Where are all the shaft drive bikes ?

Dont have to imagine, both Yamaha and Honda did it. Suzuki?

Al

 

Suzuki XN85 turbot was a chain drive.

Al

 

As was the Kawasaki 750 turbo (which was arguably the best of the bunch)
but still performed no better than the GPz900R and the 900R handled
better (on smoother roads anyway).

Yes I know... classic bike those ;-)


G-S

 

Sorry should have included Hyosung in that list.

My apologies to the nation of Korea.

GB.

P.S. Is Vegemite on toast and coffee the best brekky ever ?? I reckon it
is.

 

He'd feel denigrated!

Hammo

 

Due, no doubt, to Kawasaki failing to make the 750 a diesel...

 

Or 'dam pump' ... why are we arguing about maggots anyway?
I mean, there's been heaps of shafties since.

-----sharks

 

I've no idea, but I'd like it very much if you came up
with an original name for yourself during your time in
the house.

GB

 

But why ? Most of the naked bikes are closer to the sports end of the
spectrum, FZ1 and FZ6 aren't too far short of the R1 and R6 (and if you
saw the current AMCN the 06 FZ1 is going to be WAY tasty). A Benelli TnT
with a shaft ? Abomination ! Raptor or Monster ? No thanks !

Shaft may be low maintenance, but it adds weight, and when you're
towards the sporty end, being a porker ain't a selling point.

Could be an argument there though. Still, it costs unsprung weight and
the Viffer, Priller and ST4 are all still fairly sporty.

No they're not, just because people don't agree with your priorities
doesn't make them stupid.

It took Rob and I about 10 mins tops to clean the chains and lube them
on the Falco and the XRaptor tonight. I'm not anal enough to do it as
often as people carry on about - on all my bikes over the last 5 years
I've cleaned them about every 3-4000 km, sprayed chain lube on ever
2000K or so, got 45,000km out the OEM chain on the TRX, was still on
it's 2nd chain and sprocket when it went...

JL

 

yeh but then you cant wheelie nor countersteer

yeh what about the wheelies ??

 

Clem can do little wheelie's on a shaftie, he has a certificate to prove it!

Boxer

 

Ahh but my friend, there's weight and there's weight. Unsprung is much
more of an issue than sprung weight. The less mass your suspension has
to control the better...

Might want to chat to Mr Pennykid about "life of bike" vs the real
longevity of a shaft..

I can, but I value lower weight at the bouncy bits ahead of a minor
inconvenience of occasionally cleaning a chain and lubing it. Do you
wash your bikes ? You could just add it as part of the washing duties.
It's not that onerous, and if you do as someone else suggested and get a
scottoiler you don't even have to do the clean and lube thing, in which
case it's no different to a shafty..

Oh I can see that it's a TERRIBLY large price to pay for some
Expense wise -shafts generally go about 100 to 150K, that's 3-5 sets of
chains and sprockets, if you want to google it up, someone calculated
there was buggerall difference in the cost based on Al's experience with
BMWs (and don't forget they generally charge you more up front for to
get shafted, so don't forget the time value of money while doing the
calculation)

JL
(of course this really only matters for odd people like you who keep
bikes for 100,000km + most Australians sell them before they hit 30,000
km as far as I can tell ;-P, apparently these jap bikes are all worn out
by 50,000km )

 

It'll be a lot more than that... between the shaft, its housing, the
chunky bevel gears needed, it'll come to 5-6kg, all of it unsprung.

Especially now that Al Pennykid's gone through_all_the failure-prone
$800 ex-factory driveshafts in the world and eliminated_that_as a worry...

Chains are more compact, lighter (and, thus, have lower power
losses-although, to be fair, some of that is due to their not having to
fight against the hydraulic drag of a pair of transmission oil-filled
chambers), simpler, cheaper, and amenable to on-the-run repair in the
event of failure. They require cleaning/lubing no more frequently than
the bike requires a wash, adjustment no more frequently than the bike
requires a rear tyre, an event which can easily be made to coincide with
the need for chain/sprocket replacement.

 

What is all this talk about washing motorcycles?

Don't you guys ride in the rain?

Boxer

 

Even better... skip the washing bit altogether and just clean and lube
your chain while you're quickly checking for overly noisy/squeaky
bearings or rusty gubbins (footpeg springs, bodywork bolts, tank seam
weld) here and there.

You're back in the house and trolling Usenet even sooner.

 

and what happens when you change the jetting ???

 

Kewl, I read it in a book on motorcycle performance modifications, and
it talked about the swings and roundabouts associated with the things
you can do to make things go quicker or handle better.

Lessee, I think I can still do year 3 maths, at the previously mentioned
"spray a bit of lube on every 2K and clean and lube every 4 or 5K" that
would be <makes mumbling noises...carry the...add the.. mumble> woohooo
that's 15-20 lubings and 15-20clean and lubes for a grand total of 5mins
x 40 = 200 mins in 3 years or so (at 25K a yr or so). Oh dear, I've
wasted so much time that I'll never recover that I could be wasting on
usenet*...

Absolutely !

Fersure there too

Umm but you need to compare apples with apples. A reasonable comparison
is riding a mate's R1 back to back with my same model R1 except he had
deep pockets and had sprung for a pair of dymag carbon fibre rims, by
christ it was noticeable ! And that's actually a smaller mass saving
than chain over shaft probably would have been (he probably dropped
about 500g to a Kg on the rim weight I'm guessing, wouldn't be much more
than that).

In mass produced quantities I'd actually be very surprised if an ECU and
a pair of injectors cost more to make than carbs, particularly when the
injectors on most bikes are just picked out of the catalogs of the
specialist manufacturers (and are probably also being fitted to Daewoos
or Hyundais by the zillion as well). Similarly the ignition is run by
ECU and hence reduces cost by centralising control, also marginal
differences in cost become insignificant when the reliability becomes a
selling point (as shaft is for a touring bike - one of those performance
compromises that are taken on touring bikes to allow more convenience to
riders that do big kms)

Mmm, possibly, I had someone say to me in all seriousness that he should
swap his '01 Falco for the virtually unchanged '05 Falco because with
40K on the clock it's getting towards the point it'll become difficult
to trade in.

JL
*which is absorbing a factor of 10 or more greater time...

 

Final drive weighs 2-3kg at least, and on the rear wheel, so it's
unsprung weight. Sporty types are willing to pay big bucks to save
a few hundred grams on unsprung weight.

Look, I'm plenty convinced, but I can see why some people aren't.

-----sharks

 

The Airhead one is a bit of a shocker ... but there's improved
versions available.

Honda shafts last forever if maintained (mostly spline lube, and
change the final drive oil every 20,000ks or so ...

-----sharks

 

My wife's first Guzzi wasn't. OK, so it was a rebadged Benelli 250cc
two-smoke.

Theo