Customizing Your Motorcycle | Tailor Your Ride

Harley Tips Episode 8 Tailoring Your Ride

Welcome back as Motovan presents the experience, I’m Dave Hatch and now that we’ve got you ready to ride we’ll wrap up our show by paying a quick visit to the Toronto Motorcycle Show to see what you can do to tailor your ride.  Joining me now is the chief riding instructor at Georgian College in Barrie Ontario, Jenn Martin.

Dave

So Jenn, this week we’re back at the Toronto Motorcycle Show in the Harley-Davidson booth, in fact, we’re right in the fit shop, another example of what you can deal with at the retail level.

Jenn

Right

Dave

What are you looking for when you’re talking about making a motorcycle fit you?

Jenn

Okay so that triangle, we’re looking at the handle bars, the connection there, you’re seat, that connect, and then the feet, that connection as well.  Making sure tha tit fits you properly.

Dave

Okay so what we’re trying to achieve is a straight back and sort of slight bend, as you say, where your weight is easily distributed throughout the motorcycle.  Why is that so important?

Jenn

Well I mean, you want to be comfortable when you ride, so I mean there’s so many people out there that are riding a motorcycle that is too big for them or not comfortable and there’s so many things that you can do to make it comfortable. … it’s especially when you come to a stop, you want to be able to put your foot down reach the ground and be secure and it’s all about safety and keeping yourself safe out there when you’re riding, for sure.

Dave

Right.  So you don’t want to be leaning too far forward because that’s going to stress your lower back… you don’t want to be leaning too far back. You don’t want ot have your knees all cramped up right.  The neat thing about the fit shop is you can swap the bars, you can swap the saddles… tell me what that experience was like, like customizing the bike to fit.

Jenn

I think it’s excellent because there’s no excuse of why the bike should not fit you once you’re done with it so there’s so many things like switching out the handle bars, straight bars curly bars, whatever suits your fancy as well but making sure that your riding position is the best riding position for you so that you can steer so when you’re out there on the road you’re concentrating on what you should be concentrating on and not worried about I’m not really comfortable on this bike.

Dave

Right, That’s a very important point.  Studies have proven that if you’re comfortable on the motorcycle you will be safer on the motorcycle right because you’re not thinking about, oh my back really hurts or my knees are going… right.

JEnn

Exactly, you’re concentrating on what you should be which is what’s out there on the road and what do you need to do and the beauty of the fit shop  is, that I think is great is you can switch things out and you can… didn’t you say something about …

Dave

Wind screens?

Jenn

Yeah.

Dave

Yeah they have a new program now where at the dealer level where you can actually borrow different wind screens.

Jenn

Yeah.

Dave

They’ll bolt them to your bike.  Or saddles.  And you just take them off for a couple of hours and just try them out just again… there’s nothing worse than having a wind screen too short or too tall where you can’t see through it or it’s buffeting you and your head is bouncing around you can even try out wind screens.

Jenn

Which is great – you don’t have to make the commitment up front, you can try different ones and find the one that’s best for you.

Dave

Right, so it’s not just all about comfort for comfort’s sake, it’s really comfort for safety sake.

Jenn

Absolutely, yes.

Dave

Right.  Some great advice there.

Jenn

Good.

Dave

Thanks Jenn.