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Ride from Charleston SC to Wheels Through Time

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There will be hotel overnights in Abbeville, Maggie Valley and Traveler's Rest.
Thursday - Ride to Abbeville
Friday - Ride to Maggie Valley
Saturday - Wheels Through Time and ride to Travelers Rest
Sunday - Travelers Rest to home. May do interstate depending on mood of the group. Otherwise no interstates.
Also, set route to no dirt and no tolls.
 
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Ride report...
It was a great ride and got to spend some time getting to know my neighbor better. He was riding a Yamaha V Star 950.
While riding the smoky mountain twisties is always fun, the weather did not cooperate once we got to North Carolina. Attacking tight mountain roads that are WET severely crushed our groove.
The weather forecast kept showing a "slight chance of thunderstorms" and we kept finding them.
We did enjoy the Wheels Through Time museum. If you enjoy motorcycles, you'll really like it. If you are one of the HD faithful, you will fall on your knees and worship. They have the most comprehensive collection of Harley Davidson I have ever seen. Even cooler, a museum guide will start them up for you! They all run!
Learned a couple of new things about my R18TC during the ride:
1. I always use VPN on my phone when staying in hotels. I forgot to turn it off one morning and could not get the navigation system to start. Lesson learned that's not in the owners manual - turn your VPN OFF.
2. The bike exhibited steering instability at 60 to 70 mph. I've never noticed this before. I set the cruise control and removed my hands from the bars to make a momentary glove adjustment and the front end went into a divergent death wobble within about 6 seconds. I have never owned another motorcycle that did this. Lesson learned on this bike at least.
3. This bike does not like to turn into tight curves quickly. Requires a bit of work to hustle through mountain curves. In comparison, my Victory is almost telepathic.
4. Lastly, don't forget to ensure you're in ROCK mode in the twisties. Throttle response is way too slow in ROLL. I had kept it in ROLL to improve fuel economy and forgot to take it out.

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Hey I was there the same time period RhoXS. Quite the place, I was very surprised at the number of motorcycles some never seen by me before. Did you buy raffle tickets for the Knuckle head their giving away?
 
Wow, sorry I missed the ride and glad you didn't fall in the wobble. I've ridden my r1200c thousands of miles and test ridden the R18. R18 actually seemed more stable in a straight line to me - as in, it did not want to divert from going straight.
Maybe cruise control had something to do with the wobble?
Thanks for the update
 
cheeseBagger said:
Wow, sorry I missed the ride and glad you didn't fall in the wobble. I've ridden my r1200c thousands of miles and test ridden the R18. R18 actually seemed more stable in a straight line to me - as in, it did not want to divert from going straight.
Maybe cruise control had something to do with the wobble?
Thanks for the update
Click to expand...
The steering geometry means you need to déstabilise it by countersteering and add a bit of weight on the inside footrest. The countersteering you do subconsciously anyway so you just need to exagerate it a bit till that gets automatic too.

As to Rock vs Roll the trick is not the throttle response but loading the drive and trailing the brake into/through the corner.
 
Did plenty of trail braking. In very tight curves the 1800 will not spin up or wind down fast enough in ROLL to adjust. When I need to power out of an apex, I need it NOW. Rock mode fixes that.
Leaving in rock mode all the time destroys fuel economy and I don't relish having a fuel concern running through Sumter National Forest with no phone signal.
 
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