I started out about a year ago on a Honda Shadow 750 Aero. I always add Mustang seats to my bikes, so I thought that little Honda was comfortable. Then I got a Harley 883Low Sportster, which really made the little Honda seem comfortable, even with a Mustang. After having both entry level bikes for...
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I started out about a year ago on a Honda Shadow 750 Aero. I always add Mustang seats to my bikes, so I thought that little Honda was comfortable. Then I got a Harley 883Low Sportster, which really made the little Honda seem comfortable, even with a Mustang. After having both entry level bikes for a month or so, my girlfriend preferred the Harley and I preferred the Honda. So I decided to upgrade the Honda to this bike, a metallic blue VTX1300R with an even bigger chrome dome headlight for watching the scenery overhead. The stock seat could actually get me 30 miles without stopping, so I upgraded the seat to a Mustang again. Still no windshield, as I refuse to add one to any of my bikes. Well, this Honda makes the 750 Honda seem like a Harley when it comes to riding comfort. The combination of 1.2 inches more on the wheelbase, the 150 pounds extra weight, bigger tires, and better suspension make for an extremely comfortable ride. Painful roads are now non-existent on this VTX. It handles quite nimbly for such a large bike and actually corners better than the 750 did. The little Harley can smoke it off the line, but this VTX still has plenty of power cruising along at 80 mph, such that you can easily humiliate tailgaters at that speed. With the nice floorboards, it feels like sitting still in an easy chair doing 80. I recently took it for a 409-mile one-day ride to the Florida beaches, and I still had more energy left in me at my age of 51. This one is built for the highway! Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but the quibbles are minor. The thumb screws on the brake cylinder like to come undone every few weeks, so I just need to remember to check them. For this upgrade from the 750 Aero, one would think that it would have self-cancelling turn signals. Nope! The same cheap turn signals from the 750 Aero adorn this one. I rarely use them because I forget to turn them off, which is a bad habit. The red lights on the speedometer make that guage hard to read at night with a face shield, but I rarely ride at night. What I liked about the 750 Aero was it's quiet shaft drive and liquid cooled engine that allowed one to ride with short pants. Not so on this VTX! The shaft on this larger engine makes an annoying chirping sound, and the heat from the engine at slow speeds can be worse than my smaller air-cooled Harley. Notice that the larger Yamaha cruisers switch from shaft to belt drive and liquid-cooled big V-Twins are non-existent. Yamaha has Honda beat on this one, as I would prefer belt drive, air-cooled, and fuel injection on this VTX. Gee, that sounds like a Harley, but I don't have another $8000 to own another Harley. (I do like using regular gas on one of the last carbureted V-Twins.) For the money, you can't beat this bike as a highway cruiser. Just don't try to learn on it.
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