Have a SV650S I'm looking after for a month while it's owner is overseas (he
quite rightly figured lending me a bike is the best way of breaking me out of my
inertia in doing something about my own bikes).
Impressions after a bit of a run on it this morning:
Not riding for 9 months is very bad karma (alright you all knew that already) -
and man am I now sore after only a couple hundred Km ! Talk about lacking in
match fitness !
SV is a nice bike - adequate power for general road use - I wasn't punting real
hard (didn't want to wad it - it's not mine) but plenty of usable power across
the rev range - very user friendly to ride with its flat torque curve, that's an
awfully large amount of over-rev to the redline though - the power is pretty
much done by about 8 grand but it doesn't redline until 10,5.
Remus pipe sounds better on the ground than it does on the bike, prefer the
staintune note.
Bloody EPA/ coppers had an RBT muffler test thingy set up at the old Rd again -
and while noise compliant this SV is another one that doesn't have the label -
going to have to do something about that asap for Rob (the owner) as I was very
lucky that they hadn't finished setting up so they didn't pull me in. A guy on a
ZZR600 I was chatting to at Wisemans got pulled in (still had the stock exhaust
so he was right) hope not too many people got pinged.
It's had the front resprung and gold valved so it wasn't too bad with poor road
surfaces, I did find that I was riding it slower then I would punt my own bikes
but that may just have been the combo of not having ridden for a while and being
conscious it was someone else's bike. Might need a bit of attention to the rear
shock setup - impression was it was a bit stiff / not compliant enough. I'd
slide the forks through the triple clamps a little to speed up the turn in if it
was mine - it wasn't as nimble as I would have expected.
Only real criticism is the front brake is a bit wooden - any of you SV istas
know if braided lines is a solution for that ? Thinking I might buy Rob a set to
thank him for loaning it
Was a lot taller than I expected - dunno if he's raised the ride height - I
could just barely tiptoe both sides which is normal for an 830mm seat height - I
thought they were lower than that ? Albeit the seat to pegs relationship was
more crouched than I expected - I was expecting it to be more like the VFR -
sporty but roomy. It was fairly close coupled - seat/bars/pegs. Very sporty
position. I guess the naked is probably more upright and lower pegs ?
How similar is the SV1000 to the SV650 - is it basically the same ergonomics ?
Had a lot of fun - still very much fits the bill as one of the best "1st bike
off Ps" you could choose - very friendly and not at all confronting to ride.
JL
96 Bandit 12
89 KR1
01 SV650 (on loan)
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