely ride them for pleasure, but the Interceptor looks like sticking around for a while as it ticks so many boxes for me. 

It's fun on the sorts of smaller roads I like exploring but just about quick enough to blitz the boring roads in between them, it looks fairly cool for a modern cheap bike and it does nearly 20 miles to a litre, which is double mileage of the Suzuki it replaced. 

There are no real downsides for me, it's mechanically very simple, the electronics aren't too daunting to troubleshoot and parts are cheap. I've done 10,000 miles on it so far but have no fear of wearing it out as I can afford to rebuild it every few years, something which was becoming increasingly daunting on Harleys.

So yes, I'm really quite fond of it considering it's a modern, big selling cookie cutter bike. 

Met a former neighbour of mine last week back up home who's a long term biker - who bought an Interceptor recently (same lovely colour as yours incidentally). He reports getting 70+ mpg out of it too, which I find amazing. Maybe too many heavy bikes and ones of the sporting variety have dulled my expectations on that front.

Anyways, back to yer man's bike, he fitted a freer flowing air filter, and also drilled out a 10mm hole in the baffles on the standard silencers, and got a fairly mild remap to overcome the worst of the ultra lean Euro 4(?) emissions standard tune - and it sounds great

Really nice thing I have to say.

Neckwringer

Forgot all about this thread..................

p90fool

Nice, I haven't ridden one of those for years!

Neckwringer

p90fool said:

Nice, I haven't ridden one of those for years!

Certainly not standard and with a few trick bits...............ooooph

p90fool

Neckwringer said:

p90fool said:

Nice, I haven't ridden one of those for years!

Certainly not standard and with a few trick bits...............ooooph

I hope that includes camchain tensioners! 

gavin_axecaster

A properly sorted Firestorm is a beautiful thing.

Dominic

.......but an RC45 is one hell of a lot better !

Neckwringer

p90fool said:

Neckwringer said:

p90fool said:

Nice, I haven't ridden one of those for years!

Certainly not standard and with a few trick bits...............ooooph

I hope that includes camchain tensioners! 

Yea,goes without saying and R/R to name but a few.......................

TheBigDipper

Haven't been out on the bike for a few weeks for one reason or another. I just sold a pedal and found that the buyer was just the other side of the New Forest from me. And was happy for me to deliver. So I've just had a lovely bimble across the Forest, met a nice chap, delivered a pedal, had a cuppa and rode home again. Very relaxing and nice to be "in the moment"... :-)

Haych

My bike has not had much use recently either.  We went on holiday as a family the last week in August so haven't properly used it since before then.  

After we came back from holiday it was back to work/school, then the kids brought bugs home and everyone was ill for what seemed like weeks on end, including yours truly.

Mrs Haych is all geared up to ride pillion now, so we went out for a very gentle first ride together while they were planting Liz - we figure the roads would be quiet.  It was the missus' first time on a bike and my first time riding with a pillion, so we were both a bit tense, but it went well and she's pretty much a natural at going with the flow.  She's eager to get out again for a longer ride now.

Had a few errands to run Saturday just gone so hopped on the bike to do them and thoroughly enjoyed being out there again.

I've started watching a few motorcycle touring videos on YouTube these last couple of days so now have got the urge to plan something for next year - if my "mates" weren't arseholes I'd probably suggest something to them but after this year's fiasco I'd rather set myself on fire than hold out an olive branch to those two gits.  Whatever I do, I reckon I'll be going alone, which isn't completely bad, but it's always a bit more fun with like minded companions.

Dominic

went for a quick joyride yesterday.......not a summer's day but sky was mainly clear ........thought I'd get in a quick 40 miles
Within a matter of less than 2 minutes the sky went black ,a storm cloud raced toward me ......the fastest incoming storm I've ever seen whipped along by a whirlwind .
Was I two miles from home ?, was I ten miles from home ? ........No,I was exactly half way through and about 25 miles from home .....got absolutely soaked ,road flooded and the wind was incredible .I couldn't ride .
 The wind and rain passed after 30 mins .......I rode home through floodwater and past at least 3 uprooted trees .
 When I got home I saw a huge Birch tree had collapsed across garden and drive .....exactly where bike was parked before I went out ! Everything happens for a reason !

thebreeze

Hello gang,  I’m pretty much at where @octatonic was all those years ago when he started this thread, so forgive the basic questions but it is great to have a source of info from you guys/girls.

Helmets.  I’ve been reading your thoughts about safety/wind in your face/peripheral vision etc.  Clearly, the full/all-in-one is the safest.  If you get one without a visor (or it has a removable one) is that the best of all worlds, or doesn’t it work like that?  I.e will your face be okay/best protected if you have a full helmet but no visor on?

Haych

You can get the MX style helmets which have a chinbar and a large aperture/eye port - usually they’re used with goggles, but don’t know how goggles affect peripheral vision (never used them). 

A good full face helmet is best IMHO. Something like the AVG K6 has unimpeded vision and you have all the protection built in. 

Personally, I wouldn’t ride without some form of eye protection - a stone chip or even a medium sized fly in your eye at a decent speed is going to not only hurt, but be a massive distraction. 

octatonic

MX helmets are fine but I don't like them on the road.

The most important thing for me is fit.
I have a 'Shoei head'.
Nothing else is comfortable- Schubert, in particular, gives me a headache in about 15 mins.
Shoei GT Air are particularly good for me.

Go try a few on.

jaytmon

@thebreeze if you can hang on a few weeks, get a ticket to the NEC bike show. Apart from lots of lovely shiny two-wheeled delights to drool over, there are usually some very good deals to be had on helmets, and a massive array (wanted to type ‘arai’) to try on. As @octatonic said, fit is probably the most important thing. 

TheBigDipper

Full face helmets offer the best protection if you crash. They also offer the best protection against bad weather. "The wind in your face" is, IMHO, overrated. Once you start riding faster than 40-50mph, the wind in your eyes will start to affect your vision if you don't have the visor down or wear goggles. Heavy rain and the cold is no fun when you're riding and will affect your concentration levels after a while.

MX helmets tend to be bigger in the chin area, and that means more wind noise for most of us. 

Buy based on fit. Different makes have shells for different shaped heads. Arai and Shoei are very different. More expensive helmets will have more shell sizes to match the different head sizes they fit. Cheaper makes will have fewer sizes of shell and make it up with the lining and padding. So you could end up with a big helmet (large shell) and lots of padding because you have a medium head. 

Funnily enough, I'm using an AGV K6 at the mo, and prior to that, two Shoei GT-Airs one after the other. @Haych and @octatonic have good taste! :-) I only tried a K6 this time because it was new and I wondered if the Shoei was worth the extra. I think it was, TBH. The AGV is fine for its price and I'll run it for another year, but the Shoei was superb - for me and my head. Both are very quiet. The K6 wins for extra peripheral vision and the Shoei wins for long term wearing comfort. The built-in sun visor was a feature I never used. Not very good, optically, I thought. 

Corvus

Fit is the main thing, after type, I also have a Shoei head and Arais don't fit at all. I have a Shoei full-face and an open face. The peripheral vision sideways is the same. There's more up/down in the open face but makes no odds. The open face is a fair bit worse for wind noise.

I mostly wear the full-face esp in town, have smacked the front of one hard once. Would have been a right mess in an open face. Also scraped up a guy who'd done the same, hit face-first hard. The open face gets used in the lanes really. Shades with foam edging sorts the windblast problem pretty much. I wear a face covering either a thin fabric one or a neoprene one, that's better when you get pinged in the face by a small stone or fat kamikaze insect.

thebreeze

Thanks for all your thoughts, really helpful.  I’ve clearly got to try some on and will almost certainly go for a full face I think.  I’d do what you say @jaytmon but I’ve got some training in the middle of Nov.  I’ll ring them to see if I can borrow a helmet for that (although they say to bring one).  Somewhere earlier in the posts (it’s long!!) someone mentioned a Vyper (I think), quite liked the look of that.

octatonic

TheBigDipper said:

The built-in sun visor was a feature I never used. Not very good, optically, I thought. 

That is interesting- I used it pretty much all the time (daytime anyway), but I am pretty sensitive to light.

Sporky

I just bought myself an M1000RR. Haven't been on a motorbike in 40 years or so, so I'm starting small.