My motorcycles - past and present

1982 Honda CB450SC Nighthawk

This had the most comfortable stock seat ever. It was wide and level, and didn't crush you into the tank.

It was easy to work on, which was great, since I had no idea what I was doing. I bent the forks, and the local Honda service manager took pity on me and straightened them, since I was a broke college student.

The original tires were rock hard Cheng Shins, with all the traction of a good set of ball bearings, and I learned the hard way to not cheap out on tires.

It didn't have much power, of course.

1984 Honda VF750S "V45 Sabre"

This had POWER, a fairing, space-age digital LCD displays, and stepper-motor instruments driven by an RCA 1802 microprocessor.

It also had horribly underdesigned suspension with noodle front forks that wouldn't be seen on a 250 today. There were tons of aftermarket fork braces, and it eventually went into a power wobble and crashed.

It was very hard to work on. It was a several-hour job to pry the carburetors out.

These Honda Vees had "soft cams" which turned out to be misdesigned cam journal clearances. Mine seemed to be ok.

1983 Yamaha XZ550 Vision

Complete piece of garbage. I later heard the downdraft carburetors had a casting problem that made cold starting almost impossible.

1985 Suzuki GS550EF

This was sitting as a trade-in at a car dealership with frozen rings. These were easily replaced and I had a nice little oil-cooled inline-4.

It was slow and had strange siamesed carburetors with two bores and two linked slides per vacuum chamber.

It was eventually stolen from my apartment complex.

1982 Suzuki GS1100L

After my success with the 550, some roommates bought this with the engine in a box to rebuild it and make money. It had a destroyed transmission with a cracked mainshaft and several gears with missing teeth. The stator, rectifier, and regulator were bad. The starter motor was bad. The clutch hub was made of potmetal and would deform when you tightened the bolts to spec. It wouldn't idle, as someone lost the idle o-rings when they rejetted the carburetors.

In short, it was a complete piece of garbage.

It destroyed a left-turning Subaru.

1989 Honda NT650 Hawk GT

I went down to Miami to buy this fancy thing with a single-sided swingarm and Corbin seat.

It was slow, with a crap stock suspension. A local Mercedes tech was a Hawk nut and he revalved it and put better springs in.

I left it at work over Thanksgiving weekend and it was stolen.

1985 Yamaha RZ-350

This is the world famous kickstart-only two-stroke.

Mine had a Corbin seat.

Being a two-stroke, it was amazingly simple to work on, which was good, when a rough gear took out several shift forks in succession. The Yamaha Banshee kept transmission parts in production.

I actually rode it up to the Smokey mountains for the 1998 Honda Hoot #5.

I regret selling it so much.

1993 Suzuki GSX1100G

This was a UJM throwback with the old oil-cooled GSXR motor with a counterbalance and a shaft drive grafted on. It was heavy, but comfortable, and a great ride. For some reason, lots of people tried to kill me on this thing.

2002 Suzuki SV-650

This was the legendary first-generation light, powerful, carbureted V-twin.

It was my first brand new bike.

2005 Suzuki DL-650 "V-Strom"

This was the SV-650 with fuel-injection, horribly nerfed cams, plus more weight in the form of an ugly fairing. It had a HORRIBLY uncomfortable seat in the shape of a tree bough, where you had no room to shift position. It had no handling whatsoever, and felt like you were wearing boxing gloves. The crap stock windshield directed the wind right at your face.

2008 Suzuki SV-650 ABS

I broke my collarbone on the SV in the rain at 5mph, so I bought the new model with ABS and fuel-injection, which needed an $800 computer diagnostic system to work on it.

The ABS was apparently bodged on by the college intern, causing several serious maintenance problems.

2015 Zero SR 12.5 with Power Tank

I was stupid enough to buy an electric bike. It did have power and no clutch.

It spent 11 months in the shop due to a bad CANBUS transceiver in the extra Power Tank battery.

2017 Honda VFR-1200X DCT

I got this REALLY cheap at the local RC Hill shark dealership, but it only took a couple weeks to find out why nobody wanted it.

It had the dual-clutch automatic transmission that had no way of letting out the clutch for stops, so it downshifted through the gears like an overloaded semi. It had a default mode where it would be all the way into 5th by the time you cleared the intersection, so it was horribly slow. You could select a sport mode, but this setting was lost every time you started it.

It had a horrid oversensitive fly-by-wire throttle, where your arm was positioned such that every time you hit a bump, it fed back into the throttle.

I dropped it in the pouring rain going to the work Christmas party, lunched a shift solenoid, and had to ride home stuck in second gear. Turns out it shares the shift solenoids with the Accord.

I really regret buying this POS.

2007 Yamaha FJR-1300 (Current)

At the 2007 Honda Hoot #14, I traded the V-Strom for this beauty.

It has a shaft drive, massive fairing, ABS, gobs of power, good handling, and the second most comfortable stock seat ever.

It's a bit heavy and the fairing makes maintenance difficult, but after 20 years of working on it, I can take the fairing off in 5 minutes.

It's an ugly maroon color and the tire valves are right next to the wheel spokes, making it really difficult to check pressure or add air, but those are the worst complaints I have.

2021 Zero SR 14.4 with Power Tank

After the 11 month fiasco with the first Zero, the dealership offered me a sweet trade-in.

I changed the ugly red for "Horizon Blue" bodywork for only a couple hundred bucks and a couple hours worth of work.

I had someone pull out on me in May 2026, and I was medivaced for a couple of surgeries to piece my right wrist back together. I have no grip for the throttle, and my riding days are over.

2022 Energica Eva EsseEsse9+

I traded the VFR for this after drinking the electric bike Kool-Aid.

It had good range, with onboard J-1772 and DC fast charging. It had "speed hold" cruise control and parking-lot reverse. It also had a remote keyfob that didn't really work and stranded me several times, so I paid to get an actual ignition key. Plus the Givi bags were a one-off design not compatible with anything else.

It had some fault displays, so I took it in. It spent 12 months in the shop because Energica stonewalled the dealer about going bankrupt. Had to pay to ship it for repair, after which it would no longer charge at all, and I could no longer get it fixed, so I completely disassembled it and threw it in the trash bin, piece by piece. Nobody on the electric motorcycle forum wanted it.

The battery was composed of 9 toaster-size modules, each composed of 18 cells the size of a standard sheet of paper. That's 162 cells total. Neither the hazardous waste facility or the local recycling yard would take them, so I put the modules into the trash two at a time, since they weighed 20+ pounds.

What a massive waste.

2024 Yamaha Tracer 9 GT+ (Current)

This was the last bike I ever bought. This was the single US model year with adaptive radar cruise control and factory quick-shifter. It had a complex but informative dash, which turned out to be running Linux, after I reverse-engineered the firmware update. One weird design point was that the fuel gauge had ONE bar for "half to full"

The stock mirrors actually worked, which was balanced by the horribly uncomfortable seat. I had to spend $500 on getting the seat done twice at Sargent, and I had to modify the rear attachments.

The suspension was rock hard, no matter the setting, and the windshield was useless garbage, so I bought a Madstad.

This is also the model with only one headlight unless you're using high beams, and dim and useless cornering lights. If you've got cornering lights, why don't you have self-canceling turn signals?

The engine is very gutless for 890cc. It's basically the FJR engine missing a cylinder.

It was amazing to see that the Yamaha MyRide-Link phone app had 167 1-star reviews and that's it. Not a single 2-star or higher. That's how bad it was. If you had Google Maps up on the phone, then you started the bike, the app would somehow override everything. That's not supposed to be possible.