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Nov. 1984 - April 1989 4 seasons 12,600 mi.
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| I bought this bike
from a snowmobile racer in Greenville. He claimed he never rode it hard. Low
mileage and in perfect shape. Great looking, too. Triple disks (just
like the KZ1000).
16 valves, anti-dive front brakes. Completely black; engine and pipes, bars,
mirrors, hardware. No chrome to polish anywhere. It had an LCD digital gear
indicator between the gauges. Unnecessary but entertaining. The other color
for this year was a fire-engine red that was popular but not my style.
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| This bike was more
performance oriented than the KZ1000 and had the footpegs
just slightly further back. The bars, too, were lower and more sport
riding oriented. This represents
one of the last 'naked' sport bikes where you can see the engine (though this trend has
returned with some bikes of the late 90's and 00's). Soon after, high performance bikes were water cooled and lost the fins and the engine was shrouded with plastic like my next bike (the Honda Hurricane).
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| I did have to fix a
leaky valve cover gasket (twice, since I didn't do it right the first time). But it
had excellent reliability and fine performance and seemed particularly smooth compared to
the KZ1000. The anti-dive brake feature was only mediocre and the brakes vibrated a
bit near the end of my ownership. Could have been warped rotors.
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| I did adjust the 16 valve engine at least once. It had standard tappets not bucket and shims so there was some slight care needed to do the job correctly. | |
