Rode from London to Ridgeville (Ontario) - April 20/20

[Zwartie]

I know this isn't exactly an FJ ride report but it does involve people who currently and/or previously owned FJs.

Went for a little "social distancing" ride yesterday. Left London, ON shortly after 1:00 PM, gassed up, and rode out to see my buddy Rob who lives just outside St. Thomas. Rob and I have been riding buddies for years - ever since he got his first FJ1100 back in 2003. He recently upgraded to a very mint '07 Triumph Sprint ST. I took it for a test ride a couple weeks ago and it is brilliant - an ideal solo sport-touring machine. Lots of power on tap and good ergonomics. From his place we rode east on a few of the back-roads as well as Hwy 3 and met up with our buddy John (FJ Johnny) who lives in Ridgeville. Johnny has also been a long-time FJ owner (among many other bikes) and now has a couple Yamaha GTS1000s. His buddy Rob (another Rob) was also there on his 2014 FJR. We did a 20-minute jaunt through some of John's favourite back-roads while John and Rob (Sprint ST) swapped bikes. Stopped for a minute and then John and I swapped rides.



I had never ridden a "forkless wonder" before. I must preface my riding impression with a reminder that it's an almost 30 year old machine and that includes the front suspension. He had the rear suspension re-done last year but admitted that the rebound damping needed to be adjusted - too much rebound. First impression: The GTS engine is buttery smooth! Not as much grunt as the FJR or even my old FJ but back in the day Yamaha limited the GTS to 100 hp for the European market. The power delivery seemed pretty linear and if you really want to have some fun you need to keep it above 6K RPM. Braking was good and although it dives under braking, it is noticeably less than any other bike. The front end wallowed a bit in the corners but again, that could be due to the sacked-out front shock. It also had a bit of a wallow in the straights but John said he had to replace the tires in the middle of a trip last year and the only ones the local dealer (somewhere in the US) had was a set of Shinkos which haven't worn well at all. He has PR4s on his other GTS and says they handle and wear much, much better. I'll have to take his word on that. Wind protection / air flow was very good. Of course we're spoiled by having an adjustable windscreen on the FJR but I was thoroughly impressed with the GTS's handling of air flow. No buffeting at all. One thing I wasn't too impressed with was the riding ergos, especially the distance between the seat and the pegs. I'm only 5'8" with a 30" inseam and felt like my knees were bent too far. Could be age related. Again, he does have a Corbin saddle so the seating position is likely lower than stock. I've been mildly obsessed with the GTS since it first came out in '93. It's definitely a novelty and even a few years ago I was seriously considering buying one as an upgrade from my FJ1200. After yesterday's test ride I'm glad I went with the FJR. I would love to ride Johnny's GTS one more time after he gets the front shock redone (and new tires) and dials in that rear suspension.

After our little test ride session, Rob and I bid farewell to Johnny and headed back home. It was a balmy 9C when I left London in the early afternoon and the temperature continued to drop. Riding close to Lake Erie it got down as low as 4C - thank goodness for heated grips, seat, and vest! Rob and I parted ways just before Aylmer and I tacked my way back to Hwy 73, then the 401 and burned home.

The sunset was brilliant so I stopped for a minute on Hwy 73 just outside Harrietsville for a quick photo shoot.



I rolled into my garage at 8:30, having ridden just under 450 km. It was a good ride.

Today it's snowing with a predicted high temp of 2C. Timing is everything.

Zwartie

[Bill_Rockoff]

Nice ride, nice ride report. I'm envious, since the weather is *perfect* in East Coast Rally Land lately, but for the time being I'm trying to avoid unnecessary trips including unnecessary  risk of needing medical attention. So, for now, it's rides around the block every couple weeks to keep things charged and warmed-up and circulating.

I tried a new GTS1000 in the early 1990s, on one of those "please come test-ride our new bike" dealer things, because they were priced like an Italian or German bike but styled like a Suzuki or German bike, so they did not exactly fly off the showroom floor. This was a real technology showcase for Yamaha ~30 years ago, the first electronic fuel injection IIRC and the first ABS, as well as the swing-arm front suspension. My understanding was that the front suspension could have been configured for zero dive under braking, but test-riders found that too disconcerting so they engineered some dive into the suspension geometry. My test ride was brief but memorable.

More recently, Ducati Dave has a few of them, and he usually brings one or two to East Coast Fall rallies. I tried one of his when we worked together, we had a favorite lunch restaurant at the end of a fun stretch of twisty road (a common loop during the vintage motorcycle weekends at Barber Motorsports Park) and I liked it a lot. The thing I noticed most about both GTS1000s was that your path through a corner seems to stay largely unchanged by braking forces or bumps. Back when I still had stock tires on the FJ1200 and it wanted to stand up under braking and it was terrible on bumpy roads, the idea that a motorcycle would simply absorb bumps and slow down under braking without trying to run wide off the outside of a corner was amazing to me.

Dave has a thing for these bikes, and he may own five or six by now. (He went off the road at low speed one night a few rallies ago and flipped it down an embankment, damaging some bodywork, and I think his search for replacement parts turned up a few bikes that were too nice to part out and too cheap to pass up.) I think he was going to try to make a GTS1300 using an FJR motor.

[PaulG]

.. My understanding was that the front suspension could have been configured for zero dive under braking, but test-riders found that too disconcerting so they engineered some dive into the suspension geometry...

BMW had the same conundrum when they came out with the front telelever (?) suspension.  On initial prototypes they had zero dive on the front.  After the factory test riders, they let focus groups from the public ride them to gauge reactions.   The complaints came back they didn't like the fact there was no front dive under braking.  It didn't feel "natural".  Wha wha whaaat?    Was the engineers reaction.  They thought they were actually getting rid of an inherent fault in m/c suspension behaviour.  So they had to dial in some dive to make customers feel comfortable. 

No wonder theres a whole industry built on trying to figure out human nature.