Got a chance to ride my new S40 a bit.  I must say I am quite pleased over all.  Trying to break the motor in, so I was riding the back roads home as much as possible to keep the speed down.

Handles gravel no problem at all.  Slush and mud OK to.  Very, very easy bike to drive.  More power than I had expected after reading all the online reviews.  The speedo is out quite a bit however.  The bike indicates 109 K when I am doing 100 K according to the GPS.

A few things to note.  The idle speed from the dealer was set very low, I cranked it up to 1200 rpm.  The belt was set very tight.  I adjusted it of course.

Once it is broke in I will re-jet the carb after installing a Harley Dyna muffler.  I picked up 2 unused Dyna mufflers for $40.

Hi Art,

I should have mentioned the gas tank seems a bit wide.  I am not very big, 5'-8", but I would have prefered a narower tank like a early Sportster.

My knees seem jammed up against the tank and I find I have my feet on the outside of the pegs when riding.  Minor stuff I will get used to of course.

Flint wrote on 03/17/15 at 21:03:19:

You must be long legged for your height, I'm 6 feet, and the tank simply isn't a problem for me
and JOG is right, when it's tire replacement time, going to a 130 / 90 or 140/90 will pretty well correct the speedo

hotprops wrote on 03/17/15 at 22:09:42:


In the small engine repair field....we use this hand held tach.  You just have to hold it near a spark plug wire.  Not real cheap....but it works well and is worth having if you need to know the rpm of engines without a tach.

http://manddsmallengine.com/tinytach/fast.html

I believe there are also I-phone apps. that listen to the beats and provide the BPM....which can also be used and are lots cheaper.  I was at a music party on Saturday and one fellow had this program on his phone....were were playing at 114 BPM.  For 1,000 rpm you would want 500 BPM as it will hear the exhaust note that happens every 2 revolutions.

I would deff get that tach if I were a m/c mechanic, but it is a bit pricey just to set up my one tachless bike

Just set it up enough to be a bit fast for idling through a busy parking lot..

9 mph on flat ground, now that is useful
the louder fourth or fifth beat on the audio metronome throws me off lol