Let me approach this from a different direction. I have had the benefit of owning and maintaining all my wife's bikes since the first 250 she learned on. As she progressed from that to a Yamaha 535, then a Honda 450 Custom (kindof like a NH of the same year) and what she has now, I have had plenty of opportunity to ponder things like the diameter of the fork tubes, the number and size of front brake discs and simply the size of the frame tubing.
As I pondered this I also heard the stories of how each of her smaller bikes would perform on long trips, or at higher speeds, with a heavy load, or even in windy situations. What came into focus after a while was the idea that a good motorcycle was not just the sum of its parts, but more a chorus of all the right parts for what it was designed to do. Later I got the opportunity to learn how even a properly designed bike could be bollixed by simply adding a bigger/heavier rear wheel to the design. It is not as though we are all just a bunch of nay-saying, narrow-minded purists indiscriminately saying "You can't do that!!" to everything. After a while you begin to realize that the design of the bike you like the most really was the result of more than one competent designer, and everything is the way it is for a reason (that I typically do not know yet). I wondered the same thing when I looked at the Ford F350 and saw that it LOOKS a lot like my FORD F150. Then I wonder what could I do to make my 1/4 ton F150 carry the load of a 3/4 ton truck. Then I look at the wheel hubs, the size of the brakes, the springs or course, and the frame in general and I realize that just making the springs strong enough hold the weight without bottoming out is only one enhancement. I'd imagine that I could not then stop/start the load moving without the right sized brakes or engine. Or the frame would simply buckle as I went down a typical road with this load ... and so on. When you hurl yourself, your load and a bike down the road at a certain speed everything needs to be designed proportionally strong. You will at least learn that each thing needs to also be upgraded, or at worst, you'll break something that is not strong enough for the job it now has to do. I am also a wooden boat builder, or I was. I learned there, where I could adjust/tweak everything, that the traditions I was so strongly interested in throwing off, were for the most part, decided for good reason. It wasn't until I learned why those traditions came to be that I could tweak the smaller parameters and come up with a working finished product. Blah blah blah... Does that make sense, or did I totally miss the point completely? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
