New Member

Hi, just signed up here. My wife, Kristin, and I both ride a pair of 2002 Silverwings. We've both been riding for over 35 years and have had too many bikes to list here. I guess the last bikes we had was when we bought a pair of 2002 ST1100's in Sept 2001 and rode those up until 2009 when I sold mine with 117,000 miles on it (I used do some Iron Butt Assn riding as well), and my wife's had 56,000 miles on it. We "retired" from riding until recently when we bought our new-to-us Silverwings. Enjoying getting back in the saddle again.

Welcome to the best Silver Wing group bar none.

I too am a long time rider and have found my old man wheels in the Swing.

  SteveO

Welcome to the site and congrats on your new Swings.

  

Thanks for the welcome everyone!  Nice to find an active group that rides these bikes.

The story of why we chose our Silverwings is sort of ironic.  When we bought our ST's there was a brand new FSC600 on the dealer showroom floor - the first year they were built and the last year for the ST1100 before the transition was made to the ST1300.  I was signing all the paperwork on my new bike and my wife was sitting on that Silverwing and checking it out.  Couldn't get her off it and she kept saying, "I'd like one of these....."

12 years later we were at the same dealership and a husband/wife had just traded in their 2002 Candy Wineberry Silverwings on a pair of 2013 ST1300's.  They only had 18,000 miles on the clocks and were showroom condition.  The salesman told us to take them for a ride and see what we thought.  So we took them on a 5 mile jaunt thru town, out on the freeway to the next interchange and back thru town to the dealership.  We were hooked and bought them on the spot.

             We have members who ride there scooters in Iron Butt activities. Not me, I'm more of a candy***.  

Well, I have no desire to do that anymore.  Riding has to be fun and not a painful endurance event.  I earned the coveted (in some circles) license plate frame several times over, and then lost all my toughness.  LOL!

Hi from another new guy just a little bit south of you. I just got a leftover new 2012 this week. It is very nice overall and I am definitely going to enjoy it. I hope you guys have just as much fun with yours.

Thanks LDB! We're definitely enjoying our "new" scoots. I'm tending to compare the FSC600 to bikes we've had in the past. It falls short in some areas, but excels in others. At one point we had a '92 GL1500 Interstate and rode that two-up all over the US several times. We'll never go back to that - the Goldwing is a tank on wheels and we spent too many hours in hot weather getting cooked behind that barndoor windscreen. We even had air deflectors on the side of the fairing and those didn't even help much.

We rode two-up on a '99 ST1100ABS for a couple years and the ST was never designed for two-up riding IMO. At least not for any distance.

And that's the one area the Silverwings are pretty good at - comfort. More room to move around and change positions than any bike I've had. I feel the Swing could use a bit more power, but it's not bad. We're going to do the Lake Superior Circle Tour on them in 3 weeks and then I'll have some more opinions on how well they handle long distance touring.

Welcome to SWings and the forum as well. I think you will find the 600 is a good bet for touring. I have taken mine on three over 1000 mile trips as of now. For a single rider it works great but for two-up the Goldwing is the ticket!!!

We did a couple 500 miles so far and pretty happy. We didn't push them real hard as the bikes had the original belts yet. I put new Kevlar belts in both bikes and saved the old ones for spares. Took the variators apart and checked the rollers, but virtually no wear on those. So didn't put new rollers in. Put new rear tires on both bikes and we'll carry one for a spare that we can swap out on the road. Never had good luck with plug kits.

The Lake Superior Circle Tour is about 1500 miles for us, and we've ridden it probably 7 or 8 times in the past. It is an absolutely beautiful ride. I've done it twice in the past in two days. We plan on a 5 day ride this time around, and stop and enjoy some of the sites.

Sounds good!

Please remember that all the belts have Kevlar in; the non-OEM sellers use 'Kevlar' as a selling-point but by and large experience shows that the ones supplied by Honda last significantly longer and are £ for £/$ for $ better value than any others.

Everyone please note: I said 'by and large' so don't expect a stream of 'I use non-OEM ones and they are better' posts. :-)

We got Malossi belts from a local scooter shop that carries a lot of stuff. The Honda dealer didn't stock the belts for the bikes. I ran both bikes on the centerstand with the covers off. The old belts slapped and vibrated quite a bit. The new ones run nice and smooth and don't vibrate like a guitar string.

Couldn't really tell much difference in driveability after installing the new belts. And didn't really see much wrong with the old ones. But I think the old ones had to be stretched a bit to vibrate like they were doing. The Swing's engine is an even-fire parallel twin with both pistons coming to TDC at the same time - one on the exhaust stroke, the other on the compression stroke. If it was a thump-thump V-twin like a Harley where the engine fires both cylinders in 45° of crank rotation, then huffs and puffs and sucks and blows for two complete revolutions before it does it again, I could see where the belt would tend to vibrate real bad.

So even though the old belts looked perfect yet, I don't trust them for anything more than spares.