Sunday, March 24, 2024

New Garage Resident - 2024 GTI

A new car has arrived in the garage, a 2024 Volkswagen GTI 380 Autobahn in Dolphin Grey Metallic. The 2018 Audi S3 has been traded in on the first new car I've bought in 25 years.

Why'd I trade in the S3? That's an excellent question. It was a great looking car, handled well and was a veritable rocket. It had all-wheel drive, a comfortable and sporty interior, and nearly all the creature comforts you'd reasonably want. But it didn't have a manual transmission and after three years of trying to get used to the DSG, I'd had enough. Maybe a "tune" on the DSG might have helped with the hunting issues and soft response that drove me a bit crazy, but some news from VAG helped me pull the trigger on the new GTI.

Basically I found out that the model year 2024 GTI and Golf R would be the last of their kind to be equipped with manual transmissions. That's right, after 2024 there will be no manual GTIs. Let that sink in for a second.

Volkswagen has actually commemorated this by producing a "380" edition for the 2024 model year, 380 apparently being the internal build code for the 6-speed manual transmission. And when I looked at the prices of GTI and Golf R Mk8s on the used market (that's model years 2022 and up) it honestly made more sense to buy a brand new one. So I did. 

I opted for the GTI over the Golf R for a few reasons, not least of which was price. Golf Rs are closing in on $55-60K around here and that is too much money to get my head around. A GTI is lighter and $15K less, and the lower-powered 2.0L turbo should do me just fine. The GTI also has a fancy limited-slip differential that takes some of the sting out of losing AWD. And look at those tartan cloth seats!

So far I've put about 200km on the car and have quite enjoyed it. Yes it is slower than the S3 (75hp less and a manual transmission will do that), but the driving engagement is much much greater. And it has some nice creature comforts that the S3 didn't even have (heated steering wheel, looking at you). The much-maligned haptic controls haven't bothered me overly either, they are mostly pretty easy to manipulate. The interior layout is nicer than the Audi's as well - the centre screen is well-integrated and it doesn't look like somebody stuck an iPad to the dash. Interior lighting seems infinitely adjustable - the person at the dealership who showed me round my new car spent more time on that than anything else. I had to figure out how to disengage the electronic parking brake myself. 

Exterior styling I quite like - it's a GTI after all and I don't think they've ever made a really ugly one. The light strip across the grille is cool, the door handles light up and the mirrors power-fold as well as projecting a psychedelic design on the ground. 

There's lots of adjustability in the driving end as well, you can adjust everything from steering response to exhaust sound, as well as the DCC suspension. And speaking of that, why do all GTIs come from the factory looking like jacked up 4x4s??? (look at the fender gap in pics 1 and 2 above, sheesh) Like the Mk5 and Mk7 before it, this car will be getting lowering springs (this time, from H&R) and wheel spacers (from CTS Turbo out of BC). Speed Factor has been tapped for the install.

And a hatchback is convenient! My ice hockey bag fits in there fine but I might have to lower the load floor to get my ball hockey goal pads in there better. VW really got it right with the rearview camera under the hatch release handle. Never gets dirty and always a crystal-clear view.

I'll update next after the springs, spacers and summer tires get put on but until then, enjoy shifting your own gears while you can!

Friday, September 15, 2023

Hawk GT Progress and Paint Plans

Well not a ton of progress progress but I did get the wheels powdercoated white and the new tires fitted along with the braided steel front brakeline, and had the bike safetied. The image above is the richly imagined future paintwork to be applied to the bike, looks like that will now be done over the winter. 

Since the bodywork will be sent to the painter "off the bike" it's up to me to tape out the areas that will get the different colours. This has to be done with the panels in situ because the painter won't know how they line up when on the bike. I want to avoid what happened to this poor guy and his Hawk.

So I applied the tape as shown above and applied the colours on MS Paint 3D... I think I need to tweak the upper line of the red on the fairing to make it *just* a little more parallel to the fairing bottom. That is, move the back edge of the red a little lower down towards horizontal. Other than that I think it looks pretty good. Decals have been ordered too.

Before I did this I took the bike out for a ride along my usual 50km route outside the city. As much as the bike needs to be caned around town to make progress (it is slow), it was great on the twisty backroads and easily attained 160km/h / 100mph indicated on the straights. Great machine and it'll look as well as it goes once I get this paintwork done.

Oh, and after I finished the tape work, as I rolled the bike off the paddock stand the sidestand dug in, retracted, and the bike tipped over. Fortunately the only damage was a banana'd clutch lever, now on the list to be replaced. Aaargh.

Monday, July 3, 2023

Mirrors for the Hawk GT

So my old Hawk GT's Two Brothers Racing fairing kit came with genuine Honda RC30 mirrors. These were "OK" but kinda chunky and clunky, so I swapped them for some smaller aftermarket mirrors. Problem was, when I got the new Hawk, I couldn't remember who made the old bike's mirrors.   

HawkGTForum.com to the rescue, as always, as a user identified the mirrors from a picture of my old bike. They are "F1" short-stem (40mm) mirrors from Bike-It. I ordered a pair from the UK on eBay.

They look good eh? Single-bolt so they are super easy to fit and stay very steady while the bike is in motion. Can't ask more than that of a mirror. So with those fitted I could actually put a temp tag on the machine and ride around a bit, bearing in mind the extreme old age of the tires...

Anyway, here's a few more shots of the machine...





 Next up I have to replace those ancient tires and refinish the wheels...

Friday, June 30, 2023

Look Who's Back!

I have to be honest, even with four bikes in the garage I miss my old Honda Hawk GT. I'd done a ton of mods on it to make it just how I wanted (TBR fairing kit, Racetech fork springs, 900RR shock, braided brake lines, etc.) and it was a lightweight, stylish bike that always turned heads.

Of course, I thought that buying my Ducati 900SS/SP made the Hawk GT excess to requirements. After all, as I wrote at the time, the Ducati did pretty much everything the Hawk did but with 35 more horsepower. But it turns out, it didn't really. The Ducati is a lot more serious than the Hawk GT, it's bigger, heavier, and more powerful. The turning radius sucks, and it's less reliable. In fact the latest garage addition, the 2003 Buell Firebolt XB9R, is a lot closer to the Hawk in spirit. It's also a V-twin and is pretty light and nimble. But I digress.

Not great looking

but you can see the potential

Anyway, I was talking to an old buddy who had a Hawk GT himself and idly inquired after whether he might be parting with it. In fact he was interesting in doing so as it hadn't moved under its own power for over 20 years, and he could use the garage space. So he fired it up (it's a Honda after all), gave it a once-over, offered it to me at a price that was reasonable, and I bought it and rode it home.

But as my late wife Pam would have said, while it was mechanically sound, it was also somewhat sad. My buddy the PO is an amazing engineer and he'd done some work to make the bike more comfortable for him, but that wasn't to my own taste. For example, one of the attractions for me was that the bike already had a Two Brothers Racing fairing kit, just like my old Hawk. But buddy had fitted high Telefix bars to soothe his bad back, and that required cutting up the fairing, and that required eliminating the top fairing bracket, and that meant the fairing wobbled all over the place when riding, plus it looked... odd. So the first task was sorting that out.

Thirty Yankee dollars got me a set of Chinese clip-on bars off eBay, and I bought some Honda-style grips like on my old Hawk. I'd never fitted clip-ons to a bike before myself, but after obtaining a 30mm socket for the triple clamp nut, away we went. It actually went reasonably well; after drilling a hole in the right clip-on bar to accommodate the pin in the throttle housing it all went back together, with the new clip-ons mounted below the triple clamp. I refitted the fairing a bit lower down and the look was not perfect, but was much improved. But the fairing was still very wobbly without a top bracket.

The plan was to pick up a bracket or make one, and restore the fairing to its original shape. I bought a suitable windscreen off eBay and planned to fit it, make a template showing what fiberglass needed to be grafted on, get a boat shop to do the 'glass work, then fit it back up and design a bracket... that's lots of work and time, (and money).

However, looking at a Hawk GT Facebook group, I spotted a used Two Brothers Racing fairing, windscreen, mounting bracket, headlight unit, paperwork, clip-ons, and braided brake line for sale in Winston-Salem, South Carolina. The price had started at $800 but reduced over time to $400... I offered $300 plus shipping and a deal was made. Score! And after a brief scare where I thought the seller was backing out to sell the parts along with the Hawk GT they came with (the prospective bike buyer ended up flaking on him) the parts eventually landed in Pembina ND.

The following weekend I whipped down to Pembina and brought back a giant box. The next morning I set to work fitting it. Wow what a difference, so much better than even the repositioned chopped up fairing. The bike was really starting to look like the classic RC31 I love so much, and riding around the block confirmed that the new bracket had the fairing mounted rock-solidly on the Hawk frame.    

Now I have a parti-coloured wonder... yellow upper fairing with white/red/blue tank and seat unit, and blue/black seat. However the next order of business will be to get the wheels refinished and new Dunlop Sportmax GPR-300 tires fitted. This will take some doing as the shop where the tires will get fitted and the powdercoater who will do the work are on opposite sides of the city. But never mind, we'll get it done. Bike-It F1 mirrors (same as on the old Hawk) have just arrived from the UK and will be fitted so I can ride the bike around a bit. Next thing after that will be to decide on a colour scheme and get the bike painted - this will likely happen over the winter if I'm honest. Too much going on in the summer!  

In the meantime here are some potential colour schemes:

On an RC30

On a Hawk GT


R/W/B scheme on the TBR Pro Twins Modified Race Hawk

Another TBR race bike

Yellow option - HB Cigs Honda GP Bike

Thanks for reading and please stay tuned (if you're interested) to see how things progress!



Wednesday, August 24, 2022

New Garage Resident - 2003 Buell Firebolt XB9R

So there's a bit of a story behind this one - I'd planned a trip with some friends to ride motorcycles in the southern Rocky Mountains. The thing is, the jump-off point for the trip is 1,300km away from me, and I didn't really feel like riding the R1 across the Prairies to Calgary, riding around the mountains for five days, and then riding all the way back. But I had a space in the garage after selling the 848 last year, so obviously the thing to do was to buy a bike out west, fly out there, ride it on the trip, and ride it home. Sorted!
 
So I asked my buddy Marc in Okotoks to keep an eye on kijiji for an interesting machine for not much money. A couple days later he got back to me with this Buell. After an in-person inspection by Marc the deal was made, and he took the bike back to Okotoks to his garage/shop. He very kindly put on a new tire, changed the oil and filter, replaced brake pads and bled the brakes - basically a full service. Thanks man!

It was up to me to buy some parts to return the bike to stock. Some previous owner had replaced the perfectly stylish stock turn signals with hideous LED crapbuckets. Sourcing replacements was a challenge - DO NOT BELIEVE TWIN MOTORCYCLES OR OTHER ONLINE VENDORS THAT SAY THEY HAVE REPLICA STOCK BUELL SIGNALS. They don't work - the stock units have a threaded post, the "replicas" don't - they attach with a small screw. This can be made to work on the rear, but not the front - the front signals' threaded posts double as fairing mounts. So the lesson is, buy signals from a Buell Blast! as they will work fine. Expensive, but worth it for the superior stock look.
  
Of course one of the appeals of the Buell is the absolutely wacko engineering that went into the bike. What looks like a fuel tank is actually just a plastic cover for the airbox - the frame holds 14 litres of fuel.

Crazy front brake - "Zero Torsional Load" disc attached to the wheel rim, with six-piston caliper. Great stopping power once the pads were replaced. Advantages (according to Buell) are dispensing with the weight and complexity of a dual-disc setup, and supposedly transmitting brake loads directly through the wheel rim, enabling a lighter wheel. Male-slider adjustable fork is arranged at a 21 degree angle (!)
 
Furthering Buell's "mass-centralization" obsession is the oil tank for the dry sump engine, mounted in the swingarm.

Beefy alloy frame and swingarm eh? Made by Verlicchi and Brembo (respectively) in Italy, apparently. The whole bike is super-compact with a wheelbase of only 52 inches.

Hmmm... not a huge fan of the font Buell used on the instruments. Looks pretty amateur-hour. Small digital display has two trip odometers, the regular odo, and a clock.

Logo on the top triple clamp is classy though.

Engine visible here - it's a fuel-injected 45-degree aircooled 984cc v-twin loosely based on a Harley-Davidson powerplant, but with many features specific to Buell. It's backed with a five-speed transmission and is cooled by a loud fan that comes on after you shut off the engine. The exhaust muffler is another feature of mass-centralization, placed below the engine. The exhaust note is very Harley-like, not something you'd necessarily expect from a bike that looks like this.

See what I mean? The stock signals are quite lovely, not sure why anyone would replace them. In fact I remember back in the day, people used to recommend Buell signals for bikes like my old Honda Hawk GT. Maybe that's why they're so hard to find nowadays!

What's it like to ride? Well, I feel like I can speak with some authority on that after riding it something like 2,700km in the last 9 days, about 1,400km in five days in the mountains, and 1,300km in two days on the Trans-Canada Highway from Calgary to Winnipeg. 

I found the bike really easy to ride on twisty mountain roads. Power delivery is pretty linear but there's not a ton of it - the engine is rated at 92hp at the crank. Fortunately the bike is pretty light, so as long as the road is twisty, rapid progress can be made. For me the bike handled great, very nimble but will hold pretty much any line you want in a corner. Fuel economy in the mountains was outstanding, easily exceeding the 120-mile range reported in road tests at the time. I got 250km out of 9.2 litres at one point. But economy ebbed once on the Trans-Canada Highway. On my last tank I only got 200km before the low-fuel light came on.

While the bike felt great on the mountain twisties, the tight wheelbase and high footpegs grew uncomfortable on the long straight highway home. I was able to last about 100 miles at a time at most. The bike had ample power to cruise above the speed limit, but it's not a mile-eater like the R1. 

So will it hang around long-term? Hard to say. It's reinforced my love for low-revving big twins, that's for sure. But its air-cooled nature means it gets hot on warm days and the five-speed is clunky. But it handles great and it's certainly different - and I think I'll keep it around for a little bit at least.

One last thing - some promo materials I picked up!



"Deeley's House of Buell" was Canada's west-coast Buell dealer, associated with the famous Deeley Harley-Davidson franchise. Can you believe that MSRP though? Fifteen-and-a-half grand for this bike in 2003, it boggles the mind, especially considering Canadian MSRP for a 2003 Yamaha R1 was apparently $14,999. Buell was definitely positioned as a premium-price brand.

Thanks for reading! 

Sunday, October 31, 2021

2018 Audi S3 Beauty Shots and Random Thoughts

As I'm coming up on a year with the S3, I thought I'd better take some pics with the summer wheels before I have to change back to the winter setup. I really like the stock 19"x8" double 5-spoke Audi wheels. I'll add some thoughts about the first year with the car near the end of this post.

Still on the stock Pirelli tires that really aren't showing much sign of wear.

Love the stubby styling of this car, the overhangs are so short.

Nice little decklid lip spoiler. I can see the appeal of a larger carbon version.

FFS - nice shot but some numpty left the filler lid open!


I attached the dealer plate frame with zipties - I think it looks pretty good, and beats the $400+ factory plateholder I priced out at the dealership.

Thoughts after a year with the car? Well, while I can tolerate the Audi dual-clutch transmission, I'd still rather have a six-speed manual. Not sure why this isn't possible - Audi offer a third pedal option in the Golf R, this car's fraternal twin. In any case I don't use the flappy paddles much at all, and the Sport mode is OK but not super-engaging. Fortunately the car is so quick you don't notice the gearbox much, except when just cruising along sedately. Unfortunately in those cases the gearbox seems to want to shift up ASAP and if you ask for power there's a delay as the gearbox shifts down. Sport mode cures this somewhat but keeps the revs high at cruise - perhaps this is the only alternative.

The only other minor niggle I have has to do with the ICE system. My old 2015 Volkswagen GTI had a touchscreen interface which was great - but for whatever reason Audi went for a scrollwheel-controlled system in the S3. This is quite a bit less intuitive. I do quite like the Virtual Cockpit but haven't reconfigured it much at all - I keep the speedo and tach in the middle and real-time fuel economy on the left. I should really play with that a bit more. Maybe if I ever take a road trip I'll try out the mapscreen. Apple CarPlay has been a bit troublesome as well, it just kinda stopped working one day. After a fashion I had to fiddle with the phone and the MMI and it seems to be on track now.

Other than those small things I still love the car. The styling really appeals to me and the colour still gets lots of compliments from random passersby. Maybe a tune is in the future - I like the idea of ~350hp and a sharpened DSG experience for about a grand. We'll see.