Passes & Canyons Blog

My new throttle lock on my V-Strom.

Cruise control is nice, but pricey. I’ve always had a throttle lock on my bikes and now I have one on the V-Strom and it could not be a simpler device. That’s it at the left end of the grip in the picture above. And that’s all there is to it. You open the jaws enough to slip it onto the grip and then it rotates easily in what from this position would be forward, but does not slip in the other direction.

What that means is that when you twist the grip to speed up, the device rotates with the grip in a counter-clockwise direction. You then get up to cruising speed and, with your thumb, push the device in a clockwise direction until it is pressed against the brake lever. You can then let go of the grip and the device–pressed against the brake lever and therefore immobile–stops the throttle from rolling clockwise, backing off on the speed. When you do want to slow down you just roll off on the throttle manually and the device easily slips back to where it no longer comes into play. Rinse and repeat.

So how well does it work? Pretty darn well. First off, you need to twist the throttle a little beyond where you actually want it to sit because it does back off a little once you release it. So if you want to cruise at 70 you might get up to 73 or so, move the throttle lock into position against the brake lever, and let go. As for manually rolling off, you don’t even feel that the thing is there.

As with any throttle lock, if you don’t touch it you will slow down on uphills and speed up on downhills. What’s nice about this one is that if you have it set at a pretty good place you can just twist the throttle to speed up going uphill and it doesn’t affect the positioning, so as soon as you let go it goes right back where it was. If you don’t mind going a bit fast downhill you just don’t have to touch the thing once you’ve got it set.

This kind of thing is so much preferable to the other option I was looking for on this bike. Oh, and before I go any further, let me mention that this device is called the Go Cruise Throttle Control and it cost about $20. So anyway, on my Honda I have a throttle control that loops around the bar and has a flange that catches on a bit of hardware to hold it stationary. Then to engage it I flip the thumb tab down and it grips the throttle and holds it steady. I have the same thing on my Concours but there was no place for the flange to butt against anything to hold it in place so I had to experiment with various glues until I found one that would hold. That has worked on that bike for about 14 years now.

Neither of those options was going to work on the V-Strom. The only other workable unit I found would have required loosening things like the mirror to move it over to make room, then attaching a clamp around the bar over there, with a spanner that connects with a clamp on the grip. Again, you push the thumb clamp closed and it holds the throttle in place. But what a pain to do all that.

By contrast, this Go Cruise thing took about 15 seconds to install, and about 10 seconds was spent just getting a good enough grip to spread the jaws far enough to slip it on. I wasn’t quite sure at first that I would be able to get it on, it was that snug. But it has to be snug to work in the way I’ve described, and it did go on.

So now I’m set, and I like it. I know some guys ride without any kind of throttle control device and while you may be able to do that around town, if you’re out on the highway going hundreds of miles, that gets painful for your wrist. Me, I want a throttle lock. And now I have one on the Suzuki.

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I am taking the advice of all those people who told me, “Hey kid, why don’t you go play in traffic!”