Bike stuff, thoughts on riding, thoughts on anything that crosses my mind.
Motorbikes
This is my very first motorbike, a Docker Apollo.
I bought it to learn to ride a motorbike, specifically to learn to use the gears, as well as to learn to slalom between cones, do figure-of-eights and general low-speed control.
It’s made in China, with a Chinese motor which says “Dayane” on the side. Docker seems to be a Moroccan make.
It seemed to be pretty much bullet-proof, and, although only a 49cc when I ordered it, by the time it was ready for delivery (about 3 days later) the motor had changed to a 110cc without my asking for it.
The extra power meant it would happily ride at 80km/h, although the speedometer was maximum 70km/h and the gearing was ridiculously short: I mostly used 3rd gear to start off, 4th on the flat. 4th gear was the highest. No-one could find a use for 1st gear.
This is Kali, a Royal Enfield Himalayan BS6 411cc. I say it’s my second motorbike, but it’s my first “real” motorbike. I bought her after riding the Docker for one month and doing 1100km. I named her Kali after an Indian goddess, the goddess of death and destruction, but she protects those who love her. The goddess Kali is black.
She protected me throughout my first long voyage and forgave my many mistakes.
Fully loaded, she would do about 120km/h, maybe even more with a following wind. Ultra-reliable and mechanically simple, I could do all my own servicing. Kali was 24 horsepower , but I sometimes thought they were donkeys, or ponies at most.
When people asked why I bought a second motorbike so soon after the first, I told them it was a safety measure – statistics show that most accidents happen with the first motorbike.
When I began to realise that Kali wasn’t going to be quite powerful enough for long rides, heavily loaded (yes, it’s aguable), I looked around for a bigger bike, or more powerful bike, rather. The Voge DSX900 is a twin cyclinder Chinese BMW, that makes 95 horsepower, but more importantly, 95 nm of torque. The bike has all the bells and whistles included in the price, such as heated grips and cruise control. Her name is Kali-Ma, another name for Kali, and Kali’s legitimate successor.
Horsepower, Torque, speed, usefulness?
Have you noticed (I have), when talking of ADV motorbikes and, for that matter 4×4 cars, there seems to be an obsession with horsepower?
People enthusing over their 480 hp V8 4×4 and, for that matter, its oversized tyres? You don’t need that. You need torque and narrow tyres. The rest is just showing off.
Simply put, horsepower is high revs, speed, not much upper limit on acceleration, and torque is pulling power. When you are riding or driving through the tricky stuff, like mud, snow or sand, you need to use a gear ratio that’s relatively high for your speed. And THAT’S where you need torque the most. For acceleration too, again, it’s torque. When you have no more torque, you have no more acceleration. There, rant over, sorry, but then, this IS my page, I can say what I like.