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



Ken:  Thank you for your well written letter comparing the Sprint ST to the
T595.  I have been waiting for the 2000 model of the Sprint ST to arrive so
I can place my order (it's a long story but basically I promised my wife no
new bikes in 1999).  I have to admit longing for the Daytona in the local
Triumph dealer's showroom.  The Daytona is really a good looking bike.
After reading your letter, it seems to me that living with the Daytona is
something like living with a very beautiful woman.  All your friends love
her, you love to take her out, and she is a whole lot of fun to "play" with.
The beautiful woman is, however, difficult to live with day in and day out.
Your comparison has help me decide in favor of the Sprint ST.  The Sprint ST
is the "homelier" country girl to the beautiful Daytona "city woman" but
would be easier to live with in the long run.  (Wish I could keep a
beautiful woman, er ...I mean Daytona, on the side).
In the meantime, I'm waiting for 2000.
John Westcott
San Antonio, TX
- -----Original Message-----
From: Ken Haylock <kwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: ST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <ST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: t5mail@xxxxxxxxx <t5mail@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, May 17, 1999 8:50 PM
Subject: 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 *
>
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