During the past few months, I have seen early to mid 80s Honda Ascots pop up on CL. They look like they could be an interesting bike. Does anyone here have experience with the Ascot?
During the past few months, I have seen early to mid 80s Honda Ascots pop up on CL. They look like they could be an interesting bike. Does anyone here have experience with the Ascot?
Ascots came in two flavors: FT and VT. FT500's are thumpers, fairly common, light and flickable, lots of fun. Like riding a motard, sorta. VT500's are V twins, less common and less flickable (but still very good).
I want an FT500 done up street tracker style. http://omarsdtr.com/dtmain.html
I've always been more of a VT500 fan. I get torquiness, but I've never understood why anyone would want a big thumper for the street.
In reply to Woody:
Big thumpers have an air of cafe' about them. The bikes I have been seeing are VT Twins.
Every time I ride a thumper, it feels like its misfiring on cylinders two, three and four.
You got to just twist the wrist on a big single then it feels right. but no fun on long roads
In reply to 44Dwarf:
It is like that with all four-stroke singles. 20 years ago, I had a Yamaha TW200 which I used to rider around (mostly from home to the local dirt roads and trails). It felt like an out-of-tune engine until it was reved. Hence the name "thumper."
I likes thumpers, but then I have been a four stroke rider all my life. Tell you what; that last one (WR400F Yamaha) exhibited none of the olde skool thumper characteristics (shake at idle, slow rev due to lots of spinning mass, sorta low redline). It didn't shake, it picked up RPM like a 2 stroke 'on the pipe' and revved like a maniac. But it still had that magic torque off the bottom, I could let the RPM drop nearly to idle in a turn, roll on the throttle and instant pull.
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