Had my new (and first) Triumph America for a week now. My last bike was a Honda Shadow VT750. Thing I can't get my head around is top gear speed/revs. I have a reasonable understanding of torque and HP and I guess the Holy Grail for sports/street bikes is HP whereas cruisers it's torque.

I think once the revs reach maximum developed torque, then above that its a flat line. Please correct me if I'm wrong but for cruisers isn't it not best in top gear for the maximum torque to be at the legal limit? My Honda was doing 3500rpm (max torque of the bike) at 70mph. The America developes its max torque at 3300rpm but at 70mph it's 4000revs. Surely it could do with a 6th gear or taller gear ratios?

Please be gentle if I've got this completely wrong

I love the bike tho,

70mph is legal limit in UK on dual-carriageways and motorways but I looked on wikki and saw how confusing the limits are in the states...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States


Alan

There are 10 types of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't!