@Arpan: Maybe technically 220's shocks are better, i dont know. I am talking about how sore it feels after a day of riding - I would place ZMA's ride over 220 any day. It can very much be the case that i am factoring the easy of riding into consideration and so my decision is biased and it is not a true suspension to suspension comparo. What i am hinting towards when i say ease of riding is... to do same speeds and to take same turns at the same speeds you need to put in more efforts in 220 when compared to ZMA, i hope you agree on this point or we will have to stay disagreed cause i have noticed this plenty of times. Some maneuvers which happen seemlessly in ZMA, one has to work it in 220.
Again, this is not to say 220 is an inferior machine. It is DEFINITELY not. I enjoy riding that bike too. Just how the 2 bikes are different. Also, i was talking about ride quality when i mentioned about suspension. I agree it can be subjective and vary according to riders height, weight etc. however, when you mention handling, do you intend to say on bad roads 220 handles better than ZMA? I have a short experince to narrate, tell me how to interpret this technically. Some time back the Nerul flyover was being resurfaced. For this they had carved s-shaped lines for over 100 meters which was deeper than usual. I had the good fortune of taking both ZMA and 220 on these roads more than a couple of times and each time i noticed that 220 felt more unstable going over this uneven patch of road. The handled twitched more, braking felt more dangerous and i had to reduce speed before hitting this patch while on 220. However, ZMA glided over this (relatively speaking). I clearly remember having to ride at 60-70 kmph while on 220 and still feel fair amount of handlebar twictching while ZMA even at 80 gave a stable ride. Maybe something wrong with my 220?? Anyways, going over muddy or offroads, i felt ZMA is more maneuverable. maybe its just me. @Gliff: Regarding fuel efficiency, 220 has always returned 35 kmpl. On the other hand ZMA used to return 38kmpl but i dont know what happened recently, i have been getting 32kmpl!! All are measured from tank full to tank full. So one more thing that goes for 220 is with all that technology you will get consisitent results. There is very little that the ignorant servicing guy can mess with. Also, with all that technology, the bike runs well all the time. While in case of ZMA it depends how the mechanic has set the carburator etc. Basically, its echoing the same point, with technology there are lesser things for the grease monkey to fiddle with! One more thing that i would like to highlight is that the 220 has been a reliable machine so far (23K kms old) and has not had any relaibility issues, contrary to what i have heard over net. I hope all this helps Prathap in his decision making process. regards, Kapil [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
