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Hannes Haller's Aprilia Caponord |
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First 17,000KM What can I say!?! My love for this bike is becoming stronger with every passing week. Sure, it took a while (2000km) to get used to it and there are a few small problems but now we work in almost perfect harmony. Never before have I felt so at ease on a 100hp motorcycle, whether on the autovia @ 200km/h or leaving my mark on those unknown sideroads in Morocco. It's certainly one of a kind. This it has proven over and over again to me. Let me tell you about one of my recent and not unusual Sundays and then you tell me how many other motorcycles would be up to this. I took off around 11:00 and finally decided to explore an area closer to home. I soon found myself taking very small dirt roads and after a while came to the end of a road. An unfinished home in the distance seemed like a magnet pulling us closer. Off through the grass and shrubs the Caponord went handling this kind of work very well. Two hours later I crossed a small river about 10 meters wide and 30 centimeters deep. Several 4x4 had stopped before the river, afraid they would get stuck going across. Through the clear water I saw that the river bed was all gravel and quite soft but at least no large rocks. Took a nice run at it in first and ended up being quite soaked when I got to the other end. We kept on going and crossed the local city garbage dump from which I actually had a great view of the area. Ten minutes later we were back on the E340 coast road heading towards Marbella. Two Porsche911s approached from the rear and pretty soon we had a nice little cat and mouse game going. So tell me, which other bike can traverse rivers and fifteen minutes later race Porsches down a curvy paved road at 215km/h or make sport bikes look silly on twisty mountain roads? Don't come looking to me for an answer to this one! After one week of riding the twisties here in Spain, my footpegs were already showing wear. The kind of lean angles you can get with this bike through curves will amaze you. And despite its weight, it makes for one hell of a wheelie machine. So now to the bad news. What has gone wrong in 17,000km? Here we do have a problem. The problem is that there isn't any real bad news. The bike has never left me stranded, nothing has broken and I still haven't found any physical weak spots on the bike itself. I suppose we can only wait and see what she'll look like at 50k. Click on the problems page to find out about some of the small things that make owning an Aprilia less than a perfect experience. I have of course had all of the regular maintenance work done by Aprilia dealers so as to be in compliance with the warranty requirements. I am not sure whether I will continue this or start servicing this bike myself. Let's quickly look at wear items. Currently working on the second rear tire. It is a knobby Michelin T63 desert tire, size 130/80-17. Why? It's the only tire we could find in Agadir to fit a 17inch rim. The rear Metzeler Tourance tire lasted 13,500km and the current Michelin T63 with 3500km on it has about 2000km of life left. Still working on the first Metzeler Tourance front tire. I really expect this one to last 25k. Same goes for the chain. I am surprised at how well it has stood up to my sometimes very aggressive riding. I also expect to get close to 25k out of it. Brake pads I changed for the first time at 15k. This was really too late as I found that one of the pads was already down to steel. I surely was lucky to not have ruined the disc. So as you can see, I could never again sell this bike. It has given so much and asked for so little. |