Engineering fails in the MC world.

What, exactly, is the problem here?

"It don't look right" seems to be the only answer as far as I can tell. As if the engineers or riders cared.

I mean I'm the first one to go and question everythig without bounds, nothing is sacred. But to actually declare a problem there needs to actually be a, you know, friggin problem! This is the ***** and moan society we live in today, caught on video right here.

Also reminds me of that time the Honda CR-V 'failed' a lab test that had no relevance to the real world.

Sure test everything and question everything but that doesn't mean you have to find problems everywhere you look. That's kind of the way the process of deductive inquiry works, 'inconclusive' is the most common result outside of professional settings, and often inside them too. But that doesn't make good YouTube videos.
 
No matter what, I would expect a little more travel room on that before it hit the bumper. I expect that's what the mechanically retarded dorks in the glossy mags praise as a "firm ride" all the while not understanding that they're bottoming out. Not something I would guess to be pleasant on a bumpy back road, but then I would have to ride it to find out for sure.
 
The initial compression of that bumper, where it's only compressing the tapered tip of it, will be soft.

If there were issues with the ride quality of this bike, they would have turned up by now. That doesn't seem to be the case.

I suspect that this is a contrived or imaginary problem, and is not really a problem, because it was designed to work just as what you're seeing.
 
Riceburner said:
I had an 85, so after the fix by Honda. Had it for over 70k kms.
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Mine was an '84. It was over 15 years old when I got it, so the mod was probably unnecessary, but when you're young and have money to burn. . . Unfortunately, I gave it to my brother-in-law, who gets lots of tickets, and eventually took it off the road. I should get it back off of him and see if its salvageable.
 
Well, it should be interesting to see hows this develops out there in the real world. An ST rider I know spent significant dollars on a Race Tech component install and then fine tuning by a specialty shop and his ST tires are always totally shredded with zero "chicken strips". He will be picking up his new 2018 GW Tour DCT shortly and I don't think it will take him too long to sort out how it handles stock and what, if anything, will need to be done to it so that it handles on par or better than his old ST.
 
Anti-dive front forks,16” front wheels, big hair and shoulder pads all come to mind when I think of engineering failures of the early eighties.
 
ReSTored said:
Well, it should be interesting to see hows this develops out there in the real world. An ST rider I know spent significant dollars on a Race Tech component install and then fine tuning by a specialty shop and his ST tires are always totally shredded with zero "chicken strips". He will be picking up his new 2018 GW Tour DCT shortly and I don't think it will take him too long to sort out how it handles stock and what, if anything, will need to be done to it so that it handles on par or better than his old ST.
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Keep us posted to your friends status.People in the USA are lining up to have their 2018 wings "traxxionized".I call total ******** on this.I have read three magazine road tests on the new wing and there has been nothing but praise for the handling.There will always be riders that want more out of there bikes than they were capable of from the factory.But that's asking the machine to do something it wasn't designed for.
 
Bobo said:
Anti-dive front forks,16” front wheels, big hair and shoulder pads all come to mind when I think of engineering failures of the early eighties.
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Anti-dive forks were absolutely not an engineering fail!
 
Wingboy said:
.............But that's asking the machine to do something it wasn't designed for..............
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ST riders have been waiting for Honda to introduce a new ST to replace/update the 1300, but that's probably never going to happen. Some are referring to the 2018 GW as the new ST1800, partly in jest I'm sure.

Other forums are comparing the new GW to the old GW and the existing ST1300 in terms of size and it's a bit surprising to see how similar the 2018GW is to the 1300.

http://www.st-owners.com/forums/showthread.php?162231-2018-st1800


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A more direct comparison of the 2018 GW and the ST is here.

http://www.st-owners.com/forums/showthread.php?162231-2018-st1800/page11

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I don't think anyone is happy that the 1300 was about $19,000 new and the new GW is well over $30,000.

I think with the suspension sorted out, if that is what needs to be done, that the new GW will hustle along pretty well for a bike its size and weight.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
Anti-dive forks were absolutely not an engineering fail!
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All that I'm aware of worked by switching to extremely high compression damping, resulting in no compliance when braking on rough surfaces. I had a bike with that. All the manufacturers went through this phase in the mid 1980s then gave this up and never did it again.
 
My 2001 wing had anti-dive.It was the first thing i changed on that bike.It was very easy to disable.The first time i experienced the slam from hitting a sharp bump while braking was with my wife on with me.She slapped my helmet and yelled at me.WTF was that?
 
On every bike I ever had with anti-dive it was adjustable. Damping rod forks are already bad at braking over bumps so at the settings I liked it was a non-issue. They gave up on it after cartridge forks became feasible for production bikes - which of course are MUCH better - but it annoyed me greatly for years that midrange bikes just had plain damping rod forks
 
TwistedKestrel said:
Anti-dive forks were absolutely not an engineering fail!
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All the guys i knew that were racing in the early eighties did not like them. Can't remember if they disabled them or got a bike that didn't have them.They just didnt work on a track like Shannonville which was pretty bumpy at the time.
 
biggest engineering fail I can remember is Suzuki investing heavily in the rotary (wankel) engine, as did Norton. Almost bankrupted Suzuki.
 
I can think of two that plagued me. The doo-hickey on KLRs -- 3 decades and this is still an OE issue.

Starters on early 80's Viragos. Took 10 years of hassle before I found a cure.
 
Bobo said:
All the guys i knew that were racing in the early eighties did not like them. Can't remember if they disabled them or got a bike that didn't have them.They just didnt work on a track like Shannonville which was pretty bumpy at the time.
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Kawasaki had two different designs before they gave up. Original Ninja 600 (1985) had anti-dive that was engaged by brake line pressure. When (not if) you had aftermarket brake lines made, you simply left it unconnected. Second Ninja 600 (1988 ) had anti-dive operated electrically by the front brake switch. Those could be unplugged - or you could simply pull the lighting fuse, since race bikes don't have lights anyhow, and have no need for the lighting circuit. When the ZX6R rolled out ... no more anti-dive.
 
Pretty sure this affects all KTM LC4 motors, definitely affected my SMC. They drilled the upper left exhaust threads through to the inside of the cylinder head. Amazingly, oil found it's way to the outside of the motor.

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Mad Mike said:
I can think of two that plagued me. The doo-hickey on KLRs -- 3 decades and this is still an OE issue.

Starters on early 80's Viragos. Took 10 years of hassle before I found a cure.
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Ah, I hadn't been going down that train of thought. I can think of a few:

-CBR600F4i CCT (fake news?)
-ZX11D #3 crank bearing oil starvation
-T595 Daytona: damn near everything (extra/useless wheel speed sensor, fuel tank disconnects, really bad initial EFI tuning, con rod bearing issue, something was weird with the forks but don't remember, enraging mixture of fasteners, melty spot on lower fairing)
 
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