Clay,
The observation about the Kawasaki guys who never rode is very astute. You are on the right track.
Management who can't put themselves in the shoes of the customer will kill the company. That is what happened at GM. As soon as a manager rose to a certain level, they were given cars, their car was taken care of, and they lost sight of what it meant to be a customer. They didn't understand the sales experience, the repair experience, and the poor reliability experience. They were isolated from the customer experience, and soon lost touch.
You maintain 2 motorcycles (yours and your son's). I maintain three (my daughters' two punkins and my GG). The KTMs are much quicker to maintain; i can do the maintenance on my kids' two KTMs in the time it takes me to do my GG. It's two week nights per week to make sure we're ready for the next weekend. I'd love to do it in one evening.
The difference is what "works" and what "works great."
As an example, my footpeg brackets broke on my 2002 EC 300 a couple of years ago. In all my years of motorcycling, I have never seen footpeg brackets break. I posted on this site, and learned that "they all do that."
Huh?
If I were responsible at the factory for that aspect of the motorcycle, I sure as heck would fix that as soon as I learned that there was an issue. Redesign it. GG volumes aren't so large that they can't afford to implement a fix. Luckily, I have a welder, and was able to fix it myself when i returned home. But, the failed footpeg ruined my weekend.
The point behind all of this is that the guys on this forum ride, and they are experienced in the "experience." As you said, you'll never get universal agreement on black vs. silver rims, spring rates, etc., but you will have agreement on fundamental design and performance issues. For instance, consider the need to not use every tool in the box to pull the subframe. This has been discussed here for as long as i've been here (at least 5 years). How it was never really addressed is confusing to me. It's the difference between "works" and "works great."
The devil is really in the details. The incremental cost to move from "works" to "works great" is generally small, but the dividend it pays is huge.
Thanks for you involvement and ear. You can't find a more experienced knowledge base than what you'll find here. I learn stuff here everyday.
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