My salesman delivered my Blue/While ABS Thunderbird to the house yesterday morning that I purchased on 12/31 so of course I had to take it for a short spin. Cold snowy weather has abated here in Denver, CO for a few days so I was able to ride about 30 miles through some neighborhood streets and minor highway riding. Also rode into work this morning making for about a total of 40 miles so far.
VERY pleased with the motorcycle, it looks fantastic and rides great!
Ergonomics fit me very well, and for the 30 miles yesterday at least, was very comfortable without any immediate feelings that bars, seat, or foot position needs to be changed. Of course more miles will tell the story there.
Fit and finish of the bike is excellent. Chrome and painted parts look great with the Triumph signature hand painted pin stripes. And I think the black engine and throttle bodies along with the bare aluminum fins is awesome. And as I've already mentioned I really like the looks of the exhaust.
Bike starts effortlessly with a nice low rumble from the exhaust, just about the perfect sound for me personally, not to loud but not to quiet either. And I just really like the looks of the stock exhaust with the long flowing lines of a pipe on each side and the slash cut ends.
Power delivery is excellent, pulling away from a stop easily with nice smooth power transfer to the rear wheel through the transmission and belt drive. And let me say the transmission is absolutely wonderful! Could be the smoothest transmission I've ever had on a bike, and that includes some of the sport bikes I've own.
Performance feels very similar to the Honda Valkyrie I used to have, within the limits I kept the bike to for break-in, with the Valkyrie being a bit stronger. But this large parallel twin really pulls easily with great low end torque. Did a couple of easy 5th and 6th gear roll-ons from about 50 and 60 MPH, and a very small twist of the throttle would propel the bike another 10 to 15 MPH it a very short distance. Again didn't want to get too carried away during the initial break-in.
Mirrors are adequate but not great. Vision to left and right rear is ok but view to the direct rear is a bit obscure, nothing major though and new mirrors are at the top of my list to replace. Seat felt comfortable but a bit small, couple of times I wanted to slide back a bit but was already at the rear of the seat. But I'm sure I can get by with this seat for quite a while, I am just used to that plush Goldwing seat. Not problems for me but the grips seem really small! I have fairly small hands and my palms virtually cover the entire width of the grips.
Tank mounted instruments have a great look with speedometer being very easy to read. Tachometer however is a different story. Tach is very small at bottom of instrument cluster with small numbers at the bottom which are a little difficult to read. However, this morning while riding to work at dawn, back lighting of the tach was great at first, but tach numbers virtually disappeared during the period from darkness to light. But with a bike like this a tach is really not even necessary so this is no biggie to me. And there is a line scale above the numbers is easier to read if you can remember about what RPM you are at for each line of the scale.
Along with speedometer and tach a small LCD display is included that has fuel gauge, a multi-information display that includes odometer, 2 trip meters, clock, and estimated range to empty. With button to scroll between the various displays in the right switch housing. No moving your hands from the handlebars to change the display, nice.
Without pushing the bike handling was great, both at a crawl and at speed. Triumph really did a great job here! Suspension felt really good at slow speeds but begun to feel a bit harsh at speed. Not bad just at highway speeds you seem to get some fairly good jars on some bumps. But overall it's very comfortable.
Now to start getting those new chrome accessories…
Linear Mode
