At the risk of offending the blokes who only ride motor bikes....
has any one experience, or can direct me to anyone,of riding say the 400 cc scooters like the Suzuki Burgman for touring or the bigger Honda.
Elsewhere I'm considering buying an older BMW R65 but due to my legs being pain and difficult to get over high bikes im considering also step though scooter to tour on.
I have an old Honda super dream but im finding it to heavy and to high, although a relaible old bike.Also loaded up with luggage it seems to slow to a slow pace, as im not a slim guy, or light.
If i chose a scooter to tour i assume i could still fit luggage to it?

Check out Simon Gandolfi's blog. He did a rather longish Central/South American/US tour on a 125cc Honda at 75 years of age. Note the crutches. simon gandolfi



Seems like the choice of bike is what suits you best, not what someone else thinks you should ride.

At the first North Carolina HU meet I met a young man who had ridden down from New Jersey on a 50cc Honda scooter. He was later spotted in California touring the redwoods.

Pick what you like and smile every mile.

__________________
Jim

Hi,

I ride a Yamaha TMAX 500 scooter, I moved to it from a BMW R1100RS as I found the sports tourer riding position uncomfortable ( rheumatoid arthitis affecting my hip joints does not help). The feet forward riding postion is very good for comfort of the legs. Weight-wise it looks heavy on paper at 205kg but the weight is very-very low down. I use mine for two-up and longer distance runs, on the road excellent good handling and good engine. Picture below shows the TMAX fully loaded with camp gear for two at the 07 hubb meet (underseat storage, top box and also gear can be bungeed to seat), it also performed well on the road rideout that year keeping up with the lead rider who was on an XT600 through snakes pass.


Only gripes are the seat height is a little tall, the 400cc ones might be better. I chose the TMAX as it was the scooter closest to a motorcycle in terms of handling ( I also ride a home built 1984 Moto Morini Kanguro Special), as the engine is not mounted on the rear wheel and it has a twin cylinder engine. Most scooters being single cylinders. Very comfy and highly recommended.

Regards

Robin

thank you for your comment
Do you find then reliable..i have my eyes on a 400 Burgman, but im unsure whether this needs to upgrade to 650 or the bigger Honda..ive not seen reviews of the Yamaha.
I have an old Honda but find it hard to get leg over due to problems with legs so its why i was interested in scooter.
Do you find yu need panniers when touring?

Hi,

The bike has been reliable with only one issue the battery, I fitted a new varta battery which failed 6 months in then got the warranty replacement and had a regulator failure a few months on which boiled that battery. As my scooter has an immobiliser/alarm I would recommend with any of these scooters the use of a trickle charger to keep the battery topped up. Regarding panniers, on most scooters they are quite wide so fitting of panniers would make them wider and may affect handling. If you are not travelling two-up I personally would get a big waterproof stuff bag and bungee it to the rear seat. The 400's seem very popular, the burgmann 650 is probably the heaviest of the scooters but I have seen only good reports and they seem better on fuel economy than even my 500. There is a maxi scooter group on yahoo that could give more info on these and more, link below:-

maxi-scooters : Maxi-Scooter Club

Regards

Robin

My wife and I rode two Vespa PX200E from Cape Town to Nairobi, averaging 300 km/day for the entire 6.000 km distance.

Touring on scooters is fine as long as there are roads wherever you are going. The small wheels and the up right riding position make them very easy to navigate. Where you need to use muscles to guide a motorcycle, telepathy will do for a scooter. At reasonable speeds, I bet a scooterist will outlast a biker in the saddle before caving in from exhaustion. Unfortunately, these small wheels also means you quickly can get into trouble if the surface you ride on is badly potholed, wash boarded, rocky, muddy, snowy or sandy. You can still get by, but with much greater effort than if you had an off-roader, and at much slower speeds, and at a higher risk of getting into an accident or having your ride break down. Several Vespa scooters have for instance competed in the Dakar rally, though none very successfully.

Another drawback with scooters is that they do not lend themselves well to hauling around a lot of stuff. They do, but just not very well. I've seen scooters with four Givi boxes stacked on top of each other, scooters with trailers, scooters with side cars (I own one), and various other solutions.

As for hauling stuff, you have the following options:

• A rack on the leg shield on front of the scooter. Due to our poor range, we had to carry two 10 liter Jerry cans, one which we kept here, the other which we kept on the foot board. This rack should however not be used for such heavy loads as it impairs the handling.
• A day pack, like a backpack, which you can keep between your legs on the foot board, maybe on top of a small Jerry can. However, this defeats the purpose of having a ride which is easy to stride.
• Top Case. A scooter is already very heavy in its rear as the engine and transmission is located here. Adding more weight on the back of the scooter will impair its handling. Therefore, I highly recommend that a top case is mounted in such a way that it does not hang out behind the scooter, but rather in such a way that it occupies the pillion seat. The drawback of this solution is that you cannot ride two-up, and it also reduces your options for adjusting your riding position. We still opted for this solution and had a specially constructed rack made to hold a 60 liter Zargas Aluminum Case. Just make sure you construct everything in such a way that you can refuel easily. We removed the bench seat all together and opted for a saddle type seat with spring shock absorbers. Although this solution makes the scooter a bit top heavy, the weight is still pretty well centered.
• Side Panniers. As the rear of a scooter is often wide and low to the ground, side panniers don't work well. Racks for side panniers will need to be tailored specifically, which can be both difficult and expensive, and probably with som crappy device as the end result. Your scooter will not only become very wide, with greater effortrs having to be made to balance the scooter, but your luggage will also likely come close to the ground, making leaning into tight bends or riding on uneven surfaces a bit of a gamble. Another problem with this solution is that getting access to the wheel or engine can often be very difficult, unless you were abnormally clever in engineering your rack.

In my opinion, all the stuff you carry with you should you be able to store in a "safe" locked compartment or in a day pack which you take with you whenever you leave your scooter/bike - this leaves out soft saddle bags, open racks with your gear tied down to it, etc.

As for our ride, we are talking about a very unreliable 60's technology with extremely short range and with a tight time schedule which did not allow for lengthy stops waiting for things to get fixed. We had to carry half a scooter in spare parts, lots of fuel and tons of tools - these things alone weighed about 70 kg in total - fortunately divided between two scooters. If you were to ride a more modern scooter, with the time to wait for a rear part to be shipped in by DHL if you should need it, you would probably get away with a fifth of this stuff.

The reason I chose a scooter was because I have a special fascination for vintage Vespas. I would never have considered it otherwise. To bad I had to have a fascination for one of the most unreliable and poor performing scooters out there. You would do far better on something more modern and with more hp. I really enjoyed my trip though, and will do more touring on scooters in the future. My next really big trip however will likely be on a semi offroad motorcycle like a BMW 800 GS or F 650 GS Dakar
as I will likely have my son with me as a pillion. I know of people however who tour two up on old Vespas, with great success, so I know it can be done.

Considering your leg, the step in benefit of the scooter will surely serve you well. But, if you load that scooter very heavy, all those benefits will be consumed by poor handling. The places accessible to you by a scooter will always have food, shelter and fuel close by anyways - you won't go very far out into the bush with this type of a ride. You will not need camping gear, lots of extra fuel, etc, other than to get you through an emergency . even in Africa. Travel as light as you can, and you will be fine.

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