[Gary856]

What kind of bikes have you had before? What kind of terrain will you be riding on? I find it a little strange that you said you were experienced with carrying passengers on a bike, yet not know if a 250cc would have enough power.

For an experienced rider wanting a cruiser, I’d say go with a 650, at least, even without a passenger. There are a lot of people who think a 650 cruiser is too small to carry a passenger comfortably over long distance.

[Gary856]

With seats, my experience and my feeling are that people just needs to have enough seat time to condition their bottoms. When I started riding on a GS500, my bottom got pretty sore for a day after riding 3-4 hours; then I got used to it and much longer rides were fine. When I got the SV650, my bottom would get sore within 1/2 hr, and I thought its seat was awful; but, soon, I got used to it. Now, on the DRZ, which everyone seems to complain about its seat being narrow, hard, like a piece of 2 x 4 (it’s not, it’s actually pretty cushy), I have no problem with it even after 6 hours of riding, and wonder what all the fuss is about.

Some mirrors are better than others. I just move around to get a better angle for what I want to see – move the elbows in or move the head out to see behind, move forward and to the opposite side to check the side, sit up, bend down, turn the head; you get the picture.

[Gary856]

About 35% freeway at 75-80 mph, 10% city streets, 55% country and hilly roads.

GS500 – 54.4 mpg over 7,127 miles.
YZF600R – 48.4 mpg over 3,797 miles.
SV650 – 50.8 mpg over 2,882 miles.
DRZ-400sm – 63.1 mpg over 753 miles. (Not much freeway on this one.)

[Gary856]

Braking practice is one thing, but when you add wet road and an emergency vehicle cutting into your path unexpectedly, I can see myself locking up the rear like that too. I love riding in the rain, so I need to add panic braking in the wet practice ASAP. I think panic braking practices need to be done often enough (at least once a week) or you’d loose the muscle memory.

10 days ago I locked up my rear brake going down a steep hill… 6 hours into my Saturday ride in the hills, I decided to check out a new road (Black Rd) which I haven’t ridden, on the way back. When I got to the intersection, there was a car facing me, at the stop sign, waiting to turn right on Black Rd. Not wanting to get behind that car, I turned left in front of it, and headed down Black. It was around 7:40pm, getting dark and hard to see in the twilight. I was going a little fast, wanting to stay ahead of the car, wanting to go home, feeling confident of the DRZ, but also feeling tired from being out about 6 hours by then. Black Road turned out to be quite steep, and I wasn’t riding it too well (w/ the semi-darkness and fatigue). On a steep decent, I saw a tight left hand corner coming up, and lightly applied both front and rear brakes. I felt the rear started to skid, and skid, and skid, but directional stability was still good, with just a tiny bit of slow wiggle, and felt quite controllable. I was still on the front brake and slowing down gradually, thinking, “let’s see how this skid ends”. I finally came to a controlled stop, on the shoulder at the outside bend of the turn, a few feet from a power line pole. That woke me up. Of course, when shit like this happened, I turned off the bike, parked it, to reset my brain. I walked back to check the length of the skid mark – 40 paces -> 80 ft! I touched and felt the pavement; instead of feeling rough and gritty w/ embedded pebbles, it felt smooth and glassy, as if they put a layer of sealant to smooth out the pebbles. Certainly it was a braking error on my part, but that wasn’t the best pavement for traction in a steep downhill. It wouldn’t be fun in the rain…

Before heading downhill on Black Rd, I went from a very tight road (5-30 mph), to a twisty road w/ sweepers (30-55 mph), to an even straighter road w/ high speed sweepers (45-60 mph), so I was riding progressively faster. When I turned onto Black Rd, which was very tight and steep, and the daylight was fading, immediately it didn’t feel right, but my brain was still stuck in the go-fast mode and ignored all the warning signs. That was a major mental failure.

[Gary856]

2009 was the last year of production for the naked SV650. The Gladius is the replacement for the naked SV, but SV owners generally don’t consider it to be the “same” – looks are very different, and parts aren’t interchangeable. They’re around 430 lbs wet – significantly lower than 500 lbs.

The faired version of SV650 (“S” model”) is still being made, I think.

[Gary856]

More and more I realize things are never one-size-fits-all. Nowadays when I see new riders ask about the type of first bike and the first upgrade bike, I’m unsure what to say, because there are endless different individual circumstances.

Back to the discussion of crashing. Yes, crashes are avoidable, but the plain fact is many new riders will crash hard early in their riding career, and some won’t. There are a lot an individual can do to reduce the risks, but it’s also unfortunate that many won’t take the necessary steps to gain the necessary (way beyond just the basics) riding skills. In addition to the physical skills, many won’t have the maturity and self-control to avoid riding over their skill levels; I’m guilty of this. So again, it comes down to the individuals.

[Gary856]

Great advice from Munch – treat your second bike like it is your first bike, like you’re learning to ride for the first time again.

It’s natural to want to expand your horizons. Only you can tell if you’re ready. My first bike was an easy to ride GS500. Six months later, I bought my second bike – YZF600R, a sportbike, which turned out to be more difficult to ride than I expected. Building on top of what I learned on the GS500, I had to learn many new techniques to ride the YZF600R well. But that was exactly what I wanted – a new challenge, and new things to learn.

[Gary856]

Perforated leather jacket/pants have a bunch of tiny pin holes – if you hold it up against the light you can see light thru them. They allow a surprising amount of air movement when you’re moving. If you want leather jacket in warm weather, perhaps get a white one to reflect the heat in direct sunlight.

If it’s 90 deg or above, or muggy like in Florida, “mesh” textile jacket and pants really makes a big difference. “Mesh” means a much looser weave (bigger holes) than standard textile material, sacraficing abrasion protection, but still have paddings in elbows/shoulders/knees, and is much cooler. It almost feels like you’re wearing nothing in terms of cooling.

For boots, decide if you want water-proof (to deal with summer downpours but hotter), or ones with ventillation (cooler but may get your feet wet in the rain).

By 3-wheelers I assume you mean 3-wheel ATVs. Motorcycles have 2 wheels, which are very different in terms of steering and handling from 3-and-4-wheeled vehicles. I find bicycling experience, especially off-road mountain biking experience, very helpful when I started riding motorcycles, but it was still a steep learning curve to ride motorcycles well.

[Gary856]

1. A good starter bike is a used 250 or 500.

2. Neither the CBF600SA or the SV650, especially a new one, is a good starter bike. They’re great second bikes.

3. The inline-4 CBF and the v-twin SV will have different “characters”. To use car analogies, an inline-4 bike may feel like a high revving turbo, while a v-twin may feel like a lower revving V8. Which one feels better is a matter of personal preference.

[Gary856]

Here’s what I do:

If the chain looks dirty and grimy, I’d clean it first w/ WD-40. I’d spray WD-40 onto an old towel, then wrap the towel over the chain with one hand, while rotating the rear tire with the other hand to pull the chain thru the WD-40 soaked towel. After that, I’d switch to a clean towel to wipe off the WD-40.

For lube, I use Bel-Ray Super Clean Chain Lube. Just spray onto the chain and it leaves a waxy, white residue. I hold a piece of cardboard behind the chain to block the overspray. This lube doesn’t fling off and make a mess at all. I read that a lot of dirt riders use this lube because it doesn’t attract dirt and gum up.

The typical chain lube intervals I see is 600 miles, but that depends on your riding conditions – wet, dry, clean, dirty, short trips, long trips. I’m a little lazy so I tend to do it close to every 1,000 miles.

By the way, I have a SV650, but I’m itchy to check out a ’08 or newer Ninja 250. The Ninja looks like a very fun bike to ride.

[Gary856]

“edit: …Gary856 gave the better suggestion.”

Haha, that’s only because I don’t know jack about the mechanical stuff.

[Gary856]

Check out http://www.gstwin.com for GS500 specific technical questions.

[Gary856]

I have two different Frank Thomas jackets. The textile winter jacket was the “XTi” model that I compared against the Dainese Zen. I have a separate mesh jacket from Frank Thomas; this mesh jacket was the one I wore when I had my first low-side (40 mph) in May ’09, on a 90-100+ degree day, during a group ride; wasn’ the best jacket choice in a crash. What’s funny was during the pre-ride discussion that day, I looked around and saw lots of people wearing heavy leather suits, and thought they’d be sweating like pigs, while I chill in my mesh jacket. Well, I guess the joke was on me. haha.

The mesh jacket IS much cooler than anytying else on a very hot day. I don’t have problem wearing it because it still has shoulder and elbow padding, but I’d be extra conservative with it because it’s abrasion protection is not nearly as good as leather.

[Gary856]

I have a Frank Thomas XTi textile jacket and a Dainese Zen leather jacket (perforated). When stationary, with the liners taken out, they feel about the same – ok for a short time at 70-80 deg in the sun. When moving, the Dainese w/ the perforated leather seems a little cooler. When it’s above 90 deg, a mesh jacket feels much cooler, while offering less protection.

When it’s cold (that’s from mid-40s to 60 to me locally), the Frank Thomas XTi textile w/ the liner in is warmer than the Dainese Zen w/ the liner in.

Fit-wise, that depends on how each jacket is cut and the individual’s body proportions.

[Gary856]

Yes. Normal. But it doesn’t feel good.

My GS500 (110/70 front tire; 130/70 rear tire) would wiggle every time I crossed those longitudinal grooves on pavement. I’m used to the wiggle now, but crossing those grooves still makes me a little nervous about edge trap. The wiggle is less obvious on my SV650, and even less on my YZF-600R. After I changed the tires on the GS500 to Perilli Sports Demon, it seems to get better (less wiggle). I think tire construction (tread pattern, how stiff/soft the sidewall is, bias ply vs. radial) makes the biggest different whether it tends to track grooves on pavement, followed by how good the suspension is in soaking up (damping out) the wiggle. Tires with a continuous, unbroken center groove in the tread pattern tend to track grooves in pavement more than those with alternating tread pattern.

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