700 Miles on a Speed Triple.
A couple of weeks ago I rode my Speed Triple 700 miles in a little under 36 hours.
Early Saturday morning I left cars and coffee and headed on up the freeway towards my stop-over in Fresno on my 2007 Triumph Speed Triple. This was the first ride of 'substance' that I have undertaken on the bike, so I was learning about the bike as I rode.
First impressions get changed on a long trip, so I thought it best to put those up-front.
First off the visual, the bike looks amazing, Burnt Yellow paint, big bug eye headlamps, a huge motor crammed into a fairly short chassis and a lot of high-quality 'hard parts' on display. It looks like a cartoon of a motorcycle. As you ride you get waves from the cruiser crowd - they assuming it is a 'standard', from the sport-bike crowd - they assume you have street-fightered a sports bike and well, from most any other rider because, well, it is a motorcycle.
Then there is that motor. A glorious 1050cc Triple with that glorious noise that marks it out as something different, something special. The triple not only sounds different, it feels different. The massive mid-range allows you to be in any gear at any speed and you twist the throttle and you have instant acceleration available to you. But there is also a screaming top-end to the motor too - that fat mid-range segues into a power-ramp as you approach the red line. So really, any gear and speed will give you brutal acceleration, followed by the sort of acceleration that hurts your arms and neck and causes inadvertent puckering.
The chassis components are pretty good, big USD fork up front, a single-sided swinger and monoshock out back and a seat that looks like it was designed for humans bode well as do the big radial brakes up front.
On the road that motor dominates proceedings. On-ramps are a flurry of gear changes, followed by judicious brake applications to bring you back down to freeway speeds ! Sitting on the freeway you find a comfortable cruise - 4K on the tach is just at the start of the mid-range, 5K is smack in the middle of it. Somewhere over 4K you find that comfortable zone, overtaking anything is a minute throttle 'adjustment' will send you past all but the most determined / suicidal driver. But it is not all good news here. There are so vibes to be found, mainly through the foot pegs right in that cruising range and the wind-blast from that upright seating position really starts to hurt unless you drop the speed that you add to rid yourself of the vibes. There is a sweet spot, but it is hard to find.
The seat is good for the first 120 miles. But that is it. Once you pass that mark you will be cursing Hinckley for all you are worth. Luckily the gas tank is not going to last much longer. The most I saw from a tank before the gas light came on was a little over 150 miles. The seat 'issue' might be alleviated with a gel-seat, but as I did not have one available, all I can do is warn you. Unless you are good at sitting on a vibrating rock for a couple of hours at a time, you may want to order the gel seat...
Fuel stops suddenly become great things - a chance to stop and stretch as much as a chance to top-off and ride again. The rearsets are pretty good for cornering clearance, but a tad too high for any degree of comfort when riding in leathers - my leathers bunched up behind my knees and my boots did a good job of assisting them it appears - again with the right touring pants rather than 'racing leathers' 120 miles would be little issue.
Other than the ergo issues and my increasingly sore butt, the bike is awesome on the road. I rode through heavy rain just north of LA and there was never any hint of concern that there was not enough grip. The upright riding position allows you to see over most of the traffic ahead and that motor is addictive.
First impressions at the end of day one with 280 miles on the counter were extremely positive. The seat was worrying me a little realizing that I still had a long way to go, but hopefully I would be able to move around a little more and alleviate the issues.
On Day two I rode out to Pizmo beach via an extremely twisty back route. This showcased the handling in a big way. Despite the weight the bike will flick from side to side way better than any liter bike I have ever ridden. It is not quite '600' quick to transition, nor is it even as light as many other bikes, but the combination of a fine chassis and big wide motocross style bars allows for decently large inputs. I chased down a very well driven MINI Cooper S for many miles and apart from having to adjust my style a little for even more slow-in, fast out due to his late braking I was totally comfortable and easily within the bikes' limits.
My only criticism is exactly the same as many road testers, the front end is just too dammed subtle at moderate lean angles, you do not feel like you are losing grip, but it is hard to know exactly what is happening there. The solution appears to be to get over the bars a lot more than normal. Once you do this and allow the back to be a little looser, you even up the 'feel' and you find that you can trust it a lot more. I did wonder if I was attacking the bends the wrong way by treating it like a hyper sports bike with wide bars and if attempting to back it in Super Motard style would help. But then I remembered how helpless the rear brake was and decided that I was being foolish.
The brakes on this type of road are sublime, or at least the front brake is, the rear is not especially brilliant, but as the front brakes are so powerful that you can lift the rear wheel at 70mph with one finger, it sort of rules out the need for a lot of rear braking. There is a lot of power, but so much feel that it is like gripping the front rotors between finger and thumb, loading up the front end you can feel every single piece of dust as you pass over it. These brakes are some of the best I have ever experienced.
Once at Pizmo, via a gas stop of course, a quick food stop and then onto home - the ODO said 420 miles, home lay 280 miles south, time for more freeways I guess.
I rocketed south, moving around on the bike and tugging my leathers into my boots to stop the bunching, reaching Santa Barbara fairly fast after yet another gas stop when I realized I was about to discover how good this bike is at traffic filtering / lane sharing. Second gear is flexible enough for 0-70mph. The big wide bars and upright seating allows you to see many cars ahead making this a much better mount for this type of work than a sports bike. The clutch is fairly light but also very predictable, just like BMW drivers. I mention BMW drivers at this point because over the next hour of lane-sharing I got squeezed by no less than three of them. Nobody else squeezed me, just BMW drivers.
Eventually I cleared the worst of the traffic and made my final gas stop a mere 100 miles from home.
That last 100 miles I cleaned up in slightly illegal time and relative comfort, admittedly I found I was counting down the miles for most of it and playing mind games with myself to keep myself alert.
As I rolled into garage the ODO said 701.9 miles. I did not feel like riding around the black to make it an even number. But I could have done a few more miles had I wanted to.....
So, the good, the bad and the ugly ?
The good is centered around that motor. Flexible and brutal. The chassis and brakes are very good too, truly a 'standard' that will keep with all but the most well ridden sportsbikes through the twisties but it will decimate them on the way there and especially on the way back.
The Bad is hard to find. The seat is the worst bit of the bike, but it is considerably better than most sports bike seats, so I guess I can understand that ?
The ugly is easy - it is one ugly bike from nearly every angle. That is, however, part of its charm.......
Author
Topic: Motorcycles ? (Read 3836 times)