RE: Color

["David McCarthy" <dave.mac@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

God I've heard some daft April Fool stories but this has got to be one of
the best! I guess someones going to come up with a theory about the friction
coefficients of the respective paint jobs now!

By the way, mines Blue and goes just fine!!

Dave McCarthy
Had enough, gone out on the bike!!!



- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-st@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:owner-st@xxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Harl
Hoppler
Sent: 01 April 2000 14:39
To: Sprint List
Subject: Color


I almost hate to bring up this thread again...
There have been many disCUSSions about the relative merits of the various
colors
Triumph paints the Sprint. I?ve never joined in as I thought is was just
good natured
banter. Now I?m not so sure... My bike is/was/is red. I?ve never been a fan
of red bikes
and wanted a black one when the Sprint first came out, but they were thin on
the Earth
and I wound up with red. I got used to it, even grew to like it. It?s a
great red... But I
coveted black. So I bit the bullet and painted my beauty black, even bought
new decals.
I lovingly put my bike back together and it looked great! However, on riding
it I immediately
noticed that the performance seemed to have dropped off sharply. I took off
the fairing,
assuming that I?d pinched a hose or knocked a wire off. Couldn?t find a
thing. I put it
back together and it ran the same. I took it into the dealer, figuring
perhaps I?d affected
the fuel injection somehow and a new tune would take care of the problem. It
was
accomplished in short order, with no improvement in performance. While
chatting with
the Service Manager, he said "I thought your bike was red..." I told him it
had been,
and he said, "Too bad, the red ones are always faster..." I thought "Yeah,
right..." but
began to wonder. The thoughts gnawed at me for a couple of weeks, all the
while I was
poking and prodding, trying to figure out what I had done to the bike. Still
couldn?t find a
thing and neither could the dealer. Finally I ordered another set of decals
and painted it
back to the proper red color. As I expected, no change in performance. Now I
felt like
a complete idiot. I was discussing the whole situation with another Sprint
rider who was
up shooting the breeze one day. He suggested that the bike was still tainted
with the
black paint. That seemed pretty off the wall, but I was ready to believe
anything about now.
I offered to help him do a couple of maintenance tasks on his bike in
exchange for a favor.
I wanted to borrow his bodywork and tank...
To make an already too long story short, with the borrowed bodywork, the
bike?s former
level of performance returned. So, I took my bodywork back to the painter,
had him sand
down to the original red, completely removing any black paint, and repaint
the bike yet
again, in the stock red with new decals. Yeah, he thought I was nuts, too.
But after yet
another reassembly, my beloved Sprint is finally back to its old form. My
experience has
taught me a valuable lesson. But then, we already knew that the red ones are
faster, so
let this be a lesson to all Sprint riders. And to think I considered the
pretty, but slower,
blue, too.

Oh, and by the way, best regards of the day.



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