I found a couple of these around the area, but didn’t find any right in Louisville. I wanted to go see one near Munfordville on the weekend. Kat said she would go with me to look at it but reminded me we were going to Indy on Saturday. I made arrangements to see the bike on Sunday. The guy seemed nice. The bike was an 06 with only 4200 miles on it. The asking price was $4500 which is right around book value so I thought he might take a bit less. It was set up with a windshield, saddle bags, and a luggage rack. I would be sorely missing the storage capacity of Lois (my Yamaha Majesty) so I knew these would be very handy.
I phoned the fellow and he said he had a guy coming to look at it on Saturday but he would call me if it sold. I told him I would call and check with him. Saturday came and we rode up to Indy. On the way Kat asked if that was the only bike I liked in the area and if there might be any near Indy. I produced the print out of another C50 in Indianapolis…. Kat nearly insisted that we go see it. She is such a total sweetheart! I was surprised, but called to see if it was possible. The lady (Carolyn) said that it would be fine if we wanted to come and take a look. We went and saw it. It was a 2008 with only 2700 miles on it! It sounded loud, but was a pretty bike. I told them I would contact them if I made a decision. I wanted to see the bike near Munfordville first.
I called the guy about the 06 on Saturday night at 9:30 and left him a message. I thought he would probably get back with me in the morning. Morning came and I had heard nothing back. I looked on craigslist and the page was deleted…. We left for Indy with cash and a pretty strong intention to purchase that bike.
We looked, signed papers, signed more papers, and agreed on a price. They were pretty firm so I ended up paying the full amount. It was worth it…the bike books for almost $6000 with that kind of low miles! I found out the reason for the loudness—the jackwagon son who owned it removed the baffles from the pipes. I am thinking this whole time "I can get new ones to put in”. Meanwhile the thing wasn’t like Harley loud… I got my gear on and rode it to Kat’s mom’s house. I liked how smooth it rode, but I was kinda disappointed about how little torque it seemed to have. It felt like if you gave it too much gas instead of picking up speed it would just overrev. Still it was comfortable, looked nice, was shaft driven, fuel injected and my research revealed that it got between 40-50mpg and was not as heavy as Vince’s Burgman. The son also allowed the right saddle bag to rest on the pipe at one point. The bag was damaged but not shot.
We did our visiting with Kat’s mom and I just kept having this nagging in my gut about the torque/overreving situation. I called the son back about it. He said that he had never noticed anything like that. I thought perhaps that it’s just the way this particular bike handles. On the way out of town I resolved to experiment a little and see what’s what. I found that if you keep it down low in the gear it does fine, so you can accelerate, but the acceleration totally sucked. It got up to 70+mph on I-65 no problem, it just took it a while to get there. I was figuring that this is just the way a modern cruiser would ride… I did some more playing with the throttle and found if you let it just stay ‘overrevved’ for a bit then it would finally grab hold and put you back in the seat with a little g-force. That was nice to know. So now it would accelerate, but just had a little lag before doing it.
At this point I would like to state that 99% of my manual transmission experience was with automobiles…
The phenomenon I was experiencing was apparently called “clutch slipping”.
Yes, indeed. I was on I-65, about 35 miles from Kat’s mom’s and suddenly no matter what gear or how much throttle I give it…it is still decelerating!!! I go from left lane to right lane then finally to breakdown lane.
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