SMIDSY: ER-5 vs Honda Civic

1/ glad you walked away from it.

2/ v-strom's are utter shit, 2nd lucky escape in one day**

3/ silver cars, ooer

4/ both you and your new mate on the suzuki can now see the wisdom of
always carrying one of those disposable five quid cameras somewhere on
the bike wrapped in a bit of clingfilm

5/ you dropped a bollock, you don't have pictures, so you should not
have allowed EITHER vehicle to be moved one inch until plod arrived,
taken badge numbers and made sure "scenes of crime" stuff was recorded.

6/ first thing tomorrow is not ring plod, first thing tomorrow is see
your GP, it is surprising what becomes apparent after 12 hours or
more***

7/ you don't have to rely on insurance companies, or risk your NCD etc,
you can simply take him to court, small claims track, something his
insurance policy specifically guards him against, and get more dosh and
/ or get the dosh quicker.

8/ replacement vehicle on hire from tomorrow from fellow biker who can
give you a legit receipt for same...

9/ get your bike THOROUGHLY checked out, you don't say what it is, but
I have known instances with these stupid modern bikes taking small
dents to the box section allow frames simply from falling off the side
stand, and thus being automatic total write offs.

** I was given a nearly new vstrom after white van man whacked my
parked outside my house bike, at £1500 a week hire fee it concentrates
the insurance companies minds wonderfully.

*** I broke my wrist, and didn't even know until my doctor insisted I
went to A&E, loss of earnings for 12 weeks dwarfed value of old hack
gs550 which was deaded a good un in a similar prang to yours.

morris minor starting handles / pick axe handles and a bad attitude
will not get these losers off the road, but you can price them off by
making sure every accident they have is paid for in full, no quarter
given, and the premiums will do the rest.

in closing, sounds to me like your instincts were working overtime with
this driver long before the accident became inevitable, if you can take
anything away from this make it paying more attention to your instincts.

 

Guy Fawkes wrote:

You *did* read the title of this post?
--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
Alfa 116 Giulietta 3.0l (Really) Sprint 1.7 156 TS S2
Triumph Speed Triple: Black with extra black bits
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

ahem

not well enough it seems.....

 

Go boil your fucking chain.

 

In uk.rec.motorcycles, BGN amazed us all with this pearl of wisdom:

If it's not pissing down I might bring the GS; the tyres are borderline
and the handling can best be described as interesting.

 

In uk.rec.motorcycles, BGN amazed us all with this pearl of wisdom:

*Perk*

 

She also appears to be women, Mark.

Can you imagine what would happen to Robbo if a women came along for a
South Eastern bimble?

 

Sounds familiar

Deja vue

A witness good

In front of a witness good

I think this is the point to call the police, because you've been
injured, he doesn't know his insurance and is behaving strangely and
therefore you believe he is under the influence.[1]

Hope you manage to get it all sorted but be prepared for Mr. Civic's
story to his insurance to be very different from you and you're
witness. Sounds like you've not hurt yourself which is good.

[1] Having had it done to me, when I was at fault[2] the police turn
up PDQ.
[2] I admitted the blame to my insurance[3] not the 3rd parties.
[3] Much to their surprise, but I did hit a stationary[4] vehicle.
[4] Even if it was a really stupid place to be stationary.

 

I thought that too when I got mine - it takes longer than a week to
"understand" it - it took a 900 mile trip to work it out for me - now I
think it's great.

And you did get a 1000, yes?

 

You all coming out to play, then? Lovely. I'll try my besat not to
bend the fucker in the meantime.

 

<snip>

Well, you walked away *and* got a new best mate.

 

Indeed, good job his new mate was behind him when he came off.

 

aye, a 1000

no, it wasn't the tweedy top heavy handling, or even the ridiculous
seat height for a v twin, I kind of expect that from japanese bikes, it
was the design, a home mechanics nightmare, and a dealerships
goldmine... the bloke who ran the hire shop actually collected mine,
and we had a chat about this, his immediate response was "you're right"
but then he explained that this was a significant extra source of
revenue for him when hirers dropped them and shattered plastic went
everywhere, he then said when replacing the plastic was the only time
you could clean and service it properly, confirming my suspicions.

it reminded me a lot of the gran canyon, but not quite as "good"

YMMV

 

shit, owned several, split windscreen even, course that was back in the
day when stranglers lyrics were true

doesn't mean they can't be used as effective offensive weapons.

most long distance dispatchers keep a section of soil pipe attached,
such things will go in there quite nicely.

nah, it was a simple comment, not meant to be read verbatim, but of
course you knew that, but you have an agenda, you don't like me.

as long as I have dweebs like you biting my ankles I won't be stopping
to worry about me being the sad and pathetic one.

 

Or even to start a Morris Minor. Not only do the starter handles bend
but the front bumper does too. And ends up with the hole in the bumper
no longer aligning with the starter-handle socket.

Still - we did use it for 3 weeks while we sorted out a new battery!

Phil

 

Indeed. Bonus.

 

You do understand that purpose of the V-Strom, yes? From the above I'm not
sure you do.

I don't really get this - the Strom has very litle plastic when compared to
a GSX-R for instance - it also isn't complicated at all other than being
fuel injected - it's the same lump that was in the TL so it's been around
for donkies.

Certainly the Hayne manual I have doesn't make anything sound terribly
difficult to do.

It sounds like you either have odd expectations or something else going on
as what you've described above doesn't seem to match the motorcycle I own.

 

what, the *purpose* of the vstrom is to have tweedy handling due to an
un-necessarily high centre of gravity, and to make matters worse an
un-necessarily high seat height which both puts the CoG up again annd
also minimises any effort the rider can get via legs to keep things
upright...

yeah, and it's mainly wrapped up in that stupid pod thing up top.

a traditionally faired bike may have more plastic, but less of it is
designed to be damaged if it falls of the stand, and less of it is
designed to go top heavy and bugger up the handling

not complicated compared to a cbx, no, for a road bike vee twin it is
nothing short of quite ridiculous

it isn't terribly difficult to rebuild a cbx lump, but once you've done
it (and baought all those bloody gaskets) or once it has been dropped
you just have to stop and ask yourself if the extra complexity of the
six cylinders is worthwhile when compared to a similar capacity similar
era motorcycle, say a big zed...

don't get me wrong, I've owned a cbx, and a benelli sei, (never did
quite get around to the z13) and the sound of a six is lovely, and the
bragging factor at the pub quoting the bhp, which was impressive for
the day, and then on anything short of motorways the guy on the 400/4
ripped you a new one, then it came to service time and the guy on the
400/4 ripped you a new one again.

that's the trouble with the vstrom, it is un-necessarily complex, and
you don't get more in exchange for this complexity, you get less,
except in the sole area of "trump carding" your mates....

I specifically chose the vstrom out of all the bikes available because
it was the closest thing going to my main ride, and old 980 cc vee twin
jap, a 1980 TR1, modded a bit, with a measly 56 bmp, and I wanted
something similarish, not a revvy four, and something "modern" to
compare with.

With the sole exception of flat out motorway work, which is a straw man
argument because sooner or later you lose your licence so anything over
the ton*** is a waste of time, my 25 year old bike beat the vstrom
hands down without even trying across the board, even with the "dodgy"
old forks, "dodgy" old rear monoshock, "crap" tyres, "cheesy" old
brakes, and "useless" 56 bhp power output, and when I say "hands down"
I mean it.

*** howls of complaint from the ukrm racing fraternity.
race track != real roads

quite apart from all this, the old tri is a doddle to work on, cheap as
anything, and hugely reliable.

hang out at http://www.tr1.de/ there's a few english riders there, grab
yourself a go on a 20+ year old bike, then look at what you can pick
them up for, how cheaply and extensively you can mod them, how reliable
they are.

when you get a bike + rider centre of gravity that is somewhere around
your ass, which is about 2 foot off the ground, a dry weight of around
360 pounds, 5.5 inch ground clearance and insane banked over clearance
that 55 bhp goes a hell of a long way, and none of the "on paper"
advantages of the vstrom ever come in to play, and that means those "on
paper" advantages don't get the chance to expose the real weaknesses of
a 25 year old bike, eg suspension and brakes...

your personal "problem" is, I will assume, that you haven't had the
opportunity to be exposed to other ways of doing the same job as it
were... I used to think cars were little more than jellies on wheels
until I expressed that opinion in front of someone who used to race
mini's, not sure what it was called but it was basically courses with
an insane series of maneovers that had to be performed in a certain
order, within cones etc in a minimum time, and then they go off around
a track again against the clock.

I wish I knew what that "sport" is called now or even if people still
do it, but bottom line is being in that mini***** doing that stuff
completely blew me away, and then the road stage just knocked me out.

***** weren't BL type mini 850's, these guys had stage 3 tuned litre
plus motors, grp bodyshells etc, and their biggest problem was
physically getting the power through the rubber on the tyres they could
fit inside the bodyshell, awesome stuff.

seriously though, check out the tr1 website and see if you can hook up
with one for a test ride.

checks ebay

here you go, 400 notes
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/YAMAHA-TR1-19...tcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

It's an "adventure" bike - a big trailie - that's why it has a high seat and
high centre of gravity. Llong travel suspension etc.

The bike weights 200kg. Of that, 15kg is actually in the exhaust (which you
have a point on in terms of COG) - the rest is mainly the engine and fuel
tank, which last time I looked is in the same place on most bikes.

Having taken the plastic off mine, it weighs best part of bugger all.

But it doesn't bugger up the handling...

Anymore so than than the SV650, TL1000, SV1000 etc ?

Again I don't get you - what you get is a superb ROAD bike - I don't know
where you ride or what you ride but I know that for the roads I ride my
V-Strom on it's as fast as the GSX-R600 I had previously (except flat out)
and 100x more comfortable.

But... that's absolutely nothing like a V-Strom in design, purpose or
experience!

Do you ride at 10mph everywhere?

Haven't heard of many problems with Suzuki big V-twin engines either FWIW.

Why would I want to do this? I'd rather have a modern motorcycle TYVM,
however much "experience" I apparently lose.

You're comparing apples with pears and again. On a real road, pot holes and
all, I'd be exceedinly surprised if you could get away from a well ridden
V-Strom on your bike - it would piss past you on any higher speed overtakes
for one thing - I came off a GSX-R600 which I think knocks spots off the
handling of almost any other bike out there and the Strom is no where near
as flightly. Yes, it's DIFFERENT - but it's by no means rubbish.

By this you mean I haven't experienced 25 year old motorycles? Considering
I'm 26 you'd be 100% correct. I have no desire to either. As I mentioned
I've had a GSX-R, an SV and a scooter along with havng rode a fair few other
bikes and I can say that I'm aware of how they all do different things
differently. For the road, the Strom takes a lot of beating.

We can spend all day arguing this , I'm not going to agree with you - not
because it's the bike I own, but because I genuinally think you're talking
out your arse. You probably think the same in return.

 

See I tried the logical approach, but this potentially works better and
saves the user from wasting key strokes.