Archive for the ‘Kawasaki’ Category

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Touring On The V-Strom

Thursday, May 7th, 2026


Me on the V-Strom.

I used to have three motorcycles so when it came to riding I could choose the one that would be best for the particular ride. Now I’m down to just one, so that’s no longer a choice.

Apropos to that, Clif made this request: “Now that you’re down to only the Vstrom, I was wondering if you would consider doing a post about how that is working for you on longer trips. Thanks.”

Hey, happy to oblige. Here we go.

In the beginning I had only the 1980 Honda CB750 Custom. When the OFMC went on our annual week-long trips that was the bike I rode. But then in 1999 I bought a new 1999 Kawasaki Concours. That was a fine road bike and became my main touring bike for many years. Some years later I picked up the 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650 but I still favored the Concours for travel because it was just supreme on the highway.

It wasn’t the bike I always took, though. There were a number of years when, for a variety of reasons, I rode one of the others. Like when I was set to leave with the RMMRC on the Great River Road trip in 2022. I went to check my air pressure and found that the valve stem was totally rotted out and would surely have failed somewhere along the way. I quickly transferred all my gear to the V-Strom and headed out.

The thing is, there was never an occasion when I regretted being on the V-Strom. And at times I was really glad I was.

For instance, on the Great River Road trip we were going through some very hilly country in Missouri. Dave was leading and I was right behind him. Dave is a very good rider, on a very big bike. I figured my bike had to be more agile than his, and so anything he could do I should be able to do. So I made a decision to just stick right with him. And I did, and what a great day of riding that was! I don’t normally ride that aggressively, but I did this day. What fun.

Then there was a ride I did, also with the RMMRC, the next year, down into New Mexico and Arizona. I was on the V-Strom again and everyone else was on much bigger bikes. We did some hard riding and several people commented on how “that little bike just kept right up.” Well, yeah, it does just fine. But then there was a day when we were on a super twisty bit of two-lane and as I put it then, I watched all these guys wrestle their big machines through these turns and meanwhile I was dancing. That light, agile bike was a dream.

Now, I will say, the nice thing about the Concours was that I could go high speeds and it just cruised, so smoothly. Going that fast on the little 650 it just feels like the bike is really busy. I get the impression something just a bit bigger might be nice. That’s why I’ve been looking at a couple Yamahas, the FJ-09 and the Tracer 9. At 800cc, either of these bikes would be just enough bigger to be a little smoother without having all that weight that even bigger bikes have.

What has stopped me so far from getting either bike is that I hate buying without actually riding a bike to see how it actually feels for real. I had plans to go up to Cheyenne last fall to test a Tracer but then I got hit on the Honda and was prohibited by my neurosurgeon from driving–much less riding a motorcycle–for 12 weeks. Of course that demo days event was during that 12-week period. Now this year I’m looking at making a road trip out of going to some demo days event somewhere, maybe in Boise. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, I’m quite happy with the V-Strom. It’s a really good little bike.

Biker Quote for Today

“A motorcycle is a bicycle with a pandemonium attachment and is designed for the especial use of mechanical geniuses, daredevils and lunatics.” — George Fitch

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, motorcycle clubs, motorcycle problems, Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club, Suzuki motorcycles, Tales of the OFMC, V-Strom | No Comments »

My Travels With Charley

Monday, March 23rd, 2026


Charley on my Honda CB750 Custom.

I was going to go on the RMMRC ride on Wednesday last week but then we had a family emergency. I wasn’t going to go but Judy urged me to, saying there was no reason to skip it and she would be fine without me. So I did go.

The emergency involved her son, Charley. I can explain it in one word: fentanyl. After being on life support for 11 days he died this morning. His organs were donated to families that needed them.

While my relationship with Charley was never better than cordial, we did share some motorcycle history.

It has always been an amusing image in my mind of one time, when he was still a teenager, when he wanted a ride somewhere. I was going to go for a motorcycle ride but I told him I would give him a lift on my bike, the Honda CB750 Custom. Charley was much bigger than me so picture this big guy on the back of a bike with his knees splayed widely outward. He felt silly, and it did look silly, but I got him to where he wanted to go so he wasn’t complaining. He did remark later that his friends found it laughable.

Later, when he was living on his own, he had his own motorcycle. We never knew this, though, until after he had sold it. But one day, I don’t remember how it came about, he and I decided to take a ride. I was on my Concours and he rode the Honda. And yes, it really was too small a bike for him.

We rode down to Franktown, to the Stagecoach. That’s where this picture was shot. We just had a beer and rode home. No big deal, nothing eventful. But that’s the only time we ever rode together.

Just about a week before his fateful event he was telling me he figured it was time for him to have a motorcycle again. Would I help him pick out a bike? Of course I told him I’d be happy to.

Then a week later he went missing. After three days Judy filed a missing person report with the Denver police. Later that day he was located, in an intensive care unit in Thornton, on life support with irreparable brain damage.

And now you fentanyl merchants have brought tragedy to one more American family.

Biker Quote for Today

I’m sorry, I don’t have one today.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki | 3 Comments »

The CB750 Makes It To Steele’s

Monday, February 23rd, 2026

I spotted my old CB750 at Steele’s.

As I had pretty much expected it would, my old 1980 Honda CB750 Custom has made it to Steele’s Cycle.

I was at Steele’s awhile ago following Tyler as he broke a Ninja down into parts and we were out in the yard at one point. Walking along a row of bikes I saw a bit of blue, a shade of blue that I’m extremely familiar with, and I looked closer. It was my Honda.

The funny thing was that I did not immediately recognize it as being my bike; I only thought it was another bike of the same vintage. I pointed it out to Tyler and he asked if this was in fact my bike and I told him no, it was just another like the one I had.

It wasn’t until that evening over dinner when I was telling Judy about it that it dawned on me that no, of course it was my bike. I had noticed that, hmmm, this CB750 has the same kind of sissybar my bike had. But somehow that had not jarred me awareness. But telling her I realized it was my bike. And I went back to look at it the next time I was at Steele’s and it was so obvious I can hardly believe I didn’t realize that the first time.

There was the same case guard, the same highway pegs, the same side panel on one side from a different year’s model. Of course this was my bike. But when I first saw it it did not have so much that I had come to associate with the bike, stuff I had stripped off the bike at the tow yard when I went to look at it after the crash. Without all that stuff it just didn’t seem like mine.

I pointed it out to Rick Steele and he said that considering I got hit head-on the bike didn’t suffer as much damage as it might have. But when I mentioned the cost of bailing it out of the tow lot he got it instantly–way more to bail it out than it would be worth. He said he gets a lot of bikes from that particular tow lot.

As I said, I was not at all surprised. I expected it would end up there and in fact it has probably been sitting there ever since last summer. Now two of my old bikes are at Steele’s. They’ve had my old Concours for a couple years now and at least it’s sitting inside and may eventually be fixed up and sold. It looks like the Honda is just destined for parts.

If anybody needs some parts for a 1980 Honda CB750 Custom I know where you can find them.

Biker Quote for Today

New Year, New Dreams, New Roads

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Motorcycle repair | No Comments »

Tracking And Listing Salvaged Motorcycle Parts

Thursday, February 12th, 2026

From wrecked bike to salvaged parts listing is a fast and well-organized process.

(This is part two of a series on stripping a motorcycle for parts and listing them on the internet for sale. This is all taking place at Steele’s Cycles.)

With this wrecked 2023 Kawasaki Ninja EX650R now reduced to parts, the good separated from the bad, Tyler loaded all the smaller stuff on a dolly to haul it over to his listing station, where he would prep each individual piece for storage and listing.

But first he needed to deal with the larger parts: the engine, the intact and undamaged rear wheel, and the swingarm. These he hauled outside and doused liberally with degreaser. (He had previously sealed and taped every opening in the engine in order to prevent any water or degreaser from getting inside it.) Nothing that gets listed for sale goes out without being thoroughly cleaned, looking as much as possible like new.

Tyler took the larger items–engine, swingarm, motor–out to degrease them before getting them ready to be listed on eBay.

Typically Tyler would use a hose to rinse off the degreaser but on this cold January morning the hose was frozen. So he brought out a large bucket of warm water and poured it over them to rinse. Then they were brought inside to his listing station along with everything else.

That was just the beginning of the clean-up, however. Starting with the rear wheel, Tyler lifted it onto the bench and went at it seriously. Every spot on the wheel was scrubbed clean and then he sprayed it all over with a gloss coating to make it look really good.

Before making photos of the parts Tyler cleans them up like new.

He moved to the computer to begin the listing. Steele’s Cycles uses a system called MotoLister, which is designed to simplify the whole process of preparing a part for listing on eBay and then actually putting it up as an item for sale. The screen is quite large and vertically oriented, which minimizes any scrolling that might be needed.

Typically Tyler will search for a comparable part and use that as the starting point but in this case it appears Steele’s Cycles had never broken down a 2023 EX650R, and as the first one, Tyler needed to create a new listing.

Once the part is clean Tyler will shoot photos to include in the listing showing the condition of the part. In the case of this wheel, there was a cosmetic gouge that he was careful to document.

Once that was done he opened the listing for the wheel and used the connected camera to shoot more than 20 photos, from every angle and showing every bit of the wheel. In this case, the wheel had a small cosmetic gouge in one spot and he was particularly careful to document that bit of damage. He also made a note in the description of the wheel stating that the damage was there.

At times there can be issues where a customer receives the part and then complains about a ding like this that is clearly shown in the photographs. Did you not look at the photographs? Steele’s will take returns and give refunds but they do not offer free shipping on returns. Rick Steele said he wants the customer to have some skin in the game. Everyone knows these days about customers who order a lot of things online, only to return many of them because there is no cost to them. Not at Steele’s.

Two forms of identification help keep parts from getting lost and ensure that the customer gets what they ordered.

After the wheel was clean and the photography was finished, Tyler wrapped it with clear plastic tape and laid a red strip of plastic with an identifying number on it next to the wheel for another photo. He then printed out a tag with all the pertinent information, laid it and the red plastic strip on top of the wheel, sealed those in place with more tape, and then shot one more photo of the whole package.

With a few more entries into the listing system the job was done, Tyler pressed the Enter key, and in seconds this wheel was now available on eBay for purchase. Before his job was done he would do the same for every single part he had stripped off this bike.

The parts for each bike go into a separate bin, which go on shelves in the warehouse.

When all the parts were listed, they were loaded (with the exception of the motor) into a large blue bin and hauled back into the storage room. Here row upon row of shelves filled with similar blue bins store the individual parts of many, many motorcycles. The location of the bin is logged in the computer and when someone buys a particular part it is retrieved from the bin, matched to make sure it is the right part, and then shipped.

And just like a transplanted heart, a piece of that once sad, broken motorcycle helps another motorcycle go on living.

Each part is wrapped and tagged individually in order to facilitate finding and sending the exact part the customer ordered.

Biker Quote for Today

I’m not a biker by choice; I’m a biker by destiny.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Motorcycle Gear, Motorcycle repair | No Comments »

Breaking Down A Motorcycle Into Parts

Monday, February 9th, 2026

Today Tyler was taking apart a 2023 Ninja EX650R.

I wanted to see the actual process of breaking a motorcycle down into parts so over two days I watched Tyler, at Steele’s Cycles, disassemble a 2023 Kawasaki Ninja EX650R that had clearly hit something very hard. The story behind the bike? Totally unknown.

The bike was up on a lift when I arrived and Tyler, with the assistance of Kade, had it running and were testing the motor and all the electrics to determine the running condition of these items. Kade shot photos of the instruments to document their functionality.

This bike clearly hit something with great force.

Meanwhile, the front end was clearly headed for the trash or the scrap metal bin. While the right fork tube was bent, the left one was busted wide open, with the spring inside now completely exposed.

Naturally enough, Tyler started on the outside, stripping off the plastic body panels. The bigger ones were trash but many of the smaller pieces further back were in good shape and clearly worth resale. These were stacked on an adjacent bench, which got fuller and fuller as Tyler worked.

The gas tank was in excellent condition so that came off and had to drained. Tyler removed the gas cap mechanism from the tank and set that aside with the keys. Later when the ignition switch came off the frame it was bagged with the tank cap and the keys. On other bikes, with keyed elements such as helmet locks, those, too, are included.

All the fluids had to be drained: coolant, oil, gas, brake fluid.

The muffler came off and would have presumably worked fine but it was dented so it became scrap metal. Is this axle good or is it bent? It looked straight and it rolled smoothly on the floor. Salvage, not scrap.

Piece by piece the bike came apart with everything salvageable set aside with all nuts, bolts, and washers carefully collected. Tyler might start on removing one item but then find that to get it off he first had to remove something else. The construction of the bike dictated the sequence of its deconstruction.

Finally the wiring harness came free.

The oil pan came off and the oil had to be drained. The cooling system came off and the coolant had to be drained. Sometimes it was not a clean job; shops rags are close at hand when needed.

Finally it was time to remove the swing arm. Tyler put a jack and a block under the engine and raised it to take the weight off the rear wheel. First the wheel came off and then the swing arm.

Out at the back end, the taillight assembly was in excellent condition—salvage.

One of the very last things to come off was the wiring harness. Pretty nearly everything else had to be removed because that octopus of copper and rubber winds its way through everything.

Now it was time to release the motor, leaving only the frame attached to the front fork and wheel. The triple clamps seemed not to be bent but they would be examined more closely before the decision was made as to scrap or salvage.

Nothing left now but the frame and part of the fork.

Nothing else was good. The wheel itself was shattered on one side and the brake disks were bent.

Amazingly, the front lights and mirrors were undamaged. This bike hit something really hard but that object must have been no more than two feet high and the upper portion was unscathed.

The very last thing to come off the frame was the ignition. And this, Tyler said, was “The most painful frame ever.” Up to this point Tyler knew the words and had been singing along to practically every country/western song that came on his Pandora feed. For the next 20 minutes Tyler did not sing.

The box with the ignition switch was bolted to the frame with bolts designed not to be removed. The only way to get them out was to drill into them and then tap them with reverse bits and back them out that way. But Tyler drilled and tried the bits, drilled more and tried again—over and over and over. They just would not come. Until they finally did.

What had been a motorcycle was now a collection of larger parts—engine, rear wheel, frame—and two benches of smaller parts. The job was half done.

Most of the bike now lay in pieces on the bench behind Tyler.

Biker Quote for Today

You might be a Yuppie biker if you think a wrench is a bitchy woman.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Motorcycle Gear, Motorcycle repair | 1 Comment »

Bulletproof But What About ‘Minor’ Parts?

Monday, January 12th, 2026

For lack of a water pump my old Concours sits in storage.

My one bike these days is my 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650. With less than 51,000 miles on it currently it has a long life still ahead of it. Particularly considering that the engine is considered bulletproof, as in it will just keep on going and going and going.

But. And that’s a big “but.”

Just last week I ran across an item on Adventure Riders titled “Thinking Long Term,” about this “but” and something we seldom think about.

Zac, the writer, focuses not on the big parts, like the engine or frame, but on the little bits. Things like sensors. We all know how quickly electronic parts become outdated. What do you do if your bike depends on some bit of electronics and that unit dies, and then you can’t find a replacement?

This is not a theoretical exercise. When my 1980 Honda CB750 Custom got smashed I was faced with a decision. Do I bail it out of tow-yard jail and try to get it fixed, or do I just let it go? I chose to let it go because I had a pretty good idea that even if it was fixable–not at all a certainty–the repair would also add considerably to the overall expense and then, could I even get the parts?

Then it became even less theoretical recently when I was talking with Rick Steele over at Steele’s Cycles. We were talking about the factors that come into play when they are deciding what to do with a bike they have taken in. He used my 1999 Kawasaki Concours as an example.

As they do with all bikes they take in, they put it up on the lift and checked it out thoroughly. It ran–I knew that–but they discovered that the water pump was leaking. I did not know about that. And the thing was, Rick told me, you can’t get that water pump any more. They know a guy out east who repairs water pumps and they sent it to him but when they got it back it still leaked. So now, my old Connie is sitting in one of Steele’s storage areas with its fate unclear. The engine is as bulletproof as ever but not the water pump.

I guess this is an issue that aficionados of old bikes have lived with for a long time. Sometimes you can kludge in a different part and make it work. Sometimes you can fabricate a new part if you have the tools and the skill. Sometimes you can’t.

In my mind it makes the point in favor of newer bikes. I’ve lived for years with the reality that all my bikes were old enough that no dealer wanted to deal with them. Fortunately there are independent shops that pick up that trade. But at this point I’d just rather have the convenience of taking the bike to the dealer for service, knowing the parts are available. Plus, some of the new tech is nice. I’ve never had cruise control and that is something I’d like.

All of this is on my mind as I wonder about getting a new bike. And at this point that question is totally undecided.

Biker Quote for Today

Bikes may rust, but the memories they create never fade.

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Posted in antique motorcycles, Biker Issues, Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Motorcycle repair, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom, vintage motorcycles | No Comments »

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