Originally Posted by
Steve W.
I will agree with your assessment of the handling in the first few miles. When we picked up ours earlier this year, I did more test riding than my wife did, even though it's HER bike. The bike seemed like it had two-stage steering. When I moved the bars a bit to initiate a lane change, the bike seemed to move a bit, then it acted like it suddenly realized I wanted to do a lane change, so it turned MORE. Of course, that required some steering in the other direction to counteract that. I might have looked a bit drunk bouncing between the lines. In fact, I pretty much restricted my riding to city streets here in the suburbs. Even the 45 and 50 mph roads made me nervous. Had the dealer check the alignment (they don't do a laser alignment there), he pronounced it "good".
The rear tire was nearing the end of useful life, and I have been reading a bunch of posts here on tire choice. Replaced the original tires (sorry, I just can't bring myself to even type the name) and installed Vredestein Q5s. The difference in handling was more than just "night and day". My next test ride got up to 55-60 mph very comfortably. My wife went to visit her sister, which involves some freeway miles. She noticed the difference, too. Had a laser alignment check at the SE oHIo rally in June, they verified the alignment is good.
The two of us have now added just over 4100 miles to the odometer and have both gotten aclimated to the differences from two-wheel riding. She is now asking about adding a BajaRon sway bar, so we might have one installed at Maggie Valley.
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