Letters
LETTERS
20/20 REPORT
After watching ABC’s 20/20 report on the government’s mishandling of the Volkswagen Beetle (November 8). one has to wonder why anyone in the government would listen to Joan Claybrook when she discusses motorcycles!
David Cass Galesburg. 111.
A ROADRACER'S SUSPENSION BLUES
I just finished reading your test of the Yamaha XS1100 Special in the December 1979 issue. I think now it is time for me to speak. I am a real street bike enthusiast. I own four. Besides riding for pleasure on the street. I am also an avid roadracer.
Here is something that gripes me. All the bike manufacturers that make specials put all the really good stuff' on them and not on their regular bikes. I'm referring to suspension. Being a roadracer. I can truly use a tunable suspension. Yet if I want that I'm forced to buy apehangar bars, stepped seat, hog wheels and various other items that just don't fit me or my riding style. It seems like such a waste to put this nice suspension on a bike that most likely will
only be used for boulevard cruising. Frankly, to me it’s depressing. How about
you?
Clay Howard Glens Falls. NY
He agree and so does Yamaha: the better suspension w ill be on the standard model 1100 and 850for 1980.
HOW HONDA PICKS 'EM
I really must say that I thoroughly enjoyed your article on the NR500/SÍ1verstone and truthfully felt that it was the most pleasant piece of writing I have seen on this subject so far.
One point you raise in your article w hich I feel I can explain is that of rider selection. Knowing how difficult the development of the machine would be and the time that would be required before we could achieve track successes, the choice of rider had to take into account many other qualities other than just the ability to get the fastest lap times. To have had any rider suffering from the “prima donna” syndrome would quite frankly have been disastrous. What we needed were riders who together had experience which would embrace other aspects of road racing and w ith experience
of many types of machines and circuits. This had to be coupled with a sound engineering/technical background and genuine desire to operate inside a large team. For all these reasons we chose Katayama and Grant and I am still convinced that together they provide us with all of the experience and balance that we require at this stage. I hope that this information goes' some way to answering your questions.
Gerald Davison
Honda International Racing Co. Ltd.
Berkshire. England
THE DISCOUNT DILEMMA
Why should you pay $100 more for your next motorcycle? Why should you have to travel 30 miles or more to buy it when there's a dealer in your town? Maybe you shouldn’t; it all depends on your philosophe.
Suppose you have decided you want a particular bike and four dealers in your area sell it. Being a smart shopper, you will shop around to get the best deal. All four dealers are within $200 of each other. Fine. Now you visit them all a second time, armed with the other guy’s price and hag-> gle them down a little more. Three of them will sell you the bike for the same price, give or take 25 bucks, but one dealer is way out of line and wants $100 more than the low guy. So, you go back to the lowest price, count out your dollars, and arrange to pick up the bike next week.
Next week you arrive at the dealer saying “Where’s my bike?’’ Your friendly dealer hands you the keys and jerks his thumb, “over there . . . “ As you walk over to it, you notice it isn’t shining like it did in your visions of it sitting in your driveway. “It’s only cosmolene, it’ll come right offf when you wax it,” says the salesman.
So it’s not as clean as it should be; so what, you’ll be shining it anyway. After searching for the choke, you start it and ride off with a big smile. Two miles away, the tach stops. It’s only the cable coming off the engine, no sweat. Three miles away, you have to brake hard, tough to do with air in your lines. Four miles away, your new machine stalls and won’t start. The petcock was on reserve, and you find out how nice it is to push a 750. To make it simple, by the time you get home to show off your hardearned motorcycle, that magical firstday is ruined. Why pay $100 more? If you had, your new machine would probably have been set up properly, everything cleaned, tightened and adjusted. You would have known more about the bike before you left, probably had some gas, and would have enjoyed the day on your new bike.
Also, you would probably find the partsi for it in stock. When it was time to have it serviced, it would have been done promptly and properly.
Is that worth $100? It depends on your philosophy.
George Fallar
Mamaroneck, N.Y.*
SAFETY MEASURES
Congratulations on the stand you are taking regarding motorcycle safety. In this day of “we are right and they are wrong” it’s good to see that a few level heads are seeking the sensible middle ground where all sides can work together. No one person or approach has or is the only or best answer to motorcycle safety.
There is no such thing as being completely safe in anything we do. It’s a matter of degree or being adequately safe and even this measure is open to opinion.
Being adequately safe on a motorcycle depends on a host of conditions: the mechanical integrity of the machine, the design of the highways, rules and regulations pertaining to traffic control and perhaps above all else, the judgement and ability of the rider as well as others sharing the roads. All these conditions need improvement if we are going to have improved motorcycle safety and no one group can do> it alone. Only through cooperation and an unbiased attitude can progress be made.
Maclean Brown Ivyland. Pa.
Just want to tell you guys: Helmets work. On Oct. 1, 1979 I came off my Honda 750 at about 60 mph. I'd have been dead or a vegetable but my helmet was destroyed not my gourd-plus a few bruises. I made it.
Charles Richroath, Deputy Sheriff Prince Georges Co.. Md.
85 MPH "DO-GOODER"
I am seriously wondering who in the bureaucracy so ardently took nice and valuable time and wasted taxpayers' money to have the cycle manufacturers install 85 mph speedometers? As if the 55 mph speed limit wasn't enough.
It had to be a do-gooder or a group of rascals who are bent on slowly but even tually putting us in their control.
This 85 mph gimmick that has been injected as a sort of psychologically ob vious move to quiet the motoring public also has been motivated by someone who is trying to protect us from ourselves.
I say that if someone out there is out to protect us from ourselves, maybe they ought to try going to the bottom and just outlaw cycles, cars, trains, planes. guns and also human beings. All of those items are potentially dangerous.
By the way. I have ridden since 1933 and now have a `79 XSEleven Special.
Art Arm ijo Carson, Calif.
CYCLE SAFETY
Now, thank heavens, that you have in residence a nationally certified authority on motorcycle safety. perhaps a few com ments on your Roundup column in the October issue can reach into the rabbit warrens where dwell those who know how to live our lives better than we do.
As you correctly point out in the col umn, the DSDs (Didn't See Drivers) have a problem not so much with seeing as perception. As persons intimately con nected with the world of advertising, you know that not only for an ad to be effective must it be seen, but also it must be read and understood.
The always-on headlight helps. I think. a great deal with the DSD problem. I know that I can see a bike when I am driving a car long before I would even notice an other car, and certainly long before I would even see the bike. But there is something more that can be done with most of the DSDs.
Assuming that we have no choice when it comes to taking the risk of the killer apes that may be in the vicinity, for the rest of the DSDs we can help their perception~ with the blinka-blinka switch. They’re on all bikes sold in Europe.
For most bikes sold here you have to add the switch. But for all late electric start Hondas the switch is already there, factory installed, though not only does Honda not tell YOU this in their advertising, apparently they don't even tell their dealers and the dealers certainly don't tell their customers. It's right there in the starter button, rights under vour thumb.
Does it work? It does and has for me at least a dozen times since I bought the first bike that weighs more than I do. ■*
Maybe I'll wear out the starter (no harm so far), mavbe the starter button, maybe even my thumb, but then starter, starter buttons and thumbs have for me a lower priorité than my head.
Richard Baker M esa. Ariz.
MECHANICS COURSES
Scott Community College of Betten-* dorf. Iowa, is offering an extensive course in motorcycle mechanics. We have been teaching it for about 10 years and we have hundreds of graduates w ho are working as* mechanics, service managers, parts counter people, and shop ow ners and operators.
Our course is divided into four quarters^ and is 11 months long. Classes meet five days a week with a two-hour lecture and four-hour shop period each day. Most brands of motorcycles are represented here for repair.
We have immediate student openings/. Students can enter in August. November. February or May. We have more job open"t ings for mechanics than we can fill.
For more information write or call:
Admissions
Scott Community College Belmont Road *
Bettendorf. Iowa 52722 (319)359-7531
Jim Barnes. Instructor Motorcycle Mechanics Program *
