We're towing our Scamp with the Xterra through Canada (1800 miles so far) and the roads are 'interesting. This is what I have deduced thus far.....
Joking aside, we love it here in Quebec, although we have had to drastically reassess how far we can realistically travel in a day! This ain't the American Southwest, for sure :thumbup:
- The Can-Am engineers don't know about drive belt vibration because that starts at 65 mph and the top legal speed here is 100 kph (60 mph) on the superhighways only, of which they seem to have only 3 of about 100 km each around the three major cities of Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec. All the rest are 55 mph or less, including the 2 lane, no median, no shoulder trans-Canadian highway 17 ...... all the way through Ontario nojoke
- Spyders aren't aligned at the factory because that would be a waste of money. Except for the above-mentioned 300 km of superhighway, all the other roads are basically secondary farm roads that apparently are left to the locals for maintenance. Farm tractors towing combines and the occasional logging trucks have no problem with the off-camber, pitching, rutted, pot-holed roads apparently so there's little incentive to fix them. Besides, they're only good for driving on 3 months of summer; after that they're turned over to snowmobiles and dog sled teams I think. So, back to my point, laser alignment isn't really necessary for riding most Canadian roads, particularly at the average top speed of 40 mph, and if you go any faster you'll wreck the alignment anyway.
- Spyders have great brakes because, whenever you get on a good head of speed (90kph) you will inevitably have to very quickly scrub that speed for; a. A 4 way stop in the middle of a corn-field, b. A work crew in the middle of nowhere that has shut down one of the only 2 lanes for road repairs or c. A section of road that has been torn down to the road base with a sharp 4" transition from pavement to gravel and back again with little to no warning.
- Spyders have long travel front suspensions for when they get launched off a particularly nasty frost heave, and sticky front tires for when they land again on the aforementioned rutted, off-camber road.
- 9000 miles on a Kenda rear tire is actually not bad, considering that in the 3 months of riding season you really can't get very far in Canada anyway.
Joking aside, we love it here in Quebec, although we have had to drastically reassess how far we can realistically travel in a day! This ain't the American Southwest, for sure :thumbup:
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Glad to hear that you're not lost in the Great White North! :thumbup:
