justin_o_guy2
Serious Thumper
Offline
What happened?
Posts: 55279
East Texas, 1/2 dallas/la.
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I think building a decent frame for handling road conditions & being expected to take years of riding just simply requires more weight than is gonna lend itself to peppy performance from a low tech, low displacement engine. I think they built a " I am not a scooter" , low tech,easy maintenance, daggum good MPG bike. I see a grocery gettin commuter bike there. The fun is there, because it leans into corners & a fella can "Walter Mitty" race against himself just fine. Youll know if you chose the wrong line by the exit speed. For me, the fun isnt JUST how fast I am coming out, its "Can I improve?" & "Can I come out of that corner at that speed every time?". Until I can match my best speed out of a corner 90+% of the time & I dont feel like the bike is capable of doing better w/o someone literally backing it in, then I am not yet finished learning to ride that bike.,Ive got some really sweet curves between home & town & after a few hundred passes thru I never tired of the challenges they offer & never got so consistent that I felt like I had learned what I needed to know to call myself "Good". I look at that 400 & see never ending fun. I believe it will handle better than the Savage, in that pegs wont be dragging so soon & the steering geometry looks better for cornering. POwer covers a multitude of sins. Low power requires a rider to get it Right if hes gonna carry any speed thru a corner. The grins Ive gotten from watching my exit speeds slowly increase as I work thru those corners is something I wont forget. Nor will I forget the early on near disasters, I Have screwed up so badly as to wind up in the ditch. Didnt drop it, but I wasnt about to to try to aim it back toward the road till I stopped & got my , uhh, Act,, yea,, got my act together. The Savage will lean in a turn hard enough to fold a peg up tight enough to hurt a foot pinched between engine & peg. Ive had to pull my foot out because my ankle was in a bind & the REd Wings simply werent enough to keep my foot from hurting in there. The Savage WILL handle in a turn, & Ill bet that little 400 will out do the Savage in a corner, in the handling department, BUT, theres that little matter of another 250 CC's & the Grunt the Savage has,, It just mite make for an interesting performance comparison, 6 G's? Dang,, KInda steep, but Ill bet its a well built, low maintenance machine & would give years of cheap riding. People will buy them, & "Graduate" to a Bigger,, "better" bike, theyll be out there for cheap in a few years. But I doubt they sell many at that price,.
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