Attention Dragstar XVS 125 Owners/Fans/Potential Buyers

[lallasro]

This thread is bloody brilliant. C'mon the Dragstar 125's!!!!!

yeah, and I finish my popcorn

[dt502001]

LMAO I've been watching this unfold.

DUDE any bike can have all the problems you have mentioned,rotten bolts lower, clamps, exhaust studs,striped spark plug holes,exhaust pipes holed ect... all bikes have ali heads prone to striped spark threads.

To go all off on 1 bike is insane,stupid and down right wrong. Unless you want to talk about spefic things like comstar wheels that honda put on so many bikes that will fail no matter what you do and kill someone eventualy.

To say things like physics will teach you sonner or later is again stupid,learing from the school of hard knocks is the wrong aproch to learing safe riding skills.The bike should fit the rider to help build confidence and skills.

I would never put someone on a bike they can't touch down with both feet untill they have all the other skils to ride with confidence,if they have the riding skills to ride a bike with 1 foot then thats thier choice.But to start your best off with a bike you can.

I'm 5'11" and no way I could stop my bandit 12 from ending up on the ground once past the point of no return,may be a guy built like the ROCK could but few riders could may be 1% of al riders in the world could.

My wr I cant touch down with 1 foot without shifting to 1 side but it's light so it dosen't matter,if I had to ride my 12 like that it would be very unsafe,if I seen a rider doing that at every light I would be thinking ..what a idiot why not just put a lowering kit on it ....so that blows your theroy of respect out the window

Goin on about how a crusier dosen't handel because of steering angles is utter BS,a sport bike angel of say 26 degrees is more prone to twitch on pavement cracks,speed wobles ect. a crusier angle of say 29 is much more forgiving thoe slower to react to dive into a cornner once mastered a cruiser on the street in the REAL world at real speeds can be driven as fast on most roads.My buddie rides a midnight star and eats young ricky road racers in the twisties,O ya his pipes are scrached to hell and to my knowlage he's never crashed it.

Now if you expect a fork diameter of that of the 125 to handle the weight of a 200 lb rider to act the same when you put a 125 lb rider on your nuts I dont care if its a nsr 125 or a xvs125 both bikes will be affected.

Your entied thread is based on the fact that you got taken and bought someones else POS and most likely over paid for it and just want to wine about it.Mabey next time you decide to buy a bike you will have it looked at by someone who actualy knows what they are looking at.If you cant see these things yourself befor purchasing.We live in a disposable world and every bike if not looked after will end up in the same place ....the scrap yard.

All the problems you mentioned are NOT the result of poor desine but the result of neglect and poor maintence.

Every line of bike will have a lemon in the mix,1 bike my go 100k and never give problems the next one in the serial sequence may be in the shop every month.

EDIT and to almost tink I was going to agree with you about a track day and why it makes you a better rider, you look at it as weee look at me se how fast ican don the same thing over and over again!

The way i look at at a track day for a nebie is ....here now you have a safe place to explore your boundries without the distractions of all the things on the road..and lets look at how your doing things... then solve the wrong things

[RatBob]

any bike can have all the problems you have mentioned,rotten bolts lower, clamps, exhaust studs,striped spark plug holes,exhaust pipes holed ect... all bikes have ali heads prone to striped spark threads.

This is true, and for those things I wasn't really singling out this bike in particular. I think I was a little irritated at how this bike gets hyped so much when really it's nothing special.

To go all off on 1 bike is insane,stupid and down right wrong. Unless you want to talk about spefic things like comstar wheels that honda put on so many bikes that will fail no matter what you do and kill someone eventualy.

I disagree, I think everyone has a right to an opinion about a specific motorcycle they've owned, and there's no such thing as a "wrong" opinion. I respect what you're trying to say, and yeah every bike has it's faults. The comstar wheels are really an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about here. I've never been a fan of cast iron headers, they're a cheap alternative to save some money on extra mandrel bends at the cost of something that is heavier and will cause an issue in the future. Heat + cast iron = rapid rust. There are a bunch of other little things on this bike that I think could've been designed a lot better, but ultimately that is just my opinion.

To say things like physics will teach you sonner or later is again stupid,learing from the school of hard knocks is the wrong aproch to learing safe riding skills.The bike should fit the rider to help build confidence and skills.

I agree. Once you've built that confidence and those skills however, there really is no such thing as a bike that is "too big". I'm 5'11 and I've ridden a couple of bikes that were difficult for me to mount, and there was no way I could get both feet on the ground, even on my toes. That doesn't mean the bike is too big for me, it means that I'm not going to be able to ride it like a cruiser. Motorcycle manufacturers don't make bikes for tall people or short people in particular, they make bikes that will appeal to the largest cross section of whatever market they're aiming at, be it dual sport or cruiser or whatever. They know that dual sports need to be tall to get the kind of stability and suspension travel they need, not because "hey we better make bikes for the 6'8" tall guys out there"! Could you imagine how badly a bike would sell if they only people who could ride it were above 6'?

I would never put someone on a bike they can't touch down with both feet untill they have all the other skils to ride with confidence,if they have the riding skills to ride a bike with 1 foot then thats thier choice.But to start your best off with a bike you can.

I agree, and this is exactly what I'm saying. It rarely comes naturally, most people want to be able to put both feet firmly on the ground to start off with. It takes a bit of practice to get used to taller and heavier bikes. If you're tall enough that it's not a problem, then that's great - but it doesn't mean the bike was made specifically for you or that those skills don't exist. That's some dark ages thinking right there. And this isn't aimed at you, I know that's not what you're saying.

I'm 5'11" and no way I could stop my bandit 12 from ending up on the ground once past the point of no return,may be a guy built like the ROCK could but few riders could may be 1% of al riders in the world could.

Again I agree. There is an angle on every bike where you won't have the physical strength to stop it falling, and you're actually more likely to just injure yourself attempting. That's not really what I'm saying though. When your physical effort is divided between one leg propping up, one leg counterbalancing, and your upper body and arms holding the bars, that's a lot of physical effort nicely evenly distributed and it won't "feel" like you're using a lot of effort to keep it upright. Get it in a sweet spot of balance and you don't even need to use your arms, you can balance it nicely from just the seat and your legs, because it's teetering at that middle pivot point where it takes very little energy to move it either way.

My wr I cant touch down with 1 foot without shifting to 1 side but it's light so it dosen't matter,if I had to ride my 12 like that it would be very unsafe,if I seen a rider doing that at every light I would be thinking ..what a idiot why not just put a lowering kit on it ....so that blows your theroy of respect out the window

Not so. Many shorter riders can handle quite large, tall, heavy bikes without issue because it's become second nature to them. You probably wouldn't even notice them stopped at the lights because they make it look so natural. I have respect for these people because what they're doing is not easy! It's only unsafe if you're not able to do it safely, in which case I agree. A lot of riders do opt for the lowering kits and that's fine, but you still have to admit that it's impressive to see a tiny girl on a bigger bike like that, even if it has been lowered. It's still a lot for someone her size to deal with.

Goin on about how a crusier dosen't handel because of steering angles is utter BS,a sport bike angel of say 26 degrees is more prone to twitch on pavement cracks,speed wobles ect. a crusier angle of say 29 is much more forgiving thoe slower to react to dive into a cornner once mastered a cruiser on the street in the REAL world at real speeds can be driven as fast on most roads.My buddie rides a midnight star and eats young ricky road racers in the twisties,O ya his pipes are scrached to hell and to my knowlage he's never crashed it.

The idea that the rake angle of a sports bike is impractical is a complete myth and totally exaggerated. The rake of a cruiser is not somehow more ideal than that of a sports or a standard. Cruisers are raked beyond any other class of bike except choppers, yet they make up only a small segment of motorcycles in general - if everyone was wobbling around on these death traps, then nobody would use them. Speed wobble and tank slappers can happen on bikes with small rake, but that is what the steering damper is there for, and you tend to find this sort of speed wobble and twitch happening on bikes owned my amateur mechanics who think they're clever removing the steering damper. My NSR125R did not have a steering damper and I never had any of the issues you speak of, even though it technically has a "sports" rake. I agree that once you get used to it you can really chuck a cruiser around, but with nowhere near the same confident feel that I've gotten out of bikes with better geometry. The fact that your buddy is able to out-ride young riders in the twisties simply means he's a better rider and more familiar with his bike. It doesn't mean that cruisers are more capable than sports bikes, that's absurd.

Now if you expect a fork diameter of that of the 125 to handle the weight of a 200 lb rider to act the same when you put a 125 lb rider on your nuts I dont care if its a nsr 125 or a xvs125 both bikes will be affected.

Not sure what you're implying regarding fork diameter. All unbraced forks experience natural torsional flex, and even braced ones to an extent, and I'll accept that a heavier rider might have a mild impact on the handling response time, but we're probably talking milliseconds. Most of the forces on the fork depend on your speed, not on the rider's weight. A 125's forks would require a weight substantially heavier than a human to cause any kind of adverse effect, so I'm not really sure what your point is.

Your entied thread is based on the fact that you got taken and bought someones else POS and most likely over paid for it and just want to wine about it.Mabey next time you decide to buy a bike you will have it looked at by someone who actualy knows what they are looking at.If you cant see these things yourself befor purchasing.We live in a disposable world and every bike if not looked after will end up in the same place ....the scrap yard.

This is just an assumption about my level of ability to apply mechanical knowledge. Suffice to say that most the dragstars I looked at within my budget were the same price and all of them had the same issues. Pitting chrome on the rims, rusted headers, and dodgy electrics - nothing to do with the previous owners, even bikes that had only a few thousand miles on the clock and just a couple of previous owners had the same issues. For your information, I didn't overpay or get a bargain either, it was pretty spot on at £1200 for having reasonable chrome and paint and being in working, MOT'd and taxed condition. I didn't really have any issues with it until the beginning of this year.

All the problems you mentioned are NOT the result of poor desine but the result of neglect and poor maintence.

The choice of cast iron headers, low quality chrome, the bizarre exhaust system, the ridiculously narrow front wheel, and the piss poor electrics is all down to design. They could quite easily have chosen different options but I suspect that 2001-2004 was a difficult period for Yamaha where a lot of compromises had to be made to increase profits. The 2013 WR125X by contrast is far superior in every aspect of it's design. But then the last couple years have been good to Yamaha, so maybe that's why.

So, some of the problems maybe, but definitely not all of the problems.

"Every line of bike will have a lemon in the mix,1 bike my go 100k and never give problems the next one in the serial sequence may be in the shop every month.

The way i look at at a track day for a nebie is ....here now you have a safe place to explore your boundries without the distractions of all the things on the road..and lets look at how your doing things... then solve the wrong things"

Agreed on both counts.

[Noise]

Not so. Many shorter riders can handle quite large, tall, heavy bikes without issue because it's become second nature to them. You probably wouldn't even notice them stopped at the lights because they make it look so natural. I have respect for these people because what they're doing is not easy! It's only unsafe if you're not able to do it safely, in which case I agree. A lot of riders do opt for the lowering kits and that's fine, but you still have to admit that it's impressive to see a tiny girl on a bigger bike like that, even if it has been lowered. It's still a lot for someone her size to deal with.

So would you say that my mum being 5" 1' could ride a FJ1200? or even a triumph Tiger?

The choice of cast iron headers, low quality chrome, the bizarre exhaust system, the ridiculously narrow front wheel, and the piss poor electrics is all down to design. They could quite easily have chosen different options but I suspect that 2001-2004 was a difficult period for Yamaha where a lot of compromises had to be made to increase profits.

I had a 2002 125 Draggy and i had the common issue with the exhaust studs coming out but every bike i have owned and worked on me and my stepdad always remove the exhaust studs and replace with stainless bolts with copper slip, ive never had a problem with the XVS125 electrics and found them to be spot on and again with the 650. If they fitted any thing else bar cast iron heads then the retail price would be out of the target buyers range thus they would sell next to none which is bad business. again my 125 had 9000 on the clock and had no pitting nor any mechanical problems, yes it did have rust but it was on the cage that held up the rear mud gaurd but seeing that its diggered in shit 24/7 its to be expected and i only paid £1100 for it. All down to if its covered at night and treated right.

This is just an assumption about my level of ability to apply mechanical knowledge.

Still waiting for you to tell us about your mechanical history and past bikes etc etc so once you done that we will no longer make assumptions. or do you need a few more days to come up with a cool story?

There is an angle on every bike where you won't have the physical strength to stop it falling,

So it really is un safe for a small girl to hold up a big bike. small girls tend to have small arm and calf muscles thus no way they will keep one up. Fuck hell will freeze over and i'd ice scate with the devil the day my mother rides the new Tiger (or even the old one)

[RatBob]

So would you say that my mum being 5" 1' could ride a FJ1200? or even a triumph Tiger?

I know what you're getting at, but the serious answer is yes and no. Yes, theoretically, no not straight away, obviously. It's definitely not as easy for short people to get into these kinds of bikes and there are some unique problems that require unique solutions, but as extraordinary as it seems it is possible with practice and confidence.

If they fitted any thing else bar cast iron heads then the retail price would be out of the target buyers range thus they would sell next to none which is bad business.

I'd have to disagree with you there. Cast iron headers are really the exception rather than the rule. There's no real reason to use them, they're just slightly cheaper to make than doing the one extra mandrel bend. The final cost to the consumer is probably around £200-300 per unit, but the overall setting up cost and production to the manufacturer is going to be into the millions. Each mandrel bend costs money, especially when you're using double skin exhaust, where you need to do some very clever manufacturing trickery to get the one pipe inside the other, which usually involves one pipe being welded within another pipe that has been cut open and then welded back together and all the welds being smoothed out. Long process! Cut one bend out of that and you're making a saving, but you're also screwing your customer in the ass with nice rusty headers somewhere down the line, and all their studs are fucked as a result. Lovely!

Still waiting for you to tell us about your mechanical history and past bikes etc etc so once you done that we will no longer make assumptions. or do you need a few more days to come up with a cool story?

Mechanical history, okay. Basically my background through college was in metalwork, so really everything to do with fabrication, welding, milling, cad design, engineering, vehicle maintenance, that sort of thing. I started off biking by getting into dirt bikes, my dad being a former AA motorcycle instructor kind of encouraged me to get a road bike too. Soon as I got my first bike I had a project on my hands, so I started to take it to bits, rebuild it, and eventually got it through it's MOT and back on the road. Since then I've owned various bikes, a Ducati 600SS, CBR600RR, NSR125R (which was the bike that convinced me to do my test), and briefly owned an XS650 flat tracker which was so uncomfortable that I didn't keep it long even though it was bad ass.

List of mods I've done to the little draggie, it's got a K&N filter mounted directly to the carb neck via a short length of rubber hose, 100 main jet, 18 tooth front sprocket, 56 tooth rear sprocket, Suzuki Intruder 125 front rim running with custom spacers with a 110/80-18 tyre, steel braided brake hose, rearsets, clipons, custom springer seat, dropped the yokes down the fork tubes by an inch or so, auto chain oiler, iridium plugs, new coils (multimeter suggested it might be time and I'm glad I did), longer rear shocks, swingarm mounted custom fabbed steel mudguard (which I want to replace with fibreglass), sidemount plate and tail light. That's about it so far. I want to do a monoshock conversion and remove the rear 1/3rd of the frame section, as there's a hell of a lot of steel frame there just to accomodate the twin shocks, and any weight loss is a bonus. Would also allow me to build a new tail for it so I can mount the plate and rear lights in one unit, and possibly also have the battery and electrics back there too. Would be nice to put a smaller tank on it and move the speedo up to the yoke. We'll see - I've got a spare exhaust sat around so I'm toying with the idea of butchering the two systems together to make a 2-into-1, perhaps with a megaphone silencer just for shits and giggles. Would be a significant weight saving to hack that second silencer off, and would probably run a little better with a more free flowing system.

Dropping the yokes down the fork tubes was one of the best things I did for the handling of this bike, as it brought the rake in just enough to improve the handling without really sacrificing ride height. The power mods have been great, although I had to dick around with way too many rusted-stuck bolts on the carb for my liking. She'll go all the way to 80 now without complaint and holds 70 up hills which is more than enough. Fuel economy has bizarrely improved, I think possibly because I'm not needing to have the throttle wide open everywhere, but also probably because I took a lot of weight off. It's the twisty roads where it really shines, and is great fun to chuck around, which is really one of the only reasons why I've kept it. That and it's been pretty easy to customise. Having the wider front tyre has made a huge difference to it's stability, it's nowhere near as twitchy or floppy at low speed and cornering is much more confidence inspiring, it literally tracks round corners like it's on rails, it feels fantastic. Most of the chrome has ended up painted now so it's nowhere near as impractical as it was. So yeah, that's pretty much my background. All my bikes are kept under cover or garaged, serviced regularly, upgraded in whatever way I can. Anywhere I can simplify the maintenance or beef up the durability I've done so.

[Noise]

I know what you're getting at, but the serious answer is yes and no. Yes, theoretically, no not straight away, obviously. It's definitely not as easy for short people to get into these kinds of bikes and there are some unique problems that require unique solutions, but as extraordinary as it seems it is possible with practice and confidence.

Sorry to piss on your fire but my step dad had a Fj1200 and when my mum stuck her leg over it (well tried to) her head was close to the deck and she could only get her claf on the seat let alone get her foot on the other side onto the peg. And when she rode pillion on the Tiger she had to use a step stall to get on it. No way could she ride either of them even with stupid amounts of training etc etc. So i for one a 100% confidant that small folk should not even consider riding a big bike un less they have a death wish

[RatBob]

Sorry to piss on your fire but my step dad had a Fj1200 and when my mum stuck her leg over it (well tried to) her head was close to the deck and she could only get her claf on the seat let alone get her foot on the other side onto the peg. And when she rode pillion on the Tiger she had to use a step stall to get on it. No way could she ride either of them even with stupid amounts of training etc etc. So i for one a 100% confidant that small folk should not even consider riding a big bike un less they have a death wish

Well, fair enough, that's your opinion and you know your mother better than I do. However I've seen first hand short girls, and short guys for that matter, ride bikes that were technically "too tall" for them, and I've changed a few opinions in the past along the lines of "I can't ride that because I'm not three miles tall". Just remember little 5'2" Dani Pedrosa sat up on the 439lbs, 32.3 inches (taller than an FJ1200) cbr1000rr next time you see the motoGP on tv, and maybe give it a watch to see how he handles it. Watch him stop and start without issues in the pits, at the starting grid, and at the end of the race.

There's an extra 140lbs in the FJ, which apart from making the FJ an absolute lump of a bike, isn't going to make a great deal of difference while it's upright, and actually you're going to have to fuck up pretty hard to get it to an angle where the bastard is going over no matter what you do about it. Here's a link that explains the basics.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/triple_aqa/using_physics_make_things_work/moments/revision/4/

I know you're unlikely to experience what Pedrosa experiences, but at least be willing to accept that it's not some insurmountable obstacle or that "tall bikes are for tall people", because that idea is complete bollocks.

[Ttaskmaster]

Jeeeeeesus, it took three pages just to get you to tell us a tiny little bit about yourself?

I notice also that this amazing short rider technique now features the term 'theoretical'...

So, next question: How does a short rider who can only get one foot down on a tall, heavy bike SAFELY reverse it back up a slight incline?
What's the (theoretical) technique for that?
Switch off, dismount and lean it onto themselves while they try to stagger rearward, or just pull on the bars as hard as they can and hop backwards, hoping for the best?
How do they manage with one foot what just about every tall and muscley bloke seems to have trouble with even though they can get both feet down with room to stand and straddle?

>This is true, and for those things I wasn't really singling out this bike in particular.
So where is your rant about the problems and design flaws about other bikes (Yamaha or otherwise)?
Why is this thread entitled 'ATTENTION DRAGSTAR 125 OWNERS/FANS/POTENTIAL BUYERS' in a big, sensationalist warning style straight out of The Sun newspaper?

What makes a bike special is surely in the eyes of the rider and nothing to do with anything beyond that?
From the outset, My 125 Drag was the only 125 that fitted me, both in form and style. Nothing else measured up.
It carried me all the way to Scotland and Cornwall, got me to London and back every Friday in all weathers and traffics, enabled me to get a new job, showed me parts of the UK I'd never have visited otherwise, taught me the value of proper care and maintenance, saw me safely through thousands of road hazzards and took another 24,000 miles on top of its existing 30,000 odd, all without once having a single issue.
It never died on me, never failed to start, never spit me off unless *I* did something fundamentally stupid where the result would be the same on any other bike, nothing fell off, nothing rusted out and it was in near-pristine condition when I sadly moved on.
More than that, it forced me to learn all manner of riding techniques and characteristics, from forward planning and observation, to countersteering, line variances, condistional braking and beyond.

Aside from simply being a Yamaha bike discussed on a Yamaha forum - That is pretty special, that is the reason people here love them so much and that is what the hype is about. Every other 125 Cruiser rider seemingly can't wait to get something bigger, yet people still buy Drag 125s out of choice.

Once you've built that confidence and those skills however, there really is no such thing as a bike that is "too big".

Utter tosh.
There will always be basic physical limitations for some riders. I physically cannot ride some smaller bikes because my knee stops the bars from moving properly. There's no safe way around that. Modding would destroy the bike geometry and altering my riding position would further restrict my control over it. I have a photo somewhere (if I can find it) of my 7' 2" friend trying to sit on the new Fireblade at the local dealership launch. It's purely comical, but even further highlights these sort of physical limitations.

I'm sure you'd like to challenge that with the whole 'learning to manage garnering respect' idea or something, but sitting on a bike all twisted up and hunkered over as if you were on a kiddie's tricycle does NOT earn you respect in the real world!

There is an angle on every bike where you won't have the physical strength to stop it falling, and you're actually more likely to just injure yourself attempting. That's not really what I'm saying though.

Well yes, it *is* what you're saying - "part of the learning process", "if short people you know can't support your FJ1200, then they're either legally a midget/dwarf or you're not teaching them properly", "Bike weight doesn't matter a great deal even if you are short", "It's not something everyone is cut out to do as some just lack the confidence", "riding a tall bike does not require you to be tall, it requires you to know the techniques", "There is no reason a short person cannot handle a tall motorcycle. It's all down to technique. Balance with one foot, counterbalance with the other, shift off the seat slightly. Once you've mastered it, no bike is too tall"

Incidentally, a legal Dwarf is generally defined as being below 4' 10", where the shortest example of those I know who cannot properly reach around the FJ is 5' 4".

So in order for your 5' girl to get her one foot down on a tall bike, she has to lean the bike over beyond that 'angle of no return'. On my FJ1200 that angle is passed before the extended sidestand touches down. So unless this 5' girl is supposed to drop the sidestand every time she stops, the technique (theoretical or otherwise) does NOT let her ride the bike safely... or at all, for that matter.
Furthermore, even if she did drop the stand every time, she'd have to lean the bike the other way, past said no-drop angle in order to get her right foot down, flip up the stand and engage first gear before she could move off and once again you have a tiny 8st girl stuck under 42st of bike... and now probably with irate car drivers honking their horn at her!

So between miracle midgets and a neglect-proof bike, you freaking crayz, bru!!

The idea that the rake angle of a Sports bike is impractical is a complete myth and totally exaggerated.

He wasn't saying that...
The concept to which my esteemed fellow Noisemaker was referring is that the greater response in a Sports is also prone to more pronounced reaction from road feedback. ie when a responsive Sports goes over a rut in the road the steering jerks rather notably, where a Cruiser by comparrison would have little more than a tangible twitch.
Comparing my FJ to the 650, I wholeheartedly agree with Noisy. OK, the FJ may not really be a proper Sports by today's standards, but it's responsive enough that I notice how big the difference is.

The Cruiser's rake angle does provide some specific handling characteristics that most uninformed Sporties seem to balk at, though, but they are just characteristics and not inherrently unsafe. Cruisers are designed to be comparatively slower than Sports, but that just means not blazing into corners like you're racing, which is what we've been saying all along.
There's a lovely sharp hairpin on the road just into Boscastle that I insist on riding every time I'm down that way. The inside lane is on the uphill. My 125 and 650 Drags both handled that bend with greater aplomb than half the Sports and Tourer bikes riding with me, plus one Land Rover and a Mercedes C class. I remained a good 3' inside teh white line where other vehicles ran very wide (Landie bloke, I'm looking at you). It's all in how fast you enter and the lines you take.
There are limits on the handling, but every other bike has its limits too. Whack open the throttle on an R1 as if it were a 600 Hoolie bike and see where that gets you!
The differences between them are just factors that make us choose one over the other. I'm more into comfort than most Sports allow, so I opt for comfortable bikes.

I agree that once you get used to it you can really chuck a cruiser around, but >with nowhere near the same confident feel that I've gotten out of bikes with better geometry.

Depends how you define 'chucking around'... I've decked my 650 pegs out at about 10mph. It was that solid and that planted, whereas every other bike I've tried would (and did) fall over at such a low speed lean as there wasn't enough downward force to push against... actually, scratch that - The Police Deauville did scrape its extended panniers in a similar move, but it wasn't leant as far.
No-one is saying one bike style is better than another, but they're also making sure this doesn't become a topic about one being so utterly fucking shit that no-one should buy it and a massive ranty warning against anyone who might even consider it, particularly when the rant is opinionated, skewed and simply one bad experience against the overwhelming number of fantastic ones.

Suffice to say that most the dragstars I looked at within my budget were the same price and all of them had the same issues.

There's a reason they'll be that price, then...
Expect to pay around £2500 for a decent nick 125 Drag and peace of mind. For a bike in the condition you stated in your thread, I'd expect no more than a grand, but drop that to perhaps £800 or less depending on how heavily modded it is and the quality of those mods. There's also a reason why unmodded 125s hold better value!!

nothing to do with the previous owners, even bikes that had only a few thousand miles on the clock and just a couple of previous owners had the same issues.

As merely the second owner of a pristine 650 Dragstar with fairly low mileage that I whacked on a hefty addition to and UTTERLY abused during the time I rode it, I can confirm with considerable authority that it IS down to the previous owner(s) and how well/badly they treat their bike. Mine was so far gone, people swore blind that it was a Rat project... towards the end, it kinda was. It held up damn well and refused to lie down to die, but it had a LOT to endure and even I was surprised how rarely anything failed. By comparison, I was the one looking after two other 650 Dragstars at the same time. One recently sold for £3500 and the other is so clean and shiny only the odometer proves that it ever sees a road!

But in a very short space of time and with a fair amount of abuse, my own went from pristine to horrendous.

In short, your bike was ABUSED!!!
I know it may take time to come to terms with this, so if you'd like I can get you a counsellor who can talk you through this awful, awful experience...

[Ttaskmaster]

There's an extra 140lbs in the FJ, which apart from making the FJ an absolute lump of a bike, isn't going to make a great deal of difference while it's upright, and actually you're going to have to fuck up pretty hard to get it to an angle where the bastard is going over no matter what you do about it.

As mentioned - If you have to lean it beyond the angle of alignment just to get your foot down or swap feet (such as when dropping the sidestand), then it is going over.

[Noise]

Right with regards to pedrosa (i watch moto GPs all the time) how do you know his bike is not lowered? Can you actually see his bike leaning over further than all the others on the grid? Can you actually see him slid his ass etc over to One side? I've just watched 5 starts of this years races and I surly can't. And in the pits there is one pos two guys who catch the bike when he pulls up to park the bike while he/they jump on the secondary bike it's not like F1 where they can change tyres in a flash.

Tell you what next time you see your wonder woman shake her hand as I'm sure she is will be competing with pedrosa next season as it sounds like she can really handle a bike much better than you or I.

[bippo]

Honda use the RC213V in MotoGP. The CBR1000RR is just derived from that bike. As a result the bike Pedrosa rides comes in at around 160kg, lighter than the CBR.

As Noise said, his bike may well be lowered, God only knows. I believe they hand make the frames for GP, so his bike could have different geometry to Marquez's.

Let us not forget that GP riders train incredibly hard, so will be physically fitter and stronger than your 'average' bike rider.

Absolutely not taking anything away from Pedrosa, those folks amaze me beyond belief.

Oh and as a woman rider, I found myself restricted by the height and weight of bikes available to me. An awful lot of sitting on showroom bikes, or in some cases, failing to even get that far...!

[RatBob]

Right with regards to pedrosa (i watch moto GPs all the time) how do you know his bike is not lowered?

Mainly because I know that lowering the bike would not be advantageous to the performance. The centre of gravity and handling really depends on the ride height for it to work effectively.

Incidentally, the reason why pit crew come and catch the bike is because motoGP bikes don't have a side or centre stand, and need to be kept on a paddock stand as a result. The pit crew allow him to quickly hop off one bike and onto another because obviously without him propping the bike, there is nothing to keep it upright.

Here he is propping it:

http://www.mundomoto.esp.br/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Dani-Pedrosa1.jpg

I have to point out that it's not actually a CBR, that was my mistake. It's fairly similar but Honda have a different name for it, Honda RC213V. The weight of this bike is "over 160kg" so it's probably about 380lbs.

[Noise]

Right foot flat to the deck, on tip toes he could get both feet down suggesting to me that is lower than the rest, if only by a bit. I highly doubt that lowering a bike effects it's speed etc to get him round corners they would have raised the foot pegs to clear the ground.

But unless you our I are GP mechanics then we will never know.

So now you have two woman (my Mum and bippo) against your One wonder woman.

[RatBob]

Doesn't look lowered to me, and the pegs appear to be in the usual position. Also, facts aren't a democracy, you can't vote on possibility by counting the number of anecdotes. Anecdotes =/= fact. The core of the point, which we're progressively straying from, is that tall bikes are not specifically for tall people. They're not designed to make life easier for short riders either. They just are what they are, and anyone who cares to learn it will learn it. If you truly want to achieve something, listening to a bunch of turkeys gobble on about how flying is impossible isn't the way to go.

[Ttaskmaster]

So now you have two woman (my Mum and bippo) against your One wonder woman.

Five - Those two, my Missus... and two short-arsed work colleagues of mine that I borrowed to test this technique out the other day!!

[RatBob]

I suppose next we'll be told that a 522lbs dragstar 650 with it's stupidly far forward controls is best for a short rider because you can flat foot it. Somehow I don't think I'd get any volunteers to try that one out, people tend to like having their legs in one piece.

[Ttaskmaster]

650 Dragstar?

Ooh, my 5' 4" Mrs rides one of them!!

The 650 is actually pretty cramped for a low/mid-range Cruiser. My feet are almost below my knees on mine and most riders over 5' can reach them just fine. The bars pivot rearward for the reduced arm reach and all is well.

But you've ridden one yourself a couple of times, so *of course* you knew that already!!

Also - 510lbs, apparently... or 567 if you have a Classic.

[Noise]

Im 5" 6' and the 650 draggy is fine for me and can reach the pegs fine and so can my mum so............i wouldn't say its best for a short rider as you can't really say there is a perfect bike for every one but its a damn sight safer for a short person to ride than a FJ.

Five - Those two, my Missus... and two short-arsed work colleagues of mine that I borrowed to test this technique out the other day!!

Cool we are getting some quallity evidance that its all bullshit.

[RatBob]

Yep, more bullshit as predicted from Ttask. If you can keep a long, heavy, unwieldy, ungainly cruiser upright and handle it, then weight or ergonomics is clearly not the issue. Since we've also established that height is not an issue either, what the fuck is exactly the issue?

Oh wait, I know what the issue is, Ttask just wants to be a contrarian so that he can continue to argue with everything I say!

Since my 5'0 girlfriend had trouble keeping my 125 drag upright or reaching the pegs (back when it was still a bobber and using the stock pegs), there's some evidence against you. Funnily enough, after trying it, she actually would rather have a tall but lightweight bike where she can reach the pegs and handlebars safely than have a long reach to the pegs and bars on a cruiser. And yes, I am aware you can fit swept back bars, that opens a whole can of worms about people's different opinion on whether or not doing that is safe. Sat on my bob, if I rested my legs out over the pegs highway style, my heel would be only just past the peg, and I'm 5'11. The 650 drag is even longer, and my legs were basically straight out on the pegs, and I've ridden both a bobbed and stock version, so I'm quite happy to declare that one myth busted and bullshit called.

The reality is, a lower bike is actually HARDER to keep upright because there is less leverage, and the greater fork rake creates something called "flop" at low speeds and a standstill, where it has a tendency to want to, sometimes rather violently, flop over onto the steering lock one way or another. A taller bike has much greater leverage, so think like a socket wrench, you use a longer handle to create more torque at the socket, in other words, greater length requires less force, therefore it takes less force/effort to keep a tall heavy bike upright than it does to keep a short heavy bike upright.

Of course, that's physics, which is a hard science and has been proven fact for several hundred years now. But I suppose that will be the next thing that you'll chose to disagree with, because you're Ttask and that's what you do.

Flat earth theories anyone?

[steph g]

I've only got wee short 30" legs and I can reach the pegs with my knees bent.

Even with my back flush to my solo back rest I can also reach the bar with my elbow bent.
Only the 125 but still!