Dame came into my office late in the afternoon. She had pearls, a yellow gold ring and yellow gold necklace dripping off a figure that should have been labelled a traffic hazard. She said she needed me to look into the value of a new gold bauble she was considering for her collection, a glittering orb she called the Throttle-R. She liked the racy gold/pearl accelerator covers and the triple cam shaft core. She said she needed something that would go long, move hard and plow through all opposition. For her number, the promise of a date and one-fifty an hour, I took the case.
The Throttle-R looked sleek and fast, gold with black trim. 15 pounds, it was drilled with the pin over the ring, with both pin and CG four inches from the PAP, giving it a 1:30 look. The stakeout went over lanes that were natural and synthetic, with and without enough conditioner to keep her hair looking silky, in patterns ranging from a crazy quilt to a molehill crown.
1. Length or did it go far enough? The TR went long all right, long on everything. The ball seemed to have a mind of its own, and a distance it planned on travelling before it moved off the straight and narrow. Oil and no oil were the same to it. It was going the big length.
2. How did it move? It soon became clear that the "accelerator" cover was no such thing and neither was the "breakpoint". With this ball, it should be called the break area. The core tried to rev and flare, but the ball flailed where the breakpoint should have been. I've seen stuff that doesn't want to go round the bend, but this one wouldn't turn the corner unless you spun the steering wheel left and kicked it. If you were willing to race it, maxing out its speed and revolutions, it turned the corner all right, but the effort was too much for me. Maybe the dame wouldn't mind, but it left me feeling tired and sore -- I just wanted to push the thing left.
3. How much did it move? Oh, it moved enough. It went left gradually, but continuously, like a college professor trying to get tenure at a liberal arts college -- and, as you might guess, wouldn't stop. Once it got started nothing would stop it, certainly not minimal carrydown. The sheer amount of the move made it look like it turned the corner better than it actually did -- a mirage that proved costly when playing against the spread.
4. How did it hit? Once it finished loping toward the pins, it threw them around like Aragorn tossed Gimli -- scattering stuff in its path. You want to keep this one on the light side, no heavy yellow gold here, so that the pins scatter rather than melt into fast eights or splits. On the whole, it hit a lot better than the move would have lead me to believe.
5. Control over the gold. The TR didn't overreact -- no, this one reacted more like a lazy hound dog, it got going when it had to, no more and no less. It'd move harder when cranked from the side, but never a hard overreaction. On a hard overblock, it recovered if sent to the right, though only as much as it would have anyway. Left, well, unless the lane was juiced, it went it's merry way and punch me right in the nose. It was a smooth pearl.
6. What's the report of this investigation? Frankly, Columbia should turn this Throttle off. The coverstock smooths out the core -- for the average Joe, way too much. As pretty as the gold cover is, for most of us, this one is fool's gold. Perhaps it's the worst core/cover combination I have tried. Maybe for the higher speed (20 mph+) higher rev player, this could be a winner, as for the very low rev, lower speed player. I wonder what the cam core would have done with the enhanced superflex they put on the Wicked. Now there would be a ball worthy of the gold.
I told the dame that this one was costume gold and she should go somewhere else if she wanted a longish, forgiving pearl with a controllable breakpoint. She decided on a Frenzy to help her get around the bend. It felt good. Me, I'm gonna stay away from these high rent baubles and keep in my Element.
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"I don't mind if you don't like my manners. I don't like them myself. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings."
