Motorbike Reviews
I am about to buy a motorbike. Obviously this means hours and hours of researching online which bike to get. In short, motorbike reviews are a complete joke! How about a website dedicated to real world reviews of motorbikes?
I am 6′4″ (193cm) tall. This presents a pretty obvious dilemma when choosing a motorbike. Most motorbikes are built around the average of 5′ to 6′, lets be honest, they are built more for the lower part of that range. So when I am looking at reviews, there are a few criteria that are important to me. Here are my needs:
- The bike needs to be comfortable for my height (and weight) and not look like a toy underneath me
- The seat should feel comfortable underneath me for at least 2 hours at a time
- I want a compromise in my riding position between completely upright, and lying down on the tank
- The bike should have enough power to be able to pass traffic going 70mph (and obviously give me that little kick of adrenaline every now and then!)
- Ride comfort and brakes should be good
- Fuel economy should be pretty decent (around 45-55 mpg)
- Insurance costs shouldn’t be that of Bugatti Veyron
As far as I and probably 95% of the other prospective bike riders/owners out there, these are the basic sorts of requirements we have. But according to online review sites, these are the requirements they think we have:
- The bike needs to do over 170mph, just in case I need to pass a F1 car on the way to work
- Should be able to do a lap of Silverstone within 2 seconds of the time that Valentino Rossi did it on a race spec machine
- Needs to be able to corner at at least 100mph, with my knee scraping along the ground (I didn’t buy those Knee Pucks for nothing!)
- I should be able to pop the front wheel up in any gear, and at any speed below 100mph
- The brakes should be good enough so that I can perform stoppies, lifting the back wheel up, on the highway whenever I get the urge
- The bike should sound like a jet engine just about to break the sound barrier…at idle.
Now don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of speed and power…I am a guy after all. But unless I am on a track or on the Autobahn I am unlikely to ever go over 130mph. Any modern sport bike over 500cc will get you over 120mph, and because of EU regulations they will need to be able to safely get you back down to 0mph in a decent time too. Give us reviews on how this fits the average Joe who isn’t 5′6″ weighing 120lb. Give us a review telling us how it felt getting from London to Scotland, and how much fuel you used to do it.
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