Ozzy
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posted July 09, 2005 07:20 PM
Buell to build a dual sport?
Sure looks like they are going to be building some type of dual sport, or maybe supermoto? Or so their website is hinting at. July 23 is the introduction day.
  
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frEEk
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ummm... yeah
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posted July 18, 2005 06:49 PM
i assume that would be with a twin... i'd be interested to see what they produce: somethign similar to current DS bikes or something revolutionary?
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trenace
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posted July 23, 2005 08:35 PM
The new Cycle World has both a review of it and sort of a comparo with the BMW GS and a Ducati dual sport.
I was damn impressed. Now, y'all don't know me well as I have only 128 posts or whatever but I'm no fan of Harley Davidson, both on account of the equipment as a rule being way subpar for a long time and on account of the tariff on Japanese bikes they demanded and got, forcing riders of real bikes to suffer for the fact that they couldn't make bikes good enough to keep them in business legitimately.
I've been seriously thinking about getting a bike that I can take onto all the limerock and sand or dirt roads rather than being just limited to pavement.
From the article, sounds like Buell really did their homework and, but for one point, this is a good multi-purpose bike that's sort of like the BMW GS but considerably lighter and more able to be dropped at low cost (in fact, one of the testers wiped it out in gravel with only trivial damage.) Though I dunno, maybe with crash bars to protect the engines the BMW may be OK there. (Is it?? )
However, there was one point that is very serious, and seems to be a giant fuckup.
Namely, the steering lock is very limited, less they said than most clip-on-equipped, full-fairing sportbikes. And therefore they said, you won't want to get it into slides, because you won't have enough lock to be able to control the slide and will highside.
Now, that seems just unbelievable... if they mean it has less steering lock than the Twelve that's just insane... or even if the same, that would just be inadequate for a dual sport IMO.
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ozzy
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posted July 24, 2005 06:59 AM
2003 Z1000 low miles for sale!
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frEEk
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ummm... yeah
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posted July 24, 2005 12:56 PM
sure looks sporty for a DS. hell, doesnt look much different at all from any other Buell!
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trenace
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posted July 24, 2005 04:36 PM
Apparently they played a lot with the suspension travel, looking also at the possibility of having much more than this, and decided this was optimum for the intended purpose.
Which is, not really being a dirt bike, but as the article pointed out, there's a really substantial percentage of the roads in this country, higher of course in some places than others, that are unpaved.
Why the hell not have something that's a good streetbike or even a sporty streetbike on paved roads, that also is reasonable to ride on these dirt, gravel, limerock, or whatever roads?
Makes sense to me.
While reading the article, I didn't pay really close attention to the pics... looking at that pic Ozzy posted, damn the frame really does seem to be where it is going to block the forks from getting much steering lock at all.
If you can't get enough steering lock to go with a slide, then I don't know what the whole point of this is... maybe they should have thought about redesigning the frame to allow enough steering lock for being able to slide it?
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ozzy
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posted July 25, 2005 04:44 AM
Buell is calling the bike an "Adventure Sport" not a dual sport. A sport bike that can do dirt roads. Not neccessarly roost dirt roads, but be able to comfortable travel overthem to link to the next asphalt road.
I think that it will have a nice place to fit in the market say between between a KLR650 and a ZX6R for instance.
A bike to ride to Alaska? hmmmm.
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trenace
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posted July 25, 2005 04:56 PM
I do think it's an outstanding idea and there's a real market segment for that. I'm not going to buy it myself but this is the first Buell / H-D that seriously -- except for concern over steering lock -- grabs my interest.
Maybe that will be same for many?
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