Have come to the conclusion that the 620ie Monster is not the bike for me! If I am honest it's handling especially at low speeds I have never been comfortable with and it's a pain in the Butt on anything other that short rides as was made painfully obvious the other week when I rode it across the country to look at a project car a total trip of around 460km and it turned out to be a wated trip at that! The clutch master cyclinder also decided to give up and fail 200km from home so I rode it home with no clutch and interesting experience that. So will be looking at sports tourers and hope to view a 2001 Triumph Sprint ST 955i later this week another new learning curve as have never had anything to do with any Triumphs except the Meriden twins before. My Monster in the wild.
Each to their own, but I am interested in what you don’t like about the handling, as my view is quite the opposite.
I don't like the way it drops into turns at low speed! I am also not sure these Dunlop tyres suit it it seems very twitchy if you hit a small stone on the road and I used to like Dunlops .................... OK those were the TT100 Dunlops my Bonnie came fitted with them new back in 79 the Avon Roadrunner was also a good tyre before that on the smaller bikes like my Norton Jubilee 250cc it ran Avon SM (Safety Mileage) tyres. I am not one for "hanging off" a bike in turns/bends as for normal road riding just don't see the need for it and I do not pretend to be a racer.
I find the handling awesome on Louise's 620ie and possibly better than on my M900, however I do find it very small and quite cramped which I understand could be down to the lower seat it has. From your picture your seat looks very low and the bike might be improved by fitting one from the same year, larger cc ie bikes as they are taller.
Well I am not exactly tall being 5' 8" or there abouts and as I said for blatting about locally an spending not much over an hour in the saddle it's OK now I always wanted a Ducati almost buying a brand new 900SS back in 1979 and that is one thing that made me look at the Monsters when looking for a machine to get back into biking again and have to say that it has really met with my expectations although to be truthful I am not sure what I expected and just put it down to having not been on a bike for about 25 years. I looked at several Monsteres before buying this 620ie and they include a 600, 750 and a 900 but I only test rode the 600 around the owners apartment complex The blue/silver 600 had obviously been ropped and it took the guy over half an hour to get it to fire up it was only yhat I had travelled for nearly 4 hours to look at it and that is was the first one that I have looked ovver that I stayed around. The Orange 750 was in the same city and managed to look at that as well it started easily but had not been looked after at all and the dealer was not willing to lower the price even after I pointed out things it need to be replaced or fixed. Incidently he still has that bike for sale and has now dropped the price to what he wanted from me, The 900 was only 90 km away but was in sad state it started with not that much hassle despite being not run for a long time and the lady was willing to drop the price some but it needed a lot of work as did my 620ie. So now I am more back into riding again am looking for a bike more suited to touring we have some wonderful mountains just over an hour away from home but one must remember that the roads are not in the best of condition here in Bulgaria though they do seem to be trying to improve them much more so that they did only 5 years ago. Again last night was spent trolling through sales listings and for a change not looking for Triumph triples but at the various sports/tourers on offer nd have to say the Triumph Trophy and Sprint are about the best looking at least to my mind.
My ex had a Speed Triple (the pink one!) and I had an Aprilia Tuono 1000 at the same time and my main memory of the Triumph was great, linear power however man it was a heavy old beast.
Weight is always of some concern as I am not getting any younger after all! Now a friend back in Lincolnshire was always into Triumphs when I first got to know him he rode a T140D then after many years he shocked everyone by selling it and getting a big Virago cruiser he kept it for a few years then he sold that and bought a Speed Triple that was the first of the new Triumphs that I had been close to I had just sold my chop/streetfighter and given up riding due the arthritis on both knees the British weather was not good for them then sadly Pete married and his new wife did not approve of me! No idea as to what I had done it's not as if I was hanging round all the time as I was living back in Surrey at the time when I moved back the Lincolnshire to care for my father who had suffered another stroke I visited Pete and she made it clear that I was not welcome was not even invited in for a cuppa didn't think much of it at the time just that they might be busy it was not until I tried and called round again at a later date and they didn't even answer the door even though they could be heard inside that I realised that I was really not welcome so I didn't bother them again that was my sole experience with the Hinkley Triumphs so far. Have just checked and the chap who listed the Blue Sprint ST 955i ssort of local is actually on Viber and his name is also Peter the importance of Viber for me is that it translates text conversations which is good for me as I struggle with the Bulgarian language so hopefully I can send a text mesage later today (it's currently 01:40) and make arrangements to look at this bike. Another listing that I am considering is for a low mileage Trophy 900 and again the vendor is on Viber so will see if I can go look at that one too to compare them.
