Other Stuff > Misc / Open
Whats the crappest bike you've ever owned and why?
MCTID:
Reading these posts made me chuckle......I must have had a charmed life cos none of the many bikes I have owned have left me with scars like those mentioned........but ALL my Hondas have been brilliant, especially the 1979 CX500 I bought as an everyday work hack (with massive Krauser panniers and Top Box for all my TA kit) which NEVER let me down in two years with minimal maintenance - as nothing ever went wrong with it......not even a blown bulb !
The beautiful looking pimento red Triumph Stag was another story though ! If I was ever to strangle a vehicle and bury it in the woods or set it ablaze, that would have been the one !
What never fails to amuse me though is reading the Test Reports on a £20K or £25K new bike....'Innovative, refreshing, interesting concept' all describing characteristics which two or three years later, the same Journos and the same Magazines will describe as 'trying, expensive to repair, difficult to access, not to be purchased by inexperienced riders, only to be taken on if you have a wallet full of £50 notes - and a large wallet at that' etc etc.
These 'experts' always fail to ask the simplest questions of the manufacturers like 'How can you expect potential buyers to buy this bike when 16" tyres in this speed rating are not yet commercially available or affordable' ? or 'How can you justify the fact that at the 10,000 mile service, it will take a Dealer 8 hours to replace the OHC belt because the engine needs to be removed to undo one bolt which is inaccessible with the engine in place, at a cost of nearly a thousand pounds in labour charges' ? or lastly, 'Why have you opted for using an Air Filter Box which needs three pairs of hands to reinstall it after removal - just to adjust the tick over' ? I did manage to get some 'free' parts from Kawasaki when I complained that the front indicator on my new ZXR1200S which needed replacing due to knocking it against a car park bollard also necessitated a new half fairing, new decals, and a complete respray all because some dopey Designer had chosen to mount the indicator on the fairing rather than a stalk ! But that's another story.
To answer some of the dark and dismal tales of this thread, if only the Journos were to 'tell it like it is' and hold the Manufacturers to account, maybe we would get better products ! LOL.
cooleronthecoast:
You raise some very good points there mate. My Tuono (modern) V4 has a major service every 12,000 miles which includes valve clearance checks/shimming as required etc. It can cost £6 -800 at a main dealer. I love the bike though and many owners with good spanner knowledge tell me I could probably do it myself. What happened with the Stag? They were prone to cylinder heads overheating and warping if I recall correctly.
SteveD CB500K0:
--- Quote from: MCTID on April 10, 2020, 12:50:34 PM ---... if only the Journos were to 'tell it like it is' and hold the Manufacturers to account, maybe we would get better products !
--- End quote ---
A good point and one made recently by an aspiring motorcycling journalist friend of mine.
You can read his take on “Is motorcycling journalism broken?†here: https://www.tvam.org/is-motorcycle-journalism-broken/
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
mickwinf:
my first proper bike a royal enfield crusader purchased for i think £30. To be fair it was old and i had zero mechanical knowledge, i had some fun on it until i bought my 250k4. When i sold it i made a profit despite it breaking down on the test run, the lad had pushed it back, but when he saw the queue of prospective buyers on my driveway he bought it anyway!
cooleronthecoast:
Just to stick another nail in the CJ Hondas coffin, I wonder what CJ actually stood for? Crap Job perhaps! ;-)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version