Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/125814
Ride the bike He rides t: OJ .., ~ w Z W ...J U > U One of the necessary characteristics in a police machine is good low speed handling. Tester gets up on, the floorboards. Guzzi has electric siren. Notice also drive shaft. Triple A modifies speedo'for Hondas. has nailed four that way. They also vibrate like a tuning wand at freeway speeds and crack off. To avoid this problem some departments have installed the omni-directional dome types. There are also two types of sirens _ common on Calfomia-based cop bikes: the electric and the mechanical. The later is driven off the rear wheel and is actuated by a cable that pulls the drive shaft against the rear tire. Quarter-mile times are adversely affected when engaging the mechanical sirens. The electric sirens draws power from the bike's electric system to turn a little motor in the housing to turn the blades. What is like to ride the machines? As you'd expect, the weight makes them comfortable in a "big-tourer" sort of way on the freeway. You never forget that you are herding around several many hundred pounds. The H-D and Cuzzi have the wide 5.60 inch tires which add weigh t to the steering. Braking is adversely affected by the significant weight additions on all the machines. of course. The Honda 750 is the best with its standard disc. However, the Cuzzi for 1973 features a four leading shoe front brake which will put it in the same league. The Harley 74 weighs in at 790 pounds, and takes a lot of brake to ·haul it down. The old units really weren't sufficient, but the new set-up wi'th discs on both ends should prove a major . improvemen t. The other machines are heavy, too. The Honda is the lightest 620 pounds - and the Cuzzi comes in at 665 pounds. This is wi~ all that police equipment tacked on, remember. The Sportster is around 690 pounds, depending on how much you carry in the way of equipment. The weigh t difference helps to explain the Honda's superiority in performance. The Honda was also the only machine that had a five-speed gear box. Still, performance was somewhat less than dazzling. If they don't quite perform on the street like a Norton production road racer, then what are the machines good for? Well, they are excellent for creeping through traffic at 0.8 MPH. They can plonk around in alleys where the four-wheel cruisers get tangled up. They are also often used in radar duty, where they do the chasing. They are comparatively economical to run all day on the freeway and can get around with more agility than a car in rush hour traffic. They really aren't the hot-set up for high sp$'ed pursuit, however. If someone get.. belligerent, a motorcycle is pretty defenseless. The idea of chasing somebody'"down a moun tain road on a police bike just isn't very appealing once you've ridden one. One officer related a story about chasing a car that finally decided to stop fast. The officer grabbed his brakes and swerved. He was able to bring his Sportster to a halt a block and a half past the car. The brakes are better now, but you get the point. Cetting seven to nine hundred pounds of man and machine down a tight mountain road with the floorboards dragging won't catch any bank robbers in a high-speed getaway. But they were comfortable. The big old-time solo touring saddles and soft contour seats do the job. The floofboards are comfortable even if they do cut down the banking angles and are