My bikes, part one.

[mickj]

At the risk of upsetting some.

As I have more than one bike and they are all different (but similar) I thought I might write a little review of each of them, so starting with the oldest.

Triumph 955i Speed Triple.

After owning various bikes I bought a 900 Trident 1994 which I had for 11 years and found it to be a brilliant bike which I could not better (in my opinion) until the 955i Speed Triple came out in 2000. It was the first bike I had ridden that bettered the Trident in every area, power, grunt, brakes and handling were all superior, it was lighter and had fuel injection, so I bought one. Other bikes I tried had more power, or better handling or more grunt but for me the Speed Triple was the first to exceed the Trident everywhere. I had an issue with it at 2000 miles when the speedo drive failed and this was replaced under warranty and I had a recall to replace the QR fuel lines from plastic to metal and that has been it for warranty work. I could not get it started one time no matter what I tried and traced this to a dirty starter switch which I just sprayed with contact cleaner and has never been a problem again. I recently had to replace the front fork seals as the right side was leaking. The only mods I have done have bee to replace the can with a Quill T3, fit crash bobbins, fender extender, rear hugger and a little nose screen which keeps the clocks clean. I always run my bikes in gently, extending the manufacturers run in period and have never ragged or thrashed it. Once the warranty was over I have done all the servicing myself which has been fairly easy to do and it's now on its third battery. Apart from the thing listed the bike has been brilliant and great fun to ride, my wife had an SV 650 at the time so I converted it to single seat use but she has given up riding her own bike so I have returned it back into a two seater, which is acceptable for short journeys. I find the bike suites my riding style very well, it instantly responds to my wishes, it may not have the power of the 1050 but what it has is a lot more accessible so feels better to me (I’ve had a Tiger sport 1050 and sold it as it was not as good as my 955i), it's plenty fast enough, super smooth and sounds glorious. The economy has been brilliant and on a slow, leisurely run out I can get nearly 70 mpg, the bike never uses oil, what goes in comes out after 5000 miles and tyre and brake wear are all good. Over the last few years I have noticed that ethanol has stretched the tank so I have switched over to Esso super unleaded which is the only ethanol free fuel available in the UK. Overall I cannot really fault this bike and I would say it's probably my favourite bike. I think it’s the best looking of the Speed triple range with the looks of the original (injected) 509 but with the 955i engine, later models were a styling miss in my opinion. Fit and finish of all components is good (though not as good as my Trident) and spares are easy to get hold of, second hand bits can also be found on ebay. Prices have started to rise for clean unmolested bikes but as I still enjoy riding it I will hang onto this bike for a while yet, it may be worth a few bob in the future.