Feedback

FEEDBACK

Readers are invited to have their say about motorcycles they own or have owned. Anything is fair game: performance, handling, reliability, service, parts availability, funkiness, lovability, you name it. Suggestions: be objective, be fair, no wildly emotional but ill-founded invectives; include useful facts like miles on odometer, time owned, model year, special equipment and accessories bought, etc.

A BONNIE OWNER

I just purchased a copy of your May '71 issue, and the first article that I read was your road test on the Triumph Bonneville. In general, I feel that the article was well done, and your staff did a fine job of landing the fine points of the T-120R, but as a former owner of a ’69 Bonnie, I must take exception to a few things as well.

To begin with, let me add that I sold my Bonneville after 4700 miles and 9 months of ownership, and I was delighted to see the last of it.

Now then, if I may politely pick a few bones—you are correct in your assessment that the T-120R is a stud machine. It is that and little else. For example, I found my machine to be too cammy, and those twin Amal carbs simply made a sad story worse. The machine refused to idle properly, and starting from a stoplight became a real pain. Low end torque was so poor that I dreaded riding two-up, and avoided it whenever possible. It was necessary to slip the clutch considerably to get underway from a dead stop when carrying a passenger. When 1 took the machine on the road, the poor idling characteristics became more than I was willing to tolerate. For example, before leaving home, I would “go over” the carbs and get the machine running as smoothly as possible, then hit the open road. Thirty miles to the next town and. as I reached my first traffic light, the bike would idle anywhere from 1500 to 200 rpm. Nothing crucial, but annoying. Twenty miles to the next town, and the machine goes dead at every light or dies as soon as I hit the clutch. So, I pull over, whip out my screwdriver, and go over the carbs again. This process never ended as long as I owned the bike. Mind you, I owned a shop manual on the machine and I went over the carbs in the proper manner, but it was always a losing battle.

Another shortcoming of the Bonneville (and all British bikes, for that matter) is the fact that the engine and gearbox leaked an excessive amount of oil. The engine leaked from the pushrod covers and the crankcase. The gearbox leaked from God only knows where. After an 80-mile trip, there was a film of oil all over it. Also, after I had 300 miles on the machine engine, oil began seeping past the exhaust cam seal and into my points. The seal was replaced but the oil still seeped in. I never managed to get this corrected. As you pointed out in your article, Triumph has been building vertical Twins for 30 years. It seems to me they should have learned by now how to keep the oil inside, where it belongs. At any rate, I read somewhere that the Triumph people have recently made a concerted effort to correct this fault, but your road test does not indicate that the ’71 Bonnie has benefitted from this effort.

You praised the gearbox as being smooth and silent. My Bonnie shifted down very well but it always crunched thoroughly when shifting up. I attempted to get this corrected at three different dealers, and each time I was told that this crunch was normal! Normal or not, it wasn’t smooth and it wasri 't quiet.

1 suppose I have complained enough, and I must agree that the Bonneville has some fine attributes. It was a beautiful machine and well finished. The brakes were excellent, and the handling characteristics were very good. I could slap it through corners with absolute confidence. However, I remain convinced that the disadvantages and shortcomings mentioned above outweigh the attributes of braking and handling.

I had been warned by my friends not to buy the Bonneville; I was told that the cams were too wild and the dual Amals would compound the problem. On the other hand, I was advised that the 650 Tiger with its milder cams and single carburetor would be a much easier machine to live with, not to mention the money saved-about SI00! I should have listened.

As I pointed out in the beginning, you do a good job of bringing out the pleasant things about the Bonneville. However, new forks, new frame, new mufflers, and some fresh paint were not really needed on the ’71 Bonnie. What the bike needed, it probably didn’t get: a more tractable engine, better carburetion, an oil-tight engine/gearbox, a smoother and crunchless gearbox, and fuel lines that don't leak. I strongly suspect that the bugs that were present in ’69 are still around in ’71.

Leonard Davis Austin, Texas

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And we politely take exception with you. A mal Concentric carbs are among the easiest to keep in tune if they are not worn out or have loose jet blocks, etc. Even though they don V have as wide an adjustment range as, say, an A mal Monobloc, they are set pretty close from the factory and should require nothing more than a main jet change at altitudes of less than 4000 ft. above sea level. Your having to adjust your carburetors at 80-mile intervals indicates that something else was wrong. (Trash in the fuel tank?)

Low-end torque is quite good on a Bonnie, even though it's not quite as peppy at slow speeds as the TR-6 with i t s o n e curb. Th e ca tn t i m i n g (34-55-55-34) is exactly the same as the Bonneville.

Your oil problems could have been taken care of by installing new pushrod seals. We have seen Triumphs with over 20,000 miles on the clock that leaked little more than a Honda. The gearbox seal is another matter, but could have been corrected. And gearboxes all clunk to a certain extent, even the CB750! Granted, a man should he able to get more refinement for his $1600/— Ed.

GETTING ACTION

I’m writing this letter in complaint to the complaining “Dan Bergmens” of the world who take the time to be verbal about the problem of parts availability without doing anything about it.

We also had a parts problem on a Honda cycle (dealer without parts manual etc.). After six weeks of the runaround, we called Honda’s Customer Relations Dept, in Calif, from Rochester, N.Y. In 3 days we had an airmail letter stating the part was on its way. In a week we had a telephone call from the owner of the Honda dealer saying the part was in. The dealer not only said he would deliver the part, which was now free, but also pay for our phone call to Calif. We later learned that Honda was at the dealer’s and that the dealer came close to losing their franchise.

The happy ending is that the dealer has many new hikes this year and a much more efficient operation. Plus a few changes in personnel. You see, someone does care.

So if your complaints aren’t responded to, take them to where they are at least listened to. If enough people do, we all might not have unreasonable parts problems.

Susan Kasinger Henrietta, N.Y.

BEGGING THE QUESTION

Enough time has elapsed since Yukio Kuroda reported from Japan in the March CW that Harley-Davidson and Honda are conspiring to set motorcycle import quotas to have determined whether there is any truth to this rumor. If not, swell. But if there is fact to back this ugly allegation, then, quite aside from what CW’s views on the matter may be, solely in the spirit of providing a forum for public examination of so critical an issue, CW should print this letter and invite a reply from H-D and Honda.

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It happens that I respect the quality of Honda products-some of my best friends ride Hondas-but I’ve never found a model among Honda’s myriad of sizes and types that exactly appealed to me. So I’ve never had a Honda. It so happens that for the last few years my street bike has been a Sportster.

All this is ingermane. What is germane, in my judgment, is the attempt by Harley-Davidson to substitute the armed might of the Refulgent Federal Government of the United States of North America for ( 1 ) improved lowercost production techniques, (2) improved retail service, (3) improved mechanical design of their products, (4) improved product appearance, performance, durability, logistic support, maintainability, etc.-in short, for a better product at a better price with better service. Or to put it most simply, the attempt to protect their market with force because they’re losing out under free and open competition.

When they do this they have given up the effort to serve their customers, us motorcyclists, and are trying instead to victimize us. When AMF took over H-D, I hoped for great things. No more artificial limitations on the volume of production, no more hyper-conservative resistance to product changes and improvements. Evidently they’ve decided to play by a different set of rules. How do they justify this?

If anything is fair, it is to reduce the barriers to imports to Japan, which I understand are rather high, not to raise higher harriers around our own shores. W'hy should motorcyclists in both countries be penalized with higher prices, reduced availability, and more limited range of choice just because some manufacturers are shortsighted? The riders and the manufacturers would benefit around the world if trade barriers were lower.

Newer riders may not remember the long dry spell of the Fifties, during which motorcycle design and the motorcycle market were almost totally stagnant. International competition was the one factor responsible for breaking out of this stagnation. The domestic motorcycle industry as a whole-importers, distributors, dealers, specialty shops, accessory houses, even magazines-the whole industry has prospered enormously as a result of international trade. There are more jobs, more sales, more profits, and more attractive products. It would seem that H-D doesn’t care any more about the interests of the rest of the domestic industry any more than it cares about the interests of the buying public, for the only possible result of raising trade barriers is to strangle this dynamic growth, at least to some extent, and to return us to the stagnation of the Fifties.

Did you ever notice that those industries which cry most loudly for government protectionism are precisely the ones which have been the least progressive? The tragedy is that once they get protection, all incentive to change, to move ahead, to improve, is lost forever and they go downhill even faster than before. Brass wind instruments have been made exactly the same way for nearly 200 years in the U.S.A. When, several years ago, another firm in another country started making them on machines at a fraction of the price, the American manufacturers screamed for government protectionism. Do they expect to continue making cornets by 1760 methods all the way to the year 2 1 60?

If H-D is in trouble because it is discriminated against by the governments of Japan, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Czechoslovakia or other countries which sell motorcycles in the U.S.A, let them demand that our government 'negotiate reductions in those import barriers. If H-D is in trouble because it can’t hack it in a free competitive market, then let them improve or die. But under no circumstances should they exploit the American buyer.

Joseph Schumpeter, the famous economist, argued that regardless of the system of government or nominal form of the economy, the one factor absolutely essential to progress was the process of “creative destruction,” the process by which non-competitive manufacturers were forced aside. Without creative destruction progress is impossible. for every firm, no matter how backward or uneconomic, will be able to use legal force to restrict the choice to its products or none. With continued growth of motorcycling, we may soon see the day when the market becomes large enough to tempt Detroit to enter it and really stir things up. But if these alleged protectionist policies go through, the market will stagnate and, once again, motorcycling will crawl back into its safe, but tiny, cocoon. Is that what you want. Harley-Davidson?

Greg Krol Anaheim, Calif.