singers were much better made than hondas imho !
Oh I disagree with that rather a lot. Singer sewing machines required an army of specially trained sewing machine mechanics to keep them singing along.
Whereas Honda motorcycles were easily able to be worked on by existing personnel trained to work on other motorcycles and were in fact so well made that Honda spear-headed a general "dumbing-down" of the general cohort of motorcycle mechanics.
I am in awe of Honda's engineering prowess in that they can now introduce a brand new model (CB550 as an example) and be so sure of their metalurgy/casting and machining standards that the first service (which is an oil change and inspection only) is not due till 24,000km.
My brother dropped in last week in the course of his 9,500km in 10 day trip across Australia and back again, riding his 2007 model Honda Blackbird. It had 160,000km on the dial when it left Sydney, heading to Darwin via Cairns, on arrival in Cairns I helped him change a blown headlight bulb.
In the course of that little amusing saga I pointed out that in the time it took us to change the bulb I could have done a complete tune and service on any of our BMWs, gone to the pub, got pissed and been chucked for being drunk and obnoxious.
In the light of that I inquired whether a service on the Blackbird cost less than AU$1,000. He replied that a full service was indeed around $1,000, but they only needed to be done every 50,000km, with intermediate fluid changes.
There is something to be said for any manufacturer that can produce a bike with the sort of performance a Blackbird is capable of, combined with that sort of service interval.
Singer - eat your heart out I say!
