I have a 97 -1100 honda shadow ace. I put the new Hannigan Conte on it. I recently went on a long road trip. I found the bike struggling to maintain highway speed above 65 miles per hour with a 140lb passenger. I had to gear down to 4th and stay with the higher revs to maintain the speed. Is this normal? When I put my 100lb son in it I could maintain speed in 5th gear but the bike wasn't always happy with it. On the way home I ran into strong headwinds 30 to 50mph gusts. I was pointed directly into it and it was all I could do to maintain 50mph in 3rd gear. I was worried that I might blow something up. I am completely new to this so I don't know what to expect. Most times I can cruise at 50 to 60 miles per hour without to much trouble but anything above that with hills or wind and the bike struggles. Any suggestions.
What should I be able to expect from Highway driving. The sidecar is 200lb. I am 250lb. the passenger averages 150lb. if I have another on the back thats 100lb. That's 700lbs load. I travelled without the 3rd passenger on the highway and found it a challenge.
Funny you would post this.
It must be a coincidence because I had the exact same experience along the 401 traveling westbound into the strong wind Monday evening.
My rig normally can do 120kph in 5th with ease and more speed to spare with an adult passenger.
That evening I topped out at 100kph with no more throttle to give and I was riding alone.
The wind was very strong.
pooky - 4/7/2010 10:53 PM
Funny you would post this.
It must be a coincidence because I had the exact same experience along the 401 traveling westbound into the strong wind Monday evening.
My rig normally can do 120kph in 5th with ease and more speed to spare with an adult passenger.
That evening I topped out at 100kph with no more throttle to give and I was riding alone.
The wind was very strong.
What kind of bike do you have?
BMW R1200C Montauk
Now I don't feel quite so bad! i had a passenger in it and some hills to climb. It was also on monday night. I still feel like the bike is a little under powered at least for the 100km/hr highways. At 80 to 100 km the bike puts along nicely.We should meet up sometime as we live very close to each other!. nothing like a good Tim Hortons run 🙂
I few years back I had a 1500cc Valkyrie with a Ural sidecar. Although it never felt like it didn't have enough power, there were times it worked hard.
My worst day was 220 miles riding in to a 35mph wind at about 38 degrees F. I actually had her down to 9 miles per gallon that day. In retrospect, I think she did that on purpose so I would have to stop for gas and a warmup every 60 miles. 🙂
I still miss that bike.
Mike
Remember CC displacement isn't the same as horsepower and torque. With a sidecar rig it seems like you can never have enough of the latter two. My 1440cc Harley Road King uses most of the available throttle on the highway with a passenger in the hack.
You can never have too much power 🙂 Some outfits actually are happier in ,say, 4th gear than 5th under certain circumstances. We see much about changing the final drive gearing which is a great idea but easier said than done on some bikes. Chain drive bikes are ealy, belt drives a little more difficult and shaft driven machines are a toss up between doable and not doable. One way to obtain a lower top gear , rubber to the road, ratio, even though slightly, is to possibly find a lower profile rear tire.
With all of that being said we, as sidecarisrts , need to understand that any bike will have a rpm range that it is happy in under whatever circumstances it is required to run up against. If we keep the bike in that happy zone when underway all will be about as good as it gets with a given outfit. In other words if a rig is happy in 4th gear leaving it there is the best thing.
Many folks, especially Americans for some reason, tend to short shift their motorcycles. Lugging an engine is many times much worse on everything( engine, driveline, transmisson) than letting it rev up more.
I have Honda Valkyrie with 165lb texas ranger and power is plenty.
I have had her north of 100mph with 140lb passanger with no problem.
Problem is just like mike said hurder you puah it more MPG drop. Good says I am getting 25MPG, but I have seen 13MPG too.
I had a 1993 Honda Shadow VT1100. Mine only had four speeds which was the reason I sold it after only 1,200 miles. It was a wonderful solo bike. The other problem that it had, especially with only four speeds, was that it was simply geared too high. That is, unless you were very careful you would be lugging the engine.
Even with five speeds, the gearing is too high on the Shadows. With a sidecar, riding in fourth with a five speed Shadow, would put the overall gearing approximately where it should be. While the engine is a very good one and extremely reliable, it's asking a bit too much to expect it to pull a sidecar into a wind with that gearing. Unfortunately, with a shaft drive, you are locked in to one ratio.
To show you that I'm not picking on Honda, my 2004 88 cubic inch Ultra was geared a bit too high even for a solo. The overall gearing had been changed from the 3.37:1 on the Evolution Ultras to 3.15:1 for the Twin Cam. The extra 8 cubic inches meant there was some additional power to pull it but to avoid lugging the engine as a solo, you couldn't engage high (5th) gear below 60 mph. That meant that around town you really couldn't use anything but third and fourth gear.
When I added the TLE sidecar, I quickly realized that it was not going to work properly unless I corrected the gearing. Fortunately for me, the Harley has a chain primary drive and the Evolution motor sprocket and clutch basket are readily available. I changed from a 25 motor and 36 clutch to a 24 motor and a 37 clutch using stock parts with the standard primary chain. That lowered the gearing from 3.15:1 to 3.37:1. So $300 later, all is well. In fact, I like the 3.37:1 so much that even if I were to remove the hack, I would still prefer the gearing. It's doing 3,000 rpm at 70 mph which is really just about right. You can literally run that speed all day.
So, the issue with the Shadow is love it or leave it. There's no changing the gearing since Honda doesn't provide different units.
If I do an engine rebuild with a big bore kit will that make it better?
It would give me more power to draw from even though I don't change the gearing
rmoriss2 - 4/8/2010 3:31 PM
If I do an engine rebuild with a big bore kit will that make it better?
It would give me more power to draw from even though I don't change the gearing
Hmmmm, I wonder if parts are available for such an enterprise>? IIRC, the Shadow may well have plated-in cylinder liners. Assuming that as a fact, that means that there is nothing to bore. You would need different cylinders.
A larger bore might mean boring the crankcases out to fit the larger lower clyinder spigot into them. Knowing what I know about Honda's modern die casting techniques, there is probably not an extra millimeter to perform that task. Even if you could, assuming that there was enough meat in the crankcases, you would weaken the structure considerably. This is a problem wth Harley as well since they no longer have much extra crankcase metal in their engines. People to bore them out and they do work but it's a limited issue. You can only go so far. Also, Harley has an extremely large aftermarket with additional cylinders available. While I'm not the local expert on boring out Hondas, it's really a matter of parts availability.
With a Harley 88" there is enoguh meat in the clyinders to take them to 95" without boring the cases. They also have stock 95" cylinders available. Hionda doesn't sell items like that. What you see is what you get with a Honda, even though you may meet some of the nicest people. LOL.
Even then, a few cubic inches here and there isn't going to be the big difference. Sorry to be so negative but the Shadow engine is excelllent and reliable as it is. If one makes changes a whole world of issues may come up. Remember also, it is a liquid-cooled engine and the radiator is sized for 1,100 cc. Honda doesn't make money going oversize on anything. If you were to add some significant displacement, it's not clear whether it would cool properly.
My 2 cents. No charge. LOL.
🙂
Guess I'll have to live with it!
rmoriss2 - 4/8/2010 3:44 PM
Guess I'll have to live with it!
There, there. Worse things could happen. LOL. 🙂
A lower profile or smaller diameter rear tire would give one some torque advantage and maybe a higher cruising range.
Same effect as raising the gear ratio.
Lonnie
