Sunday, April 10, 2011

I have been to VTEC territory,

and I like it.

I've mentioned only once or twice getting the engine high enough in revs to trigger the VTEC. In one of those 'I need to work on that' moments I mentioned earlier today I took a ride this evening. When I turned around to start back I found the ramp completely empty before me and not much traffic on the highway, so pushed it a bit and shifted into 2nd around 6k and thought "I need to try this" and ran it up to about 7500 before shifting.

Right at 6800 I felt it switch on, felt the surge and heard the engine note change deeper. Ran up to about 7500-8k to shift into 3rd and discovered I was at 85 and rapidly running out of ramp and there was some traffic on the highway so I backed off. It was impressive, and now I really want to find a track somewhere to ride this thing on.

I read that Honda got some complaints that the transition from two to four valves was too sudden and a problem for some people; this was very smooth, no problem at all. And as I remember redline on my Vulcan was around 8000; at 8k on this bike there's almost 4k more to redline. The more I ride this bike, the better I like it.

One other thing, I tried out a Throttle Rocker and think it'll work fairly well. I had a throttle lock on the Vulcan(no, I did not think to take it off before selling it) and it was great on the highway; with this you still have to have your hand there, but you can relax it and just let the heel keep the throttle in place. I need to make a trip for research purposes(that's my excuse, and I'll stick to it).

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