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97 Triumph Daytona 1200 discussion forum:Living With The Lorry |
| Living With The Lorry |
| Louis Dobson said 2003-07-06 12:28 |
| The Lorry is a bit of a one trick pony, but it does that trick very well. The logic is thus: it is a physically large bike, with a huge engine. You can load it with a pillion and a ton of luggage, and it will (assuming you are comfy with a lean forward position, which I am) make an excellent fist of being a tourer. It has plenty of space, and sheer cubes mean plenty of grunt, despite the radical Cosworth tuning. *But* when you want to, you can ride it like a total nutter, because a pillion and luggage don´t bother it all. Point it at the horizon, open the throttle, and a K or so before the redline it will go utterly mental, your face will split into a huge grin, the front will go light, and your pillion will either be screaming with terror or laughing her head off, depending on type. And when you get fed up with that, you can slow down a bit and just make rapid progress across continent to your hotel. The price you pay for that is handling a clumsy great sod around town, and you´re going to lose to fast middleweights (and the current generation of fast Megabike, like the GSXR1000, but they didn´t exist in 1993) in the twisties. I bought The Lorry, not because I particularly wanted one (it followed four Triumph 900s, one of which wasl alos wished on me and I would have prefered something else), but because it was a sweet deal. I do very high ileages, and this bike was two years old but with only 1500 miles on the clock. For much of its life it has been used wildly inappropriately, lurching around London, or bouncing the rock hard spendies through Portuguese potholes (where I now live). Also, for a couple of years, a leaky Scottoiler made it run like a dog at low revs, putting me right off the thing (hardly the bike´s fault). But Eva and I rode it from Swanage to Wexford to Dublin to Derry, around the West Coast and back again, laden to the gunnels with wedding outfits etc, and in that role it was absolutely brilliant. We rode in perfect comfort, but when we felt like it we were able to go completely and utterly gonzo, and generally diminish the Reputation Of Bikers In The Minds Of All Right Thinking People, wheelying past cars at speeds we´d better not mention, and leaving great streaks of rubber out of motorway slip roads. There is now a whole genre of heavyweight sports tourers, with vast, simple engines, plenty of space, but not too many mod cons. They don´t entirely suit what I do these days, but if your idea of fun is a bike, luggage, a pillion, loads of miles and baaaaaddd behaviour on the way, they serve very well. The Daytona 1200 is an early but still excellent example of the breed - indeed, since it wasn´t built down to a price, it makes a fair case for still being the best. The perfect bike, in my opinion, for the long distance luggage-carting pillion-carrying brain-out looney. There is nothing else that will allow you to behave that badly while that laden without being uncomfortable, and it is the best way known to man of adding European traffic tickets for your collection. |
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