Stupid question- with or without top box?

Warren said:
I believe the side to side movement on the Honda top box is unique to Honda. I am not sure how well it worked as I never noticed any benefit or detriment in its use.
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ST1100 has the same, you'll learn that it works while riding out the wakes of semis... :sneaky:
 
I've ridden with a laptop in my top-boxes almost since I started riding. I had a Givi on my two Connies. The Givi survived the crash that totaled my first Connie. I don't know how a laptop would have been after that. I started with a Shad topbox and the bottom pulled out of the first one (on the ride back from Texas after my ex-mother-in-law's funeral...the same ride on which my first Cee Bailey wind shield cracked). Twisted Throttle replaced it and that one had the bottom crack while I was on the Cabot Trail during my Epic Ride. The man whose wife ran the campground in Bay St. Lawrence loaned me enough bungee cords to let me ride on around the Trail and down to Twisted Throttle in Rhode Island. They told me I had overloaded the case and bought a Givi. The Givi has often been as loaded as the Shad was on any of the trips I took with it. That Givi is currently in Spokane. My newest one is my garage.

I've always had taken my laptop with me on even an overnight trip. I carry it in a Caselogic attache and none of my laptops have ever had any trouble with them. My current laptop came with a solid state hard drive. My last one had one installed by a friend who is a computer repairman and had a used solid-state-drive that he'd taken out of computer that had died.
 
JustPassinThru said:
I believe it's to prevent vibration from causing fatigue and cracks, either in the mounting of the box, or the shell itself.

Depending on tire choice, road surface, speed...things can get a bit buzzy.

I like it, if only because I know I can put my mini-laptop in the box and not be as concerned about vibration taking out the hard drive. Although, as things get more complex/modern...and as it appears touring is on hold for awhile, maybe a long while...maybe I'll have a solid-state-drive computer the next time I'm on a long trip.

Tablets have them; but I dislike tablets. I like to be able to save material, such as podcasts...great to have going in the earphones when covering long miles.
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Honda used to have a video on it. Vibration was not part of its design. It had to do with handling and the shifting of weight if I remember correctly.
 
Warren said:
It had to do with handling and the shifting of weight if I remember correctly.
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That's what I remember, Warren. Has anyone ridden both an NT with Honda's topbox and one with something like a Givi? I've only ridden two NTs and both of them were mine with unmoveable top boxes -- two Shads, and two Givis.
 
I believe Honda may have something to the mounting system, on my CBR with a top box solid mounted it sometimes would go into a slight weave at speed 85-90 mph plus, it maybe buffering wind turbulence at the rear battering the high heavy mounted box.
 
I've been up to 106mph with a topbox mounted and have cruised for several hours at 90mph in southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. I've never noticed a weave or instabilty. Of course, I'm kind of insensitive. :-(
 
It don't help that a CBR has quick steering geometric's so it wants to go left or right and I had to drop to front end 13 mm to make it even more twitchy. I liked the go left or right didn't care to go straight, ha ha!
 
Macka said:
Yes please.

Macka
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Seagrass
 
Right after we moved to Greeley back in '14 or '15, I ran into a guy who lived here and he'd done the same thing with his NT. It made a pretty good top box. He wasn't a member of the Forum and moved away from Greeley a couple of months later.
 
Phil Tarman said:
I've been up to 106mph with a topbox mounted and have cruised for several hours at 90mph in southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. I've never noticed a weave or instabilty. Of course, I'm kind of insensitive. :-(
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Cruising with a fully loaded Honda topbox at 90mph (10% above freeway speedlimit in France) I would agree the NT keeps stable.
When crossing the border to Germany I sometimes go up to 110mph when overtaking. At this speed I usually notice a uncomfortable rocking motion at the rear, with no doubt caused by the aerodynamic resistance of the top box.
 
Back when I had my Concours I did speed tests on a stretch of highway in Nebraska, between Mitchell and Harrison, where you could see for at least 10 miles and the shoulders were always kept well-mowed, and it was reasonably level. Once I was doing 125.1 (by GPS) when a car came over a the hill in front of me about 5 miles away and I backed out of it. The next time I was on that stretch, I got up to 126.4 and everything was stable. At 126.8, the bars started a slow weave. I eased out of it and they stopped the weave at about 124. I rode the 150 miles home to Ft Morgan, CO, at mostly 75-80mph. The next morning I walked out into the yard to pick up some trash that had blown in overnight and as I walked back to the garage, noticed a silver spot on my rear tire. It was a a big nail, probably 4-5" long right in the middle of the tire. On the Connies I mostly used Dunlop Elite K-491 (popularly known in the COG Forum as the Evil Bike-Wrecking Tire, or EBWT). They were bias-belted tires and lasted and performed much better on the Connie that the Dunlop K700/K701 radials that were the OEM stock tire. The 491s had very stiff sidewalls and when I checked tire pressure on that tire, it read 15psi, even though the tire didn't look terribly flat. I always had my Givi topbox on the bike and it stayed stable while all the air leaked out.
 
I've had two NT's. One had a Givi top box with fixed mount. The other had OEM top box moveable mount. I never noticed any difference in handling at any speed. I did notice the high weight if I had the top box loaded for a trip. I got tired of hearing the clank of the OEM backed when I went over bumps so I modified the OEM mount so it would not move. I also cut the tags off my pillows.
 
JimTid said:
I've had two NT's. One had a Givi top box with fixed mount. The other had OEM top box moveable mount. I never noticed any difference in handling at any speed. I did notice the high weight if I had the top box loaded for a trip. I got tired of hearing the clank of the OEM backed when I went over bumps so I modified the OEM mount so it would not move. I also cut the tags off my pillows.
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I did the same. The clunk annoyed me too!

Macka
 
Weird... the carrier stay on my GF's '07 NT doesn't "rattle"... after I'd corrected the orientation of parts proper lateral movement is given, but no loose parts banging...
Will check the assembly on my friend's '14 NT though...
(the TC's on the ST1100 rattle a little when empty, but this Hepco&Becker design uses metal clamps to attach the case to the cast aluminum carrier stay... there small rubber dampers, but the slack of the number on parts adds up...)
 
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