"...doing just that" = "people who don't want to see the facts for what they are, call me a "hater"."
Please re-read my post here:
http://brammoforum.com/index.php?topic=2898.msg21395#msg21395"- but after discussing stuff like transmissions for fully 5 years, with some very knowledgeable engineers contributing, to have an Empulse owner get on with little or no knowledge of the physics and simply parrot what Brammo was touting rubbed a lot of people the wrong way."
Subjective accounts without hard data was completely counter-productive to what we were trying to accomplish. And 5 years of "verbal jousting" gets a little old, especially when someone in your position could have called up Richard and run some numbers.
(Of course, the server is down again, so I can't see that link, but thanks for posting it. I'd tried to find it to post it here.)
edit: Perfect example. The post you were responding to was by a guy who is one of the foremost bike and powertrain designers and engineers on the planet. You'd know him by name. His forum style leaves a lot to be desired, and he came close to being banned, but if you don't pay attention to what he's saying you're going to be missing some brilliant engineering experience. Of course, you wouldn't know this if you weren't privvy to several years of his posts (and substantiated it by doing an IP search as a moderator). He also does seem to have a very personal beef with Brammo, and I can only guess why that is. At one point he gave me some very nasty information about Brammo and told me I should post it on the forum, and I told him to stop being a bitch and post it himself if he believed it was true. He didn't.
Three other of the responders were some pretty respectable talents in their own rights. Nuts and Volts is one of the builders of the first Ohio State Buckeye Current IOM bike. So right off, you're strolling into a party where some of the top engineering talent on the forum (really, in the world) is chatting away, and you decided to come out swinging in your very first sentence. Every one of the guys who you called "armchair engineers" have built several bikes each. They've all built bikes that are 120mph+, too. These are garage built bikes that can smoke both an Empulse and a '14 Zero SR.
Here, for the record, is my response to your post:
http://elmoto.net/brammo/2835-city-bike-reviews-empulse-2.html#post35882 "liked" by ElmotoMaster - Mike, the owner of the forum.
Here also is "mechanic"s response with some very solid engineering information:
http://elmoto.net/brammo/2835-city-bike-reviews-empulse-2.html#post35888 Seriously, if you knew who he was, you'd lock yourself in the closet crying.
Keep in mind, that entire thread, and the one here as well, was spawned by a review where the writer had the nerve to find fault with Brammo's precious transmission. It was joined by two relative newcomers, you and flar, both Empulse owners and not builders or engineers.
So, yeah. Have I cleared that up?
Speaking of the thread here, this post, by the way, astounded me, in that it was coming from one of the top management of Brammo:
I think elmoto is more of a home for diy builders at this point. Zero owners seem to have adopted electricmotorcycleforum.com as their go to the forum and other diyers collect on endlesssphere.com too.
I'm just glad that this remains the fortress of solitude for Brammo owners.
Agreed. I really appreciate the opinions and constructive debate that takes place on this forum. I noticed the attempts to recover the conversation over on the elmoto forum, but I'm afraid that they are too far gone... we must leave them behind to slave in their garages and curse every idea that is not their own. It was obvious that the better the Empulse turned out to be, the more angry they would become. So... I'm glad they're pissed.
Really? How can Brammo (and yes, Brian equates to Brammo - he can't have it both ways, though he's tried to for years now) make a post like this and not piss people off? Even after a nice, civil email exchange (we've been exchanging emails for years), I pretty much resigned myself to being labeled a "hater" by them.
What Brian conveniently forgets to mention was the days back when he was getting some great advice and feedback from those angry garage builders - a few of them still in the group in that very thread.
As long as I keep getting sucked back on this thread, I'll add I think a lot of the "us vs them" mentality at Brammo comes also from the racing efforts. It's one of the reasons I'm not a fan of racing, and I've seen it in both the fanboy posts as well as in Brian's posts. I think it's impossible to leave the competition at the track, and in the case of the fans, some of the most amazingly ignorant and offensive crap is posted discussing the tech and brand once it's "your team", as well as "your brand".
I also have read repeated statements about how racing has helped the development of the tech. I'd like some hard examples of that. The 2014 Zero SR, and now the 2015 is arguably fully on par with the tech of the Empulse, and fully on par from a performance standpoint with no company racing program, and Brammo has not offered any upgrades in the Empulse for two years now. Where's all that drivetrain R/D going?
Please don't come out of the gate swinging in response to this, just give me some facts I can believe.
