The original bikes hark from an era where the bike was still a means of transport, today bikes are mostly about leisure. Therefore most modern design seems to be style led. I really rate an old Honda for the practicality, the brakes, particularly the front is a weakness, until you get used to it, but the issue is wet getting on the disk, not the stopping ability of the disk as such, even with a sidecar I was able to lock the front wheel, just trail the front brake on lightly in wet conditions to keep the disk a bit dry / warm. I do not know if drilling might inprove it, but onnmy bmws that suffered the same problem with stainless disks being a bit pants in the wet, bmw drilled the disks and apparently radial cracking could be an issue, though the honda disk is so heavy it might prove better able to survive when drilled. The best inprovement was however meant to be to fist pfm cast iron disks, but at the cost that cosmetically they looked horrid as surface rust appears rather easily. I found my bike to be extremely practical and easy to live with as a all year round form of transport in standard form, and found most changes I tried ended upmbeing reversed because the stock bike was better once you were riding in the wet the standard mudguards especially the bigger front one show their value as the wet isn't thrown onto you. Result was my bike ended up being fairly standard. One change I do like is a replica rear mudguard in grp, it doesn't rot like the standard one and makes cleaning a bit easyer. There aint a whole lot on these bikes that doesn't preform a function. One other tweak I liked from standard was the proper k&n filter that retained the original phlenem chamber and sat nicely protected in the stock positionon my 500/4 it was so discrete I never realised it was there until I lifted the tool tray to put in a new filter and realisd it was different. A totally different animal to the individual pods, it genuinely did liberate a few horses as I found when reverting to stock (sort of I wanted k3 carbs for the better mpg so swapped the whole assembly from a scrapper bike), I suspect it required re jetting so will be reverting the whole lot, carbs and all to what it came with on my bike. The reason in my opinion that this k&n filter worked better was firstly it was setup by someone who knew what they were doing, and it was well protected from the weather by sidepanells and battery and seat and tool tray. With individual filters they sit where the elements can get at them. One can of easy start to get it running on a snowy day saw those things retired to the spares attic.
