Plus Ça Change (Tweaking Part II)

Categories: Bikes Diary Reviews Tech

I've had my Multistrada for just over a month now – time enough to find out the good, the bad and the incomprehensible about it. And yes, it IS as good as the reviews say it is (my own full review has been much-delayed by the simple fact that I've been out riding it!) but it ain't entirely perfect, so here's my thoughts to date on what can be improved in future and what needs to be fixed by Ducati right now. It's a very short list, considering that this is a brand new bike designed to appeal to a much wider market than Ducatis of yore – and, by definition, a market less accommodating of Italian, ah, idiosyncrasies. But here they are, in all their ignominy – let's see what Ducati come back with:

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Posted by Richard at 02:37 PM | Comments (0)

Tweaking (Part I)

Categories: Bikes Diary Reviews Tech

Whilst my natural inclination with a new bike is to start fiddling with its setup pretty much on the way out of the dealers, with The Raven I've been giving myself time to slowly get used to it, to play with the various suspension modes and generally suss it out until I understand it enough to start prodding at it. That does however assume that Ducati have pretty much got everything right to the point where, whilst I might want to tweak to taste, there's nothing I can't live with. So time to look at the figures.

The graphs below show the electronically adjustable bits of the system and the stock settings for each mode and load (for the Preload settings, the higher the number the greater the preload and, for damping, the higher the number the 'lower' the damping effect). Whilst there's a mostly logical progression - increasing rear preload and commensurate increases, particularly to rebound damping as the load rises, there are a few anomalies in various modes that I'm still trying to work out. Also, rear damping is jumped right up in Two-Up+load in Sport mode - a bigger difference between any other mode and we're finding that Touring mode is generally a little undersprung and damped and Sport mode slightly overdamped. I've a feeling that the rear shock might need respringing - I probably weigh a tad more than the target Italian norm...

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Posted by Richard at 01:23 PM | Comments (0)

Gravity 1: Multistrada 0.

Categories: Bikes Diary Reviews

In my unending quest to bring enlightenment and knowledge to the world of the Ducatisti, I have taken one more tiny step towards Zen mastery (which must now put me on about the level of the average grasshopper) - this time to answer the speculation on various online fora about the potential cost of an off-road drop of the Multistrada 1200. Here's the answer: zip. nada. nowt. bugger all. OK, that's on a sample size of one: your mileage may vary. Turning around on a local fire road, I ran out of steering lock and decided to hop off to back 'er up, only to discover that the ground was further away than I thought. A lot further away - I'm 6', with 34" inside leg, but it still went past its balance point, at which point, whether or not it's 20kg lighter than a GS became entirely moot - it's a big, tall bike, and it was gone. Having convinced a couple of passing deer that very bad-tempered bears had been reintroduced to the Highlands, I hauled it back upright. Not a single, solitary scratch, scrape or ding. Relieved, impressed and relieved, in that order. Now off to put an ice pack on my knee... Posted by Richard at 01:34 PM | Comments (0)

"Honey, I Spent The Aga Budget…"

Categories: Bikes Diary Reviews

Time for a new toy. My old faithful STealth – my ST4s – has served me well for four years and it's a keeper, as a supremely capable all-round machine, so I'm looking for something more specific and more focussed for play on the local roads. Which is where the first of many dilemmas kicks in – which toy for which roads? Around here there are ballistically-fast, sweeping A-roads with sudden sections of tight twisties: that'll be a Ducati 1098S then. Then there are the smaller glen roads - rising and falling, twisting and turning back on themselves as they follow the edges of the lochs: much more Monster or KTM SuperDuke territory. Finally, there are bikes that seek the best compromise for all of these, plus my kilometre of potholed Belgium-on-a-bad-day drive: possibly a Multistrada 1100S - in fact if the Multistrada had the Testastretta engine, it would have been a shoo-in - I've ridden the earlier incarnation enough to know just how good a chassis they've got. But hang on, we're not talking about looking for an all-rounder here: we're looking for the maximum of engagement, hoot-inducing fun and the ability to get from A to B, usually via C to Z, with as much flair as possible and a decent tank range, given the distance between filling stations hereabouts. So I'm off to Ducati Glasgow to sample a selection of their range.

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Posted by Richard at 06:16 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Safety Last

Categories: Rants Reviews

My mother doesn't change her car very often: her last change was in 1991, from a thirteen-year-old Fiat 128 to her still-current, Zen-basic, 1-litre Peugeot 205. So basic in fact, that it doesn't even possess a clock, let alone advanced toys like a radio. The upside of this is that it represents motoring at its most focussed and basic, with nothing to distract you from the act of driving – and with such skinny tyres, you can have huge fun at very low and genuinely legal speeds. The late James Hunt used to drive an old Austin A30 van for exactly the same reasons. The Pug also possesses supremely good all-round visibility from narrow pillars and a low waistline. Its absolutely direct handling is a delight and the only downside is its criminally heavy steering, making three-point turns an exercise in forearm-pumping and giving my mother a seriously dangerous left hook. That little Peugeot is now fifteen years old and, despite its only having 25,000 miles on the clock, is starting to show signs of incipient decreptitude.

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Posted by Richard at 12:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack