James Deuce
12th July 2015, 23:16
I read a lot of crap about bikes. One thing I've picked up is that the primary reason for selecting a purchase is what other people will think of what you ride. Also that Kawasakis are disappointing piles of poo that show huge promise but fail to deliver on the fit, finish, refinement, and suspension that suspends that you can take for granted with other similarly priced brands.
So you go out and buy bikes that are ridiculously single focus and put up with piles, cramp, severe neck pain, arthritic agony, torsion of testes, DVTs and persistent impotence in the search for peer approval.
There's a bloke at work who has peculiar criteria for buying bikes. 1. He only rides bikes. 2. He has to be able to carry a week's worth of shopping home from the supermarket.
But he's not a "badass", nor is he a condescending "super-commuter", or a gnarled and beaten single-minded bike-bore. I've bought two of his cast offs now. The first was an XJR1300 that he'd left in the shed when he went mental and sold his Kawasaki Mean Streak and bought a Versys 650 and Harley Davidson Night Train in the same fortnight, "because". That sort of attitude reinforces the realisation you get with age that the bike doesn't actually matter. Anything is fine. Anything is much better than nothing.
I had to spend quite a lot on that XJR1300 because even a short period of neglect means that there are a horde of niggles to be defeated before you can feel confident that everything is trustworthy. The new seat cover. The fork seals. New horns. The rotten mirror stems. Then there was the 2 sets of Pilot Road 2's in 6000kms. The unsolvable fork seal leak/destroyed fork seal cycle. The rolling burn outs away from the lights that you were unaware you were even doing (not a bad thing btw). The stripped oil filter bolt thread that required a helicoil in the engine case that just put me off all together.
So my workmate ditches the Night Train and buys a Wee-Strom 650 with all the fruit. Now he has two bikes that are nominally "the same". A tentative approach nets a positive response to me saving the Versys 650 before it ends up in the shed.
Then it started. They're "vibey". It's a bit of a "girl's" bike. The 160/60x17 rear will "limit" tyre choice. It has a 17" front so it isn't a "real" adventure bike. Whatever the hell that is. All bikes are an adventure. It's "ugly". So were most of the people making comments about aesthetics. A Wee-Strom 650 is properly ugly.
It's none of those things. Except slightly challenged in the looks department. I'll give you that. Just pick up a mirror before you cast judgment. I've seen some of you and I've seen some of the bikes you ride. Stoned in the glasshouse and all that.
It came with Givi V35 panniers and aftermarket bars and red, anodised bar-end weights. The bar-end weights don't really help with the looks, but you do focus on them when you see my Versys, so it lessens the overall potential negative impact a little. It has Grip Puppies too. Where have THEY been all my life? I've added some swingarm spools in tasteful black and aluminium and a hugger, because I realised the giant ball of clay under the seat was actually the reg/rec and its heat-sink. My Versys is burnt orange. I really like the colour. Less garish than Kawasaki orange or lime green. A little bit classy and staid, but at least it isn't entirely black or white or a combination of black or white which is what most bikes in this price range seem to be now.
Being a good dude, the workmate put a fresh set of Bridgestone T30s on the bike and 3 month's registration and organised an escorted ride away from the Hutt, on the proviso I never return again.
The first ride was a revelation. It's like a torquey 400. It revs to 5 figures, but you don't need to. It wheelies a bit easier than you'd expect for a "girl's" bike. You have to be doing silly stuff before the KTM 1190 Adventure-mounted dude starts to get away from you. The panniers aren't really necessary for anything except touring or doing the shopping. It's not tank bag friendly. At all. Top gear overtakes are a "thing" I thought I'd lose along with the other 650cm3 I lost compared to the XJR. Didn't though. Surprisingly willing for a detuned ER6 engine.
If this thing is vibey, what sort anodyne blancmanges are the rest of you riding? It's alive, but it doesn't make your hands go numb, or shake at idle or buzz through the pegs and bars. It's a parallel twin so it lumps a long a bit and gets about 20 km/l. The fuel gauge sucks. If it gets down to one bar and you hurry to the petrol pump you're usually putting about 10 litres of fuel in. It's a 19 litre tank, so now we know just how stupid Kawasaki thinks its customers are.
Which brings us to the other bit where the Kawasaki design team sit around and drink sake while the accountants put big, thick, angry red lines through the proposed equipment manifest for the suspension. I don't know if the suspension feels like it's working because it's slightly better spec than the usual over-damped under-sprung componentry Kawasaki inflict on this level of the market. Suspension that somehow manages to wallow about when pushed a bit as well as smashing all your teeth out as it crashes from tiny rut to wee piece of gravel. Maybe being much longer travel than the usual sticks and biro springs means that some oil gets moved about through the damping mechanism at each end. But it does feel like it's doing something.
Get the tyre pressures even slightly wrong though and it all turns to steel-reinforced custard. The T30s are super sensitive to pressure changes and the front dropped from 36psi to 34psi over the last couple of weeks which meant it went from being very precise in terms of steering and dialing in lean angle to wandering about and needing course corrections throughout a corner arc. It also made the bike feel like the suspension action at either end of the bike was completely separate, with the front jack hammering away at normal road bumps and surface changes while the rear digs in and tracks smoothly. I've settled on 35psi Front and 38psi rear as the most harmonious choice and full preload at the rear and rebound on the middle setting. The front is a couple of clicks back from max preload and rebound is on minimum. Everything works together that way.
After a big heavy bike with relatively old tech Pilot Road 2s, the T30s on a light bike feel like magic to me. I went for a ride in the rain today and I can't remember the last time I looked forward to riding in the rain rather than enduring it. The Versys' bodywork somehow conspires to keep you fairly dry, the screen directs the air onto your visor like a Dyson hand dryer and the T30s have genuine feel and grip in the wet.
I'm properly happy with my "girl's" bike. It makes me want to go for a ride.
313656
So you go out and buy bikes that are ridiculously single focus and put up with piles, cramp, severe neck pain, arthritic agony, torsion of testes, DVTs and persistent impotence in the search for peer approval.
There's a bloke at work who has peculiar criteria for buying bikes. 1. He only rides bikes. 2. He has to be able to carry a week's worth of shopping home from the supermarket.
But he's not a "badass", nor is he a condescending "super-commuter", or a gnarled and beaten single-minded bike-bore. I've bought two of his cast offs now. The first was an XJR1300 that he'd left in the shed when he went mental and sold his Kawasaki Mean Streak and bought a Versys 650 and Harley Davidson Night Train in the same fortnight, "because". That sort of attitude reinforces the realisation you get with age that the bike doesn't actually matter. Anything is fine. Anything is much better than nothing.
I had to spend quite a lot on that XJR1300 because even a short period of neglect means that there are a horde of niggles to be defeated before you can feel confident that everything is trustworthy. The new seat cover. The fork seals. New horns. The rotten mirror stems. Then there was the 2 sets of Pilot Road 2's in 6000kms. The unsolvable fork seal leak/destroyed fork seal cycle. The rolling burn outs away from the lights that you were unaware you were even doing (not a bad thing btw). The stripped oil filter bolt thread that required a helicoil in the engine case that just put me off all together.
So my workmate ditches the Night Train and buys a Wee-Strom 650 with all the fruit. Now he has two bikes that are nominally "the same". A tentative approach nets a positive response to me saving the Versys 650 before it ends up in the shed.
Then it started. They're "vibey". It's a bit of a "girl's" bike. The 160/60x17 rear will "limit" tyre choice. It has a 17" front so it isn't a "real" adventure bike. Whatever the hell that is. All bikes are an adventure. It's "ugly". So were most of the people making comments about aesthetics. A Wee-Strom 650 is properly ugly.
It's none of those things. Except slightly challenged in the looks department. I'll give you that. Just pick up a mirror before you cast judgment. I've seen some of you and I've seen some of the bikes you ride. Stoned in the glasshouse and all that.
It came with Givi V35 panniers and aftermarket bars and red, anodised bar-end weights. The bar-end weights don't really help with the looks, but you do focus on them when you see my Versys, so it lessens the overall potential negative impact a little. It has Grip Puppies too. Where have THEY been all my life? I've added some swingarm spools in tasteful black and aluminium and a hugger, because I realised the giant ball of clay under the seat was actually the reg/rec and its heat-sink. My Versys is burnt orange. I really like the colour. Less garish than Kawasaki orange or lime green. A little bit classy and staid, but at least it isn't entirely black or white or a combination of black or white which is what most bikes in this price range seem to be now.
Being a good dude, the workmate put a fresh set of Bridgestone T30s on the bike and 3 month's registration and organised an escorted ride away from the Hutt, on the proviso I never return again.
The first ride was a revelation. It's like a torquey 400. It revs to 5 figures, but you don't need to. It wheelies a bit easier than you'd expect for a "girl's" bike. You have to be doing silly stuff before the KTM 1190 Adventure-mounted dude starts to get away from you. The panniers aren't really necessary for anything except touring or doing the shopping. It's not tank bag friendly. At all. Top gear overtakes are a "thing" I thought I'd lose along with the other 650cm3 I lost compared to the XJR. Didn't though. Surprisingly willing for a detuned ER6 engine.
If this thing is vibey, what sort anodyne blancmanges are the rest of you riding? It's alive, but it doesn't make your hands go numb, or shake at idle or buzz through the pegs and bars. It's a parallel twin so it lumps a long a bit and gets about 20 km/l. The fuel gauge sucks. If it gets down to one bar and you hurry to the petrol pump you're usually putting about 10 litres of fuel in. It's a 19 litre tank, so now we know just how stupid Kawasaki thinks its customers are.
Which brings us to the other bit where the Kawasaki design team sit around and drink sake while the accountants put big, thick, angry red lines through the proposed equipment manifest for the suspension. I don't know if the suspension feels like it's working because it's slightly better spec than the usual over-damped under-sprung componentry Kawasaki inflict on this level of the market. Suspension that somehow manages to wallow about when pushed a bit as well as smashing all your teeth out as it crashes from tiny rut to wee piece of gravel. Maybe being much longer travel than the usual sticks and biro springs means that some oil gets moved about through the damping mechanism at each end. But it does feel like it's doing something.
Get the tyre pressures even slightly wrong though and it all turns to steel-reinforced custard. The T30s are super sensitive to pressure changes and the front dropped from 36psi to 34psi over the last couple of weeks which meant it went from being very precise in terms of steering and dialing in lean angle to wandering about and needing course corrections throughout a corner arc. It also made the bike feel like the suspension action at either end of the bike was completely separate, with the front jack hammering away at normal road bumps and surface changes while the rear digs in and tracks smoothly. I've settled on 35psi Front and 38psi rear as the most harmonious choice and full preload at the rear and rebound on the middle setting. The front is a couple of clicks back from max preload and rebound is on minimum. Everything works together that way.
After a big heavy bike with relatively old tech Pilot Road 2s, the T30s on a light bike feel like magic to me. I went for a ride in the rain today and I can't remember the last time I looked forward to riding in the rain rather than enduring it. The Versys' bodywork somehow conspires to keep you fairly dry, the screen directs the air onto your visor like a Dyson hand dryer and the T30s have genuine feel and grip in the wet.
I'm properly happy with my "girl's" bike. It makes me want to go for a ride.
313656