Motors Motorcycle Mayhem

Is hill hold what it sounds like?

[googles]

Yes, yes it is. Oh my. I don't usually use this phrase, but what a 'snowflake' addition to a vehicle

 

So, it turns out that not only the master cylinder needed a refresh, the refrehsed slave cylinder was leaking, so now I've got clutch-fluid im my new engineoil.
Anyway, I had to rip everything apart again, and as the master cylinder was detatched anyway, i actually got it bled.

Aaaaaand...it works!
Did around 50 miles on it this weekend, the timing belts seem to be allright and the clutch is better than it has been in the last...um...decade?

 

Normally I'd agree with you, but I'm going soft in my old age and I can kind of see the point on a 300Kg bike, Goldwings have it, some BMW's have it, for some reason I think some KTM's have it

 

Seems like a reasonable feature to me! Easy enough to write in with the new-generation IMUs and digital ABS.

Anything that helps those awkward muddle moments at traffic lights and junctions from catching you out has to be a winner to my mind.

 

I mean... I thought that being able to pull away from a standing start on a hill was just.... you know... driving... I regularly have to manage traffic lights on a sharp incline, and I have no problems with a 330kg Pan European. Winds me right up when I see cars rocking back and forth when they're trying to hold the clutch - like... is there something wrong with your bloody handbrake or something?!

I had an NC750X for three years, they're solid little bikes. Fantastic fuel efficiency, and despite being a "sort of but not quite" adventure bike they're still great for commuting or darting in and around town/city centres.

The engine is a little uninspiring and you don't get much power from that 745cc engine, so you'll be working the gearbox quite a lot. But my recollection will be skewed by the power and torque available on my Pan European, so the NC750X probably isn't as bad as I remember. Plus it's still a motorbike so you're still gonna pull away quicker than anyone else at traffic lights, and you'll still have fantastic acceleration.

The storage box thing is really really handy - there's not a ton of space, but it fits most full-face helmets and it's handy to have some kind of storage without needing a top box.

The riding position is quite good, you're sat quite upright. Taller riders get a lot of wind blast with the stock screen though - for reference I'm a shade under 6'3".

Comfort though... GOOD GOD that seat is not comfortable at all. Pootling back & fore to work for 20-30 minutes and it's fine, you can deal with it. Your 500 mile ride, however, would be agony! Definitely want to get an aftermarket seat or cushion or something if you get one! Over a longer period of time I used to get quite a lot of vibration through the handlebars; I had a few occasions where I came off a long ride and my hands felt tingly and fizzy for a while afterwards.

TMF did a video review a couple of years ago:

 

So what's the regular motorbike hill start? With a car you are taught to use the handbrake but in reality a lot of people will just quickly jump from the brake pedal to the throttle and catch it, with a bike are you taught to use the rear brake and no-one actually does that or what?

 

Can't speak for anyone else, but that's how I was taught and it's still what I do. Back when I had a lighter bike I could also hold it on the clutch if I wanted to - not a chance in hell I'm even gonna try that on my current bike though.

 

Ok, makes sense.

I've never been one to hold a car by slipping the clutch (those things cost money!) but with a bike likely having a wet clutch is that not an issue?

 

That's the way it's taught, I've never had to worry about a hill steep enough that I needed too though.
I can see hill hold as being useful, but I prefer bikes with less electonical gizmos, mainly because I tend keep mine for a long time and they're always the first thing to go wrong.

 

Motorbikes use all four limbs in a sort of octopus spread of controls, including a brake on the right hand and a brake on the right foot, and between those I've honestly never had a single slippery moment where I struggled to keep control of a bike or its braking. Having hand controls, especially, is such a doddle that I sometimes wonder about getting one of those paraplegic-adapted cars with hand operated brakes. Your hands are just so much better at fine controlled motions and manipulations. I can hill start with front or rear brake and find it massively easier either way than hill-starting a car. A manual car dooms you from the start by having all three key controls - brake, gas and clutch - operated by your feet. You naturally would want to operate the brake with your left foot and the gas with your right for maximum control, but can't, because you also need to operate the clutch with your left foot (a task for which your foot is terribly ill-suited, as clutches require the kind of gentle control and awareness of tactile feedback that hands are literally designed to provide). The received wisdom to solve this is switching to the parking brake, and it's a terrible workaround, because the parking brake is about as refined and controllable as a home-made shotgun boobytrap. Pull a cable, somewhere in the distance a clunky all-or-nothing brake clamps up; release it slowly, and at some point without warning, the car lurches into freefall. ****ing terrible.

If this hill-start tech is making its way into cars too, I'm all for it, because cars frankly are rubbish in their current state, especially manuals.

Sad to head about the NC series uncomfortable seat. This seems to be an endemic problem with all - really, all - modern bikes. Anything past about 2012. Rock hard, thin, low surface area, convex seats. The early maxi-scooters, cruisers, tourers, etc. all had big cushiony things - look at the Deauville, or the Silverwing. Then at some point they all started aping sports bikes, as though anybody is eager to slide and lean sideways off their NC750 with a knee down. Even the goddamn cruisers are at it, trading plush for firmness. If a manufacturer released a budget commuter with a big squishy seat as standard it'd sell like hotcakes.

 

It's been a thing in cars for years n years n years, although granted it's become more prevalent with the wider introduction of E-handbrakes {shudder}

 

Help me choose a new lid.

I used to use a Shark 900 Dual, and my current lid is an HJC IS-17. They both utterly fail when it comes to keeping rain out and not misting up - and yes, I am fitting Pinlock inserts correctly. Plus the HJC has a terrible visor clip design that eventually fails; I've gone through two visors so far and in both cases the clip has degraded or cracked off. If I get a third visor then I'll have spent as much on visors as I did on the bloody helmet, so I'm not willing to do that.

Usually one of two things will happen.

The Pinlock insert fogs up and I have to crack the visor open to clear it; this lets in rain, which makes the fogging worse and gets rain on the inside of the visor that doesn't clear and obscures my vision.

Or.

Rain starts getting past the seals and through to the inside of the visor which makes the pinlock fog up and I have to crack open the visor to clear it; this leads to even more rain on the inside of the visor that doesn't clear and obscures my vision.

Either way I end up with a fogging pinlock and rain on the inside of the visor. A packed dual carriageway where traffic in all lanes is moving at 50+mph and you can hardly see a thing is not a fun place to be.

So. Help me out here. Recomment me a lid sized for a fathead (my IS-17 is 61-62, sized 'XL') that'll stand up to a thorough Welsh downpour and sufficiently ventilated that the pinlock doesn't fail. I'm willing to spend up to about £400 at the moment, but happy to be convinced otherwise if that's too much to ask for that price point.

 

Shoei.
But of course it depends on you having a Shoei shaped head.

 

My Scorpion has a sort of camming action to the last few millimetres of the visor closure that forces it against the gasket and seals it beautifully. I don't ride in the rain, but it's a real help in the winters. I actually prefer it over my HJC i70 when it's very cold out.

 

Cheers for the suggestions so far .

 

Honestly it's like choosing clothes - the right answer is the affordable one that properly fits your head!

That said, I splashed out on an AGV K6 last month - I made do with a pair of cheap Bell RS-2 over the last few years (first one I got in 2017), but the difference in quality, weight etc is night and day. Twice the price and really is twice the quality.

 

Indeed, but the market is so vast that it is useful to hear the experience/opinions of others. Both of the lids I've had so far have been great - comfortable, fit well, good safety ratings, etc... except that they let water in, have atrocious ventilation, and the pinlock inserts fog over.

 

I would love to throw in my 2c Byron, but honestly every helmet I've had has been shite. I don't believe in good bike gear any more than I believe in fairies - when I encounter it firsthand, I might change my mind.

edit - although come to think of it, last time I was shopping and perusing "best helmets of 2020" threads, the AGV K1 was repeatedly and independently mentioned as great value for money and the stand-out budget helmet, and user reviews seemed to support that. I was going to buy one, but then I decided that 500 miles a year doesn't really warrant upgrading my existing, smelly, slightly decrepit helmet.

Its product page specifically mentions a metal quick-release visor retention mechanism, so maybe those plastic clippy bits breaking is something they know about.

 

I detach my visor maybe once or twice a year just to clean it, so I don't understand what all this quick-release nonsense is about

 

If you're doing all-winter riding you gotta get it off and clean it all the time if you don't want to clean it on the helmet. Mine's just plastic quick release clips and they are getting a bit ropey. They depend on tiny little 2mm-wide tabs of plastic not snapping off, which if you've ever dismantled a laptop in a hurry you'll know is a bad design philosophy.

I quite fancy the K1, but winter has suddenly knocked and all my biking mojo has gone. I share my wife's car now so there's very little need to have a bike.