Posted by Max on September 22, 2002 at 21:17:52:
Recently completed a 931 mile trip with my brother and his wife, my Savage, His HD and and Her 800 Intruder. Went from 1200 ft elevation to over 5000 and down to 50 ft. As i have adjusted the Savage for the 1200 ft usual riding, I was very observant of the differences as we climbed over the North Cascades Summit and went down to almost sea level. Ran rich up over the pass but managed to clear the top in 5th WFO. Definitely was lean at 50 ft and lots more backfiring. Mine is a 96 with a larger pilot jet, white spacer in, air bleed screw cover off, and a 88 CUIN HD Glass pac muffler w/center baffle. Mileage averaged about 50MPG with luggage. Best parts of the trip were the twisty roads up to the East side of Mt St Helens to Windy Ridge lookout. Going up was fun coming down with the no guard rail side closest, made one concentrate on looking where you wanted to go, not over at the scenery. Practised the MSF ERC stuff lots and discovered I need to practice left turns as the were not as smooth a line of travel as right, wasn't turning my head far enough and was sitting up away from the turn some. Will be making a back rest out of the orginal seat pad, after turning the Honda 90 package rack around. after cruising with a luggage for a backrest. No sore shoulder and elbows from holding onto the bike from the wind blast. I've got large white plastic saddle bags and a luggage rack on the back of mine as I use it for daily shopping and general errands almost daily. The bags allow dropping in a plastic grocery sack and rack will hold a variety of items either with a net or bungies.
Hope to repeat the trip but play around SW Washington and the coast roads next Fall rather than breeze in and back out. Will eb back to the mostly straight roads of this farm country for the winter. Keep the shining side up and enjoy the Fall weather. Max .