The thing about mods and farkles

[Cormanus]

Look closely chaps: it's stuck in an abandoned gas station because it's lost its back wheel.

[capttwb136_imp]

Unlike driving a car, it's tough to find a bike that you can get comfortable on. Different size people buy a bike designed for the "average" rider. One manufacturer sells a bike that the dealer can "fit" to your specs. I'm not sure which one.

I wish all manufacturers adopted that method of production. If you're short with short arms you can pull your car's seat forward. Or if your tall you can push it back. Imagine if the engineers designed the motorcycle to work equally well with different peg locations, higher or lower seats, bars back or forward, higher or lower.

As for luggage carrying, design bags and boxes that don't affect the handling whether their on or off. That way when you don't want them on you can take them off with little change in handling. Wind protection the same way.

My BMW has the windshield that you can lower and raise according to need and bags and a top box that come off real easy, but no other adjustments. I wish it had more ergonomic adjustments. I'll bet if you had seat adjustments, bar adjustments and peg adjustments you might not have to replace stock seats, etc.

I doubt they will ever design bikes like that. Why should they, we buy them just the way they are. However it would be nice.

[LongRanger_imp]

I'm not one for mandates, but I do wish manufacturers would be required to adopt standard controls. My four bikes have different control locations for the turn signals, horn, high beam, starter, kill switch, etc. It's not atypical to jump from one bike to another and have to relearn where the horn button is or how to signal or cancel a turn. It becomes natural once you have an hour on the bike, but they're all different and I've many times had to think too much when it should be intuitive (for safety's sake).

Certainly, it wasn't too long ago that some bikes had their gearshift on the right and their rear brake pedal on the left. And many bikes had shift patterns that were different from what is commonly accepted today.

[flynrider]

I'm not one for mandates, but I do wish manufacturers would be required to adopt standard controls. My four bikes have different control locations for the turn signals, horn, high beam, starter, kill switch, etc. It's not atypical to jump from one bike to another and have to relearn where the horn button is or how to signal or cancel a turn. It becomes natural once you have an hour on the bike, but they're all different and I've many times had to think too much when it should be intuitive (for safety's sake).

Certainly, it wasn't too long ago that some bikes had their gearshift on the right and their rear brake pedal on the left. And many bikes had shift patterns that were different from what is commonly accepted today.

I remember those days. When taking a ride on an unfamiliar bike, the first question you asked was, "What's the shift pattern?".

As far as controls go, I lucked out. The controls on my '13 CB11 are identical to those on my CB750, which I've been riding for 20 years. When I ride someone else's bike, I'm invariably beeping the horn when I want to signal a turn.

[Lord Popgun]

If you have a '14 and want switches like the '13, Ferret changed his and posted a How-to.

[ChipBeck_imp]

CB4ME could have the worlds coolest yard sale

Gentlemen,

I bet I'd come in a close second here!! One of these days I'm going to list for sale all of my excess parts. And it's quite a bundle.

Chip