And now the epicness that is Haroldo starts. He inspires new threads. The original threads will be millions of posts long. People will have to quit their jobs, get divorced, lose all that is meaningful to them, or was, to devote the time and resources needed to follow Haroldo on his adventures.....
Not really of course, and Haroldo knows this is all in good fun and we all love him. Really. And Haroldo's famous (infamous?) 'valve adjust thread' was epic... we coulda' sold tickets to that thing. Ah, the good ole' days.
But in serious answer to your question: mostly we modify our bikes for comfort, convenience, and some performance (I say some because it is absolutely not all about simply increasing speed or quickness but truly increasing things such as driveability, suspension performance, etc.). I think the reason it is done with motorcycles more than cars is because we can adapt ourselves to cars much more readily and much better; motorcycles demand a pretty strict seating position, so to change comfort, one has to change saddles, peg height, etc., etc. In a car, we just shift position.
I think bike models such as tourers, sport tourers and similar get farkled more because they are usually ridden more but especially further than other types. Not many sport bikes around with, say, 40K miles on then and especially not 90K + but that is not at all uncommon for C-14's, FJR's, OldWings (Hondapotamuses), etc.
The emotional part is actually much smaller IMO. Some people get custom paint, pinstriping, custom wheels, external lighting and so forth but look at the ratios: it seems that for every set of custom wheels on a C-14, there are 1,000 aftermarket saddles purchased. So I think the great majority of mods. fall into the comfort category. Convenience next, then all performance mods. third (although if those include headlights, horns, engine running mods., etc., then maybe overall performance would be second and convenience third).
Anyway, that is basically my view. Hey, it was free, right?
Brian
http://www.zggtr.org/index.php?topic=22663.msg280856#new
Just curious, and am looking for some philosophical answers to a question and, no doubt, a smart-azz remark or three.
Mrs. E. remarked the other day that, when I owned my 2003 Honda 919 (which I sold 2 years ago for not enough money), that I didn't put NEARLY the amount of energy and maintenance and farkles that I have put into my Connie. For example, I sold it (the 919) completely stock. Never put Farkle #1 on it. Never changed out the coolant or the brake fluid <gasp>. Just rode the damn thing, other than having the plugs changed out at 14K miles. Was too lazy even to do that myself (or maybe a 12 hour work schedule had something to do with that - dunno). By contrast, I have dug into my Connie much more than I ever did my 919. And I wonder, why?
Granted, the Connie was more expensive to buy - but not by much. Even in 2003 dollars, the cost for the 919 was only about $6,000. I paid $9.5K for the Connie in 2015.
So the question:
What is it that drives people to invest time, energy, money into a motorcycle to maintain it, keep it going, be safe, etc.? Is it emotion, or something more objective than that?
If it's emotion, are we willing to recognize that and defend it? Note that I'm not denigrating that emotion - I think in some cases it defines us and makes us people who are more than willing to make a stand on a particular theme. But at which point does objectivity outweigh emotion?
As I said, just curious and interested in some viewpoints.
