The philosophy is sound, however he picked the wrong motorcycle brand; he will never know what it's really like!!!

[gstallons]

These bikes are like today's cars . You could strip all the badging off all the 4 door cars and could not name three correctly . All the liter bike crotch rockets are the same. And unfortunately that is what sells , along with $3500 worth of space suits , good medical insurance along w long term disability if not funeral policy .  YES , they are fun but I can only operate it to about 10% of it's potential .

[LaGrasta]

I like this guy's videos, watched a few. I've always said, "ride a slow bike fast", it's much more fun. As for 100hp, that's fast! I've done 160mph on a RC51 years ago and ride over 100mph nearly every time I ride. Frankly though, even 50hp will get you where you need to go, with a smile on your face.

[activpop]

48 minutes ago, LaGrasta said:

I like this guy's videos, watched a few. 

I've seen a bunch of them too, and think he does a great job on them. There's the one where he went down avoiding a deer on one of his rides.  He and Griso got banged up pretty bad, but it could've been worse.

[audiomick]

13 hours ago, p6x said:

... when you have a Guzzi, you can't go riding a Kawasaki....

 

It worked well for about 10 years for me.

[p6x]

Well, as the saying goes, to each, his own...

I rode Japanese bikes until they stop making two strokes engines. Personally, the two strokes had something that four strokes never offered. But let us not go there, because two strokes are just a thing of the past, and if you never had one, then all the discussion would remain opaque.

If we go past the early Guzzi models, once they got that distinctive engine architecture, they never deviated from it. You will always know its a Guzzi because it has that powertrain look unmissable.

The same could have been said about BMW and their flat twin, but they have also added water to their wine.

Most of the other brands always were eclectic in what they chose to power their creations. Honda being the best example. I think they have just about built any possible engine architecture during the years, including a Guzzi copy in the CX.

I thought Ducati would have stuck to the L shape engines, with the desmodromic distribution, but this year, they have also started one with conventional distribution.

Yesterday, I looked at a Suzuki SV 650 on the one hand, and a Suzuki 9S on the other.

However, today, the engine architecture that prevails everywhere, is the vertical parallel twin. This powertrain is now everywhere, including on the Chinese brands. There are some exceptions; Indian and HD are still sticking to the past.

I don't know where we are heading, but I am going to keep with what I feel corresponds to what I think a motorcycle should be. I am most likely obsolete, but when I look at that Suzuki 9S, I see nothing that I wish I had.

Edited November 24 by p6x

[activpop]

Coincidentally, this appeared today.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12Bk2czNN7T/

 

[docc]

Finally got to watch the guy's video today before taking mySport out on a beautiful autumn day here.

I enjoyed reflecting on his philosophical take on motorcycling while slipping along the creeks and over the ridges.

[audiomick]

15 hours ago, p6x said:

... the two strokes had something that four strokes never offered...

Indeed. I only owned one, a Honda MVX 250. Sad story, actually: I helped my girlfriend at the time in choosing it. She only rode it for a couple of months before she had a really nasty accident. Someone turned across in front of here, and she suffered multiple fractures in the right leg, and a ruptured knee in the left, pretty much all of the ligaments on the knee.

Anyway, I got the bike, got a new frame for it, and rode it for a while. Nice, actually. What I would have really like to have had was a Kawasaki KR 250 S, but never could afford one. I also rode an NS 400 R a couple of times, an RD 250 (it made the rounds in my circle of friends, and proved indestructable), a brief ride on a Suzuki RGV 250, and one time a TZ 350 race bike on a track. The TZ was simply amazing.

So two-strokes have their charm, but are most likely a thing of the past.

 

As far as four-stroke motors go, obviously I like the Guzzi V-Twins, both the big-block and the small-block versions. Visceral, invigorating maschines. Lovely.

But, I still do like inline-four motors. I had a long and in-depth relationship with a 1976 Z 900 whilst I was still in Melbourne, and about 10 years of GTR 1000 here. Before that, 6 or 7 years with a Honda CBX 650 E that someone gave to me as a birthday present. A fundamentally boring motorcycle, actually, but the motor was really quite nice.

The Guzzi motors offer something that no-one else does (not even Ducati, despite the similarites...), but a Japanese in-line four can also be good. At least, if it is a Kawasaki. I've ridden some pretty boring Honda and Yamaha in-line fours too....

 

PS: I once rode a Triumph 750 Triple that a mate in Melbourne had for a while. One of the old ones that were created by adding a third cylinder to the Triumph vertical twin 500 motor. I think it was, essentially, a boat anchor, but it was really good fun to ride for that brief ride. A motor that really let you know it was there, even if it wasn't actually producing a great deal of useful power. I think that has something in common with the Guzzi motors. These days, they are not really anywhere near the ball game as far as power output goes. But the way they do that what they do is entrancing.

Edited November 25 by audiomick

[p6x]

6 hours ago, activpop said:

Coincidentally, this appeared today.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/12Bk2czNN7T/

 

Yeah, but this is the Moto Guzzi Owner's Group; these guys are already sold on anything Guzzi...

 

 

[activpop]

11 hours ago, p6x said:

Yeah, but this is the Moto Guzzi Owner's Group; these guys are already sold on anything Guzzi...

 

 

He just joined the group yesterday...after trading in his 900RS for his first Guzzi. 

[p6x]

50 minutes ago, activpop said:

He just joined the group yesterday...after trading in his 900RS for his first Guzzi. 

Awright! he is excused then....

incidentally, I left the Facebook Moto Guzzi Quota group a few days ago. I don't like the format, the restrictions; I thought I had finally found one possible way to use Facebook, but then navigating the way they want you to post, the contact photos which require the user to flip through them to see them all, the automatically hidden replies chosen arbitrarily, so you have to click to have all the answers, sometimes multiple times. Garbage!

I am better off it.

[HRC_V4]

Love my Guzzi's and Honda V4s, but it is a mental adjustment going back and forth between them.  People who think HP=fast just need to go ride an NSR250 or similar bike. Riding my buddy's on good mountain roads, I kept going into corners thinking I was fast, but upon exiting them, thinking to myself, heck, I could have carried another 10-15 mph.

[GuzziMoto]

I find that both smaller, lighter, better handling motorcycles and larger, more powerful, motorcycles are both fun. They are different, but I enjoy both. At least half of my motorcycles over my riding career have been smaller, lighter, better handling, motorcycles. But the other half have been larger motorcycles with more power. Then there is the aspect of what sort of power the larger motorcycles can have. Most of mine have been larger displacement twins, that have as much or more torque then horsepower. I have ridden large displacement fours with more horsepower then torque, but I have never actually owned one. But I have not owned one mainly because I don't think I am mature enough to ride one in a responsible manner and worry I would kill myself on something that fast. A larger displacement twin gives me a middle ground, a motorcycle that feels fast without really being obscenely fast. I do look at bikes like the V4 Tuono and think I want one when I grow up. But so far I haven't yet grown up sufficiently.

I might add, I have never thought "This is a good motorcycle, but it would be even better if it had less power". Whether it is a smaller, better handling, motorcycle or a larger displacement twin cylinder motorcycle, I have always found that more power is a good thing. Likely that is no longer true once you get to the level of some modern fours that make 200 hp or more. They probably would not be more fun with more power unless you were on a race track. But those motorcycles aside, more power is generally a good thing in my book. YMMV.

Edited November 27 by GuzziMoto

[audiomick]

11 hours ago, HRC_V4 said:

... I kept going into corners thinking I was fast, but upon exiting them, thinking to myself, heck, I could have carried another 10-15 mph.

I mentioned further up that I got to ride a TZ 350, a pure race bike on slicks. That was on a closed circuit, of course, and I had done a number of laps on my Z900 before I rode the Yamaha.

That was here:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/11692249#map=17/-37.216168/145.083636

The first time round going down the longer straight, I braked for the right-hander at the end of the straight where I had been braking on the Kawasaki, and actually accelerated again to get up to the curve. Even then, the bike could have no doubt got through the curve a good bit faster than I was able to ride it.

[Pressureangle]

Ah, 2 strokes.

I cut my teeth (and my lips on my teeth) on a Yamaha MX360 flat track racer, later a Bultaco Astro 250. I was much happier later on a Honda XL350 4 stroke. More to do with my talent than horsepower. 
I had a '75 Kawasaki 500 triple. Matched ports, expansion chambers, K&N shocks, dual discs. I rode the wheels off it. Rewarded me with a broken collarbone at about 40mph. 
Replaced the 500 engine with a 750 and found on the first ride  why the 750 frame was much longer. Insanity. I rode it maybe 300 miles and sold it to someone I didn't know who couldn't live without it. Never saw it or him again so he may have got his wish. 
Watching the old 500GP riders lament the 2 stroke days...I get it. Though they never disparage the new bikes or the riders on them, you can tell that they know in their hearts these kids couldn't keep up on those old bikes. Or what racing could be like with light 200hp electronically controlled 2-strokes.