EricV said:
Cruise control serves a different purpose than a throttle lock. Both have value, in different situations...
No argument there, EricV...
I was literally raised in the car business, and spent a ton of time with auto cruise controls. Over the years I fiddled, futzed, and generally got frustrated trying to adapt auto cruise controls to motorcycles along the way in the '70's, '80's, '90's, to current. Honestly I was never fully satisfied with the results of any of those attempts, nor even with my installations of the Audiovox units. Never tried a Rostra, but essentially I always thought these universal car units, no matter how much effort went into trying to make them near a "factory" looking install or work like one, still appeared an afterthought... And opened the door for reliability issues on long trips - the last thing I ever thought I needed.
That's why I've always, at least so far, preferred a good, well made "throttle lock" of some kind. They're simple, reliable, easy to service in the field, and if they do have some sort of issue you can simply remove or disable 'em. I've used Vista-Cruises (and liked 'em), Kaokos, Throttlemeisters, as well as others. All were pretty good for the most part, and certainly a welcome relief on any really long trek. The one pictured above (and I'll be you know who makes it, EricV...
) is the best I've found so far.
As for Yamaha making cruise control on the Super Ténéré... It'd be a walk in the park for 'em. Everything is there, especially with the "throttle-by-wire". Speed sensors, RPM sensors, clutch switch, brake light switches, a stepper motor for the throttle butterflies on a concentric linkage with the throttle cables, the ECU always knows what gear the transmission is in, etc., etc., etc. If BMW, Harley, etc. can run cruise on their EFI bikes, so can Yamaha. Hell, Yamaha even had cruise on the ol' Royal Stars, and the Ventures before that. Granted, those were carbed bikes, but with the EFI bikes it would actually be much easier for the factory to do... Just some software programming, some wire, and some control switches. In fact, I have always been mystified that Yamaha didn't offer cruise on the FJR1300. Just doesn't make any sense when some of that bike's primary competition - i.e. several BMW models - have it. Yet Yamaha doesn't even offer cruise control as an option. Even if they wanted to be able to advertise at a lower price they could leave it off out-of-the-box and make it a profit-generating option.
Oh, well... I guess I'll just have to wait until Yamaha wakes up. ::017::
Meanwhile, I'll just have to stick to the throttle locks...
Dallara
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