RE5 on the top of the mountain

[nathaust]

Lets see if I can get some pics to work.

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[nathaust]

I was able to keep up with them fancy cycles.

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[nathaust]

Range made me a little concern

[nathaust]

The group

[timpa136]

Beautiful bike, I do hope you were dressed warm for that ride.

[t140v]

Yep its like riding through the Alps, lovely scenery but freezes your bollocks off.

Nice bike and 10 out of 10 for getting it out and riding it, have rode mine through two winters the alloy seems to be much more resitant to salt than my GT380 that turned into a slimy black lump after a winters riding.

Congrats Stuart

[nathaust]

Thanks guys, yeah I dressed well enough. I'll do a write up of the trip maybe this evening.

[nathaust]

Mileage works out to about 320 miles round trip.This was my first time going over the North Cascade pass in Washington state. I have wanted to do this run for a long time. It always came highly recommend and it didn't disappoint. I went Mville, Arlington, Darington, Concrete, over the hump to Winthrop and back the same way.

I rode my 1976 Suzuki RE5. Overall I am pleased with how it did. The ride was smooth and comfortable. I had a couple concerns about how the single carb would be affected by the high altitude pass. My other initial concern was my actual range capability. The bike is listed most places as getting around 30mpg. The only stated range I found was 80 miles. The last fill station before the climb and the first on the other side is 71 miles.

Another concern I discovered on the way was my front brakes were not slowing me as well as usual. I thought to myself that I must have got some fork oil on one or both rotors when I drained and changed the fluid the evening before. In Concrete I examined them closer and found groves on the surface of the rotor where I don't remember them before. Also the right pad was occasionally sticking on. I can't recall the last time I checked the pads and I couldn't tell without being able to pull them off. During the run I had about the same braking force which although was diminished didn't seem to worsen or get me killed. Later I could see that one small grouping of grooves were fresh and shinny. I could also audibly hear it scrapping from time to time which was not instilling much confidence.

The braking issue along with the old skinny non radial tires with spoked wheels and 70's tech suspension all lent to me taking along time to build confidence in the bikes abilities and my skill to push it but not too far. Another draw back of the rotory engine is the noticeable lack of engine braking. This is due to the characteristics of the spinning rotor and it carrying inertia after throttle is closed. This and the lack of friction from constant changing direction of say a piston traveling up then down then up ect. all makes the very useful tool of engine braking almost non existent and even dangerous if the rider is used to using it and not having it at an inopportune moment.

I rode middle of the pack of the three, I didn't have the head set com box so this seemed best. I also kinda like the idea of someone behind me who could let me know if anything fell off. The daytona was lead which took me a while to sort out because it is a modern powerful sport touring bike. This made it a bit hard for me to judge upcoming terran because if I saw the daytona take some speed into a corner in which I could not see the end or sometimes even the apex I didn't know if I should match and risk overrunning the tires or the spoked wheels limits. If I could I still might run into the issue of needing to hard brake which I would most certainly not be able to stop anywhere close to the distance the Triumph could.

At the upper most parts of the pass I did experience some narrowing of my power band. Of coarse this is where we did the most passing of RV's and such. The RE5 was capable even then. I just had the be mindful of where the power was. The power band was moving ever higher in the RPM range so I had to usually shift in the middle of passing to avoid over reving. Power quickly returned once we dropped a bit.

I didn't run out of fuel! Although I did make a total of 5 stops at the pump. I was getting better fuel usage as the trip progressed, I'm guessing it was because I was shifting better where as on the way over I kept the revs high and thus my power available. On the return trip I finally found the confidence in myself and knowing where the bikes limits were. I did a very respectable higher speed decent keeping up with the fancy daytona making committed ever deeper left and right leans. I was able to stay right with him although I'm sure he could have pushed it past my limit if he wanted to.

[wayne]

Sounds like a great trip.

Range: you can count on at least 125 miles on a reasonably tuned bike and that'll leave you with 1/2 a gallon remaining (my all time record is a little over 170 miles to dry but that was trying to be economical).

Limits: get some good tyres on it, replace the steering head bearings and change the swingarm bearings to bronze. Build your confidence and you'll be really amazed at how competent the bike is. It isn't the fastest out of a corner but my RE has the highest sustained cornering speeds of any of my vintage bikes and that includes an early 16 valve GS1100 and a four valve GS750.

[tom93gts]

That sounds like a great ride! I regularly do this sort of thing on my newer-ish ('93) bike but don't trust the range of my RE5 enough to attempt. What was the average mpg you got for the trip?