anyone know about kawasaki en400

[toads]

Hi everyone, I've just joined this list but I've spent the evening thus far drooling over custom bikes, and found the kawasaki en 400 and 500 to be really ( as in suspiciously cheap) compared to other bikes of similar year and style and cc rating, have any of you had experience with them at all, I am just getting back into bikes again after 20 years of child rearing. I have a very sweet little gn 250 but she is really a bit underpowered and tame for my liking, I hope to progress to a 400 before too long. cheers Lu

[FROSTY]

arent they the old z440 parallel twins in a custom frame--if so a solid bike with no real vices

[moko]

They`ve got the GPZ500/400 motors in,strong,long-established unit but quite peaky and therefore not the best for cruiser style riding,though later models were re-worked for more mid-range.Test here by a guy I know from various forums as Mitch,basically tells it like it is.These bikes were never very popular over here but basically nothing wrong with them and if you want a budget cruiser then they`ll do you.As they`re belt-driven(at least the 500 is,400 wasn`t officially imported here and I dont know about that one)you might want to check out the availability of belts before you buy,from what I`ve heard they last pretty well but you dont want your bike off the road for weeks waiting for one to get shipped from Japan or something.they were always cheaper than other cruisers even from new so dont read too much into the fact that they`re "suspiciously cheap".Biggest problem with Kwaks in the U.K. is carb-icing and corrossion,both mainly due to our shitty weather and shouldn`t be an issue in N.Z.

http://www.bobpickett.co.uk/bkit/en5001.htm

[toads]

Thankyou for the benefit of your wisdom, my main concern is reliability, we live in a rural area and breaking down is always a major inconvienience, so the availiblity of belts is definatley something to consider. Thanks Lu

[moko]

They`re pretty reliable and not a bad buy by any means but might be an idea if you do buy one to buy yourself a belt for future use if the nearest dealer dosnt keep them in stock.GPZ500 uses near enough the same motor and they`ve got a good rep for reliability,they were really popular in the U.K.,ER500 is a kind of retro model of the GPZ and still sells loads,a lot of riding schools run those because they`re rider-friendly,reliable and cheap to run.I`ve seen a couple of road-tests of ER`s where bikes have run up serious mileages in a short space of time,all the Kwak 500`s are a good bet.They also did a kind of enduro model once that never really took off but they`re all decent enough machines.