Passes & Canyons Blog

A stop up on Lolo Pass on this year’s OFMC trip.

We had a lot of long stretches on this recent OFMC trip and these are the times when cruise control or a throttle lock come in really handy. Some people just carry it a bit too far, though.

Bill is one of these people. Bill almost always has his cruise control engaged. Sometimes that is not a good thing.

I led most of the trip and I can’t count the times I looked back and Bill was way, way behind. And it’s not like I was going super fast. He just sets his cruise control and lets it go. He really hates to have to touch it. If Dennis was behind him I could tell immediately where they were because of Dennis’s super bright lights. If Dennis was in front of Bill I sometimes had to just assume Dennis was keeping tabs on him because I sure couldn’t see him back there.

What was worse, though, was when we were on multi-lane highways, when the speed Bill had set brought him up behind someone going moderately slower and he would then just creep past them. Never mind that other traffic was piling up behind him also wanting to go around this slower person, Bill wouldn’t touch his cruise control, they would just have to wait for him to finally get past and move over. This happened a lot.

Meanwhile, none of my bikes have cruise control. I have throttle locks on all of them but this is a less than perfect solution. Of course you slow down going up hills and speed up going down hills so I just nudge the throttle to compensate. Not a big deal as long as the thing holds you at speed.

Which they generally don’t. Usually they slip and you gradually go slower so you have to frequently tweak it to get back up to speed. But for some reason, on this trip, the throttle lock didn’t slip very much. There were times when I could go half an hour without touching my throttle lock, just cruising along. How nice. Wish it was like that all the time. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?

So it was with all this in mind that, following having the Kawi overheat coming up to the tunnel on the last day of the OFMC trip, that I started thinking that maybe I could consider trading the Kawi for something newer, lighter, and with more modern equipment–such as cruise control. That is an ongoing issue. I really don’t know what I’ll end up doing. But one thing I know for sure is that you’ll hear about here whenever any decisions get made.

Biker Quote for Today

Dreams and handlebars are two things worth holding onto.

This is the Kaoko throttle lock he had on his ST.

I was riding with the RMMRC recently and there was a new guy on his first ride with the group. I didn’t catch his name. What I did catch was that he had a throttle lock I’d never seen before.

Of course, the large percentage of modern touring bikes come with cruise control built in. Cruise control is superior to a throttle lock because you set the speed and the engine revs more going up hills and less going down so you stay a constant speed. With a throttle lock, unless you adjust it, you’ll slow down going up and speed up going down.

Plus, in my experience, they have a tendency to slip so you periodically have to adjust them.

And I do have extensive experience here. I have throttle locks on all three of my bikes. Two of them are the type that clip on the bar and to set it you snap it shut. With a flange braced against the box that houses your kill switch and starter button it stays in place and keeps the throttle from backing off.

The other kind, which I have on the V-Strom, is just a lever that rotates when you turn the throttle. To set it you push it forward with your thumb so when you release the throttle it rests against the brake lever, blocking the throttle from backing off.

The first kind, which I have on the CB750 and the Concours, works best. It can slip but you can tighten it. Still, I’ve never been able to get it set on the Concours so it doesn’t slip. The second kind would probably work best if it tightly grabbed the bar but at least on my V-Strom it does not. So it slips a lot and there is no adjustment. Basically I have to speed up more than I really want, set it, and then I have a short time to relax my grip before I have to do it again.

So I was very interested in this throttle lock on this Honda ST. It is made by Kaoko and it’s more expensive than the others: about $130 versus $15 to $20. What the guy told me is that he had to take the weight off the end of the bar and then jam the coned end inside the plastic tube that allows your throttle to rotate on the bar. Then to use it you push the knob forward and set the throttle where you want it. Then let go.

How well does it work? He didn’t say a lot about that but he sure didn’t complain about it. If you ask me about my throttle locks I’ll tell you about their deficiencies and well as their benefits.

So will I try one? Oh, maybe, but spending $130 on something that might not be better than what I have is a hard choice to make. What I would really like would be if the company offered to either give me one or let me try one so I can then test it and write about it. That’s how I get a lot of my gear. But if I do end up with one, one way or the another, you can bet I’ll be telling you about it here.

Biker Quote for Today

If I was a motorcycle, a Vincent red Rapide, I’d ride around to your house, baby, get you up to speed. — Mark Knopfler

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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Biker Quote for Today

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