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Sprint ST vs. T595 (plus assorted VFR's) - a direct comparison...
- Subject: Sprint ST vs. T595 (plus assorted VFR's) - a direct comparison...
- From: kwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Ken Haylock)
- Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 02:49 +0000 (TZN)
With my '98 T595 now being almost exactly 12 months old, with 12,000 miles
under it's wheels, any attempt to replace it is going to cost me big heap
wonga in depreciation. And yet, despite all the factors that attracted me
to the T595 in the first place still applying in spades, I've found myself
drawn to the idea of chopping it in for a new Sprint ST. Why? Well, part
of the reason is that 12,000 mile total - well below the 18-20,000 miles
that I racked up in successive years on my two previous VFR's (an '86, and
a '92). There were days in this last winter when I actively avoided
non-essential journeys, simply because I didn't want to go by bike! The
T595 is not, by any measure, a winter bike. Although as ultra-sports tools
go it's a very versatile machine, it just can't cut it after 5 hours in
the saddle, laden down with half a ton of luggage, at 3am on the M6 in a
December hailstorm. I can also say with bitterness that hard luggage
messes up the weight distribution, and buggers up the handling of the
T5 to some extent...
Thus it was that I found myself standing beside Trumpet dealership Carl
Rosner Motorcycles' Sprint ST demonstrator just south of Croydon, late on
a Monday afternoon. These are my impressions...
To look at, the Sprint ST is not particularly striking. The T595 is far
more pleasing on the eye - whereas the ST has more than a hint of Suzuki
GSX750 Teapot to it. Stylistically, I'd say it plays second fiddle to the
old 97-style VFR750, but has the measure of the utterly bland VFR800. The
clear flush-fit front indicators look slightly odd, I'd say, but I guess
they'd grow on you. The rubber-treaded front pegs are practical, but make
the T595 parts-bin pillion pegs look slightly incongruous. Practicality is
well catered for with a centre-stand which is well designed, and easy to
use. Throwing a leg over the machine, it all seems vary familiar as my
hands fall to the bars. Pure VFR! Having said that, after a year on the
T595 it feels like I'm sitting bolt upright, although I know I'm not. The
clocks are very clear and well laid out, although the little numbers on
the speedo make it look cluttered; this isn't a huge issue, since my
experience with the T5 - numbered more sparsely - is that you soon learn
what needle angle equates to what velocity. All the idiot lights are
arranged in a neat row across the top of the dash, and in addition to the
fuel warning light (a la T595) there is a pucker gauge, along with a
little LCD clock! The screen appears at this stage to be very low indeed
(of which more later), and the headlight controls have moved from their T5
placement across to the right hand grip. The seat feels extremely
comfortable - much better than the hemorrhoid special on the 595.
Pulling in the clutch to fire the beast up, my first and only ergonomic
gripe is that the lever span is huge. This wouldn't be an issue if it was
adjustable, and indeed the clutch assembly appears to be the same as the
T595 unit, but it's a pain, aggravated on this bike by the fact that the
bite point is set quite a long way out in the clutch travel. Fortunately,
that aspect of clutch operation /is/ adjustable. Later, I nearly dropped
the bike doing a low speed U-turn from rest, as I looked for the bite
point in vain while the bike toppled gracefully to the right... found it
just in time!
The motor starts first time, and if you discount the noise like a bag of
spanners in a cement mixer at idle, it sounds great. This demonstrator has
the Triumph performance can for the ST fitted, but it's far less raucous
than it's T595 equivalent when blipping the throttle. The glorious bark on
the T595 (low performance can) can become wearing after a while, but it's
an incomparable sound when you're pressing on in the twisties - and the
Sprint ST can't quite compete in that area. It can compete with the VFR
though! My 92 VFR with the Remus can demonstrated how good a V4 can sound,
a rich, spine-tingling howl that just begged me to wind it open. The
VFR800 I tried last year couldn't compete - it sounded flat and sanitised,
even allowing for the standard can, and completely uninspiring. Later on,
I discovered that when you give it proper stick, the ST sounds almost as
good as the incomparable 595, which provides a soundtrack that can give
best only to Carl Fogarty's Ducati at full chat...
Pulling away, and getting out of the car park, once the aforementioned
clutch action has been overcome, reveals plenty of low down grunt,
providing precise control at trickle-speeds. The steering lock is
infinitely better than the supertankeresque steering on the T5, while the
wide bars give plenty of leverage for low-speed manoeuvres that would
become three-point turns on the 595. On my bike, I'd need to be holding at
least 4,500-5,000 rpm and slipping the clutch if I didn't want the bike to
pop, bang and surge, but the ST seems to pull cleanly from 2,000 rpm, and
is geared slightly lower then big daddy T595. Considering that 5,000 rpm
is about 30mph in first on the 595, you can see that filtering and
trickling through traffic is less than entertaining. I gather that the
955i has better mannered fuelling than the 595, but that even so it can't
compete with the ST.
Once out on the main road, I find that everything is cool in traffic -
quite literally. The 595 cooks your legs when it gets a bit hot, and it
gets moderately hot every time it has to crawl, and especially every time
it has to sit stationary at traffic lights. The riding position means that
unlike on the 595 I can look over my shoulders relatively comfortably,
while the mirrors contain barely any elbow (about all I can see on the 595
unless I contort myself to peer round them). This all contributes to far
more relaxed riding in traffic, and the additional height that is a
side-effect of the more upright stance is useful here as well. Suspension
is softer than the brick-hard T5 stuff, but much firmer and better
controlled than the boingy bits on my VFR's ever were - and much the
better for it. At least my teeth aren't in danger of falling out every
time I come to a small imperfection in the road surface, which is the
effect that the T5 generates.
Eventually, after much 30mph riding, and the odd opportunity to explore
the incredibly elastic roll-on midrange as I exploit the gaps that open in
traffic every now and then (my VFR750s were both good at this stuff, the
ST is if anything better), I find myself approaching a smallish offset
shellgripped roundabout, beyond which is a twisty National Limit B road.
I've only been on this bike ten minutes, and yet without a second thought
I'm weighting first one peg then the other, and using the incredible
leverage that the wider bars coupled with the riding position give me, to
wang through the obstacle at a rate of knots, heeling first one way then
the other. By contrast, on the T5 I always find that I'm much more locked
in position, and have to steer almost entirely by countersteering using
only my forearms; the high pegs in particular make weight transfers
difficult, and the net result is that the extra, and excellent, high-speed
flickability of the bike is compromised by the ergonomics. The front
biased riding position on the T5 certainly makes the steering feel more
precise, but for me, pushing the front tyre hard into corners isn't on my
agenda; I ride everything (T5 no exception) slow(er) into corners on the
road, and accelerate out, so a front end that would allow a racer to trail
the front brake harder and deeper into a corner while howling the front
tyre has no benefit for me whatsoever. Even the better tyres on the T5
serve only to go square and wear out more quickly on real roads, and of
course bearing in mind that I've dragged pegs in the wet on the track on
my old VFR shod with BT57's, the likelihood of me noticing the extra grip
that the 56's offer on the road is pretty infinitesimal. If I could afford
to explore the limits of the 595 on a track (where it isn't insured of
course) I /might/ then notice, but frankly I doubt it.
Exiting the roundabout (that's traffic circle in 'merkin, by the way), I'm
away, winding it on hard and exploring the performance envelope. At speed,
I discover that while the screen may seem low, appearances are deceptive.
I wouldn't be surprised if my head took a pounding at insane speeds, but I
was unbuffeted at a merely mildly bonkers velocity. The brakes are the
same as those on the T5, and are just as sharp - but you need to allow for
more rear-to-front weight transfer than on the T5, and I have a feeling
that the rear brake on the ST might actually have a purpose, what with a
less front-biased weight distribution meaning that the back wheel spends
more time on the ground. At least, in their plagiarism of many of the best
features of the VFR, they didn't steal those damned stupid linked brakes!
Experimentally nailing the sucker open is revealing as well... the bike is
better in the mid-range than the T5, pulling from 2K right round to the
redline, with a rush at the top, but it is just missing the really extreme
top-end rush of the T5. Thing is, apart from a lap of the old Nurburgring,
a couple of mad moments on country roads and a few hundred miles on the
German Autobahn and other continental motorways, the number of times that
I've reached the hot part of the power band in top can be counted on the
fingers of one foot. The number of times I use the top 15 horses on my T5?
Very few indeed, and in winter - not at all if I want to keep the bubble
up and the rubber down! Nope, I reckon on the real road, the ST might even
prove to be the faster real-world bike, for most conditions, because it
has more power in the places that you need it when picking off traffic and
suchlike.
Turning round and heading back, I'm forced to marvel at how sorted the ST
is. The road is clearer this way, as traffic heads out of town rather than
in, and I can briefly get into full hoon mode in a couple of places. OK,
the addictive triple howl is both more muted and more civilised than it is
on the T5, the bike isn't as responsive to mere thought at speed, and
there are slightly less in the way of horses to tame, but in the real
world, complete with colour-coordinated hard luggage and a top-rack, it's
like a VFR only better where it matters. Plus it cruises naturally at 80
instead of 120, which makes the odds of my licence staying in one piece
are enhanced; how I haven't been busted on the T5 I really don't know...
And it's a Triumph of course. So, mine's a black one, please...
Ken Haylock - T595 + CD200 Rat - MAG #93160
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* kwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx *
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