Indicators self cancel

[vfxmark]

...If rely too much on technology then we lose the essence of biking. I do not like linked brakes, ABS, self cancelling indicators, lack of light switches etc etc. They can be useful but in so few instances as to make them the problem rather than the solution. Ride better and safer first, then see if you need the complexity.

Each of us finds our own place on the continuum of
"primitive" to "technically sophisticated" according to our own tastes and capabilities...
but as annoying as some of the technical improvements undoubtedly are (self-cancelling signals for instance) one must beware too much misplaced nostalgia...when I had but one vehicle in my life and it was Triumph Bonnie, I loved the look and the sound and the feel and the handling...
...but I hated being very late for job because the points had closed up again...

and while I know that on a good day I can outbrake my bike's ABS, I have never crashed on a good day.

After many years without ABS, I have ridden almost every day that I was in town in the last decade on an ABS-equipped bike. I would like to think that I am such a good rider that I would NEVER overbrake the front end of my bike and wash out the front end, but if someone cuts me off and I am not paying enough attention, I would rather have the ABS modulate my front brake than lose the traction completely... I have tried and tried , but I just can't seem to steer the bike once it is sliding along on the cylinder head with me trailing behind by a few feet

I can't help thinking that "technology giveth and technology taketh away"...the traffic flow here in Los Angeles can be murderously quick, and the wonderful technology of cell phones has reduced the attention that drivers pay to the traffic around them.

I'll trade the weight, cost, complexity, and complications involved with ABS for one single accident avoided. That's just me...

In my airhead days, I replaced four alternator rotors and a diode board on my own bike and another rotor and diode board on my [now]wife's... I used to carry a small piece of drill-rod in the toolkit that I could drop behind the rotor bolt to use the bolt as a puller. I don't miss that. I don't miss ice forming in my float bowls on a cold night. I don't miss tubed tires. I don't miss brakes that wouldn't stop the bike. My '83 R100 was a great bike, but I had to check the valve clearances every thousand or fifteen hundred miles, thanks to metallurgy problem with that model year.
I love the lighter weight of my new GS, even if some of that weight was lost by providing too small a battery and removing half of the wiring harness and replacing it with the "too clever by half" Can-Bus system.

For me, a number of the technical advancements are good because they allow me to concentrate on riding the bike, instead of wrenching on it...in my case, I would rather ride than maintain. The ones that annoy me I learn to live with.

Mind you, I ride like an idiot - have done for over thirty years -. I just slid the new GS along a wet clay road on its side...wasn't my intention, but boy was I surprised that the road was slicker than the snow I was riding in last month. it was raining here in LA and I missed the mud of my youth - had to go find some.

Now I'm off to pick up a little plastic welding kit to fix the saddlebag

The self-cancelling indicators are a real annoyance... but now as I streak towards a freeway exit as I work my way from the fastest lane to the exit lane, I just keep my thumb resting on the indicator paddle, lest it give up before I am done exiting...
...I have a long thumb, so this isn't such a hardship

Considering the statistics regarding the high proportion of motorcycle accidents caused by on-coming left hand -turning automobiles (here where we drive on the right side of the road) signals are REALLY important...
I don't know what it is like in the UK these days, but here in Lost Angeles, very few car drivers use their signals and the police no longer bother to enforce the signalling laws.

 

[Brian ROSEN]

'following bikes and traffic waiting to enter the r-a-b?' No doubt about these eventualities. The following bikes should STAY as 'following bikes' and wait until I have left in whatever direction I decide to go. Anybody waiting to enter should WAIT until I have passed. In neither of these cases should I need to give any signal at all. (Moreover any signal could be misinterpreted.)
And I agree with most of what our American friend has written but he was only joking about sliding along in the mud....wasn't he?

 

[vfxmark]

...but he was only joking about sliding along in the mud....wasn't he?

Alas not.

It takes a certain skill to slide that far going uphill

Had i planned on a trip to the mud (rather than a trip to the market) I would not have had the bags mounted...
now I get to renew my plastic welding skills, as there is very little option with polypropylene but to weld...

Once I had picked myself up and recovered the little plastic trim bits from the bag, I headed to the market...

I didn't realize until I got home and got out of the aerostitch that I had been walking around the market looking like one of the Mud People... (not in the non-aryan sense, mind you.)

so far: significantly ground down rocker cover (though not leaking)
somewhat damaged bag lid

much dirtier (and still wet) Aerostitch

as the adverts go for mastercharge...
"not sliding up a mud hill on my R1100 S: Priceless"

For them what is interested:
There was a nifty little review in the US magazine MCN (Motorcycle Consumer News) a few months back for a thirty dollar plastic welding rig sold by Harbor Freight - I'm off to pick one up to try it. Harbor Frieght specializes in moderately well engineered but very cheaply made tools, hardware and other equipment at very low prices - 99% of which is chinese.

They have a motorcycle repair lift these days for either three hundred or four hundred dollars - a steal at either price compared to what a professional one would cost...
...now to justify the space it would take up