jackcorbett

Just got back from a 10 day trip to the U.S. This was for a farm director's meeting. I think I mentioned the fact that I farmed for 23 years and I lived on that farm. I notice that my tenant who now lives in the house I once lived in has a new Woods mower to replace the Grasshopper mower I used for years. These things have basically a variable speed transmission that I described in an earlier post and trust me, they are better than sliced bread. I also asked my tenant's father who also happens to be my best friend and to say that my pal is mechanically inclined is like saying Rembrandt was a good painter. Jack told me that the same types of automatic transmissions that are currently in motorbikes like the Airblade, Nouvo, Fino and Mio have been used in snowmobiles for years and there have been very few problems. I used to laugh at Jack for having three used snowmobiles since I felt the deep snows he was looking forward to seeing were well behind us. I also bought a Consumer Reports in the states and that this entire issue is devoted to cars and that there seems to be a number of cars now coming out with variable speed automatic transmissions.

This is a proven technology and one which Yamaha adopted years ago, which it has been perfecting in its motorbikes. To remain competitive Honda had to make a move so it came out with the Honda Click and more recently its Air Blade. I look at such machines as cutting edge in today's Asian market and that machines such as the Honda Wave are cheaper alternatives but which are nevertheless, for at least the type of driving one typically encounters here in Pattaya, more for the guy who really can't quite afford the very best. For this kind of driving I view getting even a much bigger bike, even if someone gave me a nice BMW 800 which I think is a terrific machine for countries like the U.S. a step down when it comes to everyday practicality here in Pattaya, driving ease and comfort (under again these conditions), enjoyment of driving. As to manual transmission machines such as the Honda Wave, the Phantom, and a few others I view them....and again I want to quality what I have to say, I find these to be absolute dinosaurs compared to the current crop of automatic machines when it comes to a beautifully conceived, well styled, eminently practical, easy to drive, cheap to operate, machinery for the kinds of conditions I am confronted with on an everyday basis. But would I have my Nouvo back on the farm? No way. I had at different times two 185 cc. Honda XL on off road manual transmission dirt bikes and they were terrific for what I really needed. Then there was that Honda thumper with a 500 c.c. engine which was a giganticized version of those two 185's. Sure, it was powerful and could go up and down the interstate passing cars but it just wasn't as practical for what I really needed. I once had a 650 cc. BMW twin---an R-65, but later I got the 1985 BMW 1000 K-100 RS that would do 140 miles an hour back then and zero to 100 miles an hour in 7 seconds (BMW and practically everyone else has much faster machines now), but I'll tell you what, in the real world, for everyday driving on the road in a variety of conditions that little 650 would beat out that gorgeous 1000 c.c. speed demon most of the time, even when it came to touring across the country for 500 miles a day with a girl sitting behind me. Bigger is not always better. And these little automatics are really all the machine most of us really need here while driving in Thailand cities.

I don't know about that. My Thai girlfriend has a four year accounting degree, has a few years of experience in this area and has an Accountant's kind of mind.

I think it's hard to go wrong with either the Nouvo or the Air Blade. Just depends on personal preference. They handle differently but both handle quite well. I believe the new automatic motorbikes have become very highly evolved machines for what they are designed to do and that is to provide reliable, cheap, very practical transportation in environments similar to Pattaya's.

Took my Nouvo in yesterday. For one thing the brake has been squealing for some time now when I first take it out due to moisture. This goes away after a minute but I decided to see if the shop could do anything about it. Although it's a Yamaha we have a close by Honda shop that gives us good service. Got waited on immediately. Here they will often work on a bike right on the showroom floor so they get right on it. The mechanic took the wheel off and checked the front brake, then he changed the oil. Lastly he put air in the tires. We were out of there in 15 to 20 minutes and all of this cost me just 140 baht.

They had a lot of Air Blades for sale there and one Honda Phantum. Also lots of Honda Clicks, Waves and so on. I sat on the Phantom which is a rather cool bike. It had saddle bags. But I thought about my old 185 Honda XL's which were dual purpose dirt bikes weighing around 240 pounds. The Phantom has to weight a huge amount more than those XL's and gains just 15 cc's. So it looks like "much to do about nothing" with them. I visualized trading in my Nouvo for one versus trading in my Nouvo for an Air Blade. Well...the Nouvo and the Air Blade sit a lot better than the Phantom where you sit low in the seat. You really have the feeling of being right on top of things with the two automatics and having the best riding position possible with respect to having great visibility and control of the machine. And then there's storage. THe Houvo has a great book right in front of the driver whereas the Air Blade doesn't. But both have nice storage areas under their seats. Furthermore a hook can easily be installed on the Air Blade giving it the same practical additional carrying capacity as the Nouvo. And then there's the automatic transmissions of the two bikes. They are very smooth and so easy to manage. THere is simply no comparison between driving such a bike where you simply twist and go and anything out there one has to shift. Granted...it would make no difference to me on interstates or country roads back in the U.S. but in the city traffic one encounters in Pattaya, Automatic is simply a god send. These bikes are also quite light on their feet and smallish when it comes to parking that i think anything larger driving under these conditions poses a disadvantage.

As to the comment about the reliability of the automatics, I asked my THai girlfriend last night about that. She burst out laughing when I suggested that some people think the Honda Waves are more reliable than a Nouvo. She mentioned all the gears, chain and other stuff on the Waves as being problem prone.

I've driven my Nouvo a few thousand kilometers now with not the hint of a problem. Furthermore I know several other guys who drive automatics and they've never heard of these automatics having problems. You don't read about them either.

I am reminded of some of my experiences living on a farm where I farmed for 23 years. For one thing I got a Grasshopper riding mower with a 52 inch front deck. It had these two wands you pulled back and forth to steer with. The machine literally turned on a dime and it was so easy to drive. It had a variable speed transmission. You just pulled back on both wands simulaneously to get to top speed. To go into reverse you pulled back on both wands. When I first bought the machine I felt it seemed to be built too lightly to hold up for many years. I used it to mow a yard that was over 3 acres and I had a couple hundred trees to steer around. Before I had a much heavier built Yahoo riding mower of much more tradional design. The Yahoo caused nothing but problems. The Grasshopper was hardly ever in the shop. Maybe once and that's all, and the transmission held up perfectly.

I had three manual tranmission pickup trucks before finally getting a Dodge Dakoka 4 by 4 with automatic. I'd often haul wagon loads of grain out of the field with these trucks. And I did burn out a few of those manual clutches. BUt i never had a problem with the automatic. I also throught the years bought a few tractors. First John Deere I bought as a 4650 with a great cab, with air, a seat more comfortable than you'd find in any car at any price and it had a fully automatic 15 speed transmission. You had this lever and you could very rapidly slide it all the way up the entire gear range. My neighbor who had been born with a gift for all things mechanical told me that I could expect problems with that automatic transmission since previous tractors from Case and International had problems with anything that was not fully manual. Well....he was wrong. Totally. That was a great tractor and it never had any problems ever, especially not with the automatic transmission.

So I sure would not worry about the automatic tranmission from a Nouvo, or a Mio, Fino, or an Air Blade or Click.

am in the market to buy a motorbike in the next month or so.

I quite like the look of the Fino but havent yet test riden one. Has anyone got one that would like to comment.

the bike is going to be used for general trips to 7-11 and local markets, bank etc and not long trips- have a car for that.

cheers

Yep. I got one for my Thai girlfriend but she uses my Yamaha Nouvo and I use her Fino. The Yamaha Nouvo is theoretically the best bike in the Yamaha lineup in my opinion. It has large 16 inch diameter wheels and tires for greater stability. It weighs around 30 to 35 pounds more than the Fino, and there are some nice touches all around. For instance, the Nouvo has an automatic choke. It has substantial under the seat storage. The Fino does not. So when it comes to getting a lot of groceries, my girlfriend will use my Nouvo over her Fino. The Nouvo also has two shocks on the rear, the Fino like the Mio and the Honda Click has a single shock absorber so for the big loads the Nouvo is better. And for some reason although the Fino, Mio and Nouvo all share the same 115 cc. engine, my nouvo accelerates faster than her Fino.

Okay.....all that's on paper and on paper I would not personally drive the Fino. But I live in Pattaya where one is not going to go very fast anyway due to traffic and the insane driving of many if not most Thais. Truth is, the way I drive and under these driving conditions I could easily be happy with the Fino. It is by far the best looking motorbike around. Ying and I can sit in a bar together and look out on the Fino as I admire its peerless Italian inspired lines. And for some reason, this particular Fino has better brakes than my Nouvo. It's very quiet and it's extremely agile and smooth. It's a very nice machine and it only costs 40,000 baht. On the other hand Nouvos are now going for around 48,000 baht so it's a steal as well. Going at speeds past 35 miles an hour or so, the Nouvo is going to seem more stable but 35 miles an hour is fast enough to get you somewhere here in Pattaya in a hurry. I'd say it is up to you. The two bikes feel substantually different from each other when you drive them but both drive very well within their respective limitations and both represent as far as I'm concerned the state of the art in motorbike evolutionary development and design. For driving in city environments such as Pattaya both bikes are very superior to machines like the Phantom and 150 cc. Honda discussed at length here let alone bigger bikes like 400's, Honda Steeds or anything similar. Do note that I mentioned driving under conditions similar to what Pattaya offers. If I lived upcountry and found I was driving under different conditions I might well think otherwise.

Try riding one of each, then makeup your own mind.

For what it is worth, concerning fairly extensive modification of a Nouvo to get more power, consider what happened when I modified the 1993 Mazda Miata I used to have in the States. Stock, it had a 1600 c.c. engine producing 116 horsepower. First thing I did was to install a free flowing after market muffler and then a header. Supposedly good for 5 horsepower gain for the muffler and 5 to 8 more because of the header. And then I had installed a Sebring Supercharger. I was probably running around 175 horsepower or so and that car ran as if it had a V-8 in it. Whereas before it would do about 119 miles an hour now it would do 139 miles and hour. And that was all it would do because of the rev limited that would cut in while in 5th gear once a certain rpm level had been reached. You'd hit 139 and boom, suddenly the engine was getting no more fuel. Also had better shocks put on the bar, bigger wheels and tires. When the first engine went I'm pretty sure it was because the car was only designed to do around 6000 rpms for sustained periods of time. Now I was suddenly opening the car up (and pretty often). Whereas before the most I could get out of the car was around 6000 rpms at 119 mph now I could suddenly get 7200 and more (except for the rev limiter that cut in around then). But I'd be doing 7000 rpms trying to get to 7200 and 139 mph, and then I'd be doing 7100 and finally 7200. And I'd have it at these kinds of speeds for up to a couple of minutes. The engine was not designed for that and it shot craps. The second engine went because the fuel air mixture was too lean. It hadn't before but when the supercharger was installed problems would occur. And I"m not sure what caused the 3rd engine to blow. I then took off the supercharger but left the header and free flowing exhaust on. The car was once again very reliable for a few years and then the transmission shot craps at 150,000 miles when I traded the car off for a 2002 Special addition Miata with a six speed transmission that had 1800 ccs and 142 horsepower stock.

So my thinking is the same sorts of things could happen if one fools around with the stock configuration of the Nouvo too much. Just for starters the larger 250 c.c. and 400 c.c. Yamaha scooter style bikes shipped to the U.S. market utilize 2 drive belts whereas the Nouvo uses just one By increasing the power too much one might be overstressing the drive belt. And that's just for starters.

But I'd love it if Yamaha would introduce a 135 cc. or 150 c.c. Nouvo. I'd be assured then that everything was engineered to work together in a very reliable package.

Glad you went out and got a new Nouvo. You will no doubt be very happy with it.

Eljeque--Each to his own and I'm really not mechanically inclined. I don't know where I got the information but fully knowing the Yamaha Spark had 20 cc's on the Nouvo, and thinking it had appreciably more horsepower than the Nouvo I read somewhere on the Internet that the Nouvo had just a tad more power. Here's another one. As far as I know, both the Mio and the Fino have the same 115 cc. engines as the Nouvo. However, my girlfriend's Fino does not have the power of my Nouvo and the Nouvo is 30 pounds heavier. I sense the power difference and she states unequivocally that her bike is not as powerful as mine. So I have no idea what Yamaha is doing to its engines. As to the Spark, I never drove one and because of the chain drive it might be getting more power to the ground than the Nouvo. So I really don't know what would happen if you put a Spark Cylinder in a Nouvo.

What I meant was the if I were Yamaha I'd seriously look at dropping the Spark's engine into the Nouvo frame. And I'd add liquid cooling just as Yamaha had already done to the Spark. Then if the Spark is not really producing more power than the Nouvo, I'd be changing a few things inside to make sure that it outproduces it by 20 percent or so. Then I'd fatten those big diameter tires of the Nouvo a bit. The result would be an even more stable, better handling bike (and more safe) than the Nouvo already is. Yamaha could then justifiably claim "We've got a more stable bike than the Air Blade, we trounce it in acceleration and in top speed, we have the more comfortable seat--it's simply bigger and better."

Although the Air Blade is a more capable bike than the Yamaha Mio or Fino, Yamaha could leave the Mio and Fino in place competing against the Air Blade for the smaller drivers. These machines might not be as stable but they are about 15,000 baht cheaper. I've really enjoyed driving my gf's Fino and it's a terrific looker.

In the States Yamaha has a 250 cc. motoribike and a 400 called the Majesty which has gotten rave reviews. I take it that the much larger Nouvo type bikes one sees here are the Majesty models. The Majesty will do 95 to 100 mph but I think it's overkill for places like Pattaya. For here they seem overly large and heavy. The little automatics are really what most of us need. I would think that a 135 cc. engine wouldn't be enough of an increase in engine size to cause Yamaha to increase the frame size any or not by much but it would be just enough for it to be able to completely outclass Honda while cementing its reputation as being a step or two ahead of Honda when it comes to automatic motorbikes.

I'd rate the Air Blade and the Nouvo as a toss up depending on what you like best. I own the Nouvo and have had it for 15 months or so. But I rented an Air Blade in Krabi and my girlfriend and I took it out into the country. Roads were good and smooth with little traffic and I loved the Air Blade, so much so that I was actually considering trading for one when I returned to Pattaya.

The Air Blade employs 14 inch diameter wheels whereas the Nouvo uses 16 inch diameter wheels. The Nouvo has substantially better ground clearance (useful for driving over the curb going to my favorite bar for example whereas the Air Blade grounds out here). But, the Air Blade has slightly fatter tires than the Nouvo's.. eg a 90 versus an width 80 dimension for the Air Blade. The Air Blade has a more compact frame and it's lower than the Nouvo so being a more closely coupled bike with fatter tires it's going to have a more glued down to the road feeling. However, with its taller tires the Nouvo is going to want to drive in a straight line due to the gyroscopic effect of the larger diameter tires. On the Air Blade you are more likelly to play boy racer going from lane to lane or just making little maneuvers from left to right just for the hel_l of it.

Now I don't know about top end of the two bikes because I've never gone more than around 90 to 95 kilometers per hour on my Nouvo but I have raced them side by side to compare acceleration.

My pal David had bought an Air Blade so we decided to race to about 30 miles an hour. I started out on his Air Blade with David driving my Nouvo. I won by a couple of bike lengths or so. I then told David we should race again since he outweighed me by a bunch. David said he didn't think it would make any difference. I insisted so this time I drove my Nouvo with David driving his Air Blade. Well, this time the Nouvo won by two or three bike lengths because I weigh around 76 kilos and David weighs around 110 to 115 kilos.

David ended up leaving his Air Blade with me for four weeks when he returned to the U.S. so I'd drive it fairly often to keep his battery up to snuff, but only for short little jaunts where the traffic was not bad as he didn't have insurance on it and I was not sure how mine would cover me on his bike. Anyway, you hate to abuse a good friend's machinery. But I also figured out he was not looking so I decided to once again race his bike. So I insisted to my English neighbor Gus that he should try David's bike out for a spin. Gus is approximately my weight. So we raced side by side until we hit about 30 miles an hour or so on the backstreets here in Naklua. Until we hit around 30 we were dead even, and I do mean dead even. Neither of us gained as much as one foot over the other. And then I started pulling away on the Nouvo. But I backed off because I did not want to risk an accident.

The Nouvo is a pretty smooth machine but the Air Blade is even smoother. It does not seem to be as fast as the Nouvo on acceleration while the Nouvo seems to be more gritty. But here you have real world results and there really is no difference whatsoever....at least to 30 miles an hour. I also want to mention that I recently bought my girl friend a nice red Yamaha Fino which like the Yamaha Mio and the Air Blade also employs 14 inch wheels and tires. But the tires are narrower than the Air Blades. It's not going to be as capable as either the Nouvo or the Air Blade when it comes to stability but it's a lot of fun to drive and in many ways its handling is similar to that of the Air Blade. I think it's the 14 inch versus the 16 inch wheels that make a big difference here.

Air Blade versus the Nouvo.....it's a real tossup. A guy could be very happy with either one. But I think Yamaha is about to trump Honda and soon so if I wanted the absolute best I'd be inclined to wait awhile. My reasons appear in another subject area in this forum.

I'd get a new one. I paid 53,000 baht for my Nouvo around 16 months ago. They are now selling for 48.000 baht--dirt cheap when you compare this to small motorcyles in the U.S.

Recently Honda came out with the Air Blade. Until Honda came out with the Honda Click just before it came out with the Air Blade, Yamaha about owned the automatic bike market here in Pattaya. It had the Nouvo and the Mio, a smaller bike than the Nouvo although it also had a 115 cc. engine (113). So when Honda came out with the Air Blade it employed a liquid cooled 110 c.c. engine and claimed it had more horsepower than any other 125 class cc. automatic on the market. Meanwhile it introduced several other nice features not used in the Nouvo which would seem to make the Air Blade to be newer and better.

So here's my theory. Yamaha has just knocked off about 5000 baht off the price of its flagship small bike, the Nouvo while Honda has kept its Air Blade at premium price level. Yamaha is a very innovative bike company, especially so in this bike market. Recently it redesigned its Mio which it is now selling for 40,000 baht while calling it the Fino. This is a gorgeous small bike with curvy Italian lines---a real retro piece of work. But it's still selling the Mio after giving it some small cosmetic changes which make it pretty spiffy looking. But.....Yamaha also has the Spark, a semi automatic model that is somewhat comparable to the Honda Wave. But it's 135 cc.s to the Honda Wave's 125 so it's likely to be faster. And get this, the Spark is liquid cooled. So if one were to claim liquid cooling is better than air cooling, why does Yamaha provide Nouvo's poorer sibling with a 135 cc. liquid cooled engine while keeping a 115 c.c. engine in the Nouvo which is air cooled?

Something's underfoot with the 5000 baht discounting of the Yamaha Nouvo which is already a hel_l of a machine the way it is. Now if I were Yamaha I'd drop the 135 cc. liqouid cooled engine from the Spark into the Yamaha Nouvo's frame. I'd tweak the horsepower a little upwards taking advantage of the leeway liquid cooling can give me here. Then I'd take my 16 inch tires that are larger in diameter to the Honda Air Blade's 14 inch tires and I'd make them slightly wider to at least match the Air Blade's. Yamaha would now have the most stable bike in its class on the road with no argument on that score and it could no doubt claim a 20 to 25 % advantage of power over Honda's Air Blade. If Yamaha would do this right it would blow Honda right back into the swamplands of outer Mongolia--at least for the time being..