Why ride street bikes?

[Sawyer Rob]

I had a 70s Yamaha DT250 enduro. It was my first bike. :thumbsup:

I had a 360 that I bought new...

I hill climbed with it a bit, it had pretty good low end torque!

SR

 

[MossRoad]

On the positive side, the backup cameras offer quite an improvement. I first got one on my pickup, because I thought it would be nice when hooking up a trailer. I didn’t realize how useful I would find it every time I backed up.

My employer is putting them on all new work vans if they don't come stock with one. I really like them, too. So much safer, and way more convenient, especially in vans with no side windows. :thumbsup:

 

[MossRoad]

I had a 360 that I bought new...

I hill climbed with it a bit, it had pretty good low end torque!

SR

A friend of mine had one of those as well. It had way more power than my 250. :thumbsup:

The one thing I did not like about my 250 was that it seemed that anytime I'd take it off-road for even some mild trail riding, a turn signal or two, and many times the headlight, too, would stop working. I think the shock of off road would shake the filaments out of the bulbs. And that headlight bulb, at the time, was like $30. Car headlight bulbs were maybe $3.00. Ahh.... the good old days.

 

[cqaigy2]

I started out on a Honda 70, little orange one, what a rush that thing was at the age of 8. A Bultaco was next and then Indian was it from there on out..

Bultaco was a sweet trials bike! Rode with a guy that road a Bultaco to world trials champion back in the 70's, I don't know how to spell his last name but it was something like Googamali, first name Joe. He was a wizard, superb balance. Saw him more than once, standing on the seat of his Bultaco, sitting still, no kickstand, walk up onto his handle bars, then back to the back of the bike, plop down onto the seat, and get back up again, never losing balance or putting his foot down.

 

[Jstpssng]

Going through this list of fast bikes over the years, I was happy to see my little RD400 was faster in the 1/4 mile than a lot of stock bikes two and three times its displacement. :laughing:

It was always a joy to pull up to next to someone at a stoplight on a 1000cc+ bike and leave em lookin!

List of fastest production motorcycles by acceleration - Wikipedia

I can't imaging having a sub-10 second street bike out of the box, let alone highly modified. YIKES! That's fast.

I recently saw one listed on Hemmings or BAT, it was going for some pretty good money.
My first year in college a student had one of those which he parked right under my dorm window. He used to pi$$ a lot of people off the way that he racked the engine, the sound of the performance can he had would echo off the buildings. They were just coming out with synthetic oil, and didn't that two stroke stink. He flunked out after second semester, but we all groaned when the bike came back with another freshman.

 

[MossRoad]

I recently saw one listed on Hemmings or BAT, it was going for some pretty good money.
My first year in college a student had one of those which he parked right under my dorm window. He used to pi$$ a lot of people off the way that he racked the engine, the sound of the performance can he had would echo off the buildings. They were just coming out with synthetic oil, and didn't that two stroke stink. He flunked out after second semester, but we all groaned when the bike came back with another freshman.

I put expansion chambers on mine that also moved the exhaust from going down the sides, inboard of the foot pegs, to down under, then swept up and out. Besides the performance increases, it allowed way more lean to either side VS the factory exhaust, at the sacrifice of ground clearance. Many times I had crested a hill and gone airborne only to bottom out those pipes on the asphalt on the decent! They took quite the beating. :laughing:

 

[wagne223]

This one was the fault of the motorcycle operator:

I-4 reopens in Deltona after motorcyclist run over twice, killed

 

[mikester]

Why ride street bikes?

I gave up reading these anecdotes after page 3.

Bottom line is that when your number is up, your number is up. Congrats, you won the lottery.

You can just as easily die walking across the street. Or in the case of my neighbour accidentally slip fall down the stairs at 3am and almost died with major injuries. Or working on your tractor PTO with the engine running. Or getting cancer.

If you are going to ride/drive like an organ donor then you up your chances a little bit.

People won't quit high risk activities because of the high risk. Just take a look at all the smokers, texting/talking on the cell while driving drivers, guys doing stupid lifts on their little tractors... Unfortunately opinions are like a**h***s and everyone has one, and "common sense" is an oxymoron.

Statistics are a good tool to see what's already happened. Doesn't mean you should drive down the road looking only in your rear view mirror.

 

[Paddy]

I ride a bike, a bicycle that is. And 99% of the time it's on a rails to trails path. We just started riding again after a 40 year break from our childhood days. It started in China of all places. I know sounds crazy but, there are two reasons it works; 1) we stay in small towns and we beeline it to the rice fields. But the Chinese drive somewhat like we walk down crowded sidewalks, airport terminals. They drive all over the place but very slowly. Bikes, walkers, carts and cows are constantly merging and crossing the roads.

I think that is the issue we have in the USA, we have turned into very aggressive drivers. I'll give you examples; Parking lots, freeways and stopping on a dime at stop signs.

Parking lots have become so frustrating. I get it, they are busy, we all want to just get in and out ASAP. But when someone is backing out of a parking space, why do 90% of the people think "i can slip past if I gun it". This just makes the process much slower, now we are trained to creep back taking forever! I remember the days when we would see the back up lights and, we would flash our lights and let them quickly back out. Ah, the good ol' days.

Freeways have become zig zagging bumper cars. Passing on the right, cutting two lanes or more, passing on the entrance ramp before the solid white line is done. What really drives me crazy are the selfish drivers who find themselves in the left most lane and realize it's their exit but cut three lanes to "just make it". Really?? just go to the next exit.

Aggressive stopping at 4 way stop sign intersections. Do they really think I'm going to start through the intersection if they are doing 30 mph 20 feet from their stop sign?? I'll treat them as a car out of control and make sure they actually have working breaks! If they had just slowed enough for me to feel they were stopping I would have been long gone and out of their way. So it actually takes longer for them to clear the intersection.

All the examples are just showing predictable driving is safer and faster. One last story; I was in a big city in India, traffic was so crazy, cars on the sidewalks , no one paying attention to stop lights and such. I needed to cross the road. I stood there for 5 min trying to get my timing right. An old lady grabbed my arm and just started walking very slowly in to the traffic. The cars could see our speed and "anticipate" where we would be in 10 sec. We stayed constant and crossed quickly. Granted the cars were not going that fast.

I don't feel safe taking a car or even my Tahoe on the freeways in most big cities. So we will keep our "bikes" on the rails to trails, thank you.

 

[MossRoad]

The Italians are coming!!!

 

[3930dave]

Going through this list of fast bikes over the years, I was happy to see my little RD400 was faster in the 1/4 mile than a lot of stock bikes two and three times its displacement. :laughing:

It was always a joy to pull up to next to someone at a stoplight on a 1000cc+ bike and leave em lookin!

List of fastest production motorcycles by acceleration - Wikipedia

I can't imaging having a sub-10 second street bike out of the box, let alone highly modified. YIKES! That's fast.

Drove my friend's RD400 once, just took it easy, not being my bike...... not a beginners bike, you know how peaky they were - impressive with the right rider on it...... yeah, I liked those 2 strokes, good power for the day.

Friends had a Kaw H1, and H2. Any lesser of a rider would not have survived the H2 - he was a bit crazy, but seriously skilled on 2 wheels..... went on to street racing the litre Kaws after that.

And, that's the thing..... pretty much the easiest thing to do on 2 wheels is ride FAST. IMO, one of the best plans for survival is to learn to ride the wheels off a small displacement bike, refining your skills there completely, before moving on to something stupid fast.

If you've never seen it live, pretty cool to see a fast 250 rider (OK, not a 450# guy) on a twisty road - can typically outpace many/most riders with much bigger bikes, w/o even trying hard....

Rgds, D.

 

[MossRoad]

A guy I was lifeguarding with in the early 80's had a Kow Mach III H1 500 triple. It was pretty modified, and scared the bajeezers out of me. I was sitting on the back while he as doing 135 on a local road we liked to "try stuff" on. WEEEE!!! (no brains).

He knew I wanted to get rid of the enduro and get a street bike, and helped me find the 77 RD400. I was very impressed with it in stock form..... but we knew we could modify it for cheap and make it much more impressive. :laughing:

So, I started with boring it out just a bit, putting in different pistons to raise the compression a bit, ported it just a bit, put in different reed valves, removed the oil injection pump, put on much larger carbs, Specialist II expansion chambers, removed the air box and put on some high flowing K&N air filters, different clutch plates and springs, took two teeth off the front sprocket, got some lower handlebars, rear setback foot pegs, a fairing, and some wheelie bars for the dragstrip. Some nice Dunlop road racing tires for the street. I don't remember any of the specific part numbers, etc.... as it's been 30ish years. Most of the parts came from Specialist II. (they are still in business).

Stock it was supposed to turn low 14's in the quarter mile and had a published top speed of about 106.

I got it down to a pretty consistent sub 12's. A lot of 11:92 @ 119mph runs. A lot. I was really, really consistent. I'd dial in 11:91 and never break out when bracket racing and usually won the day. (whopping $15 first place and do $2-300 in damage for the day!!! :laughing

In that configuration, I was pushing some ungodly RPMs in 6th gear when going through the trap. When it was stock, I could rarely get it to red-line in 5th, and it would slow down in 6th. Taking the 2 teeth off the front sprocket dropped about 1 second off the 1/4 mile time and raised the top end speed. The wheelie bars shaved another good bit of time off, as you didn't have to worry about launching the front end off the ground.

About the only things left that I could have done were to get an air shifter, even more aggressive porting, and getting the crankshaft lightened, and a wider swingarm to allow for wider rear tire for better traction off the line.

I've seen a few sub-10 RD400s.... WOW!

Oh, I also weighed about 135# back then, had a 28" waist and was 6' tall! :laughing:

Today..... I'd bet the bike would groan if I sat on it!

 

[tractorshopper]

If you've never seen it live, pretty cool to see a fast 250 rider (OK, not a 450# guy) on a twisty road - can typically outpace many/most riders with much bigger bikes, w/o even trying hard....

Rgds, D.

That's been my experience. My oldest brother is a very experienced mountain road rider and better than me and better than most I know, but while riding with him on my dual-sport 250 in the mountains the one time since I got it, I can easily outpace him, where when we rode the same Honda Magna's back in the day, I could never keep up; not even close. That was the one wreck that I had that I was completely responsible for. I was trying to chase him up the mountain and came way too hot coming into a curve. He was already probably 300 yards in front of me in less than a 1/4 mile and I was trying to catch up.

But the Honda CRF 250L I have now (even with my knobbies) is so easy to push into the turns and it just goes wherever you want it to with very little effort. It's more than an equalizer. Only draw back is that my rear end struggles after 100 miles. But if I lead, I lose him without trying and if I follow, I'm often riding brakes to force myself to stay back.

 

[Industrial Toys]

Saw a rider yesterday, dressed in dark colors, with just some stupid white LED outline and no headlight on in daytime. Guess, this guy doesn't want to be seen.

 

[Jstpssng]

A guy I was lifeguarding with in the early 80's had a Kow Mach III H1 500 triple. It was pretty modified, and scared the bajeezers out of me. I was sitting on the back while he as doing 135 on a local road we liked to "try stuff" on. WEEEE!!! (no brains).

He knew I wanted to get rid of the enduro and get a street bike, and helped me find the 77 RD400. I was very impressed with it in stock form..... but we knew we could modify it for cheap and make it much more impressive. :laughing:

So, I started with boring it out just a bit, putting in different pistons to raise the compression a bit, ported it just a bit, put in different reed valves, removed the oil injection pump, put on much larger carbs, Specialist II expansion chambers, removed the air box and put on some high flowing K&N air filters, different clutch plates and springs, took two teeth off the front sprocket, got some lower handlebars, rear setback foot pegs, a fairing, and some wheelie bars for the dragstrip. Some nice Dunlop road racing tires for the street. I don't remember any of the specific part numbers, etc.... as it's been 30ish years. Most of the parts came from Specialist II. (they are still in business).

Stock it was supposed to turn low 14's in the quarter mile and had a published top speed of about 106.

I got it down to a pretty consistent sub 12's. A lot of 11:92 @ 119mph runs. A lot. I was really, really consistent. I'd dial in 11:91 and never break out when bracket racing and usually won the day. (whopping $15 first place and do $2-300 in damage for the day!!! :laughing

In that configuration, I was pushing some ungodly RPMs in 6th gear when going through the trap. When it was stock, I could rarely get it to red-line in 5th, and it would slow down in 6th. Taking the 2 teeth off the front sprocket dropped about 1 second off the 1/4 mile time and raised the top end speed. The wheelie bars shaved another good bit of time off, as you didn't have to worry about launching the front end off the ground.

About the only things left that I could have done were to get an air shifter, even more aggressive porting, and getting the crankshaft lightened, and a wider swingarm to allow for wider rear tire for better traction off the line.

I've seen a few sub-10 RD400s.... WOW!

Oh, I also weighed about 135# back then, had a 28" waist and was 6' tall! :laughing:

Today..... I'd bet the bike would groan if I sat on it!

A friend who was really into bikes went a similar route with his RD400- that thing would scream. I remember him pulling up beside me at a light the day after the races with the wheelie bar still on. When the light changed he was off like a shot.
I haven't seen him in decades, but the last I heard he was still working on bikes at the local Harley shop.
After 40+ years of wrenching on them he's the guy I would want to work on mine if I was a rider.

 

[MossRoad]

A friend who was really into bikes went a similar route with his RD400- that thing would scream. I remember him pulling up beside me at a light the day after the races with the wheelie bar still on. When the light changed he was off like a shot.
I haven't seen him in decades, but the last I heard he was still working on bikes at the local Harley shop.
After 40+ years of wrenching on them he's the guy I would want to work on mine if I was a rider.

I miss riding mine. I miss working on mine. However, when we had our first child in 1992, I wanted to be around a while and that bike was my Christine.

It sits in pieces in a storage shed. I'm scared to put it back together again.

 

[oosik]

I guess I should clarify. My bike is classified as Adventure touring. Verbiage sells more bikes - ???. 2017 BMW R1200GSA.



View attachment 570042


Me and the bike in downtown Benge, WA. Current population - 52. The bike is being patient - I am on a hinny break.

 

[MossRoad]

Nice looking machine... :thumbsup:

 

[oosik]

Thank you - Moss. Prior to 2017 I was an avid Harley rider - for about 27 years. Finally - in 2017 I woke up one day and thought - - - there has got to be more to riding than - blaaaaaaattttt. My Harley had turn-out straight exhausts. Now I ride the BMW - quiet as a mouse urinating on cotton. I can hear the wind - I can hear the cows MOOO as I drive past - I can hear the Meadow Larks - life is good.

 

[LouNY]

My current ride 2014 Ultra Limited, bone stock including the pipes, she just purrs along;

Previous rides, lot years lots of miles;