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Firstgear HT Overpant – Crash Tested
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Gary856Participant
Munch and eon, thanks for the explanation on the unpredictability of weather and the importance of waterproof gear in your climate zones. Makes sense now to this rain-riding newbie – me. I’m in San Jose, CA, where the weather is super predictable, especially with weather.com’s hour-by-hour forecast and radar map. I can see the rain coming a week ahead, and on a given day we either have rain or we don’t, almost no surprises. I’ve forgotten the thunderstorms that came at a moment’s notice I experienced in my youth, growing up in Taiwan, over 30 years ago.
Eon, good info on the conflicting outer-shell’s breathability vs. waterproof requirements. I did not realize that you had already done the research on Rev’It, and I did not realize that most textile outer-shell are not waterproof. Have you considered Aerostitch, and would their products work for you? Every manufacturer tries to offer a 4-seasons jacket because that seems to be what people want, but I’ve since realized that there’s no such a thing, even for the temperate California climate. Any given jacket is good for 3-seasons, at best, in my opinion. We’re better off having two jackets, one geared toward the warmer months and another toward the colder ones. Or you need an electric heated liner, which is yet another thing to buy and deal with (power consumption).
Gary856ParticipantI think the outer-shell of the “Turbine” overpants I have is mesh construction for the warmer weather. Its’ a very tight weave, but still mesh, thus soaks up water in the rain. Other models, such as Cayenne Pro and Sand, in Rev’It’s lineup just MAY have fully waterproof outer-shell construction. Double-check before you write them off. I got Rev’It pants because they have hip pads/armor, which aren’t provided by many other brands.
My rational of getting a cheap rain suit ($40 for jacket and pants) to wear over my regular gear is so that my more expensive gear don’t get dirty/muddy from the spray kicked up by cars. It’ll also add a bit of extra warmth. I don’t quite get why waterproof gear is that important since you can just wear a cheap rain suit over the regular gear, unless you’re touring and really don’t want to pack the extra rain suit. I guess I’ll find out if it’s really a lot of hassle to carry and wear the extra rain suit.
Gary856ParticipantAs of last week I’ve ridden 9,700 miles, and finally went on a 60 mile ride in the rain on Saturday morning. It included some sections of expressway (50-60 mph), 2-lane country roads (40-50 mph), and a narrow and twisty road (15-30 mph). Locked up the rear twice:
The first time was when going about 50 mph on the expressway, got close to the intersection and the light turned yellow, hesitated for a moment on whether to keep going or to stop, then decided to stop at the last moment. Had to brake fairly hard, but in the wet I used less front brake and more rear brake, and fish-tailed into the intersection by about 6 ft. Kind of expected that, and I could have used a bit more front brake and a bit less rear.
The second time was when coming close to stopping to make a left. The rear locked up, skidded a few feet and did a slight jerk when traction was regained. That lock-up surprised me a little; felt like maybe there was some sand on the ground at the intersection.
In the straight sections I pretty much rode as fast as in the dry, but in the tighter corners I went maybe 5 mph slower, followed the slow-in-fast-out principle, and leaned my body to keep the bike as upright as possible. I kept the speed in check and avoided braking in the corners.
It was fun; wish it had rained harder, but I’ll get my chances, and needed to upgrade my rain gear. Temperature was mid-50s, much warmer than the clear but cold (low 40s) weather we had a few days before. The helmet visor didn’t fog up too much and the visibility was not bad. I realized that although my Rev-it Turbine overpants are “water-proof”, it’s the inner liner that’s water-proof; the outer shell is not and got soaked, along with the content in the pockets. Also, my leather gloves got pretty wet; not good. I just bought a two-piece rain suit, and I’m looking for a pair of water-proof glove covers.
Gary856ParticipantLane splitting is legal in California and I do it at traffic lights (split to the front) and in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I haven’t tapped any car’s mirror yet, and like you, I’d stop and wait if I thought I’d come close to tapping a car’s mirror. Nevertheless, I agree that often the margin of error is pretty small and surprises can happen.
Tapping a car’s mirror during lane splitting would be extremely embarassing to me, because that shows a lack of control and judgment. I always imagined if I ever did that, I’d stop to give the car driver a chance to catch up, but as you pointed out, it’s hard to stop in heavy traffic. If you didn’t stop, could that be considered hit-and-run? If I was driving and a motorcyclist hits my mirror, I would expect him to at least pull over, apologize for it, and go from there.
Gary856ParticipantOff season (now – late fall and winter) is when you can usually get the best bargain. Come spring and the beginning of a new riding reason there will be more buyers and the prices will go up.
All Ninja 250 in the US, including the redesigned version on 2008, uses carburetors.
Gary856ParticipantVulcan 500 is reviewed in the “Motorcycle Reviews” section of this site. See the “Motorcycle Reviews” tab at the top of this page? Click on that, and scroll down until you see the Vulcan 500 review. Below is the direct link:
Gary856ParticipantNot sure if this is the same … I recently changed oil on one of my bikes and the oil got on the header (pipes) when I unscrewed the oil filter. I wiped it off as much as I could, but there was still a film of oil left on the header. When I started the bike after the oil change, as the bike warmed up some smoke came out from the engine area up to the dash area, and the smoke looked pretty dramatic in the headlight as I back the bike out of my garage, but soon dissipated. The smoke didn’t have a strong odor. The same thing happened again the next day when I started the bike. In all it took about 3 rides before I stop seeing the smoke coming out from the engine area at start up; I think the oil film finally evaporated completely.
Gary856ParticipantI’ve worn a Shoei RF-1000 size XL for 11 months. It’s size didn’t seem to change much before/after break-in.
I wear a bandana under the helmet to: a) keep the hair somewhat neat, b) avoid sweating up the helmet liner. The bandana makes the fit just slightly tighter. When it’s cold enough to wear both the bandana and a thin cotton ninja hoody over it, the fit gets a little tighter still but still ok.
Gary856ParticipantWhen I first started riding I liked riding late at night, say after 10 pm, around my neighborhood streets. There was very little traffic to deal with at those late hours.
When I was ready to go a little faster and farther, I liked riding on expressways where the oncoming traffic is separated by center islands/dividers. I could ride at a comfortable speed (40-60 mph) for a long block and not worry about cross traffic until the next intersection.
Gary856ParticipantProfessional reviewers ride the bikes to the limit of their capabilities so they can tell you which bike is better when pushed to the limits. I ride a brisk (to me) but conservative pace on streets that’s well below the capability of either bike, and at that level the two bikes’ handling and braking have a very similar feel.
I don’t know how a out-of-adjustment valve feels like. I think it would go out of spec so gradually so an average person would not detect it by feel. Also not sure if it’s only a problem only at the upper rpm range, but I thought I read somewhere when it’s grossly out of adjustment the valve can get “burned”. I have to do some research on gstwin.com on this. When buying a used bike I would just ask the seller about the maintenance history. Ask some questions and you’d get a feel if the seller is a straight player or playing games. The guy I bought my GS from did valve adjustments himself and kept notes of the measurements.
Visually the GS is lower than the SV. I just went out to my garage to measure the seat heights. I placed a level on top of the seats to make sure I was measuring to the right height. With no weight on the bikes, the GS’s seat height (at the lowest point) is 30 in, and the SV’s seat height is 31.5 in. I’m 6′ w/ 32″ inseam. When I sit on them, I can flat-foot both bikes, but my knees are bent more on the GS, and on the SV my legs are almost straight.
I don’t want to mislead anybody into thinking I’m saying these two bikes feel almost the same “overall”. They’re not. The GS, being an older design and air-cooled, feels almost crude in comparison to the SV. The SV, with liquid cooling and fuel injection, feels much more grown up and polished. It’s just that I paid $1750 for the GS and $3900 for the SV, and the big price difference affects my frame of reference when judging these two bikes against each other. The SV is a better bike overall, but bang/fun-for-the-buck-wise, I feel the GS is ahead.
Gary856Participant1) How does the gs500 compare to the sv650 in handling, both at speed (like freeway) and in cornering?
I’d say they handle about the same, except the GS is about 2 inches lower, which feels more compact and more nimble to me. The seat and the front end of the SV are noticeable taller.
2) Braking, the gs500 comes with a single front disc. Is the sv’s dual front disc. outright superior?
Don’t feel much difference in normal use. No problem with either. I’m normally very gentle with braking so I really don’t come close to using the full capability of the brakes often. Did a few panic braking practices but not enough.
3) Maintence of air cooled engine vs water cooled? Are the costs about the same? The gs appear to be more simplistic but it’s maintence intervals for valve adjustments appear to come more often? Is this a hassle or a non-issue?
I didn’t like the GS’s very short valve clearance inspection/adjustment intervals – only 3k miles per the manual. Going to a shop for a valve adjustment would cost close to $200 per visit. But on gstwin.com I’ve read people say that the valve clearance tends to stabilize after a while so you don’t have to follow the 3k intervals strictly. Many GS owners seem to DIY w/ valve adjustment; that is a little daunting, but I’m curious enough to want to give it a shot.
4) Is the power difference dramatic, like “OMG!” Or is it more like, “OH! That feels good!”
The power difference is significant and immediately obvious. The GS feels like a peppy 4-cylinder car. The SV feels like a muscle car. If you could have only one bike, I can see most people choosing the SV over the GS based on power alone. However, when the road gets technical (narrow and twisty), the much softer power delivery of the GS becomes an advantage and allows a bigger margin of error. The much stronger and taller/bigger SV feels like it’s just one small throttle mistake away from disaster on a very technical road. On those roads I can ride the GS harder, faster, feel more in control and have more fun.
I’ve averaged 55.7 mpg on the GS over 4,800 miles, 50.7 mpg on the SV over 1,300 miles.
Gary856ParticipantI’ve always had short hair and my ears do often become folded when I put on the helmet. I just wiggle the helmet a little, or stick my finger in there to unfold my ears. It’s never been a big deal to me.
Gary856ParticipantI don’t often see people include European bikes in the “beginner’s bike” discussion. I assume it’s cost and reliability related.
In terms of power and weight, my feeling is on normal city streets and freeways (wide and fairly straight), anybody can ride any bike, even a fairly new beginner can handle a heavy and powerful bike just fine. However, the heavy and/or powerful “advanced bikes” become difficult to handle for beginners when the road gets technical (tight and twisty). In other words, how the Bonneville works for a beginner depends on how and where you intend to ride it.
Gary856ParticipantI had an “interesting” experience with uphill start.
I bought my GS500 before I knew how to operate a motorcycle. The seller rode it to my garage and parked it there. The evening after I finished my MSF class (no M1 yet, and no riding gear other than the helmet, gloves and hiking boots), I started my GS for the first time and went for a ride around my neighborhood streets in the dark. After a while I decided to go up this small hill not far from my house. The hill was perhaps 400 feet high, with a county communications facility (bunch of antennas) on the top and a good view. The road going up was fairly steep; on a mountain bike I had to be in the lowest gear and strain to ride up that hill. I thought that first gear would be spinning the engine too high, so I decided to charge up the hill in second. That worked well until the first turn, which happened to be the steepest section and the sharpest turn (more than 90 degrees), so I had to slow down and down shift. I stalled the bike right there. Not panicking yet, I held the bike with both brakes, started the engine, let out the clutch and stalled it again. Tried it again, more gas, letting out the clutch quicker, stalled again. I started to worry. Tried it 3 or 4 more times, still couldn’t get it going. The headlight was getting dimmer, the battery was getting weaker, and I really began to worry. Being in the steepest section, I dared not let go of the brakes, and couldn’t put the kickstand down and get off, so I was stuck there in the dark, with a weakening battery, fearful of dropping the bike on my very first ride. I didn’t know what to do, so I stayed like that for a few minutes, and then finally decided to try duckwalk backwards down the hill while dragging on the front brake. That worked, and good thing I could flatfoot on this bike comfortably. When I finally reached a driveway on the right side of the road, I back into the driveway carefully, started the engine, turned left and rode downhill.
I thought about this problem for a few days. I even mentioned this to a friend who’s been riding for 20+ years. It must have been so instinctive and natural for him because he had no clue what my problem was with uphill start. A few days later it came to me – I was stalling because I was letting out the clutch too quickly; my logic (false) of letting out the clutch quickly was to get the power to the wheel and get moving quickly so I wouldn’t slide backward down the hill. The magic words were “the friction zone”. The correct technique was to stay in the friction zone, throttle up and get the bike moving slowly without bogging and stalling the engine, before letting out the clutch all the way. Once I realized that, and with a little practice on my slightly inclined driveway, uphill start was no problem.
Sounds simple if you knew this ahead of time, and I knew how to do this in a stick-shift car. But being out riding for the very first time, I was just overwhelmed on that hill and couldn’t think this through. If you just read about a situation ahead of time, then you’re better equipped to deal with it when you actually encounter it.
I’m curious how others learned to do uphill starts. Did someone explain or show it to you, did you “just know” on your own, or did you have to figure it out the hard way like I did?
Gary856ParticipantOK, eternal, I stayed up until almost 2 am to write the semi-nonsense I wrote (the physics/mechanics were not fully correct; I think I messed up by discounting the tire’s “coning” effect in a turn you mentioned, and I didn’t/couldn’t explain the steering geometry involved). I really shouldn’t have written what I did, because half truth like that (on the physics/mechanics part) only serves to confuse people. If anybody is really interested in the physics of this, read the following from James Davis on what’s happening during counter-steering (which talks about the tire “coning” thing):
http://www.msgroup.org/Tip.aspx?Num=048&Set=
A lot of this stuff is counter-intuitive and can make one’s head spin. When I first read them, I spent days thinking about it, finally put it all together and felt it make sense, but now, months later, I half-way forgot why again. Understands the physics satisfies the intellectual curiosity, but by and large it’s not necessary to ride the motorcycle.
Anyway, let’s not gunk up this thread with too much physics discussions. I’d like to get back on topic – share your experience on learning to ride. Thanks.
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