is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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Actually, the current web histogram is much prettier. Even lower and it's almost a flat line. Doesn't have that 50% hump that happened at 11:30.
Is this a thing of beauty or what?!?
iHub's CPU utilization histogram now. It was a LOT higher earlier and with lots of huge spikes:
The db is looking better, but I'm not content yet. Want to see if I can help it out a little more before I go:
I was just going to ask if things are running more smoothly because I finally looked at the webserver itself, and it's improved dramatically! It was running with all kinds of peaks and valleys on the histogram. Peaks exceeding 80%.
Since disabling auto-refresh, it's been running at a steady 20-25% with NO peaks.
I need to get going out of town as soon as possible and still have preparations, but I figure I can afford to devote another hour to this to see what I can brea.... I mean IMPROVE before I go. But I think I needed to be looking at the webserver than than the db server to begin with, though the refresh is expensive to both. But I thought the bottleneck was the db server, despite my having observed SQL Servers running at a nearly constant 80-100% without any ill effect, and we're nowhere near in that boat yet.
No, we're not on the new webserver yet, and if it would help, I'd expect its help to be marginable, at best, except that I could safely put more of the load on it and less on the db box. Though the site's performing extremely well for me, and running traces isn't showing anything being misbehaved, it's obvious from the db CPU histogram that the machine is really getting a workout.
I'm waiting for my favorite consultant to take care of setting up the new box, as its problems are going over my head. I'm just a programmer. He's a programmer and a major Windoze hardware/OS guy.
No, Midas, not interested in your new machine unless, perchance, it's got a pair of 3.6Ghz processors, faster and bigger hard drives than we're using now, and at least 4 gig of memory. <g>
The current db is using a pair of 2.8's, so just stepping up .8Ghz on each processor (1.6Ghz total, roughly) would help quite a bit, as would switching to the fastest hard drives money can buy (they're nearly but not quite there) and a RAID configuration that sacrifices some security for the sake of speed.
What I've done so far, and looks to have made an impact, but not good enough for me yet:
1. Disabled auto-refresh of Favorites and Board.
2. Disabled "realtime" (yeah, right -- it was lagging by nearly an hour anyway) full-text indexing and made it an hourly job.
I don't know what I'm going to do next yet. The machine is definitely breathing easier, but it's still not what I'd remotely call "good enough". Was running at about 50% utilization with frequent spikes ot 80%+. Now running from 20-30% with occasional 50%+ spikes. If I can get the spikes below 50%, I'll consider it good enough for now.
I'm hoping the last few percent can be gained my improving the efficiency of current procedures rather than disabling any others.
Pretty odd. It's absolutely flying for me from home on dialup. In every regard. But I'm on my way to the office where I can more effectively get onto the servers and see what's up with them.
If I find that we're getting clobbered, expect some minor features to get disabled, like auto-refresh of boards and favorites.
As Matt said, our traffic levels have grown by 20-30% practically overnight, and traffic levels were already very high. But I was pretty sure I'd determined that we could handle 50% more on our current infrastructure and that I wouldn't need to order new equipment (a replacement db server, more than anything else) until we were about 20% more loaded.
In any event, I'll do what I can to help slowness problems people are seeing. And I expect I can get quite a bit accomplished through tweaking.
test
I'll have to try this sometime with a two-stroke with carbon buildup since they all do after a little while, and the head is easy to remove for before/after comparisons.
Your caveat about dumping too much water in is very important. Fluid is not compressible so if a cylinder gets too much of it while the engine's running, something's gonna give and it won't be the fluid. Usually a connecting rod will get pretzled, but far worse can happen. And often does when people try to drive a car into too-deep water. Even hitting the starter with a cylinder full of water can destroy an engine.
Someone came out yesterday to look at the BMW I'm selling on eBay and dropped off a copy of Motorcycle Classics magazine.
I went immediately to the article on my fave 2-stroke (and one of my favorite bikes, period).
Here's the first part of the article: http://www.motorcycleclassics.com/article/view/socialmisfit/
Discussion of racing and driving schools and lots of pictures over here: http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=2389
Your local BMW, Porsche, or Audi club is bound to have events available. And they'll allow anything that's safe, though it's a good idea to bring something track-worthy. We still laugh about some of the cars we've seen, like Hyundai Sonatas, and the PT Cruiser that wasn't even the forced-induction one that's available that showed up for one event, then showed up for another even later with flame decals on it which we figured were good for 5 horses.
A lot of people just go to Enterprise and rent a Mustang. A modern 6-cylinder Mustang even with an automatic is actually a very capable car.
It's a Mustang Club event I'm going to next weekend, and I invariably end up passing cars with the green "E" decal on the rear bumper. What cracks me up the most isn't the fact that people are using rentals. That's not all that uncommon. What cracks me up is that they go get a rental then sign themselves up to run in the "big dogs" group, which is supposed to be the domain of racers and instructors in serious hardware. The Mustang event every year is one of my faves because I don't have to instruct, so it's not as grueling. But a downside of it is that only a handful of the people in my group are ones I personally know to be instructors and racers, so you sometimes see things that shouldn't happen in such a group, like lifting or even braking in a turn. So following distance is a LOT greater unless I know the guy in front of me or the guy behind me knows me.
I don't think it's as common a problem as it used to be, mainly because cars running leaner nowadays and thanks to fuel injection and tight computer control, they stay right in the optimum fuel/air ratio range all the time rather than running "fat" in some areas like was unavoidable with carbs.
But I still see that familiar coloration in the tailpipe of modern cars. My guess is that carbon is an unavoidable by-product of internal combustion engines running on current fuels.
I'd always heard that spraying a mist of water into the intake for a long time with the engine turning decent revs was a good way to dissolve and blow out carbon. Haven't ever tried it, though.
My opinion, though mostly all we've got is opinions on it and they vary widely, is that it's best to run through all of the load range, from full positive to full negative, in as varying an rpm range as possible. So when I drive on the hilly highways out here, I might go up a hill floored in 6th (it'd reach 4k rpm too soon in 5th) then get all the way out of the gas to give it maximum negative load. Let any metal particals get vacuumed out the exhaust.
Actually, what I call "racing" is just a shorter way to describe what I do.
I participate in Driving Schools on road courses. More specifically, I instruct at them. Have participated for 10 years and instructed for the past 5. A club (typically BMW, Porsche, or Audi) will rent a racetrack (road course) for a weekend and break out the participants into 5 groups. 4 groups of students and 1 for instructors. The students are grouped based on experience, with group 1 (or 5, depending on which order a particular club does it) being first-timers or sometimes groups 1 and 2 being novices, but group 2 having more horsepower. Group 3 has experience (usually 3-5 weekends) and Group 4 is mostly folks who drive near but not quite at the Instructor level. They're goooood!
We instructors get assigned 1 to 3 students, depending on how full the school is and how many instructors are available. Usually we're given students who drive cars similar to ours. For example, since I started out with a 91 Mustang GT and still use it, I used to always end up in heavy, torquey American cars. Vettes and Mustangs usually.
When I got the Subaru, I started getting AWD students more often than not since instructors who drive AWD are even rarer than those who drive the Powerful Pigs. The local Audi club has few of its own instructors and the instructors from BMW and Porsche teach at their events.
So, the way it works is I ride around the track with my students and teach them how to do it. Everything from taking novices out and teaching them the basics and gradually getting them up to a high enough speed that they're starting to get near some limits and teach them how to recognize those limits. With intermediate students, it's usually putting polish on their game and teaching them to react instinctively and correctly when things go wrong. Advanced, it's usually hanging on for dear life (while appearing very calm) and giving them little pointers. "You don't actually have to lift as much here." "Try to get the car about 6 inches further left here." That kind of thing.
In return for our hard work (and it's grueling!!!), we get our own sessions. In our sessions, it's similar to racing in that we're getting around the track just as fast as we possibly can and still trying to get faster. The main difference between racing and an instructor session in a driving school is that we're only allowed to pass on straights, and then only when pointed by. Track etiquette is important. Though in groups where we all know each other really well, including weaknesses, habits, differences in preferred lines, and car capabilities, we play pretty rough. Following distances get close, and we make each other pass at the ends of straights as often as possible to force the passer into the wrong line in the turn. Fun stuff like that.
One of my favorite tricks in the Mustang is that when I catch and pass a momentum car (something that brakes and turns well, but has comparatively little power -- it has to keep its momentum up because it's so difficult for them to get back up to speed), I'll go through the next series of turns at a slower than usual pace to rob them of their momentum, then take off on the next straight so they're not attached to my bumper for the next half a lap.
The event I'm going to next weekend isn't actually a driving school. It's open track. Still the same separation into groups, but no instructing unless a novice wants an instructor to ride with them a session or two to break them in (I've always ended up being one of those instructors), but otherwise it's just playing. Same rules about passing though.
My dad will be going with me and driving the Mustang in the intermediate group (he hasn't done it for a couple of years) and I'll be feeding myself to the wolves in the all-out racecars in the Scoob and occasionally in the Mustang if it gets hot enough for the too-old Hoosiers to really stick. I don't dare put new ones on it because the car doesn't have ABS and my dad has flat-spotted more than one Hoosier by locking up the brakes.
Fortunately, nobody at this event will have anywhere near the seat time I've got at this particular track (I think I'm second only to the former track manager), so a lot of the wolves are kinda hobbled. Though a handful of them have the hardware and the experience that I just can't touch them.
Wasn't there a model called the "Sonnet" or something like that which had the 2-stroke? The car I'm thinking of looked like a slightly sportier version of a Citroen 2CV. Pretty sure one of my cousins had one.
Got the STi last weekend. Trying to hurry up and get the required 1k miles on it before taking it past 4k rpm so I can take it to the track next weekend. It'd really suck to have to spend the whole weekend in 5th and 6th to keep the revs below the break-in requirement.
Oftentimes a problem with brakes won't give audible cues until you're nearly stopped. Usually the noise is present all the time, but can't be heard until you're nearly stopped because of things like engine and wind noise, and it can be a frequency that isn't in easy hearing range unless things are moving slowly.
My initial guess would be like someone else's that they just need to bed in or the rotors may be gouged. Whenever I put on new pads, I go through a ritual of gradually heating them up and letting them cool, then getting them VERY hot (heavy braking from high speed), immediately getting back up to speed, then braking more gently.
The purpose is material transfer. The rotors and pads transfer metal back and forth all the time in the case of sem-metallics (which any good brakes typically are), and the metal that's been transferred to your rotors by your old pads doesn't conform to the shape of the new pads yet. This'll usually correct itself with time. Or right away if you put the effort into bedding them in.
It also could be that the rotors need to be replaced. Personally, I don't like to turn them because I don't like thin rotors. But if they're expensive rotors and won't be used very aggressively, turning's okay.
Did your old pads wear down to the backing plates before they were replaced? The inside one usually wears down more than the outside (I noticed you said you replaced your calipers -- this is often done when a sticking caliper is leaving the inside pad in contact with the rotor, rapidly wearing out that pad) and the problem here is that on most cars, you can't see the inside surface of the rotor without taking it off. My track cars get splash shields removed not only for better cooling, but so it only takes a glance to see what condition the inside surface is in.
For the same reasons you can't see the inside surface, it tends to be the culprit. I've replaced many a rotor that looked great on the outside and was gouged like crazy inside.
Other (low probability) items to check:
1. Make sure one of the brake pads wasn't put on backwards so it's actually the backing plate rubbing the rotor. This actually happened to a friend of mine when his crew changed his brakes at night and they worked fine and showed little indication something was amiss on the track until a couple of laps when they'd finally gotten warmed up enough that his next heavy use of them welded the backing plate to the rotor.
2. Double-check that one of the bolts that holds the caliper carrier isn't going far enough through the mounting hole that the head of it is rubbing the rotor. Please don't ask me how I know to look for this one or how long it took me to discover it. Sometimes it's hard to notice a 1/4" difference in bolt length.
I'm not sure what small-displacement bikes there are out there, but you most certainly have the right idea about how little it takes to smoke a car 0-60. Not quite as true of 60-0. Think about the size of a bike's contact patch compared to that of a car. And the fact that most people can't threshhold-brake a bike since it's important to nearly but not quite lock the front tire since all the weight is transferring onto it.
The hot ticket back in the day for a smallish gal who was just gonna run around town were bikes like the Honda CM185 or the CM400T (automatic tranny) or the Kawasaki 250 "Eliminator", which actually was a hoot because it would rev like crazy.
If one will never put a bike on the highway, more than 250cc isn't needed. In fact, if they still make it (hard to imagine they wouldn't), the Kawasaki KE100 is an awesome little bike that does a lot of stuff well, including gentle off-roading. Although for a first-timer, it can be a bit hard to launch, having the typical 2-stroke lack of torque at idle.
I know my best friend's wife started out with a 250 she bought nearly-new a year ago (has since graduated to a Shadow 750, which we mildly warmed up recently), but don't remember the make.
So they're definitely out there. And if it's new and Japanese, reliability typically isn't going to be an issue.
The only problem with a 250 is that if you do end up going on longer jaunts or put it on the highway for more than a mile at a time, it quickly comes up short in power and comfort.
Personally, I very strongly dislike the swept-back look/feel of modern "cruisers" (I think that trend got started or kicked into high gear with the Yamaha "Special" series), but they're awfully easy to control and quite a bit more comfortable than a "standard". Stepped seat with the driver's part really low, pegs forward a bit, bars pulled back a bit. And very comforting/comfortable for novices. We're talking seat heights along the lines of 26 inches.
So, were I female and unaccustomed to motorcycles and didn't have any plans to ride on the highway much or ride very long at one sitting, I'd be looking for a 250cc cruiser.
AND taking the AMA riding course.
Both annoying and ferocious.
I'm sure I've previously mentioned a Kawasaki G3SS I used to own. 90cc 2-stroke. I learned a LOT about 2-strokes with that bike, constantly experimenting with new expansion chambers and instake setups. Things like profiling the ports and rotary valve.
The local dealership (still there right next door to where I bought my new Subaru last Saturday) kept a lot of pistons in stock for me because though I really stayed on top of reading the plug with each new modification, I still holed a lot of pistons.
When I got it really dialed in, it was probably making about 15-18 horses in a powerband maybe 1k wide. 18 horses doesn't sound much, but remember I was only dealing with 90cc's (could've gotten more by boring it to 100cc, which would've been easily done), so it'd be like your 1800 making 360 horses.
And in a bike I could easily pick up and carry into my apartment. And when I weighed 135 lbs dripping wet.
It was very "nasty" sounding. And I had two choices when launching it. Wheelie it or be more "civilized" and help it along with my feet to get it going until it made enough power to barely pull itself. It was geared pretty tall and top speed was an indicated 87 mph.
That bike was a fun companion for something like 6 years until someone stole it. On those bikes (and most of the Kaw 2-strokes), you could just open the seat, disconnect the black wire with the white trace, and fire the bike up. And it was so small that I took it from KC to Colorado Springs in the back seat of my Impala.
LOL! Damn, we're old Tom! I hadn't even read your post yet when I mentioned that Saab used to make a 2-stroke car.
Especially with a serious set of expansion chambers, which I found to be the single most important element in getting maximum power out of a 2-stroke. It's all about using sound waves to suck the exhaust out of the engine, which, because of the overlap necessary in an engine that has to both get rid of spent fuel and breathe in new fuel each time the piston comes down, actually works as a kind of reverse-turbo charger. Instead of ramming more fuel-air into the engine as a turbo does, good expansion chambers make the engine suck more fuel-air that it otherwise would. A problem with them was that the perfect design would often "over-scavenge" and suck fresh fuel-air into the pipe along with the exhaust.
I had a lot of fun not only with a favorite H2 I used as my main street bike for years, but a GT250 before that. Either one would leave stop-light competitors in a cloud of exhaust smoke as they rocketed away. The GT250 even took its fair share of CB750's that weren't being launched well. The H2 was completely untouchable. At the time, there was simply nothing I couldn't beat on the streets.
A good friend and I used to hustle people on the streets of Olathe and Overland Park in our youth. Me on my GT750 and he on my (mildly tweaked) H2, which could easily dust the GT. I'd "beat" him, then he'd talk a fool into betting money that their cage could beat him, and give them a costly lesson in power/weight ratios. If a car decided to play along while he and I raced, I'd go just fast enough to beat him and the car, and he'd go just slow enough to be beat by the car, and we'd often come up with a freshly-minted sucker. <g>
I'm so surprised I survived my youth.
Oh, man! You stepped into it this time! LOL
Those weedeater-sounding things are monsters!
Until relatively recently, with dramatically improved cylinder heads and intake/exhaust and fuel delivery, inch-for-inch 2-strokes have typically made nearly double the torque of their 4-stroke counterparts.
Mostly for the simple reason that a 2-stroke turning 10k rpms is going through 10k power strokes per minute, but a 4-stroke is only doing 5k power strokes.
It's not quite that simple, but it's the biggest factor at the heart of the power difference. That's why we're only just now seeing 4-stroke engines in applications where small size and light weight are important. If you can only afford about 25cc's because of weight/size constraints, you can't do it with a 4-stroke.
And upsize the 2-stroke to 750cc's and you're dealing with some SERIOUS power.
But there are tons of plusses and minuses for both the 4-stroke and 2-stroke. The big 4-stroke negatives are:
1. More moving parts
2. More weight (especially weight that's moving)
3. A valve-train that usually dictates the upper rpm limit (valve float)
4. Half as many power strokes per crank rotation
4-stroke pluses:
1. Much wider powerband
2. Much cleaner running
3. Valve-train and fuel delivery much more controllable and flexible
4. Much longer service life
2-strokes pollute like crazy, have a very short service life (mostly because of their very indirect lubrication method), can only be tuned to run with decent efficiency in a comparatively small RPM range (wasting fuel at any other rev), and are extremely finicky in that a subsystem problem that would make a 4-stroke run poorly will stop a 2-stroke in its tracks.
The 2-stroke vs 4-stroke wars were getting fought fiercely in the 70's. The 4-strokes won. I think the last mass-produced street 2-stroke motorcycle of note was a rather limited run of water-cooled Yamaha 350's. Early 80's? Emissions problems killed the 2-stroke as a viable choice for street bikes.
2-strokes were rarely used in cars, though I do remember a Saab model that used a 2-stroke. With how much a car weighs, a 2-stroke just doesn't work because a car needs something with a broad powerband, which a 2-stroke doesn't have. A seriously tweaked 2-stroke could very easily make 80 lbs of torque at 10k rpm and 40 lbs at 8k. No exaggeration. The old Kawasaki H1 and H2 ("Widowmakers") were notorious for their inability to get out of their own way when they were "off the pipe", but uncontrollable wheelie monsters when they suddenly hit the rpm range they were tuned for. The Suzuki GT750, through water cooling and compromise produced a much wider power-band, but still needed some revs to get going. Cooling? Yep. The balance between power production and heat disposal was so delicate that the air-cooled triples (Kawasaki) had to run bigger main jets in their center carbs to prevent holing their pistons.
Chain-saws and weed-eaters indeed! hehe
'twouldn't be silly at all. Pit bikes are quite useful. Especially at RA, where the walks can be rather long. Gotta save the legs for bracing yourself in the Pumpkin.
So you need it to keep your track game sharp and keep yourself safe.
Anyone want a very low-miles 2005 BMW K1200LT?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1,1&item=330006239896&ih=014...
I hope Paulie doesn't mind that I used his picture as the main one.
Hard to get more "sane" than an XS400. Very mild-mannered bike. Parts aren't easily had, but not frequently needed.
I'm a big fan of the XS650. Equally mild-mannered, still plentiful (including parts -- though the charging system is a huge weak point, as is the engagement mechanism for the electric starter), fairly inexpensive, yet with enough grunt that two-up riding isn't any challenge for the engine even at highway speed.
But an XS650 in the same condition that XS400 is in would likely be in the $1500-$2000 ballpark.
Given your size and weight, I think you'd be quite happy with the 400.
From a collector's perspective, $900 might be a bit on the steep side because it'll never be a desirable bike among collectors. The smaller bikes don't get a lot of respect unless they were rather special in their own time. Like the CB400F, or an RD400 Daytona. The only people who would actively be seeking out this bike (and likely having trouble finding it) are those who are trying to complete out a Yamaha XS collection.
However, as a pit bike and one for just tooling around (if you're not wanting to do a lot of highway miles), with the low miles and legendary reliability of the Yamaha twins, $900 is pretty good.
I actually had an incident in my early 20's where my knees were shaking violently and I simply couldn't get them to stop. Scared myself half to death and it was all at my own hands.
I know I've told the story before and likely posted a pic of the bike.
I'll re-tell a short version.
Back when I had intimate knowledge of the effects of expansion chamber dimensions, carb size and setup, and port shape and size on the performance characteristics of 2-cycle engines, I decided to build a bad-assed dragster based on a Kawasaki H2 (750cc 2-stroke triple). It was mostly a matter of getting an extremely light frame built, getting pieces made/adapted like a wheelie bar, rear-sets, tiny fuel tank, etc, then building what I knew mathematically would be the most powerful 750cc engine I could make. According to my calculations, it should've been good for about 120 horses in a very tiny (and high) rpm range and the whole bike weighed in at far less than 300 lbs. And I was 150 lbs dripping wet.
When I had it finished enough for a test ride, I took it out on a local stretch of highway, and was absolutely thrilled with the way it really felt like I was wrapping my arms around a missile.
Until the front-end suddenly shook so violently on the upshift to 4th gear (easily 120+ mph) that it nearly yanked the clip-ons out of my hands. Despite having a very aggressive steering damper.
The tank-slapper went away as quickly as it'd arrived and with it came the realization that what'd happened is the front tire had just reached very high speeds (while barely turning) airborne then finally met the asphalt and was suddenly forced to very high speed, yanking the bike's mass forward violently and briefly.
When I coasted to a stop on the shoulder, my knees were shaking uncontrollably. For several minutes. The exhiliration of such well-behaved incredible acceleration and speed had been replaced with the knowledge that I'd literally "created a monster". It was most definitely not my cup o' tea.
I walked home, picked the bike up in my truck, and never rode it again and later sold it with a rather large collection of Kaw H1's and H2's I spent a few years accumulating.
I was tempted a time or two to put that engine into a street bike, but decided if it didn't kill me, it'd kill whoever ended up owning it. In fact, that's how a lot of H-bikes and their riders met untimely demises. Uncontrolled wheelies.
V-twins of any displacement aren't particularly threatening bikes. Lots of torque, but low seat height and low center of gravity.
Believe me when I say that the best you can hope for with a top-heavy bike is to get to where you *don't* drop it when moving very slowly. The fear is always there. I've been riding for 30 years, with many of my bikes being real terrors in one aspect or another, and still, simply turning the Big Beemer around in the driveway pegs the Puckerometer.
Edit: Today's commute to the office done on a 1964 Honda 305 Dream. Big, cushy bikes sure are nice, but it's so gratifying, in a primal sort of way, to just ride an ancient 4-speed with zero frills aside from electric start.
I think the huge difference is that you're dealing with a very top-heavy bike whose engine has an awful lot of, shall we say, "personality", especially in the upper revs. Oh, and it's not one you can just drop the clutch on and it'll take off. Takes more finesse.
An 1800cc twin, on the other hand, has a MUCH lower center of gravity, lower seat height than yours, likely weighs a lot less overall, and doesn't become a snarling beast at higher revs.
And it takes comparatively little finesse to launch it. Just drop the clutch. In pretty much any gear. <g>
Runs fast as hell for me and Profiler not showing anything unusual.
test
Not really sure. Having trouble getting my head completely around the ramifications.
Just keep in mind that it's a bit of a handful. Top-heavy and though it's rather sedate at lower RPM's and throttle openings, when you whack the throttle open, you better mean it and you better be hanging on. The top-heaviness comes into play mostly in parking lot stuff. When there's no gyroscopic effect helping keep things upright, the ground seems pretty far away and you have to constantly fight the bike's tendency to want to lay down on it. With practice, it's managable. But even as experienced as I am, I've only got a 30-inch inseam so if I'm doing a tight u-turn on the Beemer, it looks like I'm about ready to drop it. Because I am.
The engine doesn't give the "Oh my God, this thing's gonna kill me!" exhiliration of the CBX. More like my BMW with more top-end attitude.
I've always liked that bike.
Wouldn't be my first choice for someone getting back in the saddle again after a long absence, but it's also far from being my last choice. Pretty close to the middle. Not the most difficult bike on which to get your sea legs back, though it'll be difficult. And once you're comfortable, you'll find it a wonderful companion. Fun, practical, and can do many types of riding VERY well. Be it touring, short runs to the grocery store, canyon-carving, commuting, enjoying-the-weather rides, or poker runs.
I think I just realized one of the main reasons I rarely choose the Big Beemer for my short trip to the office. The drama/miles ratio is too high. Getting it out of the garage, turning around in the driveway, the slow scarey ride on about half a mile of loose gravel, and the slow maneuvers near the office. On the smaller bikes, I just throw my leg over the saddle (which, in itself, is a bit of drama on BB) and I'm on my way.
Didn't remember whether it was you or someone else who's "re-learning". The CBX is definitely not for such a person.
They're only appropriate for collectors and for experienced riders who are or know really good mechanics.
They're about the top-heaviest things ever made.
That's the one. That one doesn't have the original seat and they didn't have backrests or luggage racks. But it looks like a Corbin, which is a very popular replacement seat.
Don't know if you can tell in that picture, but it's pearl white. With 2 or 3 shades of blue accent decals.
They're good bikes, but a bit of a handful. Extremely top-heavy and lots of horsepower. It can wheelie in 3rd, though you have to try pretty hard.
Mint condition, they bring well over $10k. With dings, they go for around $5k or a little less. Collectors are snapping up the perfect ones. New price was $5495, which was actually higher than the Gold Wing that year. It was the most expensive Japanese bike of that year. As a result, sales numbers were low, and there's a story (possibly urban legend) floating around that there are some of them still in their original crates as well as a comparatively large number of zero-miles ones used for mechanic training because of the complexity of the valve-train.
Cost of ownership can be high. There's a clutch between the crank and alternator to protect the end of the crank from being twisted off because of how quickly the bike revs. That clutch is a frequent failure point. And the valves are adjusted via shims (24 of them), so a valve adjustment is VERY expensive. As is synchronizing the carbs, since there're 6 of them.
Torque-wise, the Gold Wing trounces the BMW. No contest. 50% more displacement and it's cammed for low-end grunt.
It's not the torque I think is overdone on the BMW. It's a very nice engine.
It's just that a luxo-sport-tourer isn't really me. A CBX is. As far as sport-tourers go. Not a lot of gizmos. Just a big motor, generous storage, and it's so awesome-looking.
Yet another reason to buy new.
I prefer to know for certain that a vehicle has been broken in properly. And it's worth it to me to take the depreciation hit for that peace of mind.
Although apparently with the bikes you're looking at, there's not much of a depreciation hit to be taken.
If you can afford it, and it's a relative bargain, I'd pretty strongly suggest the 1100.
But my approach on vehicles has always been "Get as much as you can afford". Which led me into the BMW, only to find that I went overboard on that one. Really the only time that philosophy has led me astray. And it's not that it's a bad bike. It's a GREAT bike. But it's not me.
Bigger engines always make for higher resale value, too.
I like the V-twin design just fine.
My problem with it is that the Japanese go out of their way to make so many of their bikes completely indistinguishable from a Harley.
It's the "copy-cat" thing that bugs me.
I've been thinking about it, and though I really am talking way over my head here, I'd think a capacitor's discharge could be slowed down by simply not giving it infinite continuity.
My only experience with them is on old points-based ignition systems where their function is to store juice that'd otherwise be arcing across the points and burning them, and, I think, releasing all of their energy the instant the points break contact to give the coil enough juice to get its attention.
I know old TVs use them, too, presumably to make startup faster and they've led to stories (urban legends?) of people being shocked when dinking with TV's that haven't been plugged in for years.
Don't big electric motors also use them to get a bit of a jump-start against a heavy load, like an air compressor?