when are these bikes actually out of gas??

[Pterodactyl_imp]

Length between headstock and seat determined length, design criteria to see motor on both sides when sitting on bike determined width, only other option for increasing capacity is making tank taller, which they did on the dlx, and most of the early adopters thought that made the tank look bloated.

The price you pay for sporting looks.

See that is when you can tell that even honda (or maybe especially Honda) lets marketing, rather than riders, make too many decisions..

oh well..

Back to "I ran out of gas because..." stories..

The riders make decisions? Good idea. This forum should set up a working committee to decide which riders and how the riders will make the decisions required. Some suggestions:

1. Group decision-making
Consensus decision-making tries to avoid "winners" and "losers". Consensus requires that a majority approve a given course of action, but that the minority agree to go along with the course of action. In other words, if the minority opposes the course of action, consensus requires that the course of action be modified to remove objectionable features.

2. Voting-based methods:
a). Majority requires support from more than 50% of the members of the group. Thus, the bar for action is lower than with consensus.
Plurality, where the largest block in a group decides, even if it falls short of a majority.
B). Range voting lets each member score one or more of the available options. The option with the highest average is chosen. This method has experimentally been shown to produce the lowest Bayesian regret among common voting methods, even when voters are strategic.

3. Delphi method is structured communication technique for groups, originally developed for collaborative forecasting but has also been used for policy making.

4. Dotmocracy is a facilitation method that relies on the use of special forms called Dotmocracy Sheets to allow large groups to collectively brainstorm and recognize agreement on an unlimited number of ideas they have authored.

5. Participative decision-making occurs when an authority opens up the decision-making process to a group of people for a collaborative effort.

6. Decision engineering uses a visual map of the decision-making process based on system dynamics and can be automated through a decision modeling tool, integrating big data, machine learning, and expert knowledge as appropriate.

Once the riders have sorted that out perhaps then a Steering committee should be selected by the riders. Who sits on that committee could be determined by one of the above methods. That steering committee could perhaps select and assign groups of riders to various sub-assemblies of the bike to determine the form these sub-assemblies should take. Review committees would then review these decisions and submit further recommendations to independent consultants for their recommendations on the aforementioned recommendations. These recommendations would need to be costed. A Finance Committee, selected by riders, would take the matter in hand and bring down recommendations for review by the working committee. The working committee would then review, revise and develop working papers for the general riding population for consultative purposes. Feedback from the riding population would need to be reviewed by another independent committee who would then take their recommendations to the first mentioned steering committee.

I realise that this is simplifying what in practice would be a much more complex process but it would be worth a try.

Cheers.