Taken delivery or taking delivery soon? (crate damage)

happytrails said:

Thanks for the heads up Ed. I passed it on to my dealer.

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Be sure to check the bottom front of the header pipe, right where the curve ends and it flattens out. You can't see it from the side -- you have to be ON the ground looking up at it. If I think of it tomorrow, I'll try to get a pic.

Other stuff that was damaged on mine:

- Besides the flat spot under the header pipe, the rear-most heat shield on the right side muffler is dented on the bottom so that it doesn't sit flush.
- Right side mirror has about a 1/2" scratch.
- Clutch reservoir has about a 1/4" scratch.
- Orange reflectors on the bottom sides of the forks were borked. They were swapping two from another one when I rolled in (the one I didn't take).

Dealer says Honda made the crates a little too small, probably to get a better rate on shipping. I probably would not have noticed any of these if they hadn't pointed them all out to me. At least not until I gave it a good stem-to-stern cleaning. But Honda will be replacing all of these parts. To be honest, I wouldn't even care, and would be just as happy if they wanted to give me, say, a $500 voucher for accessories.

happytrails said:

My Blue Deluxe is being uncrated Monday, for Next Fri. delivery.
Looking forward to break in miles on those twisty NC mountain roads in the next month, before returning to Islamorada for my summer Boy Scout sailing charters. Flat roads 45-55 mph on the Keys...still always love the bike for all my transportation. On the ST1300 with a Tour Master soft bag can hold a 12 pack in volume. Saddle bags , same volume as CTX, can get total of six bags of groceries. Always the way to travel! For any or no reason at all just ride!! Capt. Tom

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I am jealous. This bike is going to love those mountain roads.

sleepngbear said:

So you can look at it two ways -- Honda releases the bike when it's ready and we can complain that 'support materials' are not in place, or they wait and we complain that the bikes are not at the dealers in time for riding season for most of the northern hemisphere. I don't know about you, but I'd much rather be riding.

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For the most part, I agree completely. But in my case the lack of a taller windshield is preventing me from going a lot of the places I want to go, essentially shortening the riding season for me anyway. The windshield is scheduled to ship from Japan around May 1, then I have to wait for it to arrive and to get it installed. I will be lucky to have it all in place by mid-May, I think. The overly long winter this year is not helping the situation, either.

I just hope Honda is prioritizing the production of various accessories and making them available as soon as they are ready (even if it is piecemeal), rather than waiting until the whole line of accessory items is ready before releasing any of them. I would be perfectly willing to wait a lot longer for various chrome bits and pieces if it meant that I could get a FUNCTIONAL item for quickly. I bought the blacked-out Deluxe model partially because I am not a big fan of chrome decorations, so they can take as long as they want to show up on the parts list as far as I'm concerned.

After the windshield, I would like to see the center stand next, followed by the travel trunk (though I have no plans for buying one of those myself, I can see a demand for them among CTX1300 buyers).

I agree that Honda seems a bit behind on this launch. I expected to see a lot more marketing of this model, since it is supposed to be so revolutionary. The aftermarket companies don't have anything either, maybe because they want to wait to see how well the bike will do before committing any resources to making a new product. That's just good sense on their part, but frustrating for us early adopters.