New Years day ride.

[GL1100Mike]

New Years day in south east Ohio is usually wet, snowy, cold, etc. you get the idea. This year was much different, temps in the mid 50's and just a little overcast. It was time to ride. I decided to to take a short ride through the countryside. This is the way to start the new year. It was just a short ride, around 25 miles, but what a way break the winter blues. though I know that the weather will turn more seasonal and we here still a couple of months of winter to go. It was great to get out there and do some miles of secondary roads and twistys to get you good frame of mind. I hope that everyone has a good new year and safe riding. It time to start thinking about the next Goldwing Gathering. Enjoy the next few months, it only gets better. Mike.

[brettchallenger]

I miss my GL1500. I had to sell it because of the stupid emission zone laws in London, I don't live there but my children and grandchildren do. It would cost me £15 a day to take it in there. But it was a great bike for British winters, sat behind all that plastic, nice and warm. What really annoyed me is that it wasn't polluting, just oldish (2000). The law is so stupid that I could take in my 2015, Jawa 350 and it wouldn't cost me a penny. The Jawa is a communist era, Czech bike and is more or less the same engine as it was in 1970, and yes, a two stroke.

[Rambozo]

Sounds like time to do an electric conversion on a 1500.

[Sadanorakman]

Sounds like time to do an electric conversion on a 1500.

I've already proposed this in earlier posts, but seems there's little appetite for electrification among the members here.

I can understand why, because many of you are based in the states, and many use their bikes for long distance touring, where range and ease of filling are very important.

Over here in the UK, I could work with 150 mile range and an hour to recharge. That would get me to plenty of places.

I ride a 2000SE, and have a 1991SE that needs significant mechanical refurbishment.

When I went to Paris on business last year, I wished I'd have ridden the 2000SE over, but then discovered I'd only be able to ride it in Paris between 8pm and 8am each day due to emissions legislation.

The 1991 is absolutely begging for the engine to come out, and be replaced by an electric drive, and a few Tesla packs.

My gut feeling is if you filled all that available space with motor and cells, they would not outweigh the components removed. It would be very interesting to see what kind of range this could provide.

Now if only I was retired already, I'd have the time to embark on this!

Easiest way may be to mate a motor to the existing drive shaft. There are plenty of smaller brushless traction motors available now, with or without planetary gear reduction systems.

Alternatively, entry-level electric cars are using hub motors on the rear wheels. To transplant one of these to the rear is possibly more challenging, and would likely give less starting torque, but would provide greater efficiency (think riding range) due to no final drive losses.