I consider myself pretty knowledgable on 70s/80s Jap bikes and I honestly had no idea these were ever brought stateside. I assume it’s an XT600 engine plunked down in a street bike chassis. Yamaha perhaps originated the movement with the 78 SR500. Suzuki GN400. Others did it is as well, Honda’s FT500 Ascot with the…
4Runner96
4runner96
Honda had the same setup on their 4 valve XR/XL600s, I guess it was common for the era. Me, I prefer the simplicity of my DR540's single carb. I consider that one of the benefits of a single cylinder bike: minimize complexity, minimize weight.
No. Morons have hacked up enough clean stock bikes. Please stay to ruining old CBs
A properly tuned stock Sportster, even a 1200, and even the Big Twins, can very easily crest 50mpg cruising the open road, a Sportster easily knock down closer to 60mpg. In fact, they were getting close to 55-60mpg out of sportsters in road tests back in the 70s. Lots of urban putting around and hard riding? Sure it…
“ I don’t know exactly what because I’m not smart enough to know – but something does indeed change.”
Glad Jalopnik continues to hire such competent, car-savvy writers
What an absolute brain-dead take.
“Weight doesn’t matter on a bike to good riders.”
Huh?
Wow dude thanks for that revelation. I thought all the heavy bikes just fell over while riding all the time
From his other piece on riding a Livewire:
“The thing about riding an electric motorcycle is that you’re constantly doing mental math to calculate how far you’ve come, how much range you’ve used to get there, how far you have to go, and what percentage over that mileage you’ll need in range to achieve it. Percentages,…
No, but you can still find some screaming deals. Locally there’s a clean ZZR1200 for $4k, a nice 1st gen FZ1 just sold for $3k, several good ZRX1200s in the $3500-4500 range, Bandit 1200s always come and go in the sub-$3k bracket (insane hp/buck there).
I like that 0-60 figure and immense EV torque, but no exhaust note…
Out of the absolute top guys that I know.... none are ASE certified.
Go look at any oil field fleet numbnuts. Yeah, they buy brand new HD trucks and then beat them to death.
Agreed. For the price of a FWD midsize car you’re getting much more substantial “bones” and you absolutely feel that when you drive them. Before carpocalypse I was semi-seriously considering swapping my wife’s 2012 Camry for a lightly used 300 AWD. Relaxing comfy highway commuter that can gobble up some nasty downtown…
Why are you messing with all this stuff David? Unless the car had some sort of running condition, modern iridium plugs go to 150k and beyond. As far as preemptively changing wheel bearings, balljoints, waterpump, etc. I sure hope you went with OEM parts, otherwise you spent a bunch of time and money installing highly…
The Pan-Am is another one of these incredibly bloated, top heavy, expensive adventure bikes for old guys to ride to starbucks. The motorcycle version of driving a three row crossover with the “offroad” unpainted plastic.
The FTR looks like some weird cartoonish mess that’s 2 feet wide with that massive radiator sticking out, monoshock, etc. Just not my jam. The XLCR looks like a motorcycle
What Indian product would I buy? I just looked at their website. One of those goofy-ass looking FTRs? No thanks
I scooped up a low mileage DR650 last fall for basically half-price after it had been subjected to a riding season by an 18 year old who rode it on the original 15 year old Trailwings (read: lowsided multiple times). It’s quickly become my go-to bike for local riding. I’ve got a fleet of old GS Suzukis I’m slowly…
The beauty(?) of it is that there are so many low mile “girl bike” sportsters floating around, that if you are a handy person, you can cobble together your own Harley and truly have something special. But I agree it’s silly that you have the basically re-engineer the thing to get away from that “ass on the ground…
I had written off Harleys since I started riding on the street at 17, always rode Japanese bikes, mostly of the 70s variety, have owned some dual sports and a Bandit 1200S. I’m in my early 30s know and am very seriously eyeballing a Harley. But not anything new, or big. I want to take a mid 90s-early 2000s Evo…