GSX1400 Owners .org

The next bike to enter the garage was a Triumph Tiger Sport 1050, I wanted a more upright bike to fit in with my wife's preference and I wanted to try the adventure style bike without going the full GS route.  The Tiger Sport came with a special offer of free panniers so I bought a top box and rack to go with it with the intension of doing a bit of touring but they ended up not being fitted and spent their entire life in the loft.  The only other items I bought with it were a set of hand guards and some heated grips but whoever decided to fit the switch for them inside the fairing needs his arse kicked as you could not operate then while moving.  I quickly bought a spare seat and had that sent off to be recovered with two inches of additional foam to make it wider and higher as it seems most manufacturers still insist on fitting seats that are way too low, slope down and taper in at the front to allow hobbits to ride them.  Once the new seat was fitted it transformed the comfort and feel of the bike.  Next I bought a new straight through pipe and downloaded a tune for it which I installed using tune ECU and my laptop, that made it better to ride and the sound was fantastic.  During the time I had the bike I experienced no problems at all except for the screen which made the ride very noisy and beat me up with the buffeting, I cured that by buying a spare screen and cutting it in half so it just covered the clocks.  The bike was now all day comfortable with little noise and no buffeting and it had the triple howl I liked.
During this early period of time with the Tiger Sport the Speed Triple had been on a SORN so had not been used much.  However when I did tax the Speed Triple I was expecting it to be a little less of everything, being 100cc down and 15 years older although lighter with a shorter wheel base.   But in reality even with the same layout of engine I didn't find it as nice, yes the Tiger Sport had more power and torque (and weight) than the 955 Speed Triple but it was all higher up the rev range so was not as accessible without revving the engine harder.  It was more comfortable with my new seat and screen with (on paper) better suspension and brakes but it had much less character and was therefore not as nice to ride.  As much as I tried to ignore these deficiencies (in my eyes) the bike just was not as much fun to ride as the Speed Triple which would pull harder from lower revs without stuttering and the brakes and suspension did not feel old or less able, the right amount of power always seemed to be exactly where I wanted it to be and I never found myself in the wrong gear which couldn't be said of the Tiger Sport, it seemed smoother too.  My wife had never been on the back of the Speed Triple as she had always ridden her own bike but as a pillion now she had her first outing on the Speed Triple and confirmed she much preferred it to the Tiger Sport, especially as she could just get on it without having to climb over the bike to get on.  After almost three years of ownership I decided that there was only room for one triple in the garage and it wasn't going to be the Tiger Sport so it was sold on to make room for a BMW R1200r.

If you want to find out what happened after that read my other posts, "my garage pt1 to 5"