The Bruiser Brothers: Honda’s VT800C Shadow and VF750C Magna Article's Headline - You say motorcycling has an image problem, and we say you’re nuts. You still meet the nicest people on a Honda - it’s just that now they’re wearing stick-on tattoos rather than Madras-print Bermudas.   Let’s hear it for men’s motorcycles. There’s enough about the 1980s to make a hard-drinking, bar-trashing, chain-smoking, truss wearing man mad as hell...peach-and-lavender restaurant motifs; his-and-her BMWs; no-fat, low-cholesterol burritos; decorator exercise salons; legions of uppity professional women all fully qualified to take over the company chairpersonship. Whatever happened to those timeless virtues - sex, drugs, rock-and-roll and a choice of air-headed chicks for passengers? At least some motorcycles remain as bastions of a man’s world. Machines like Honda’s Shadow and Magna. These babies pack enough chrome and phallus imagery to rival the Washington Monument. Colors: Forget today’s trendy blendings of purple, beige and chicken-yellow - these bikes come in only strong-hued red and black around honest, basic forms. Honda hasn’t blister-packed its customs in sport-bike plastic-wrap bodywork - the Magna and Shadow look like motorcycles not egg-mobiles; they meet the eye in metal-to-metal contact. Weight: There’s none of this pound-saving technology designed to make motorcycling palatable to the watercress crowd here - the 800 and 750 have manly heft. They’re Hunk-bikes - the Magna press to earth with 530-odd pounds, and the Shadow, with 541 pounds, outweighs the V-four. Both saddles are low cut - 28.1 inches and 27.5 inches respectively - but that won’t help many women: Honda stretched the Magna and Shadow with limo-length wheelbases (66.0 and 63.5 inches) God-fearing wheel sizes (19-inch fronts, 15-inch rears) and conservative frame geometry, so these jock bikes happily lack the power-steering characteristics preferred by society’s child-bearers. Yes - we’re aware that somebody’s mother somewhere ride a Magna or Shadow, but don’t write to tell us; we don’t want to hear about it. What’s so wrong with a man’s world anyway, even if it is almost 1990? Honda’s Magna and Shadow take dead aim on a male audience; that’s clear from the first look. The Magna trumpets the American hot-rod theme with air-exhaust grills cut into its sidepanels, a massive engine showcased between bright red fuel tank and lower bib-cowling, four individual mufflers canted up like blooie-pipes, and a disc-style rear wheel finished in high dazzle. The Magna may roll on a whispering exhaust note, but its entrance is a blaring event nonetheless. The Shadow, with more chrome and contrived doodad-ation than a heavymetal band, is hardly less restrained. Chunky, finned cylinders really reach for the rough-hewn look Milwaukee made famous. The twin’s wire wheels, 56 spokes a hoop, recall days of yore; indeed, this Honda hides its radiator and water plumbing like a covert operation. At all points the Shadow is circumspect, almost apologetic, about it’s technology; it uses modern engineering only to get back to a time when motorcycles were rough-and-ready V-twins - and men had ham and eggs for breakfast. Though united in male bonding, the Magna and Shadow trade on distinctively different themes. The engines establish the machine’s identities with power - and the way it’s made. Honda may have beaten a strategic retreat from the 90-degree V-four concept (slow sellers get retired), but the Magna’s V-four is simply a wonderful engine. Power rolls out effortlessly, with a flat, hollow sounding exhaust note trailing behind. Want an engine that will cruise along the avenue, tucked away in fifth gear, buring nonchalantly at 1500 rpm without a trace of gear snatch from the driveline? The Magna obliges. Want an engine that has the same electric smoothness everywhere - 1000 or 10,000 rpm, and at all points in between? That’s the Magna. Do you like a civil engine that’s as unflappable as a narcoleptic? Or one that absolutely runs and guns at its redline? It’s the Magna V-four on both counts. The VF750C’s four-cylinder operates with precision, assurance and power. The engine can be as invisible - or omni-present - as the rider wishes; it’s just a matter of wrist angle. On a 55-mph byway the V-four settles into a hum and recedes into the background like a fading image in the rear-view mirror. Get stacked up behind slow moving traffic and the Magna offers its rider a series of options: lever around the dawdlers in sixth - or nick down to fifth or fourth and blast clear. Over in Shadowland, the VT800C engine creates a different kind of ride. This narrow-angle V-twin patiently beats along, ever-present, softly pounding, with the slow-moving rhythm of a distant kettle drum. For years Honda has designed and refined narrow-angle V-twins that use staggered crankpins to control primary imbalance, and, thus, engine vibration. This system does not leave these V-twins glass smooth, nor - do we imagine - did Honda engineers intend it to do so. More likely, the object was to rid the motorcycle of surface-level quaking and shaking - while leaving a clear, though submerged, back beat of rumbling vibration. In the 800 Shadow, this system works. A rider senses the engine vibration as the Shadow lumbers along; yet, a careful monitoring of pegs, seat and handlebar reveals suprisingly little buzzing at normal, steady-state highway speeds. Always the rider is aware of the Shadow’s engine. In part, the V-twin’s prominent exhaust note explains that impression. The government’s decibel-meter does not discriminate between the quality of sounds; it simply measures sound energy, whether it’s gnashing straight-cut gears or a melodious exhaust. Since liquid-cooling smothers much of the internal engine noise, the Shadow’s exhaust system can be louder than otherwise. Furthermore, the rider soon recognizes that the four-speed Shadow, chugging forward, spends a fair amount of time in each of its lower three gears.The V-twin pulses and throbs as it accelerates and pulls against the load of tall gearing. The four-speed box represents a sort of “de-teching” - an end-run into the past; yet this wide-ratio transmission places greater focus on the engine, and its basic pulling power. The Shadow engine is certainly capable of spanning the chasms between gears, and seldom to conditions demand more than a 4500-rpm effort from the V-twin. Given the Shadow’s gearbox and gearing, the engine’s sweetest zone - about 3000 rpm to 4500 rpm - covers quite a range of road speeds. On the highway, the 800C lopes at an indicated 3500 rpm at about 60 mph; 70 mph has the crank churning at 4000 rpm While engine speeds above four-five produce vibration, at highway speeds, with the transmission parked in top, all remains placid on the control deck, save a far-away rumble in the handgrips. But the exhaust note - pocka, pocka, pocka - reminds the rider that the big V-twin, though droopy-eyed, is still at work. As the import barrier to 750cc motorcycles drops away, the displacement of 700cc Japanese bikes naturally jumps back up to full-displacement - 750cc and beyond. Honda’s original Shadow arrived on these shores in 1983 with a 79.5 x 75.5 750-engine. Uncle Sam’s five-year tariff program begat the sleeved-down Shadow 700. Todays realities bring us the 79.5 x 80.6mm VT800C, about the maximum displacement Honda figures this basic package can carry. On similar fashion the Magna V-four has done the old 750-700-750 two-step. Hello, 1982: the 70 x 48.6mm Magna 750 debuts. Quick cuts, 1984: the 70 x 45.4mm 700 arrives. Revival, 1988: back to the original stroke and 750cc displacement. The Magna V-four has endured through the first and second generations of the VF and VFR Interceptors - both come and gone by 1988. Like the original 750 Sabre and VF 750, this 750 Magna engine uses a 360-degree crankshaft and chain-driven double-overhead camshafts. Thus, the VF750C unit is technologically quite different from Honda’s last V-four sport bike engine, the VFR750 Interceptor, which had gear-driven overhead cams and a 180-degree crankshaft. Ergonomically, the original cruisers were disaster areas. In a short time, however, power-cruisers - like the Magna and Yamaha’s V-Max - improved mightily. That left style-cruisers - those V-twins bearing a Milwaukee imprint - as examples of the “no-gain/ real pain” school of motorcycling. Then a couple of things happened to change our perception of cruiser ergonomics: Style-cruisers inched slowly but steadily toward comfort while, at the same time, motorcycles like Suzuki’s GSX-R750 demonstrated how uncomfortable street riding could be made by road-going track bikes. Both the Magna and the Shadow are more comfortable and functional than they first appear. Neither is hampered by the sort of goof-ball handlebars which guaranteed discomfort on first-generation cruisers, but the Shadows riding posture is more passive than the Magna’s. The VT saddle/peg layout, for instance, cants the upper body slightly backward, requiring a conscious reach forward to the handlebar. This body stance, along with somewhat awkwardly placed foot controls, discourages energetic riding, and anyone unfamiliar with the far-forward footpeg positioning is likely to miss the peg altogether when setting out from a stop. Spatial relationships are reasonable for riders with 30-inch inseams; they fit naturally into the saddle without pushing up against the seat’s rear “collar.” Our long-legged staffer (35-inch inseam), however, could never slide back far enough to get comfortable. The Magna - with its pegs placed more conventionally than the Shadow - promotes a fairly standard body stance: insoles behind a line dropped vertically from the knees; head and shoulders forward of the riders belt-buckle. While the Shadow offers a wide, flat seat adorned with buttons, the Magna’s saddle is a bit narrower, with deeper cushioning and a more rounded crown. The Magna seat is the more comfortable of the two, in part because the scoop-shovel VT perch packs down after 100 miles or so and begins to burn the rider’s backside. Moreover, the VF’s ergonomic layout allows greater latitude for body movement; unlike the Shadow’s, the Magna’s stepped seat won’t get in the way of six-four riders. Despite their tough-guy looks, these cruisers are reasonably easy on their pilots. Suspensions, calibrated for boulevard and highway running, are stone simple: no adjustable anything, save spring preload on the dual rear shocks. Front forks effectively soak up such road surface irregularities as Bott’s Dots, but the rear units demonstrate some design trade-offs. The VF and VT are heavy motorcycles with elemental and unsophisticated rear suspension systems. Stiff springs on relatively short-travel shocks minimize the torque reaction from the shaft-drive units. But such a system produces, in turn, a very firm, sometimes unyielding ride - even at minimum preload. Because of these suspension limitations, the ride quality of both the Magna and the Shadow depends on road surface more than anything else. When either bike runs across concrete pavement that has slabs out of alignment, or when they must cope with rough, undulating pavement, they return a similarly harsh, jarring ride, even with the preload adjuster on full soft or one up from soft. But get the bikes out on smooth pavement, and they’re fairly personable. The Shadow tests endurance more than the Magna. The VT’s seat is less comfortable, and the 800’s ergonomics require a rider to steady himself against the windblast by pulling on the bar. Nevertheless, the Shadow can glide along on smooth, straight routes for 125 miles, though its pilot will be happy to see the low-fuel light wink on at 135 miles. The Magna is the superior traveling companion; while the VF’s rider must switch to reserve at 145 miles, he can easily ride out the bike’s full range - 180 miles. Real men ought to have real intelligence and never confuse themselves with real road racers like Wayne Gardner. Likewise, the VF750 and VT800 should never be confused or compared with a VFR750 Interceptor. Backroad chicanery - the faster, the nastier - has both these cruisers out of their element, and the bikes actively resist such treatment. Through fast turns, the Magna’s hard-mounted exhaust system grounds ominously. The Shadow’s alert is more sophisticated - and perhaps less insidious. It’s footpeg position allows the rider’s boot heels to drag on the pavement before the peg touches down. When the fold-up peg grounds out, it can rap his foot smartly, or, if he’s napping, clean his foot right off the peg. It’s an effective deterrent to fast riding on curvy roads. According to motorcycle lore, the American cruiser scores better on curves of the pillon-tootsie kind. Maybe yes, maybe no, but expert testers can certainly vouch for this much: Passengers will prefer the Magna. Although pillon persons reach their limit within an hour on both bikes, the Magna’s seat offers the preferred accommodations; it’s firmer and more deeply padded than the pillow-style VT saddle, which looks allot better than it sits. The Shadow also vibrates more than the Magna, quaking its passenger seat when revs climb above 4500 rpm. Still, that’s an infrequent bother. A more pressing annoyance is the Magna’s passenger footpeg location- up and far forward - dictated by the organ-pipes muffles. The toe of the passenger’s boots easily contacts the rider’s heel, and pushing off from a standing start, the rider must keep his foot from banking into the passenger’s foot. Finally, both bikes would benefit by having some sort of sissy bar, especially the Magna’ whose peg layout tips the pillon-rider rearward. Say you want perfect comfort for guests? Go buy a Gold Wing or rent out a first-class hotel suite. The Magna and Shadow are pleasant enough for short-term acquaintances. And guys who are genuinely lucky might discover that special pillon-person who is more interested in the man than his machine.