To be fair, the Honda definitely had me initiated. But this thing has me converted. Now I just have to fight the temptation to just twist that throttle and spread myself out on the pavement. This bike has a lot more ability than I can correctly handle right now, so I'm trying to be very careful with it.
I'm definitely happy with my purchase- I could easily throw down $1000 into this bike, but that'd pretty much all be cosmetic. It needs some wiring stuff done and some other odds and ends, but it's mechanically quite sound.
I brought it home at the end of March after it having sat all winter. I coaxed it to life on starting fluid- I had the choke on and one hand capping the exhaust to get it to idle, but after about 3 minutes of that it took right off. I've been regularly riding it since then and now it's great. I can walk out to it in the morning in a 25 degree day, throw the choke on and tap the starter and she'll fire right off. Let it warm up while I leather up and put on my helmet and she's good to go. Hands off at 55 and she's stable and smooth. Feel like it'll throw me over the bars if I grab the front brake fully. I am very tentative cornering it- it's not nearly as planted feeling as the Honda was, and I've already accidentally rolled on too much coming out and broke the rear tire loose (to be fair, it was a really slick, smooth piece of pavement), but otherwise I'm loving it. One of the best things- it cruises at 55 mph without sounding like it's working, it fits my body size like a glove, and with the saddle bags and bungee straps, I can carry groceries.
The current plan is to restore all the fairings (BTW- anyone have any good tips for fixing cracks and replacing tabs on ABS plastic?), strip it down and do a simple gloss black/gloss white paintjob. I'll probably recover and redo the seats- I want to add some padding to the passenger seat and a ~1.5" backrest/support to the rear to provide some extra comfort and security for my occasional passengers. The airbox is really difficult to properly mount and seal, so I kind of want to redesign that to make it easier to work on.
