Cycle World Letters
CYCLE WORLD LETTERS
Notes from the Guzzi philes
A letter from B. Parrette in your October, 1984 Letters column criticizes Cycle World's supposed lack of honesty in describing the Moto Guzzi's reliability and simplicity compared to a
BMW. I wholeheartedly disagree with Mr. Parrette’s assessment. I own a 1978 T-3 with 38,000 miles racked up. Other than an occasional electrical problem (rectifier, ground on starter switch), I have not experienced any problems that were not routine. The machine doesn’t use oil between 2000-mile changes. It handles beautifully with stability at high speeds. Valves, carburetors, battery, brakes are easily accessible. The cycle is more reliable than my car. The only problem is that I cannot afford a LeMans. Please continue your reports on European road machines and allow your readers to make an informed choice.
Burt Thelander
Godeffroy, New York
When answering Mr. Parrette’s “Not a Guzziphile” letter, you were correct to point out that everyone has an opinion.
Here is mine: I bought my ’81 Guzzi G5 in September of 1980. It has 55,731 miles on it. My longest trip has been 7000 miles. To date I have replaced: one turn-signal bulb; one taillight bulb; two spark-plug wires; one speedometer cable; one bat-
tery. The bike gets 60 mpg at 60 mph loaded for touring. I change the oil and filter every 3000 miles; it uses a quarter of a quart in that time. My opinion is that the Moto Guzzi is a very fine motorcycle—reliable, dependable, simple, and it handles just fine in the corners. It also costs less than a BMW, a Harley, a Gold Wing, a Venture, etc. I have had no trouble getting parts within 24 hours. Of course, this is only my opinion.
Neal Daugherty
Moreno, California
Actually, it’s more than that; it’s your actual experience, which is worth more than a hundred opinions any day.
Four-wheeled H-D accessories
Who are you trying to fool? The Harley FXRS (“FXRS Fong-Term Report,” September 1984 issue) left its rider stranded several times and you say it has a certain toughness? I have owned a Harley, my dad has owned Harleys, and so have a lot of my friends and relatives. And we all know that if you ride a Harley, you had
better own a pickup truck so you can get your Harley back home when it breaks down.
In 30,000 miles, my KZ750 Kawasaki has never left me stranded, and it has more cylinders and more performance than a Harley. And as far as belt drive being better than a chain, tell that to my cousin; his Sportster has broken two belt primaries in the last year. There is one good thing I can say about Harley-Davidsons, though: They have helped to sell a lot of tiedown straps and pickup trucks.
Gregory Hall
Godfrey, Illinois
Mis-reading between the lines
Who is Paul Dean? Is he salaried? Why you would even consider publishing a piece of trash like “Changing Standards,” (September, 1984) is beyond me. He likens every bike under 700 pounds without radios and refrigerators as doomed “to buy the farm.” Any bike with spokes, a chain, and minus a fairing is labeled a “standard.” “There’s nothing special about them,” he says. Dean even has the nerve to call the BMW K100 “measly.” “The end of the line
seems imminent.” Motorcycling in this country hasn’t been the same, he states, since the advent of the Yamaha FTD.
Paul’s personal bike was spotted recently on 1-80 near Cheyenne, Wyoming, going 55 mph downhill with five children in the trailer waving snow-cones. Shame on you forever, Paul.
A consensus of the MRA
Boulder, Colorado
For one thing, it’s a Kawasaki LTD, not a Yamaha. Says so right there in blackand-white, plain as day. But judging by your letter, that’s not all you misunderstood.
I have just finished reading Paul Dean’s Editorial about lack of respect in the October issue of Cycle World. My first reaction was to wonder what planet you inhabit. My experiences here in the Midwest have been completely opposite those you wrote about. Early this summer I headed south from Indianapolis and toured Tennessee, Mississippi and Fouisiana, ending up at the World Fair in New Orleans. Whenever I stopped at the end of each day, I always went to the best motor inn I could find, feeling that they would have the best dining room in town. In every case I found the welcome genuine and very friendly. Whenever I needed gasoline,
I looked for a station where I could also get a cup of coffee. After the usual “where are you from” and “where are you going” preliminaries, plus a little talk about motorcycles, I usually found that the coffee was on the house. Even when I took my grubby, sweat-soaked clothes to a laundromat in a small town in Fouisiana, I met with friendliness, an interest in > touring on a motorcycle, and the free use of the dryer.
Reader Information
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Letters cannot all be answered. Nor can all Service inquiries be answered. We appreciate correspondence sent to the editorial offices and will use the most interesting and appropriate letters in the magazine.
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I don’t have an expensive BMW, don’t wear expensive leathers and don’t frighten people by my appearance. I’m just an average guy riding an average motorcycle and enjoying life. Perhaps you should plan your next trip to the Midwest and the South where people
accept you for what you are and not what you appear to be. If you come this way, I’ll even introduce you to a bank where they give preferential (below prime) loans to their good customers who buy motorcycles.
W.J. Murdock Indianapolis, Indiana
We don’t have to go out of California to experience the same kind of treatment, but that’s not the point; the people who change their opinion of you once you become associated with motorcycles usually are the ones you have to live/work/do business with or around—your family, your neighbors, your co-workers, loan officers, etc. The people you encounter while riding are friendly and cooperative almost everywhere, mostly because they have no real stake in you or your future.
On the other hand, we know about a jillion motorcyclists (us included) who would like to meet your banker friend. He’s a rare find.
Bring on the Bonnies
As an owner of both the KL600R Kawasaki and the XL600R Honda, I can assure you that their performance is much closer than your test of the Kawasaki (September, 1984) suggests. The KLR both starts easier and handles better at high speed. And if the test left you thinking that this was just another half-baked technical experiment, compare the Kawasaki’s specs to those of a Triumph 750 Bonnie. Then road-test and you’ll come to know what a KLR eats for breakfast. And by the way, mine goes a heck of a lot faster than 97 mph.
Robert Wilson Blacksburg, Virginia
Okay, but consider this: Since the Honda XL600R is, by your own admission, slightly faster than the KLR, then it, too, can outrun a 750 Bonneville, and do it without the aid of double overhead cams, liquid-cooling or most of the other techno-trickery of the Kawasaki. Besides, you might think that it’s a major engineering accomplishment for a 600cc, 300-pound bike designed in 1983 to outrun a 750cc, 410-pound bike designed in 1961, but we don’t. And as far as top speed is concerned, the radar gun we Yused to clock that 97 mph is accurate within one percent. The speedometer on your KLR is more than 10-percent optimistic at a mere 60 mph. Which would you believe?
Another KLR on the loose
I own a Kawasaki KL600R. In your test of this bike, I found that some of the specifications you gave were contradictory to those in the bike’s owner’s manual. For example, you gave the test weight as 325 pounds, but my manual gives it as 287 pounds. Other examples are wheelbase, ignition system and oil capacity. Who is right and where do you get your specifications?
Jeremy Roberts
Collinsville, Missouri
It’s possible that neither is wrong. We 'get complete specifications directly from the manufacturers, but we don’t use all of them; we take many of the measurements ourselves, and only use the supplied data for things we can’t practically measure on our own (bore and stroke, compression ratio, transmission ratios, etc.). Consequently, there can be some variation in the techniques used to get our specs compared with those used by the factories. For instance, they usually weigh a bike bone-dry (no gas, engine oil, battery water, fork oil), while we weigh it with a half-tank of gas. And the wheelbase measurement can vary quite a bit depending upon where the chainadjusters are positioned and how far the bike has settled down on its suspension. The factories often get their chassis measurements from an engineering ,drawing, but we take ours right off of the test bike itself. You didn’t state exactly what your manual says about the ignition system and the oil capacity, so we can’t comment on those discrepancies. But it now should be easy to see why our numbers and those in the manual sometimes don’t agree.
