Mana no more

I shuold let you know that I have sold my Mana. I was tired of all the problems that it had, and, frankly, I was extremely disappointed. 

The bike was in repar for more than 45 days. One morning it just stopped working. And this was after I had had to already change the dashboard due to water infiltrations. Enough is enough. 

It got to the point where I would not take my Mana because I was afraid it woulde let me down somewhere. 

This was my first Aprilia. It will be my last one. I had only had Japanese bikes so far, for more than 20 years, and never had a problem. I better stick to those. 

Too bad though. The idea of the Mana was very good. Execution was messy. And I am fed up of being used as a beta tester by companies which regard customers only as stupid fuckers with money. 

Goodbye Aprilia. 

How does the Mana handle with the top case Shad SH50?

After having sent me some great shots of his Mana with the top case Shad SH50 installed, JB also sent me the following comments about how the bike feels and handles with the topc case.

Thank you JB!

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Hi all,

Here are some first comments about the setup Mana and SH 50 top case.

The Aprilia rack is just a piece of cake to mount is just five minutes. The existing passenger handle has to be removed but the rack has two lateral ones which are finally more comfortable for the passenger. (We are talking about comfort when many other bikes would just be lucky to feature something to hook up the back meat).The SH50 mounting is pretty easy but requires some new holes to fit into the existing ones of the Aprilia rack. The choice for this top case was based on size, price and aestheticism as the color really match the bike's. The case is also available in red, blue, black, etc. Check http://www.shad.es/ for more information. Personally this is the best and most beautiful case I have found on the market even if Givi has great products too.

Again Shad say they would make a baggage rack available for the case but “ a couple of month” is too long anyway for me as I need to use the bike to go to work when I am at the office which happens two or three times a week. The case has then to accommodate my soft business bag including a laptop, all being worth about 8 kilos.

The first time I ride the bike with the case, I thought it was too much disturbing. But a strong wind was blowing this day and finally the most sensitive effect was with lateral wind. The overweight is not a problem and it is the same as if you would have a very light passenger on the back seat. The same day I went for a famous ride around the hills. The road goes from 300m to 800 m of altitude over 10 km. Its is a pretty fast one with long curves that you take between 120 and 140 km/h. The case was empty this time. I did not pay attention to it as it had absolutely no effect on the bike. What was concerning me was the tuning of the rear shock absorber that I think could be harder to accommodate fast curve speeds. It was great fun anyway !

All in all the only thing I have noticed with this setup is some noise coming from vibrations at null speed. This problem can easily be solved with one additional screw at the top rear of the case and the plate. My son and my daughter have volunteered to test the bike as passengers and they both said it's just like in our sofa !

Have great rides.

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Thank you JB. I think what is particularly interesting is the increased comfort of the passenger, who now has two handles for increased stability and a place to rest his back...

I am not surprised about the wind effect, as this would occur with every bike with a top case...

I might have to buy one myself in the end...we'll see!

Mana with Shad SH50 top case

JB, a commentator of Mototourism, sent me some very good photos of his grey Mana (great colour, by the way) with a Shad SH50 top case. You can see them below.

I must admit the bike looks a lot better that I thought it would: it must also be the fact that the Shad is the same colour as the bike. It actually looks very neat.

JB kindly promised to send me a few words on the Mana's behaviour with this top case. I am really curious to hear how it handles, as this case is really big, and I am sure that the different weight distrubution will affect the bike. Depending on what he says, I will decide myself on whether to buy the Givi V-46 or not. I would like to avoid it, but I think it will be necessary during the winter, when I will have to store the winter gear...

Riding behaviours

I have always wondered to what extent the bike you are riding influences the way you ride. I have always been riding enduro-style bike, and I have always considered myself a very cautious rider.

I never lost sleep over how to cut the perfect corner…I am more interested in the comfort the bike has to offer for long journeys or for commuting, or in elements of the design rather than in the top speed or absolute power.

However, I found myself riding in a much more aggressive way with the Mana than I have ever done in the past.

The Mana is much more powerful than anything I have ridden before, and it is the first naked I have. And I am starting to appreciate why so many riders talk about the importance of cutting the corner in a certain way…when I enter the tunnel which takes me home, with a steep turn, I am smiling at my ever more daring attempts to find the limit of the bike, pushing down with my knee…

I have started to use a lot more my weight to incline the bike, and I am in general riding faster than I used to. Faster than I probably should. I discovered myself losing grip over my rear tyre exiting from a turn. Opening the throttle to the full with the Mana is not a good idea, I realized…nothing happened with the V-strom (even if it is a decently powerful bike), but a lot can go wrong with the Mana when you do it…

A few years back, I was driving a sports car, an Alfa GTV…and I was definitively driving faster and more aggressively than I am now that I have a different type of car.

Big deal, you might think. Well, for me it is. I always thought that I could control myself on any bike, that deep inside I was a cautious rider. I am realizing that maybe I was so cautious because I was always riding easy going bikes, and not powerful naked.

Again, nothing major, I am not racing on the streets. But I wonder whether a Harley 1200 Nightster or a Triumph Scrambler or Bonneville would have been closer to my traditional riding styles…

And I am definitively increasingly determined to take riding classes. Yes, I have been riding for 20 years now. But I feel I could benefit so much from riding classes. I will find out what are the options here in Belgium…

Pimp my Mana

It took FAR longer than I thought it would...but in the end I managed to put on the red reflective tape on the wheels of the Mana. I am not too sure about the colour...when I bought the red tape I thought that I would replace it with a different colour if I didn't like it...but given the time it took me to put it on I have no intention whatsoever to take it off and try on a different colour...

Unfortunately the job was not as easy as I thought it would be. I had bought a tape with a plastic thing which is supposed to help you put it on the wheel. It took me a while to figure out how it worked, and even so the tape kept breaking off in various points.

The result is not as messy as with the yellow tape I had put on the V-strom (for which I did not have the plastic ruler), but it is far from perfect anyhow. It looks like if a drunkman did it.

Anyway, what do people think? Do you like it?

Transporting stuff with the Mana

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, one of the main reasons why I preferred the Mana over the other possible choices was its practical aspects. The trunk, in particular, really appealed to me.

At the moment I fill it in with a long Abus chain, the bike's documents, a pair of rain trousers and a very light rain jacket. When I park the bike, I put the chain-lock on and I fit the rest of the trunk's content into the helmet, which I then put into the trunk.

However, even with this trunk, the Mana cannot obviously compete with a scooter in terms of luggage space. And when you need to transport a gym bag or a business suitcase, you need to use a spider net.

You can obviously also use a shoulder strap bag, but if there is a sensation I hate in life is that of having a bag on my shoulder. I go to the extreme of not bringing stuff just so that I do not have to carry it on me, even when I walk....

Fitting a bag with a spider net on the passenger's portion of the saddle is realtively easy: there is a small hook on each side of the bike that can used to fix the net. However, I find the distance between them and the passenger handle - the only other point of anchorage - to be too much...they should have put a couple of additional hooks in between.

In any case, the bag tied up like this seems stable, and doesn't move. I want to avoid having to buy a back case, as it would really spoil the line of the Mana...

Sunday ride...not much of a ride!

This post should have been very different. I had planned to report on the roads I would have ridden the Mana at the weekend. However the itinerary that I did ride, suggested by a Belgian motorbike magazine, was absolute RUBBISH: 90 kms of riding in the suburbs of small villages, with no turns, no hill whatsoever, appalling surface conditions, no sightseeing, no scenic panoramas, no nothing.

Belgium is a country famous for its flat land. Its most famous singer, Jacques Brel, used to sing about the “plat pays”…Riding in Belgium is obviously NOT as riding in the Tuscany hilly countryside or the beautiful coast…but Belgium can offer very nice roads, which make it for a very nice weekend or Sunday ride. Unfortunately today this wasn’t one of them.

So, rather than talking to you about the ride, I want to talk a bit about a couple of other issues that I noticed about the Mana after this extra 300 KM ridden at the weekend.

Consumption
First of all let’s talk about consumption. I am just below 1000km now, and I noticed that consumption varies enormously depending on whether I ride the bike in the city traffic, or on the highway and in the country roads. Obviously the engine still has to adjust, and the consumption value will probably vary, but I guess the data can already tell me something.

In the city centres, the reserve light comes on after 175-190 km, with consumption of 15.2-16km/lt (6.25lt/100 km). That’s not much. However, if I ride it on the highway and on the country roads, at stable speeds, we get to 20.5 km/lt (4.8lt/100 km), which is quite good.

(The calculations are made filling in the tank to the top, setting to zero the odometer, and then refilling in the tank to the top and dividing the kms ridden by the gasoline litres you put in: simple and very accurate).

My major problem with all this is that the gas tank is too small, as it forces me to put gas at least once every 5 days of continuous commuting use, in the city traffic. I wish the tank was actually a couple of litres bigger, which would have added a nice 30-40 km to the current estimated autonomy of 228 km (in the city traffic) and 310 km (on highway / State roads).

The V-Strom also has very different consumption patterns, depending on the roads I ride it on, but the differences are not as marked as with the Mana. Moreover, the Strom consumes less and has a larger fuel tank, which gives it a much larger autonomy than the Mana. But obviously the two bikes have very different souls, different purposes, at least in principle.

Passenger life
Last Saturday I had to take a guy behind me as a passenger. He had decided to sit as a passenger of another friend riding a scooter, but as soon as we hit the highway, the scooter friend had to pull off the road, as the wind was really making the whole thing instable. So he came as a passenger on the Mana, and we headed off for a nice (ironic) 50 Km of highway at 90-100 km/h (we couldn’t go any faster as the scooter was a 125cc…and that was its maximum speed…and we don't leave any man behind!)

Anyway, the experience was quite interesting, because the guy behind me had NEVER been on a motorbike. On our way back, he was the passenger of another friend of mine on a Yamaha MT-03 and at the end he said that the Mana was a lot more confortable than the MT-03, which really gave him a sore bottom…

So, the passenger life seems to be ok, but with a caveat: not too ride to fast nor to accelerate too impulsively or the passenger just flies away…but then again, I think it is a problem common to all naked bikes.

The gear mode
I keep on experimenting. What I find particularly helpful is to be in the automatic touring mode, but then switching gears down to exploit the engine brake before entering into a turn, for instance, or approaching a traffic light.

I started to use the shaft pedal as well…it came natural again, although mostly I do use the buttons at the left handle.

Today I also experimented my first panic brake. I feared that when this would happen, my left hand would automatically have looked for the clutch…finding nothing. However, this did not happen. I did hit the brakes as one should do, but I did not have the reaction of reaching for the non-existing clutch. I don’t know whether to be happy or not about this though…what would have happened if I had been on the V-strom? Will I be able to have different reactions depending on the bike I am riding in that specific moment? I really hope I never to have to find that out...

The paint
The paint on the fake fuel tank gests scratched by simply looking at it. Beware, really.

Pictures of the day

I leave you with a few picture of the day. Nothing scenic really. You will have to wait for next weekend’s tour for those…

In the land of the Duvel beer (a pretty good beer, if you ask me)

Early rain forces me to stop under a highway bridge, put on my rain suit...and then stop again after 30 minutes, as the sunshine came out again and accompanied me for the rest of the day.

This is...ehm, I don't know. But I thought it made for a good picture, don't you think??

In the rear view mirror I saw a church next to two windmills...I had to take this picture!

Stopping for a good half an hour waiting for the bridge to come down...

Why Mana?

Over the past few days that I have been riding the Mana, a lot of coworkers have been asking "what is that fantastic motorbike you own now??". However, a lot of friends of mine have also been asking "why the hell did you buy the Mana?". From their point of view, with the same money I could have bought a motorbike that would have kept a higher value...a BMW, for instance.

It is true that from that point of view, buying a Mana is probably a bet. Aprilias are not famous for keeping a high value when they are sold second hand. And on top of that, the fact that this is an automatic bike, a completely new model, and one whose reliability is not proven yet all add to the potential low value when I sell it. All true: but thinking about this when you buy a new motorbike is like refusing to sleep with a beautiful woman because maybe, in ten years, she will leave you. It only means you lack the passion.

When I was shopping for a new bike to replace the scooter I was using in Brussels, I had a couple of criteria in mind:

• It had to be a motorbike: I had grown tired of the scooter I had bought two years before, very practical and everything. It was great, but it wasn't a motorbike. I am a motorbiker, and I need a motorbike. It is that simple.
• It had to be practical, but not as ugly and as boring as a Honda Deauville. I needed something with space to put my stuff though.

• It had to be funky. It had to had the looks.

I never liked sports bike. I never liked the innatural position your body needs to be in while riding...so I was actually looking either at a new Enduro/supermotard or at an "old style" new bike.

I excluded the enduro option, because I already own a fantastic enduro-style bike, the V-Strom. The perfect bike, if it wasn't for those turbolences which kill my head as of 80 Km/h...I looked at the Yamaha MT-03, which really looks marvellous, but it has a zero score in practicality.

So I was looking in particular at the Triumph Bonneville or the Triumph Scrambler. I was that close to buy the Scrambler, as I had found a bike shop which had a fantastic offer, but then I tried the Mana.

And in spite of the fact that during my test-drive the bike actually broke off, it was love at first sight. A real motorbike, practical, with lot of space, which allows me to go to work without ruining my shoes with the gear pedal, and which has the looks and feels like a real power monster.

I understand: the Mana is probably the motorbike that for its futuristic features is the furthest away from the Triumph Scrambler or the Bonneville. Which are both great bikes, and which sooner or later will find their way to my garage.

But for the moment I am with her.

I like this!

My post on the first impressions on the Aprilia Mana was translated into Korean!! Thank you Lewis!!

Aprilia Mana - first impressions after 400Km

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just recently got my new Aprilia Mana. I named her Clarabella (this is an habit of mine, to name all the bikes I had...I will come back on this topic sooner or later).

So far, I have been able to take it for a long spin during the weekend, riding it on the highway, on some nice countryside roads, and in the city centre, on the daily commute to work. Obviously the engine still has to adjust, but I think I can draw some first conclusions, especially in terms of what I like and what I don't like.
What does the bike feel like?
The bike feels great. Mind, this is my first naked bike, I always rode Enduro-type bikes, so I can't really compare it with other naked. However, I can say for sure that what Aprilia used to say at the time of the launch - i.e. that this was not an 'easy' motorbike, but a real sports bike - seems to be absolutely true.

On the Mana you are on two rails. The bike goes where you tell her to go, without having to move too much or press on the pedals to get it down. The bike feels also very low - a lot lowerethan my V-strom - which is an incredible advantage in the city centre. I had never felt such a sensation of control as with this bike.

The seat is very firm, but very comfortable. The body can assume a number of positions that can come in handy on long journeys when you need to switch positions a bit. The longest I rode it was for 270km in one go, and I did not have backpains or anything else.

The trunk is absolutely amazing. It now contains a long chain and a rain suit, which I fit into the helmet when I want to put my helmet in the trunk itself. Both my helmets - a Schubert J1 L size and a Shark S800 XL size fit in the trunk (individually, obviously). The full face Shark actually fits in better than the Schuberth.

The gearbox
As most readers would know, the Mana has an automatic gearbox, with different modes of functioning: a full automatic mode and a sequential mode.

In full automatic mode, you drive it without having to change gears, and you can choose among three different engine modes: Touring, which is the one I have been using the most; Sport, which keeps the engine spinning at higher level and gives you a stronger break engine sensation - but which also makes the bike vibrate and consume more; and Rain, which Aprilia says it is useful when it rains and the road is slippery, because it cuts the power of the bike, so that it makes it difficult to lose control of the rear wheel.

Of the three modes, the one that convinces me the least is the Rain one: with no engine braking power at all, the motorbike becames even more dangerous when it rains, and you have this mode on...because you end up having to use your breaks a lot more frequently than you would with, say, the Sport mode or the Touring mode. But this is my personal opinion.

The sequential mode is the one I am using the most: with this, you can change gear either with two very easy and intuitive bottons at the handle, or at the pedal like on a normal bike. In reality I NEVER NEVER NEVER used the pedal, apart from the very first time just to see how it feels.

It becomes immediately natural either to use the bike in automatic, especially in the city with eavy traffic, or in sequential mode. At the moment I find myself using the sequential mode, switching gears at the handle, a lot more than I thought I would. I would say I use this mode 60-70% of my riding time, as soon as the roads free up from traffic.

The dashboard
The dashboard is very complete and very well done. The only thing missing is the fuel indicator. However, when the bike enters into reserve mode (approximately 3 liters left) a red light comes on, and an odometer automatically turns on to indicate how many kilometers you have been riding in reserve. This is very useful.

There are four lights which lighten up to indicate when to switch gear in sequential mode. However, I haven't used them that much yet: I kept the engine spinning at lower levels than I normally would, since it is very new.

I find it very useful the possibility to switch among the different functions of the dashboard from a button on the left handle, without having to touch a button on the dashboard itself - as it happens instaead on my V-strom.

The gear-buttons at the handle are right where you would expect them to be...the process of switching gears become immediate after a couple of Kms....However, the button to switch gears up is right where normally you would have the horn...and this means that on a couple of occasions I tried to use the horn but I was actually switching gears...not very nice!

What I DO like a lot:

• How the bike feels, the immediate controlling sensation that it gives, and the fact that it does not tire you even on long roads and on the highways, if you respect the speed limit (in Belgium it is 120Km/hr). I always had Enduro bikes, and always suffered from turbolences caused by the fairing. Nothing like that on the Mana (ok - probably this is the case for all naked...)
• The engine noise: SPECTACULAR. It just rattles like a real sportsbike
• The trunk, very roomy and useful.
• The gear buttons on the handle
• The gearbox: fun, practical and at the same time engaging. This is a bike which is both great to ride at the weekend and for commuting every day.
• The possibility to visualize the different functions on the dashboard from a button on the handle.
• The look: I know, this is entirely personal, but the bike looks simply amazing. The front and the left views are phenomenal.
• The dashboard, very beautiful and clean.

What I really DON'T like:

• The vibrations on the pedals at high engine speeds, especially when the gear is in Sport automatic mode
• The location of the horn button, very umconfortable to reach.
• The sound of the horn: absolutely terrible, it souns like a 50cc scooter. A real shame.
• The location of the stand, very difficult to reach
• The fact that you end up scracthing the cover of the trunk pretty fast, unless you open it with the handles real straight.
• The exhaust pipe, which ends us very high on the bike, making it difficult to use soft luggage...
• The rear view mirrors. Cheap, small and difficult to fix.
• The lack of even a small space under the seat, to put your documents and a anti-theft system.
• The lack of a fuel indicator.

All in all, for the moment it seems like a great bike. I am 100% happy of my purchase, and don't regret it at all. We'll see. This is my first Italian bike (I always had japanese bikes before): I hope I don't come to regret my choice because of reliability issues...

I plan to post new review of the bike as i ride it, and will post itineraries i will be riding in the near future. Stay tuned!