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Western Reserve Harley-Davidson / Buell Mar 1, 2004 |
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Welcome to our e-newsletter. We look forward to your feedback, tell
us what you would like to see in future issues. Contact us at
info@wrhd.com
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St. Patrick's Day Celebration
Join us Saturday the 13th to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We'll
provide the music, and food - corned beef and cabbage sandwiches!
Ride in for some fun! Check out the Spring MotorClothes arrivals.
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WRHD Host Mentor Chamber Benefit
Last Sunday, Western Reserve was the proud host of a Mentor Chamber
of Commerce Scholarship Fund Raiser. About 300 local community
citizens enjoyed a food tasting, raffles, a silent auction, Sislo the
magician, and refreshments. WMJI's Jimmy Malone was the master of
ceremonies. The event was a great success and great fun.
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Do you inspect your bike every time you take it out for a ride?
Like a pilot visually inspects a plane during a pre-flight
checklist with a walk around inspection, it's important for you to
give your bike a once-over before hitting the road.
To help make this review easy to remember, the Motorcycle Safety
Foundation uses the nickname T-CLOC's. That stands for:
T - Tires and Wheels - Air pressure - Tread - Cracks, dents,
loose spokes - Bearings - Brakes
C - Controls - Levers - Switches - Cables - Hoses - Throttle
L - Lights and Electrics - Working condition
O - Oil and Other Fluids (coolant, hydraulic fluid, fuel) -
Levels - Leaks
C - Chassis - Suspension - Drive components (chain, belt, or
drive shaft)
S - Side stand
Following this routine safety check can go a long way to ensuring
your enjoyment (and safety) on a road trip. Whether the road trip is
a matter of a few miles, or a few thousand miles.
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Remember when you were first learning how to ride a bicycle and you
saw this strange piece of equipment with handlebars attached with
only two skinny tires keeping it from falling down? There was no way,
you thought, that you would be able to keep your balance on a pair of
skinny tires while trying to peddle and ride it all at the same time.
It's pretty funny how the science of handling physics and laws of
balance can play such a mysterious role in our minds. That, plus the
help of a set of training wheels didn't hurt either.
To keep it as simple as possible, motorcycle-handling physics has
4 basic elements, which allow you to keep from tipping over. These
include steering rake and trail, gyroscopic precession, wheelbase,
and the law of momentum (which states that objects in motion tend to
want to stay in motion). When these factors are combined along with
others as well, you are able to ride a motorcycle while keeping it
stable and upright.
Although riding a bike or bicycle may seem strange at first, it's
extremely natural once you begin. However, you will find that
riding becomes even more intuitively natural in just a short time.
Without getting too technical about the physics side of things, a
motorcycle's wheels create a gyroscopic effect similar to a spinning
top. The faster a wheel spins or rotates, the more steadily it wants
to stay that way.
The trail portion of handling your bike comes in when you think
about a bike's ability to steer quickly. Basically, it's the
imaginary line distance measured from the bike's steering axis line
(where it would intersect the ground) to the center of the front
tire's contact patch. The shorter the trail usually means the bike
will have a quicker steering response and thus better handling around
corners and turns. But nonetheless, there is such a thing as too
short a trail or too long, which will usually lead to diminished
results in handling.
The wheelbase of a bike also plays a major role in the handling
characteristics. Measured as the distance between the front and rear
axle, the length of the wheelbase has much to do with the quality of
directional stability and steering response. As with most cruisers,
stability is a good thing so most bikes will have a greater wheelbase
length than say a sport bike will have. Basically it comes down to
having just the right amount of all of these handling characteristics
to comfortably manage the bike.
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Store Hours
M, T, W, & F : 9am - 6pm
Thursday : 9am - 8pm
Saturday : 9am - 5pm
If you've received the text only version, please click here to
view a library of HTML versions:
http://www.westernreservehd.com/Newsletters/news_library.htm
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