Was looking at various bikes again and one thing I always consider is how much it weighs in on the scales. Weight can be good in some ways as it keeps the bike steady and less prone to weaving or scrabbling over the tarmac, however that said good suspension and tyres should take care of that. I say should but not always.

I tend to start drifting off when people start talking about their bloated two wheel mega truck with its supersized sized engine that is invariably capable of producing far more power than the rider can safely handle, drinks fuel like no tomorrow and weighs ridiculous amounts of kg's.

Out of interest I googled the specs on my old Benelli 250 phantom 1974, now granted it is a two stroke and air cooled, but....it had twin shocks, steel tank and frame and swinging arm, steel chromed v rim spoked wheels, drum brakes (Twin on the front), cast iron barrels and it was a twin cylinder, chrome steel headlamp, and chrome mudguards, steel twin exhausts and weighed in at what I would consider a portly 136kg.

Now consider the modern day Repsol Honda 250, okay so its a 4 stroke and its faired and it is liquid cooled so thats going to add weight but it has alloy wheels, fi, mono shock, alloy exhaust, made of modern materials and it is only a single cylinder.  How come it weighs 161 kg and 4 more with abs??

This tends to go throughout the ranges of modern day bikes. The like of the supersports show that manufacturers can make large capacity powerful supersports that weigh not much really with power to weight ratios that could only be dreamed about 40 years ago, but somehow when it comes to the mainstream models and so called adventure bikes the weight seems to climb up out of all proportions, are they just too lazy to shed the weight or is it commonly accepted that bikes weigh far more than they should?

While I love adventure bikes I just cannot figure how in the real world they could function as a true adventure bike, most are nigh on impossible to pick up single handed, the fact if you had a crash and it fell on you it would likely break your leg or similar, even a 250 dirt bike can be hard to haul off you when you bin it let alone 220 kg plus of oversized junk landing on you... They have become the biking equivelent of the Chelsea tractor, the two wheeled version of the landrover discovery and freelander.

I think that is why bikes like the Triumph street triple have been so successful, for a start they have a smaller more economical engine of 675cc with 3 cylinders so it revs clean, gives plenty of torque and bhp (currently 105bhp). That coupled with more sensible weight 182 kg starts to make sense and logic. The Yamaha MT09 is a move in the right direction as well, an 850cc which weighs 188 kg and I am sure there is room for shaving off more weight although die cast aluminium frame makes me think of dinky and corgi toys that shattered as soon as you stepped on them.

All pretty random really, but makes you wonder why bikes have seemly gone the way of cars, ever bigger and heavier, more tech but more weight and so on an so forth. 

Its about time bikes returned back to the day when they didn't weigh so much, given the fact that nowadays we can reliably get 200 bhp + per litre why exactly are we dicking around with bikes that have 1400cc engines and above?