Good long range bike
smaller than 750ccs? Nothing ! Thats too long of a trip for a small bike, go with a bigger bike like the V Strom 1000 or the Kawasaki Contours, ur going to have to climb the Rockeys, you don't wanta climb a long mountain road at 35 mph and have a long line of traffic behind you.
2011 Toyota Tacoma 4x4, 09 Yamaha Tmax, 08 Suzuki King Quad 750
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Sev
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I've got a friend who went on a 1200km trip over 2 days with me on his 1984 Yamaha Maxim. Most any bike will get you there, it's all a matter of comfort and skill after that.
Of course I'm generalizing from a single example here, but everyone does that. At least I do.
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You don't need a 750cc engine to go up a hill. My 30HP bike will climb any hill I've found (and I live in the mountains and know some pretty steep long grinding straight hills) as fast as any car on the road. It'll take hills where most cars are slowing down to 55MPH at 70 and still accelerate.
It's a bad idea to choose a bike by CCs for this sort of trip... or at all... my 250 has the same hp as some 750s... a Vulcan 500 LTD has more horsepower than most 800cc cruisers, and so on. If you have 35-50HP you'll be fine.
The real issue for mountains is handling. I took a fun ride last night after work, looping through some local mountain roads...
I started at Mt. Baldy, went up to about 5500MSL (per the GPS), turned around and took Glendora Ridge Road to old Hwy 39. A pretty good website for pics of this route is this one (which is not mine)... Which gets back to TechTMW's advice about the KLR650 of course...
some nice pics of the KLR, which would be a good choice for the proposed trip.
Anyway, I had no problem going along as fast as the turns...well, as my skill... permitted... and I had no problem climbing some steep hills in the process... though there weren't any really steep hills along that route. More like steep hills in corners (I had to downshift to 1st...lots of skidmarks on those corners) heading up Mt Baldy... then it was pretty much level the rest of the way.
It's a bad idea to choose a bike by CCs for this sort of trip... or at all... my 250 has the same hp as some 750s... a Vulcan 500 LTD has more horsepower than most 800cc cruisers, and so on. If you have 35-50HP you'll be fine.
The real issue for mountains is handling. I took a fun ride last night after work, looping through some local mountain roads...
I started at Mt. Baldy, went up to about 5500MSL (per the GPS), turned around and took Glendora Ridge Road to old Hwy 39. A pretty good website for pics of this route is this one (which is not mine)... Which gets back to TechTMW's advice about the KLR650 of course...
some nice pics of the KLR, which would be a good choice for the proposed trip. Anyway, I had no problem going along as fast as the turns...well, as my skill... permitted... and I had no problem climbing some steep hills in the process... though there weren't any really steep hills along that route. More like steep hills in corners (I had to downshift to 1st...lots of skidmarks on those corners) heading up Mt Baldy... then it was pretty much level the rest of the way.
Ride it like you think owning it matters.