[Author Index] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Sprint ST vs. T595 (plus assorted VFR's) - a direct comparison...



With my '98 T595 now being almost exactly 12 months old, with 12,000 miles 
under it's wheels, any attempt to replace it is going to cost me big heap 
wonga in depreciation. And yet, despite all the factors that attracted me 
to the T595 in the first place still applying in spades, I've found myself 
drawn to the idea of chopping it in for a new Sprint ST. Why? Well, part 
of the reason is that 12,000 mile total - well below the 18-20,000 miles 
that I racked up in successive years on my two previous VFR's (an '86, and 
a '92). There were days in this last winter when I actively avoided 
non-essential journeys, simply because I didn't want to go by bike! The 
T595 is not, by any measure, a winter bike. Although as ultra-sports tools 
go it's a very versatile machine, it just can't cut it after 5 hours in 
the saddle, laden down with half a ton of luggage, at 3am on the M6 in a 
December hailstorm. I can also say with bitterness that hard luggage 
messes up the weight distribution, and buggers up the handling of the 
T5 to some extent...

Thus it was that I found myself standing beside Trumpet dealership Carl 
Rosner Motorcycles' Sprint ST demonstrator just south of Croydon, late on 
a Monday afternoon. These are my impressions...

To look at, the Sprint ST is not particularly striking. The T595 is far 
more pleasing on the eye - whereas the ST has more than a hint of Suzuki 
GSX750 Teapot to it. Stylistically, I'd say it plays second fiddle to the 
old 97-style VFR750, but has the measure of the utterly bland VFR800. The 
clear flush-fit front indicators look slightly odd, I'd say, but I guess 
they'd grow on you. The rubber-treaded front pegs are practical, but make 
the T595 parts-bin pillion pegs look slightly incongruous. Practicality is 
well catered for with a centre-stand which is well designed, and easy to 
use. Throwing a leg over the machine, it all seems vary familiar as my 
hands fall to the bars. Pure VFR! Having said that, after a year on the 
T595 it feels like I'm sitting bolt upright, although I know I'm not. The 
clocks are very clear and well laid out, although the little numbers on 
the speedo make it look cluttered; this isn't a huge issue, since my 
experience with the T5 - numbered more sparsely - is that you soon learn 
what needle angle equates to what velocity. All the idiot lights are 
arranged in a neat row across the top of the dash, and in addition to the 
fuel warning light (a la T595) there is a pucker gauge, along with a 
little LCD clock! The screen appears at this stage to be very low indeed 
(of which more later), and the headlight controls have moved from their T5 
placement across to the right hand grip. The seat feels extremely 
comfortable - much better than the hemorrhoid special on the 595.

Pulling in the clutch to fire the beast up, my first and only ergonomic 
gripe is that the lever span is huge. This wouldn't be an issue if it was 
adjustable, and indeed the clutch assembly appears to be the same as the 
T595 unit, but it's a pain, aggravated on this bike by the fact that the 
bite point is set quite a long way out in the clutch travel. Fortunately, 
that aspect of clutch operation /is/ adjustable. Later, I nearly dropped 
the bike doing a low speed U-turn from rest, as I looked for the bite 
point in vain while the bike toppled gracefully to the right... found it 
just in time! 

The motor starts first time, and if you discount the noise like a bag of 
spanners in a cement mixer at idle, it sounds great. This demonstrator has 
the Triumph performance can for the ST fitted, but it's far less raucous 
than it's T595 equivalent when blipping the throttle. The glorious bark on 
the T595 (low performance can) can become wearing after a while, but it's 
an incomparable sound when you're pressing on in the twisties - and the 
Sprint ST can't quite compete in that area. It can compete with the VFR 
though! My 92 VFR with the Remus can demonstrated how good a V4 can sound, 
a rich, spine-tingling howl that just begged me to wind it open. The 
VFR800 I tried last year couldn't compete - it sounded flat and sanitised, 
even allowing for the standard can, and completely uninspiring. Later on, 
I discovered that when you give it proper stick, the ST sounds almost as 
good as the incomparable 595, which provides a soundtrack that can give 
best only to Carl Fogarty's Ducati at full chat...

Pulling away, and getting out of the car park, once the aforementioned 
clutch action has been overcome, reveals plenty of low down grunt, 
providing precise control at trickle-speeds. The steering lock is 
infinitely better than the supertankeresque steering on the T5, while the 
wide bars give plenty of leverage for low-speed manoeuvres that would 
become three-point turns on the 595. On my bike, I'd need to be holding at 
least 4,500-5,000 rpm and slipping the clutch if I didn't want the bike to 
pop, bang and surge, but the ST seems to pull cleanly from 2,000 rpm, and 
is geared slightly lower then big daddy T595. Considering that 5,000 rpm 
is about 30mph in first on the 595, you can see that filtering and 
trickling through traffic is less than entertaining. I gather that the 
955i has better mannered fuelling than the 595, but that even so it can't 
compete with the ST. 

Once out on the main road, I find that everything is cool in traffic - 
quite literally. The 595 cooks your legs when it gets a bit hot, and it 
gets moderately hot every time it has to crawl, and especially every time 
it has to sit stationary at traffic lights. The riding position means that 
unlike on the 595 I can look over my shoulders relatively comfortably, 
while the mirrors contain barely any elbow (about all I can see on the 595 
unless I contort myself to peer round them). This all contributes to far 
more relaxed riding in traffic, and the additional height that is a 
side-effect of the more upright stance is useful here as well. Suspension 
is softer than the brick-hard T5 stuff, but much firmer and better 
controlled than the boingy bits on my VFR's ever were - and much the 
better for it. At least my teeth aren't in danger of falling out every 
time I come to a small imperfection in the road surface, which is the 
effect that the T5 generates. 

Eventually, after much 30mph riding, and the odd opportunity to explore 
the incredibly elastic roll-on midrange as I exploit the gaps that open in 
traffic every now and then (my VFR750s were both good at this stuff, the 
ST is if anything better), I find myself approaching a smallish offset 
shellgripped roundabout, beyond which is a twisty National Limit B road. 
I've only been on this bike ten minutes, and yet without a second thought 
I'm weighting first one peg then the other, and using the incredible 
leverage that the wider bars coupled with the riding position give me, to 
wang through the obstacle at a rate of knots, heeling first one way then 
the other. By contrast, on the T5 I always find that I'm much more locked 
in position, and have to steer almost entirely by countersteering using 
only my forearms; the high pegs in particular make weight transfers 
difficult, and the net result is that the extra, and excellent, high-speed 
flickability of the bike is compromised by the ergonomics. The front 
biased riding position on the T5 certainly makes the steering feel more 
precise, but for me, pushing the front tyre hard into corners isn't on my 
agenda; I ride everything (T5 no exception) slow(er) into corners on the 
road, and accelerate out, so a front end that would allow a racer to trail 
the front brake harder and deeper into a corner while howling the front 
tyre has no benefit for me whatsoever. Even the better tyres on the T5 
serve only to go square and wear out more quickly on real roads, and of 
course bearing in mind that I've dragged pegs in the wet on the track on 
my old VFR shod with BT57's, the likelihood of me noticing the extra grip 
that the 56's offer on the road is pretty infinitesimal. If I could afford 
to explore the limits of the 595 on a track (where it isn't insured of 
course) I /might/ then notice, but frankly I doubt it. 

Exiting the roundabout (that's traffic circle in 'merkin, by the way), I'm 
away, winding it on hard and exploring the performance envelope. At speed, 
I discover that while the screen may seem low, appearances are deceptive. 
I wouldn't be surprised if my head took a pounding at insane speeds, but I 
was unbuffeted at a merely mildly bonkers velocity. The brakes are the 
same as those on the T5, and are just as sharp - but you need to allow for 
more rear-to-front weight transfer than on the T5, and I have a feeling 
that the rear brake on the ST might actually have a purpose, what with a 
less front-biased weight distribution meaning that the back wheel spends 
more time on the ground. At least, in their plagiarism of many of the best 
features of the VFR, they didn't steal those damned stupid linked brakes!

Experimentally nailing the sucker open is revealing as well... the bike is 
better in the mid-range than the T5, pulling from 2K right round to the 
redline, with a rush at the top, but it is just missing the really extreme 
top-end rush of the T5. Thing is, apart from a lap of the old Nurburgring, 
a couple of mad moments on country roads and a few hundred miles on the 
German Autobahn and other continental motorways, the number of times that 
I've reached the hot part of the power band in top can be counted on the 
fingers of one foot. The number of times I use the top 15 horses on my T5? 
Very few indeed, and in winter - not at all if I want to keep the bubble 
up and the rubber down! Nope, I reckon on the real road, the ST might even 
prove to be the faster real-world bike, for most conditions, because it 
has more power in the places that you need it when picking off traffic and 
suchlike. 

Turning round and heading back, I'm forced to marvel at how sorted the ST 
is. The road is clearer this way, as traffic heads out of town rather than 
in, and I can briefly get into full hoon mode in a couple of places. OK, 
the addictive triple howl is both more muted and more civilised than it is 
on the T5, the bike isn't as responsive to mere thought at speed, and  
there are slightly less in the way of horses to tame, but in the real 
world, complete with colour-coordinated hard luggage and a top-rack, it's 
like a VFR only better where it matters. Plus it cruises naturally at 80 
instead of 120, which makes the odds of my licence staying in one piece 
are enhanced; how I haven't been busted on the T5 I really don't know... 

And it's a Triumph of course. So, mine's a black one, please...




Ken Haylock - T595 + CD200 Rat - MAG #93160

________________________________________________________________________
                               _    _
                    .oooO     / )  ( \     Oooo.
                    (   )    / (    ) \    (   )
                     \ (    (   )  (   )    ) /
                      \_)   .oooO  Oooo.   (_/
                       
                     * kwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx *                     

 *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
 The ST Mailing list is sponsored by the Unofficial ST Website
   http://www.TriumphNet.com/st for ST and Mailing List info

=-=-=-= Next Message =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=