[Ben]

I think it depends how big your tummy is. I think most of the time it doesn't matter too much. You won't be able to crouch super lower in a tucked position, but you don't need that in the street anyway.

I personally don't think it looks silly.

-Ben

[Ben]

You should be okay. The SV650 is a pretty darn comfortable bike, even for someone who is a bit bigger. 

[Ben]

Did you check your battery connections? Maybe they came loose while riding and you didn't tighten them enough.

[Ben]

I agree with Jeff in Kentucky, you should be fine if it was just a minor bump. A lot of helmet manufacturers have free testing if you send your helmet to them, but chances are they are going to keep it and say you need to buy a new one just to be on the safe side. I’ve dropped my helmet from about 3 feet and I still wear it.

Ben

[Ben]

Gorgeous looking bike! I’ve always been a fan of that paint scheme.

Ben

[Ben]

The site is not officially dead, although I have to admit over the past couple months I investigated selling it since I am not very active here. Even though I received a few more than generous offers, in the end this site is just too close to my heart and I didn’t want to sell it to someone that would just spam the hell out of it with ads even if it would have fixed some of my financial woe’s. I realize I’ve been neglecting things a bit. There are a few problems that have been above my skill set for a while, but I am determined to try and fix those over the next month or so. I would like the website to be a place where you can point any newbie to and he could quickly and easily find all the information he needs in 10-20 minutes. Gear reviews are important, but in the past I focused wayyyyyyyyyy too much on them. They will now be maybe 10% of the site. You’ll start to see the front page changing as well.

Part of the solution might might mean ‘starting over’ the forum using a phpBB instead of drupals forum module. I’m not sure yet. That would effectively kill all the posts that have already been made, which would probably kill the forum. Right now the drupal module is very very sloppy and rudimentary. Upgrading to the latest version of drupal may fix that as well. We’ll see what I decide to do.

Cheers all,

Ben

[Ben]

FINALLY!!!!!!!!!! After nearly a month of working on it I have finally rid BBM of any malicious code. What a pain in the ass. It was my home computer that was compromised and they stole a bunch of my passwords. I’m taking steps to insure that won’t happen again. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Ben

[Ben]

Hey guys,

Thanks for all the feedback. I think I am going to change the main frontpage so that there are 10-20 articles that new riders should definitely read instead of all the gear review stuff. If you guys have any recommendations on which articles to include (or articles I should write, or articles you have written that you want to include) please let me know. You can always e-mail me at [email protected] or PM me on this website.

Ben

[Ben]

lol holy crap WeaponZero you own more gear than I do! Haha. Video and written reviews are definitely open to users if you guys want to write them. The best way is to submit them to [email protected]

Or if they are a video you can upload them to youtube and e-mail me the link and I will put them up here. You live on the east coast right Weapon? If you lived in the bay area california I could help you film them with my camera.

Ben

[Ben]

I can sorta see where you are coming from. I’m not sure where their products are made but I’ve been really happy with all the Shift gear I’ve used in the past, it has saved my skin (literally) more than once. The shift jacket that I use almost daily I actually got on sale from ebay for about half price before I even started BBM (i think it was 300 new, so I got it for around 150). I liked that it was just a relatively plain black jacket that came with hard armor. Having worn it for 5+ years I can say that it has held up extremely well, in the wind, rain, and beating sun.

I digress. I dunno if shift is charging too much or not, I think that is relative to each persons income. I think it speaks very highly of them as a company that they are willing to put their stuff out there to get tested by a website such as this. There are a lot of companies that don’t have the guts to do that. Often times if a company’s gear does get tested and they receive some negative feedback they will sever the working relationship with BBM. Every product is going to have some positive and negative feedback in my reviews; Some companies understand that, and some don’t.

I’m definitely not in the business of putting out reviews that I don’t stand 100% behind. BBM is a labor of love for me, I’m not going to sell out and write reviews that cater to the gear manufacturer’s ego. I still work 40 hours a week as a bicycle mechanic, the income from BBM’s ad’s only cover server costs and some new gear purchases for review. I wish I had thousands I could spend and review everything I want, but that’s probably not going to happen anytime soon lol.

Haha, alright, time to end this rant. I dunno where I was even going with that.

Long story short: I don’t think shift is overpriced compared to the quality you get, but thats personal to each individual (and based on my personal experience, which I admit might be somewhat biased even though I try to limit that effect). It would be nice to be able to test every manufacturers gear so I could have a larger base of knowledge when I review different safety equipment. For now, out of the stuff I’ve reviewed Shift racing has shown really great quality in there jackets which is what I care about.

Ben

[Ben]

Hey WeaponZero,

Haha, I know I am a bit of a Shift whore, but that’s for two reasons mainly. 1. yes, I admit, I really do love their stuff and it seems to fit me well. 2. They have been an absolute DREAM to work with! Really all the guys at Shift are really attentive and willing to work things out with me even though I have a pretty small website catering to a niche audience. I’ve worked with a bunch of other companies and some of them won’t even give me the time of day.. *cough*alpinestars/icon*cough!* , oops, seem to have something in my throat

I’m working on getting some different gear, but I guess you guys have to bear with me a bit. Most if not all of the money that is donated goes to gear costs, and the stuff that doesn’t goes to server costs.

Ben

[Ben]

Thanks Eon

Can’t do too much about the microphone unfortunately, thats the one bad thing about my camera. I might try and shoot indoors next time to cut down on ambient noise though. Thanks

Ben

[Ben]

Thanks SCrider I will take all those into consideration for the next video. I’m definitely looking to improve so tips like these are what I need. Thanks!

Ben

[Ben]

Ouch, that sucks WeaponZero! I’m surprised you didn’t try it on when you first got it. I know you are more of a veteren, but when I first started riding I wore my gear around the house for a bit before I even got my motorcycle lol.

Ben

[Ben]

Thanks Mike! Glad to see users supporting the community

Ben

[Author]

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