Officially old?

[daveuprite]

Bah humbug!
I still hate Windows 10!!

Well yes, very fair point. Lots of new things are crap. But many people said that when all the things we know and love now first came out.

I just about remember the 1970s debate between bikers over disc brakes on road bikes, with lots of old timers preferring their familiar drums. Well I wouldn't dream of buying a powerful bike with front drum brakes now, and I don't much like the idea of riding classics with them.

And that same kind of debate is playing out right now with electric bikes vs internal combustion engines...

[garyboy]

Bah humbug!
I still hate Windows 10!!

Well yes, very fair point. Lots of new things are crap. But many people said that when all the things we know and love now first came out.

I just about remember the 1970s debate between bikers over disc brakes on road bikes, with lots of old timers preferring their familiar drums.

on that subject .. discs / age …. I went to thunderroad last year and saw on display by the café, a Suzuki X7 and Suzuki hustler 250 …… I looked at their discs and was awestruck with how flat billet crap they looked .. and remembered how crap they were for .. er .. stopping?

I was shocked how dated the bike looked … and I used to just luuuurve that bike/s …. how small it looked .. and yikes .. it waz a 2 stroke … how could I have forgotten that … then remembered the potch of filling the oil tank.

yes .. I then felt old
especially remembering a family bike accident
life changing for me

all that time had passed since the eighties

[daveuprite]

This is me being old...

[garyboy]

Crikey ... silent movie days? .. u much older than I thawt

[Crossrutted]

a drum brake bike would've stopped before punting that rock - just sayin'

[DavidS]

Bah humbug!
I still hate Windows 10!!

Well yes, very fair point. Lots of new things are crap. But many people said that when all the things we know and love now first came out.

I just about remember the 1970s debate between bikers over disc brakes on road bikes, with lots of old timers preferring their familiar drums.

on that subject .. discs / age …. I went to thunderroad last year and saw on display by the café, a Suzuki X7 and Suzuki hustler 250 …… I looked at their discs and was awestruck with how flat billet crap they looked .. and remembered how crap they were for .. er .. stopping?

I was shocked how dated the bike looked … and I used to just luuuurve that bike/s …. how small it looked .. and yikes .. it waz a 2 stroke … how could I have forgotten that … then remembered the potch of filling the oil tank.

yes .. I then felt old
especially remembering a family bike accident
life changing for me

all that time had passed since the eighties

My old Triumph is tiny compared to modern bikes.

AE4270A2-D11C-4F04-A47D-6E8E217DEF0B.jpeg (240.17 KiB) Viewed 3435 times

But I saw a guy on an Yam RD yesterday and the bike looked the size of a moped.

[garyboy]

ahhhhhhhhhhh ….. so modern bikes really HAVE gone bigger !!

and theres me thinking I had shrunk already

[daveuprite]

ahhhhhhhhhhh ….. so modern bikes really HAVE gone bigger !!

and theres me thinking I had shrunk already

How true is that...

Bikes should have got smaller and lighter, and they did - until about 2005 or so. Which is when rider aids started adding weight. Understandable, considering that a brand new R1 makes about 50% more power than the original 98 bike (which was no slouch...!). It's bloody hard to control 200+bhp without some help, and the big manufacturers would have faced huge legal challenges following accidents if they had offered nothing to assist riders to put that kind of power down safely.

But the ADV trend towards huge bulk, huge carrying capacity and huge tank range is different. It was led by fashion, and has resulted in some grotesque hippo bikes, very rarely used in a way that matches their appearance. Why any would want to wallow about on a quarter of a tonne (or more!) of un-pick-up-able bike, pretending to be some kind of all-terrain traveller, is beyond me.

Keep it small, keep it light, keep it human-scale...

[Tonibe63]

The average age of riders is increasing and we need extra room to carry supplies of Tena men

[DavidS]

ahhhhhhhhhhh ….. so modern bikes really HAVE gone bigger !!

and theres me thinking I had shrunk already

How true is that...

Bikes should have got smaller and lighter, and they did - until about 2005 or so. Which is when rider aids started adding weight. Understandable, considering that a brand new R1 makes about 50% more power than the original 98 bike (which was no slouch...!). It's bloody hard to control 200+bhp without some help, and the big manufacturers would have faced huge legal challenges following accidents if they had offered nothing to assist riders to put that kind of power down safely.

But the ADV trend towards huge bulk, huge carrying capacity and huge tank range is different. It was led by fashion, and has resulted in some grotesque hippo bikes, very rarely used in a way that matches their appearance. Why any would want to wallow about on a quarter of a tonne (or more!) of un-pick-up-able bike, pretending to be some kind of all-terrain traveller, is beyond me.

Keep it small, keep it light, keep it human-scale...

Spot on.
Why does any usable bike need to be more than, say, 220kg, but preferably around 180kg?