Scram

[Horse]

that is never going to make you grin.

Never?

We had a CG125 as the training scheme loan bike. I've posted (probably too many times ) that it gave me probably my best ever biking moment: flat out, downhill, leant over the bars, stretching the throttle cable and laughing out loud. Overtaking a 911, driven by the most bored-looking bloke.

Smiles per £? Couldn't beat it

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I had a 1980 YZ125G, Yamaha claimed 26.4 bhp for it, it was one of the most fun bikes I've owned, it's also the lightest motorcycle I've owned and went through a piston ring every 20 minutes.

[Cousin Jack]

I took mine out yesterday. Was fine for first half hour. Then I chose to let the full 202 bhp loose. That was fun.

I'll choose my way

And I hope you enjoy 'your way'. Nothing wrong with 200 bhp, but your bike cost around £14k at a guess, not everyone can afford, or chooses to afford, that much money. I could buy the same bike if I chose, but 90% of my riding is on narrow country roads where 50 bhp is plenty AND I get 80 mpg. To me the compromise of less power, less money and less weight is good. Your choice is your business. Similarly a 24 bhp cheap commuter is not my bag, nor yours, but it will suit some people.

[MrLongbeard]

I took mine out yesterday. Was fine for first half hour. Then I chose to let the full 202 bhp loose. That was fun.

I'll choose my way

Yorick yesterday

[dern]

You need 10 hp to corner at 60 mph.

Years ago we instructors had to run in 20+ brand new CG125s at the training school before the 'Ells Angels got their hands on them by riding them home and back to work. I was doing 60 miles a day, so took me around 8 days to run a bike in. I think it took three weeks all told to get them all past their first service.

The rides took me a bit longer than the motorway route but the twisty cross country routes from Maidstone to Kent were great fun. Avoiding slowing down becomes everything. Most of the bikes had scraped pegs by the time they went out on general release!

Is that what you ride now then, a cg125?

I bought my daughter an sr50 and it was great fun for a bit. I think anyone could have some kind of fun on anything for a bit, doesn't mean you'd want one long term.

[Trinity765]

that is never going to make you grin.

Never?

We had a CG125 as the training scheme loan bike. I've posted (probably too many times ) that it gave me probably my best ever biking moment: flat out, downhill, leant over the bars, stretching the throttle cable and laughing out loud. Overtaking a 911, driven by the most bored-looking bloke.

Smiles per £? Couldn't beat it

Expectation has a lot to do with it. You expect a bike to be boring but then you ride it like you stole it and all of a sudden it's fun. You expect a bike to be too powerful, but then you ride it and find it's easy and friendly and it becomes fun.

Scram. Verb. To leave or go away from a place quickly. I can think of much quicker bikes to leave town on.

[Horse]

About the only 'bike' that I've not enjoyed riding was my sister's Honda Express, 50cc shopping basket thing. Scary.

Apart from that, even an MZ 125 was ok, and a 2013 Kawasaki 250 was reasonable.

Of, one other to the 'blurgh' list: BMW 650 'Funduro'.

[matt]

I think it looks alright,but I think the Himalayan looks fun as well. Sure it could do with more power for UK roads but they were designed for India.
I have a lot of fun on my e mountain bike and that's got less than 0.5 hp I think?. Horses for courses.
They are supposed to be working on a 450 with about 40hp at the moment, pictures of it look quite nice in my opinion.

[matt]

laptop keyboard checker

[Taipan]

At 24hp it's going to be very boring.

Depends where you ride it.

My 500 Bullet should make 27bhp.

I ride it two up around the local lanes. It's loud and slow. When you ride it past a pub beer garden everyone looks.

I wear a brown leather jacket and an open face Blue Oyster Club helmet.

It's the best bike I've ever owned.

New drugs?

Good idea. It's probably for the best...

[asmethurst99]

Looks alright but need to see it in the flesh - A fruity pipe and less of the retro stuff and it might be fun. 3500 quid would be ok

[The Spin Doctor]

Is that what you ride now then, a cg125?

I bought my daughter an sr50 and it was great fun for a bit. I think anyone could have some kind of fun on anything for a bit, doesn't mean you'd want one long term.

70-odd hp XJ6, mostly. Plus an elderly Hornet 600 with a bit more poke.

And a positively ancient CB250RSA... 26hp and great fun on back roads.

[The Spin Doctor]

About the only 'bike' that I've not enjoyed riding was my sister's Honda Express, 50cc shopping basket thing. Scary.

Apart from that, even an MZ 125 was ok, and a 2013 Kawasaki 250 was reasonable.

Of, one other to the 'blurgh' list: BMW 650 'Funduro'.

We had the shopping basket Express at CSM for 16'er CBTs... I nearly fell off that doing a practice e-stop. I wondered why all the other instructors had stopped to watch me - the guy I'd replaced at the Catford site broke his arm falling off the same bike doing demo emergency stops. He'd only been there two days. Fortunately my finely-honed reflexes got me off the front brake again before I went arse over tit.

Oddly enough, they also had a Funduro on site. As the new boy, I was lumbered with it. I like singles and have put a lot of miles on Honda's 650 Dominator, but the BMW was awful. It shook itself to bits much under 3000 rpm and hit the rev limiter at 6k. And because it was a road bike, it was over-geared so you could cruise in top, but that meant that in intermediate gears, the five speeds were too widely spaced to make the 3000 rpm rev band actually work. 50 was particularly awful - it was right between two gears and didn't have a gear that you could hold the speed in. It was either in the chain chatter zone in the lower gear, or on the rev limiter on the next one up.

[The Spin Doctor]

From an article I wrote a very long time ago...
-----------

In June 2006, RiDE magazine had a very interesting article. With a data-logger on their GSX-R600 they were able to get real data on how much power four of their staff actually used to ride their bikes round their favourite test route.

Steve Rose lapped their 40 mile ‘TT circuit’, with (in his words) “the speedo barely dropping below 100mph” for an average speed of just over 60mph. He needed an average of just 26.3hp on the ride. He used a peak power of 72hp, some 30hp short of the maximum output of the bike and the average throttle opening was just 15% – he never got it more than half open.

72hp? That's the output of those ER and MT twins!

The more legal sounding 47.4mph averaged by Emma Franklin required just 11.1hp. Yep, you read that right – ELEVEN HORSEPOWER! That’s what a CG125 makes. She used an average of 10.4% throttle and a maximum of 39.4hp, or rather less than the output of a restricted 500cc A2 licence bike.

Ed Tim Skelton lapped at 51mph, using an average of 13.5hp with a peak of 94hp. His average throttle opening was just 13.5%.

Horsepower is used for three things:

:: to move the mass of the bike off the line
:: to lift the mass of the bike up a hill
:: to push the wind aside

We might be using full THROTTLE for hard acceleration in a higher gear but that's not the same as full POWER. Peak power usually lurks somewhere near the top of the rev band, and you only generate it at full throttle when you hit the right revs at the same time.

The datalogging showed that only racer Kev Smith managed to get the throttle fully open and hit the full monty 110hp at the same time. Even he only used an average of 36hp with the average revs only half way to the red line whilst blasting his way round at the highly illegal average speed of 65mph.

With a typical 600 hitting 70mph at the red line in 1st, and 100mph in 2nd, it's highly unlikely Smith got anywhere near peak power in the higher gears. He probably managed the wide-open throttle at peak revs accelerating in 1st from a standstill - possibly away from lights - or maybe 2nd or 3rd on a long straight.

Once rolling, we don't need nearly as much power to keep a bike moving as people think. 11hp is enough to push a CG125 to around 65mph on the flat. The CG won't get there speedily, but it will get there.

And that's why Emma Franklin was able to complete a 47mph lap using just 11hp. On her legal-sounding lap, most of the power was redundant nearly all of the time - there are just too many hazards and speed limits. It's a good indication that it's not how much power you've got, it's how much you need.

[Whysub]

I have a Himalayan (amongst other bikes) which is perfect for the 100's of kms of trails and unpaved roads around here. It copes well with those, probably because of its lower power*.

But I would not buy a Scram, as its not suitable for my requirements of a roadbike, and the Himalayan has more versatility for what is the same engine, gearbox and frame.

*Rode the Himalayan to Portugal, and just outside Braganca four Ducatis came past me just before a long, winding downhill mountain pass. I managed to tag on the back of the 4th bike, and for about 6 kms, kept with them. As soon as the road started to rise again, they were able to piss off into the distance. Down hill is a great leveller for bikes, uphill shows who has the power.

[The Spin Doctor]

Down hill is a great leveller for bikes, uphill shows who has the power.

You're doing work, going uphill, lifting the mass of the bike against gravity so yes, generally speaking more power wins.

But I remember trying to keep up with two other bikes on a freezing cold, wet, muddy, slithery pass in Austria, and I really struggled on the uphill section.

I was wheelspinning everywhere on my newly-acquired 120 hp GSX-R750... the two girls were on a Transalp and an NVT650.

I was catching them up again on the straights once I finally got the totally unsuitable sport compound rear tyre to stick, but you can only use what power the road surface allows you to use.