| Author | Message | ||
     Nevar |
You'll need a subscription to view... http://www.motorcycle.com/mo/mccompare/05_Value_Supersports/index.motml Tim | ||
| Nevar |
First Place: Buell XB9Sx -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If the Buell is a loveable little puppy dog, it's a pit-bull puppy, with a solid, muscular feel and a powerful bite. The Buell is a bundle of contradictions and unexpected engineering solutions that somehow all work well together, like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor or a peanut-butter and banana sandwich. It's not the fastest, best-handling, lightest, or cheapest bike in the test, but three of our four testers preferred it and picked it as the "best" bike here. The first surprise is freeway comfort. It looks like an overgrown Super Motard, with the vestigial fairing, tiny seat and tall, braced handlebar. However, that seat is much plusher (for the rider!) than it looks, with extra foam to make it higher. That extra height makes it hard for the "little people" like Gabe and Pete to get their feet flat at a stop, but the extra foam makes the perch surprisingly able for a long day of riding. "I rode it 480 miles down Highway One in a day, and I could still walk at the end of it" said Gabe. The comfort is furthered by that teeny slip of a fairing, which actually works well enough to manage the windblast at speeds up to 80 MPH. Faster than that and you are fighting the wind, but this bike is better to tour on than you'd think. The passenger seat on the CityX is a terrifying thing, but truly, it's not as bad as it looks. It looks like an afterthought, and is thinly padded, but the pegs are placed humanely, and as long as you're not too large, it's perfectly fine for short trips. Sean took Gabe over to Buell's fleet center to pick up a test unit, and aside from being scared silly on Dirty's favorite on-ramp, he weathered the 20-minute trip with no lingering effects. It's definitely not for touring, but it won't result in divorce the way a Ducati 916's passenger seat would. Another surprise is a smooth sweetheart of a motor. Pete remarked that it was "smoother than any other in the group", and Gabe preferred the smoother and easy-to-manage XB9 motor to the rambunctious 1200 motor on bigger Buells. It's "perfect for just about any type of riding", according for Pete. Sure, it shakes like a diesel generator at idle, but over 2,000 RPM it is as silky as a Ducati or even a Japanese liquid-cooled twin. This smoothness means you can access the 72 horsepower output quickly with a minimum of shifting and revving. And that is a handy feature, because this bike lags behind the Japanese machinery in the clutch, fueling and transmission departments. Both Pete and Dirty noted the poor off-idle response from the fuel injection, calling it the "least-sorted" and "sub-standard." That poor response can also be noted in the dyno chart as a big dip between one and two thousand RPM. The "clutch and tranny are reminiscent of a 1968 John Deere" according to Pete, and Gabe couldn't help but notice the long throw and crude feel from the gearbox. Finding neutral was about "as easy as finding a kosher butcher in Baghdad", according to the Visceral Wordsmith. If you can overlook the crudeness of those items, you can find yet another pleasant surprise: handling on par with a custom-built roadracer. With a tiny wheelbase, well-calibrated, stout suspension components and a massive frame, the Buell manages to be passably stable while at the same time incredibly light and flick-able. "Handling is super responsive and quick...overall it's like riding a bicycle" said Pete, who had a blast riding the CityX on both the street and track, and even cynical and hard-to-please Sean noted the Buell possessed a "nice neutral toss-ability that just begs to do anything you ask of it." The big pink man flew around the Streets of Willow (on the Buell's stock Pirelli Scorpion Sync tires) like he was in a centrifuge, passing racers with double-digit number plates. A novice or expert rider -- and anybody in between -- will benefit from a fun, great-handling ride. Surprising comfort, great handling, flexible motor and wicked good looks are sufficient to place this bike in first place over the more refined and polished CBR. As Sean says, "the Buell is the only bike in this test that makes you want to just hop-on and ride... to the store, to work, next door to your neighbor's house, up the mountain and back for lunch, anywhere, any time", and Pete thinks it "may just be the perfect canyon carver, everyday city thrasher/commuter, hooligan machine and weekend sport tourer." Gabe struggled to describe why he liked the little bike so much, especially after he had to ride it 500 miles in one day, but he summed it up by just saying, "it offers a great combination of usability and uniqueness for those who aren't happy with mere competence." | ||
| Xring |
Reviews like that are the reason I subscribe to motorcycle.com Cool! Bill | ||
| Nevar |
Yes. I think they do a great job. And the subscription fee is very reasonable - $12 / yr. Tim | ||
| Typeone |
I'm a subscriber as well and agree, well worth the minimal fee. The HUGE pics and movies at the end of each article rock. | ||
| Seth |
I have had an almost un-natural fascination with the City Cross since last year; this most favorable review makes my need for one just that much more!!! Please everybody; please stop posting pictures and reviews of this bike! My poor bank account couldn't sustain another attack!  I seriously do need to get me one of these! | ||
| Roly |
hi ,i have a city x . well pleased ,not as quick as a jap rocket but differant , don't need to rev guts out of it ,but you can ,brill round the county lanes and a roads. | ||
| Reepicheep |
Seth... Do *not* under any circumstances click the following link. http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buell/messages/21/145168.html?1126228009#POST511 154 Have no idea who the seller is, but that is a *smoking* good deal. | ||
| Xring |
A CityX sold on ebay last week for $6000. Appeared to be a legitimate auction and reputable seller. Wow. Bill | ||
| Dagwood |
I wouldn't sell mine for that. Great article. No subscription here...what were the other bikes in the test? | ||
| Dagwood |
Sorry Seth...I'm just a proud papa!  | ||
| Dagwood |
Thanks Tim!! This article made my day!  | ||
| Nevar |
Dan, Well, the article "preaches to the choir" as far as most of us are concerned. I still like to just go out into the garage and look at my XB9S - of course now it's yellow and it is a proven fact that yellow is the best and fastest! Tim | ||
| Nevar |
I sure hope I don't get into trouble copying that review over here - didn't think about the consequences... Maybe a plug for Motorcycle Online: It is a VERY good site and the reviewers seem to be fair. It's also a good site to look up reviews of older bikes - at least the last 10 years or so. Tim (Message edited by nevar on September 09, 2005) | ||
| Santacruzmtman |
MO's great, I'm always to see motorcycle reviewers that understand the tactile joy of owning/riding a buell/harley. | ||
| U4euh |
Nevar, we won't tell if you won't. Thanks for posting. | ||
| Buellshyter |
I believe this was for model year 2005. What with Buell improving the clutch and transmission I'm betting they would like the 2006's even better. | ||
| Imonabuss |
Now guys, go buy a subscription to MO! It's an excellent e-magazine, and selling subscriptions is how they pay their editors, testers and models! | ||
| Nevar |
MO is a good source if you're curious about a bike. I have copies of 4-5 m/c mags for the last 10 years but it's a pain in the @ss to find a particular review from several years ago. On-line is best! Tim | ||
| Court |
Great review. . . bad form for badweb since it is copyrighted. Don't forget to subscribe.  | ||
| Reepicheep |
I am *really* sorry, but that was more or less a complete cut and paste from the article. I felt I had to move it. http://www.motorcycle.com/ has cheap subscriptions. Reposting just the XB9SX section is bad enough and already pushing it, but it is still less then 1/4 of the article, and *many* of the other sections mention the Buell, so I think leaving that here probably sells more MO subscriptions then it looses. But posting the whole article is going too far, I wish we could, but we can't, either legally or ethically. Spend the $15 for a years subscription. Or email somebody else that did and handle it offline. I am not slamming anyone here, I posted a dyno plot from that same article elsewhere. How about these as some candidate rules: 1) Posting excerpts of articles is fine, so long as you include a source attribution, preferably a link. 2) If it is more then 25% of the article, it is NOT an excerpt any more. 3) Posting the full piece is only acceptable with the written (letter or email) permission of the author. 4) If there is a piece of material that you think is important to the community, post a link to it and we can see if we can make an archival copy in a part of the badweb server that is not internet facing. As long as the original source stays online, we keep our copy offline. If the original becomes unavailable (I am thinking of Henriks excellent crank seal tutorial as an example), we try and reach the original author for rights to republish here. | ||
| Court |
>>>>But posting the whole article is going too far That is an accurate statement. Back in the days when I was a custodian, I'd have moved that baby in a heartbeat. Well done. Court | ||
| Nevar |
Sorry guys! (Hanging my head in shame) But I do think the free publicity for Motorcycle Online out-weighs this infraction and I can't believe that the MO staff would take any action. In the posts it was clearly stated that the article was from MO and I'm sure the raves in other posts about MO would please the MO staff. Besides, there are dozens of cool pictures and video on the MO site that I didn't post here. I think that websites get really riled up when their articles are plagarised (sp?) by other websites and this clearly was not that. But, I learned my lesson and I won't do it again. Tim (Message edited by nevar on September 10, 2005) | ||
| Tommy_2stroke |
MO is absolutely worth the cost of subscription. Go thee and pony up, then dig through their test archives and read all the Buell reviews. It will become immediately apparent that the MO staff does indeed "get it" when it comes to Buell. I found it interesting that in this latest comparo the Honda was rated more highly than the CityX, if the criteria was weighted towards the "intellectual". But in the end the CityX wins, because the "emotional" pull of the Buell is just too strong. Boy, can I ever relate to that... I've never ridden a bike that "hooked" me more deeply than my little XB. | ||
| Nevar |
Here is a list of Buell reviews that are available on the MO site: 1995: S2 Thunderbolt | S2 Thunderbolt Long Term Update 1996: S1 Lightning* 1997: M2 Cyclone 1998: S1 White Lightning * | S3T Sport Touring 1999: 1999 Models | M2 Cyclone | X1 Lightning 2000: Buell Blast* 2001: XB9R Firebolt 2002: XB9R Firebolt* | XB9S Lightning 2003: XB9S (Intro | Comparo) | XB12 | XB12R (Funky Twins Shoot Out) 2004: XB12S [Streetfighters Comparo] 2005: XB9SX [Value Supersport Shootout 2005] | ||
| Jandj_davis |
Never says: "Besides, there are dozens of cool pictures and video on the MO site that I didn't post here." Nevar, are there any videos for this specific review? I cannot find them, and I am subscribed. | ||
| Nevar |
Jandj, You're right! Sorry - for this particular review there are just pictures. Tim |
