Is The 2024 Honda Goldwing Still A Capable Touring Bike? | Colorado Road Trip Wrap Up

Is The 2024 Honda Goldwing Still A Capable Touring Bike? | Colorado Road Trip Wrap Up

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I just got back from my 2,183 mile road trip with Robert White. These are my thoughts on how the bike performed and all of the accessories that I've added to the bike. This video is sponsored by Cruiseman's Garage Honda Goldwing Maintenance Video Series.

Hey everybody, welcome back to Cruiseman's Garage. I have got a bunch of notes here and I wanted to go over them with you and just kind of give you an end of road trip summary. Now even though we're back from our road trip to Colorado, I haven't put out all the videos yet. We still have, I think, day 4, 5, and 6. I'm not sure how many there are going to be, but we're going to have other videos coming out so make sure you watch for that. If you haven't seen the videos that we've done so far, I'll put a link up above and I'll also put links to all those videos in the description below.

And also, don't forget to check out the videos on Robert White's YouTube channel, which is Robert White Moto. Okay, now what I'm going to do is I'm going to kind of start at the front of the motorcycle and I'm going to go work my way back and I'm going to tell you how I think all of these various accessories that I've added, and the bike in general, how it performed on this road trip in regards to performance, comfort, just in general. I think you might find this helpful. I'm going to start first with the windshield. I have an F4 Customs. This is a 20-inch wide with the recurve.

And I've had an F4 Customs on several of my motorcycles. I've been very pleased with them. They're very, very easy to keep clean. They've pretty much eliminated micro-scratches on these windshields because they have a proprietary coating and that allows you to even use glass cleaners and paper towels if you're in a pinch. I don't do that.

I always carry microfiber cloths with me. But you could if you had to, using it will not damage the windshield. I know Robert also has an F4 Customs on his bike. I'll let him speak to how he feels like it performed for him. But I've been very pleased with it and it did a fine job.

The other wind-related product that I have is from Honda and it's these upper air deflectors right here. Once again, I still prefer these over the aftermarket. There are some good ones out there in the aftermarket. I like the looks of these better and I love the mechanism of how they turn in and out.

In colder weather, you can flip them out like this so they block some of that air hitting your hands and even on your shoulders. We did get into some temperatures on this road trip down to 34 degrees. We didn't know it was going to be that cold, but the last day or next to last day riding back through the mountains of the Million Dollar Highway, it got extremely cold. So those really helped a lot. Also when it got warm, and we I think got up into the 90s a couple of times, but when it gets over 80, 85 degrees, you can turn these in and they direct the air back to you. Now I'll put links in the description of the video to all of these products I'm going to talk about if you're interested.

Some of these are available from Wingstuff, some are available directly from these companies. So we'll just put that out there for you. Okay, let me talk about two products at the same time. I want to talk about the Honda Goldwing seat. This is always a subject of controversy, this seat comfort. A lot of people complain that the Honda Goldwing seat is uncomfortable, I have complained in the past.

I had my previous seat, both of them, I had a 2018 seat and I eventually replaced it with a 2021 seat because I put the larger trunk on the 2018 model. I had both of those seats rebuilt by Wingsoft and I think Wingsoft does a great job of adding some additional padding. I know some of you out there have bought aftermarket seats such as Ultimate, Russell, Daylong, so there's all kinds of aftermarket seats out there to help with comfort. I know Robert on this trip was using an Airhawk pad in addition to his Ultimate seat. But I will tell you that I noticed when I rode this motorcycle back from Tennessee that I didn't notice the discomfort, and it was a stock seat. I didn't notice the same discomfort that I had had on the previous 2018 seats, even the ones that had been rebuilt.

I felt like I just didn't have any, I rode 7, 8, 9 hours a day on this trip. I think we rode 10, 11 hours some days, and yeah, you get a little discomfort, but nothing like what used to be I had to get off every hour, hour and a half, and that's why I want to combine my review of the seat with the highway pegs. I have the highway pegs from Goldstrike, they came on the motorcycle.

I actually kind of prefer the ones from Show Chrome. I like the Commander highway pegs better, but this is what the bike came with because I think they were having a hard time getting the Commander highway pegs in. And from Show Chrome, anyway, I did have the Goldstrike highway pegs. I think it's these highway pegs that are making the seat more comfortable because when I get sore or I feel some soreness setting in, I can stretch my legs out, I can push on my legs to reposition myself, and I think that may be why I'm not having the discomfort on this seat that some of the other ones have. So if you don't have a set of good highway pegs, you might want to check out the Commander pegs from Show Chrome or these ones that I've got from Goldstrike are also nice. Everybody has their own preferences.

I'll also combine that with this Show Chrome Rider backrest. Now I have the Platinum backrest. They no longer offer this right now, they're reworking it, but any of the Show Chrome backrests are going to give you that same relief when you're riding.

It gives you something to kind of push up against and kind of take some of that strain off your lower back. Okay, so seat performed well, highway pegs performed well. However, when I returned back a couple days ago, I did notice that this right highway peg from Goldstrike was loose. The mounting bolt had come a little bit loose and I could actually move the highway peg with my hands, so I went in and re-tightened that.

So make sure you get those bolts good and tight and check them every time you get back from a road trip. Actually, I didn't even notice it was loose until I washed the bike, and that's why I think it's important to keep your bike clean, because as you're washing the bike, you're touching all these different parts, and when I got down and started cleaning around this area is when I noticed that foot peg was loose, so it's a good idea to keep your bike clean. Okay, let me talk about the cruise control.

I love the cruise control on the Goldwing. It works flawlessly. You set the speed, it holds it no problem.

It's not adaptive cruise control. I don't particularly care. I just like the fact that we've got cruise control. If I need to bump it up one or two miles per hour, you just tap the resume plus button up a couple of times, and every time you tap it, it goes up one mile per hour. Cruise control worked great, so no problem there.

Let me talk about Apple CarPlay and the CarlinKit. Now, I have wireless Apple CarPlay using the CarlinKit, which plugs into the bike, and then my phone connects to everything wirelessly. It worked perfectly for me the entire trip.

I have had some issues with CarlinKit. One time over a period of maybe two or three days, it lost the connection somehow. I don't know if it was a phone issue or if it was a CarlinKit issue, but I have videos on the CarlinKit and how to set it up. I have my Sena Impulse helmet, and these things all kind of tie together.

The Sena Impulse helmet, the iPhone, which I have an iPhone 15 Pro, and of course the CarlinKit. Once I got Apple CarPlay up, I was using Waze as my navigation. Most of the time, I just followed Robert because he knew exactly where he was going.

I was able to get text messages and phone messages. There were a couple of places on this trip where we lost cell service up in the mountains, but it still worked very well for me. I didn't have any major issues. So the CarlinKit performed well.

The only issue we had, and I'm going to talk now about the Sena Impulse helmet. The Sena Impulse helmet has the 50 series communicator built into it. And it performed overall, I'd say, very well. Robert and I were able to use mesh communications, open mesh on channel one. And we probably should have changed channels because we picked up some other riders a couple of times.

Not a big deal. But we were able to communicate very clearly with each other. I could hear him perfectly the whole time. Now Robert has the SRL EXT from Sena on his brand new Shoei helmet. And it performed very well.

We had no trouble getting pairing with mesh. That worked great. Robert, however, had some issues with me cutting out. He said I was mostly riding behind him, but we were never more than a quarter of a mile apart.

And he said the farther back I got, the harder it was for him to hear me. I never had any trouble hearing Robert. He always came through very, very clear on the mesh in my helmet, but he had issues hearing me sometimes. So we would ride a little closer to each other, and that seemed to resolve the issue.

My issue with the Senna Impulse is one of battery life. I did lose, let me back up. I got the low battery message two times on this trip, but even though I got the low battery warning, the helmet continued to perform. The communicator continued to work for at least another hour.

It never did shut off. The only time I lost power to the helmet, when the battery actually died, was on the last day on my way home. Robert and I had already separated. He went his way.

I was coming back home, and about the last hour of a 12-hour ride, it did die. It finally gave up, and when you lose your helmet communication, you also lose Waze. You lose Apple CarPlay because the CarlinKit can no longer connect to anything. My problem with the Sena Impulse helmet is that it has this magnetic charger in the back. If it had a USB-C charger, I could put an external power supply, like a power bank. I could connect it and keep additional power going to it and ride virtually indefinitely.

Robert, I think, wishes his SRL-EXT had the same feature. It has an external battery, but it's not plug-and-play. You can't just unplug it and plug in another battery and have it keep going. Those are some things I would like to see SENA address in the future. I think the new SENA Impulse Helmet is going to have USB-C, and since this is a 50-series communicator, I think you're going to be able to run it with shore power, where you can plug in a power bank and continue to run.

Robert cannot do that with his SRL. If he plugs in the USB connector to a power bank, it shuts off his communicator, and I was a little surprised by that. Let me talk about the brake free, since we're talking about battery life.

I never ride my motorcycle without my brake free on my helmet turned on. I think it's one of the most important safety devices that I own, because when I start slowing down or coming to a stop, that bright LED, red LED on my helmet starts flashing, and I can tell you that it has saved me on multiple occasions. People coming up behind me too fast, they see that red light flashing if I'm slowing down, and I can visually see them in the rear view mirror. It's almost like I can see what they're thinking, like they notice me.

If you don't have a brake free on your helmet, I think it's one of the most important things you can do for your safety. Now, I am a brake free affiliate, you know, I don't make any bones about that. You can save $10 by using coupon code or promo code CRUISEMAN if you make a purchase. I think they have a $20 off offer right now, plus you can save another $10 if you use my code CRUISEMAN. I'll put a link in the description of this video.

I don't harp on it a lot, but I rode this entire ride, Robert will tell you, because when he was behind me, he noticed the brake free. Every time I'd slow down or come to a stop, that thing would start flashing, and he said it was very attention-getting, because it's up high. It's at driver level. Even if they're in a pickup truck, it's the highest thing on the bike is your head, and that light makes a big difference.

Okay. Enough of that. But the good thing is, the brake free battery never died.

I would turn it on in the morning. I didn't even turn it off when I would put the helmet in the glove box, or we'd come to a stop to go to lunch or something. I always just left it on all day. And it would go 12, 13 hours, no problem.

Never died on me. It has a great battery life, so love the brake free. Let's talk about the Show Chrome saddlebag and trunk liners. I have these liners that I've added to my saddlebag to hold little tools and other rags or whatever, water bottles. I really do like these Show Chrome saddlebag liners, and rather than just having stuff flying around the saddlebag or putting it in little bags, these things mount with Velcro, so if you need to take them out when you come to a hotel, you can peel them out real easily with Velcro, take them to your hotel room, put them back in when you get back on the bike. Let's talk about the Honda parking brake.

My parking brake failed on this trip miserably because there were a lot of times that Robert and I would pull off onto a pullout area that was maybe on some sort of an incline and my parking brake would not hold. It is already, that cable has already stretched and I have never ridden off with the parking brake on on this motorcycle. When I picked up this bike in Tennessee, the parking brake was working great, no issues at all, because what I'll do is when I come to a stop, I'll put the parking brake on and then I'll push back to see if I can get the bike to roll.

No, it was doing great, but during this trip, I used the parking brake several times and by the probably third or fourth day, we would park on an incline, I'd put on the parking brake and the bike would just start rolling backward. That's not acceptable. Honda needs to address the parking brake on this DCT model, because in my opinion, it's just not up to the task.

Now, I can go in and adjust it, and I will. I'm going to go in and adjust the cable. I can adjust it at the rear wheel. I have a video on how to do that in my maintenance video series. Please check that out if you own the videos, but you shouldn't have

to. Honestly, you shouldn't have to. I wish it was just a transmission lock of some kind or some sort of electronic parking brake. Honda can do better, and I ended up having to... We had to scrounge around for a big rock to put under my back tire so that my

bike wouldn't just come rolling back while we were parked. You shouldn't have to do that on a $30,000 motorcycle. Okay, now let's talk about gas mileage. There's something about this particular motorcycle, and I don't know what it is, ever since I got the bike, it just never seems to me like it's getting very good gas mileage compared to my 2018 and certainly compared to Robert's 2023 Goldwing. We kept meticulous records every time we filled up. We both used the

Fuely app and we kept very good records. We both ride the same style. We're not hot-rodding. I'm not, certainly not. And we go the same speeds. We have the same tire pressure. Robert's bike, if anything, was heavier than mine because he had a big, huge bag on with all kinds of camera equipment. So, if anything, he should have gotten worse mileage than I did.

We filled up I think a total of 13 or 14 times. Now, I've got a spreadsheet here showing all of my different fill-ups, all of my mileage, what I paid per gallon. And the best mileage I got was 52.8 miles per gallon. That was riding high altitude in the mountains. The worst mileage I got was 36.9 miles to the gallon. That's not very good. My average was only 43.6 miles to the gallon. And we were riding what I would say would be pretty conservatively.

We would ride mostly the speed limit. There might be a few days we rode 5 miles an hour over the speed limit. But most of the time, it's not like we were going 95 miles an hour. Nevertheless, it's irrelevant because Robert, at every time we would fill up and we would measure our mileage, he was consistently getting anywhere from 4 to 6 miles per gallon better than I am on this bike. I would say this motorcycle probably gets 4 to 5 miles per gallon less than my 2018. And I ride the same ride, the bike's equipped virtually the same way.

So I don't know what's going on with the gas mileage on this motorcycle. Now, Robert has a couple more thousand miles on his bike than I do. So maybe you could argue it's more broken in. But I think after 3,000 miles, the bikes should be broken in. And I don't think the fuel mileage is going to go up dramatically. Now, at one point, I discovered, about the third time we filled up, I discovered that Robert's using premium fuel. And I always use 87 octane or regular fuel. And so I thought, well, maybe that's the difference.

So I switched over and started using premium fuel, which, by the way, is much more expensive, as you know. And no difference. I couldn't really tell a significant difference. There was one fill up where we were very close. I think he had 52.9 miles to the gallon, and I had 52.8. Okay, we were almost the same when we were riding through the mountains. But

every other fill up, he was consistently three and a half to five miles per gallon better than I was. Let me know in the comments down below, what kind of mileage do you get, especially in the higher altitudes? But here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, we're only at about 700 feet elevation. So my mileage is never great. But still, even at this elevation, Robert gets better gas mileage than I do. What are you getting on your Gold Wing? I'd be curious to know. So that was the mileage statistics. We wrote a total of what, 2000, I think I told it the first of the video, 2180, something like that. There is one fill up missing from this spreadsheet, and that's the one I did when I got back into Dallas. But still,

you get the idea. Okay, another thing I want to talk about is the traction action mount, which I have mounted up here to my left mirror. I had a camera mounted on that virtually the entire trip. I also had a couple of other things strapped down to my ram mount, and it performed perfectly. Now, I have drilled a hole and put a screw between the

mount and the ram ball mount, the base, I should say, of the action mount and the ram ball mount. And that's to keep that mount from unscrewing. If I put a ram arm extending out to the left side of the bike and put my camera on there, the wind will catch that camera and it will flip it back and the windshield stops it. It keeps it from flying off, but it will unscrew from that 1.25 base. So what I did is I drilled a small hole, had a friend do it, and we put a screw in there with a nut and now it didn't go in anywhere. So that's just my little hack if you have that issue. The other product that performed admirably, no surprise,

was the Fantic X8 Apex, which is my little portable tire inflator. One day Robert and I noticed our tire pressure. Once we got up into the higher altitudes and the cooler temperatures, both of us had pretty low tire pressure. I think my rear tire was at 35, my front

tire was at 35, Robert was even lower. I think his front tire got down to 32 and his rear tire maybe at 35 or 34. So one morning we got out the X8 Apex, hooked it up to both of our bikes and we aired up all four tires. We brought all of our tires up to 41 psi and we were able to air up all four of our tires and it only took away one quarter of the battery life on the X8 Apex. So if we had needed more during the trip, we would have been fine. So it performed admirably. I kept it on my bike and my saddle bag just in case we

either had a flat or we needed to add air. I think that's pretty much it. If you guys have any other questions about how anything on this motorcycle performed during that road trip, please put it in the comments down below. I'll try to answer the questions if I can. Everything else worked fine. The motorcycle is absolutely amazing. This is the smoothest, quietest, easiest motorcycle to take a road trip on. We would get off these bikes after 8 or 9, 10 hours of riding and you actually don't feel that you've had any physical strain. Even Robert was surprised because he's got some issues with his neck and he was concerned before we left for the trip how his neck was going to survive and every other part of the body and he was pretty amazed at how smooth this bike is, how quiet it is, how comfortable it is. It is the best touring motorcycle out there. I am very happy with it. I love

the motorcycle. I loved my 2018. I love this 2024. I can't wait for the next road trip. I hope you guys have enjoyed the videos and you're continuing to enjoy the videos. Anyway, thanks for joining me today. If you liked this video, do me a favor and give it a thumbs up. I also want to take a second to thank Southern Honda Power Sports for supporting and sponsoring this series of videos. Much appreciated. Thank you and I'll see you on the next Cruise

Man's Garage. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

2024-10-08 23:11

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