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Heretic

Discussion in 'Other Bikes' started by gliddofglood, Jun 3, 2019.

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  1. Your grindr picture on the side may have been a bit much though :D
     
  2. That never occurred to me because I have never used grindr...

    Apparently, if you publish a book, people want to see your mug. Before I was (still am) happy to be anonymous. I don't do selfies.
     
  3. why have you put a pic of your self in your avatar?
     
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  4. Good write up, you seem well happy with your new bike - less so with the Trident inspired Spluttering Sofa! I like my Monster for the same reasons you like your Trumpet. The engine on my Monster is modded to just under 100bhp too so its probably similar to ride, though of course theres no electronic goodies and less torque. Enjoy.
     
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  5. Yes, the Spluttering Sofa doesn't really do it for me, although all those Hinkley triple motors are fab. It's a weird thing to say, but this retro bike is really showing it's age. It's far too retro for its own good. So I have understood that we want retro, but not too much. The Speed Twin is bang on the the money here.
     
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  6. Good review and thanks for sharing.
    Really like the look of the Speed Twin and as you and others have said that around 100bhp is enough for road riding. Last few years I've been on 899 Panigale then had 2 x Tuono Factory, while I'm far from getting the full potential from these in road riding, they really have been great fun but thinking maybe I'd miss that excitement if I went to a lesser powered bike.
    Keep thinking about a change of bike and the Speed Twin so perhaps a trip to Triumph dealer and a long test ride is in order.
     
    #68 FellZebra, Jun 27, 2019
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2019
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  7. Yes, it's a different vibe from having full-on power, but frankly, when you don't have a fairing, having massively powerful bikes seems a little pointless to me as it's the air resistance that sort of decides how you ride them.

    The Speed Twin reminds me a bit of my 907ie which I loved. How many horses in that? 80 odd? Being a 2-valver it was a little breathless at the top end, but for most of the time it was great on the road. You just close the throttle at the approach to the corner, get the massive engine braking, then bang it open again when you hit the apex and let the torque whoosh you out. Makes for a very satisfying and quite relaxing ride.

    I think how good my 851 was on the road, and that never made 100 bhp. The 916 was measured at 108 at the wheel (it was just a Biposto). I can't say that there really has been much correlation between the power of my bikes and the fun I have had from owning and riding them.
     
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  8. I haven't been trying to spread my heresy, but equally, it is interesting to try other bikes from time to time. I have tried many over the years and two cylinders has always been my favourite engine configuration. A parallel twin just sounded stupid for years, compared to the advantages of a V and BMW's opposed pistons may make engineering sense but they look grim. Also BMWs are designed for Übermenschen and you have to be 6 foot 4 or the thing feels like a boat.

    How Triumph have managed to create a huge parallel twin that is so smooth and easy to ride in town is astonishing. No vibes at all. I assume it has big balancer shafts and a 180° firing order, but I should check (as if it really makes any difference to me). The Speed Twin is also physically very small. It feels like a Ducati in that respect.
     
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  9. Massive bikes are heavy & defeat the object to me in many ways.
     
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  10. Hard to know where to put this post. Does it go in Other Bikes? Or in the Biking Mojo thread? Whatever, I’ll just put it here.

    I took the Donald Trumpet to the Alps yesterday – a 300 mile round trip, which is a longer day’s riding than anything I have done in the past years. Also, the Alps, you understand, isn’t just a comfy cruise. It’s bends aplenty, sheer drops if it goes wrong, hairpins and somewhat variable road surfaces. If you wanted to put a bike through its paces, you could do worse than visit the high passes.

    The only downside to the ride yesterday was that it was well in excess of 30°C and that is at least 10°C hotter than you’d like it for getting trussed up in the Batman suit. It’s been about 32 to 35 or more for over a week now – far too hot to really do anything outside. So long as you were on the move, things weren’t too bad, but the moment you stopped, they quickly became very uncomfortable. At one roadwork traffic light just outside of Andermatt, I waited in the searing heat as literally about 100 cars came through. It must have been well over 5 minutes. Luckily, I had turned the motor off or the bike might have just exploded. I still don’t think that there is a temp gauge on the bike, either for the motor nor the ambient temperature, so you don’t know how miserable the engine is, nor exactly the measured reason for the steam coming out of your ears. This explains the lack of photos; I just couldn’t be bothered to stop to take them. To be fair, that’s not just a heat thing. I almost can never be bothered to stop for photos; if I’m riding, I’m riding. This explains why I have so few photos of all the places I’ve been on a bike.

    Picture the scenes: There are white, rushing mountain torrents hurtling to the valley floor, literally thousands of bikes (makes you think of the TT or Bol d’Or), Sunday cars like flocks of Porsches or old Monte Carlo rally participants, spectacular scenery, vertiginous mountain peaks, forests of fir and larch and plenty of rock that you want to avoid getting to know on a first name basis. People with a fear of heights need not apply.

    I kicked off with a scoot along to the lower Alps which takes you through absurd picture-box Swiss countryside, all chalets and clonking cows in fields and boxes of geraniums. For those who have never seen Switzerland in the summer, it is like every cliché you could imagine, everywhere you look. Then you get into the spirit of the thing with the Jaunpass, a paltry 1500m high. The Trumpet was superb: plenty of brakes and the monster torque sling-shotting you out of corners.

    After you come down from the Jaun, you go through the Simmental valley which winds from village to village of wooden houses. Here the more upright riding position makes sense as the villages are less purgatory on the wrists than a sportsbike. It is advisable and polite to rumble through the villages on the speed limit. The end part of the valley follows a torrent through a wooded glen. It has a race-track road-surface and corner after corner. It comes out at Lake Thun. If you think of Interlaken, the town lies between two lakes, Lake Thun and Lake Brienz. The road to the Alpine passes follows the southern shore. It’s a frustrating road in that it’s wide but single carriageway, no overtaking and an Armco separation, so you just have to bumble along it at 50 mph as that’s the speed limit and you won’t be able to overtake the traffic in front. As you trundle along, stickily, you can look at all the people having fun on paddleboards on the lake in their swimsuits. Your choice of Sunday pursuit is starting to look quite stupid.

    Eventually, you leave the lake behind and go to Meieringen. I stopped off for a coffee ice-cream and half a litre of mineral water at a shaded café and listened to the end of the England innings vs. India. But eventually, there was nothing for it but to put the leather back on and head for the real passes. There are 3 passes here, in the shape of a diamond, the Susten, the Furka and the Grimsel. If you want to do all three, you’ll be back where you started from, so I elected to do the Susten and the Furka. The Grimsel is perhaps the most fun. From memory it kicks off with a lot of superbly surfaced fast sweepers that are just nirvana on a Ducati. Sadly, this is a pretty good place to put a speed trap, so I figured that it was probably the best pass to avoid. The Sustenpass takes you to Andermatt, and you can head out from there on to the Furka. When you come down from the Furka, you either tackle the Grimsel and go home rather as you came, or you head down the entire Rhone valley to Lake Geneva.

    The Susten is superb and culminates at 2224m, so it’s high. Bikers tend to wave at each other, but as there are so many, it’s more prudent not to wave back unless you want to disappear over the side of the mountain. I reserve the waving for the quieter bits of the journey or when you are stuck behind cars. What you don’t really want to do is to be looking at waving bikers as you approach a hairpin which is only fenced off from the sheer drop by a few concrete bits of Toblerone which might stop a car, but a bike can easily slip between them…

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    Down off the Susten (didn’t bother stopping at the top. It might have been 2224m and noticeably cooler than on the valley floor, but it was still well toasty), I bypassed Andermatt but not before being grateful that there wasn’t a traffic jam in the sort of underpass that leads up to it. I’ve been stuck in one of those on a hot day on the 999 in the past and I thought it was going to melt or blow up. The Furka has a very bumpy road surface and signposts tell you it isn’t going to get any better for the next 12 kms. I have decided that the Donald Trumpet is a modern bike in retro clothing. There is really nothing much retro about it, but if there was, I suppose it would be the twin shock set-up. Normally speaking, they are well up to the job, but on the Furka, you get to their limits. No doubt it will be possible at some stage to fit some hugely expensive, piggy-back Öhlins items. As it is, you have to have to calm down a bit unless you want to po-go over the edge of the cliff. The 999 with its stiff chassis and suspension wasn’t really a whole lot more suitable for this. The Furkapass tops out at 2431m. The Valais side of the pass is a lot more Trumpet friendly. Sadly, although the bike is yet to see rain, unless you count the fat drops that were just beginning to fall near Brig as a big storm started to brew, it now needs a clean as you can’t help riding through meltwater on the Furka – the residual snow still comes up to the road edge. It is also now bug-tastic.

    After the Susten, you end up in the very upper reaches of the Rhone Valley. The villages are nice enough, but by this stage, my bum was beginning to feel the effects of 6 or 7 hours in the saddle and I was keen to get home. It’s motorway for the final 60 miles or so – just as well.

    So what did I discover? Well, it was great to be out riding again in deepest Switzerland which is a staggeringly scenic place. The roads were pretty familiar and nothing much has changed. The Speed Twin is very well suited to the terrain, but then I always had plenty of fun on my various Ducatis. There is every sort of bike in the mountains and I assume that everyone is having a good time. I only saw one copper, but I was warned about his presence a few miles in advance – inevitably – so made sure there was nothing I could be reproached for. Was he booking people coming down the mountain? Maybe, but I didn’t see any sign of police activity further up. Perhaps he was just hanging around as a sort of deterrent. In any case, there didn’t seem to be any repressive measures in place. I shall definitely be doing some more Alpine biking in the coming weeks. It really is something that has to be experienced. I am also keen to get over to the far east of Switzerland which seems almost a different land – it’s wilder and more remote.

    In short, the mojo is back and biking in Switzerland is not dead. Just be a bit wise about where to do your speeding and how much of it.
     
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  11. Great - you can sample the Susten, Furka and Grimsel as often as you like @gliddofglood , but I only get one go every two or three years. Just great.
     
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