Stuff-mo-tron

Mon, 27 Mar 2006

I'd followed along as he reported a few snippets of his trip this last month to a mailing list we're both on. I didn't realize the full extent of it, though, until he stopped by this morning. I just knew that he'd ridden from Seattle to Daytona Beach, Florida in a week, which seems like madness regardless of which bike you're on.

In fact, he had ridden for a month, from Seattle to Florida, and then very circuitously back to Seattle, spanning 8000 miles. I didn't get a lot of details on the trip, but it sounds like it was a lot of fun.

I was interested in some technical details of the trip, and he was happy to discuss them with me. In particular, he said that when he'd run out of electrical power with the driving light on, he had been riding at about 7500 RPM. That was the only extra load on the electrical system, so I now know that the Ninja 250's electrical system needs to be spinning above about 8k RPM to support a 55w extra load. There's not a lot of headroom in that electrical system, to say the least.

He also said that the bike didn't really burn oil unless the motor was turning around 10 or 11k RPM. That's no real surprise to me, as I always found that riding on the freeway would burn a lot of oil. Freeway speeds are usually over 9k RPM if you want to keep up with traffic.

His actual goal in coming and talking to me was to offer me the chance to buy back the bike. I refused without any hesitation, since I know that I want a new or nearly new 250 for my next bike, not one that's already lived at least half its useful life. However, I asked him what he thought his next bike, and with a similar lack of hesitation, he said, "K1200S."

If you're not familiar with the BMW K1200S, the very brief rundown is that it's the most insanely powerful motorcycle BMW has ever made, producing 167 HP. That's about the same as a mid-size car. Yet it weighs 550 lbs. It's about 5x more powerful than the Ninja 250, for a moderately small weight gain. It's also a very expensive motorcycle, at $15,800 list (figure $1000ish for options you'd want, plus about $1000 for freight, setup, and license, and 8.8% tax brings it out to a solid $19,366 by the time it's on the road).

He didn't seem to have any qualms about going to a motorcycle that costs 10x his current bike and makes more than 5x the power. After hearing about the 8000 mile trip, it seems like a better choice for him than the Ninja 250, I have to say.

Sat, 18 Mar 2006

Picked up a new shock today. With
any luck, it can be rebuilt and reconfigured a tiny bit to work on the future Ninja 250. If not, it'll hold its resale value pretty well. Huzzah!

Wed, 15 Mar 2006

I was up a bit earlier than normal yesterday, so I went by the
local DOL subagent, and got my license plates swapped around again. The Le Mans is now free of all possible entanglements to its sale (previously it had my ham call license plate on it, which is illegal to transfer to anyone else). The sidecar is now my official radio-geek vehicle, which is appropriate -- it's the most likely vehicle to get some kind of radio installed on/in it.

I got the sidecar's windshield mounted to the hinges a day or two ago, and it looks pretty good. I still don't have the angle adjustment system built yet, so the shield is just lying flat against the sidecar's body. I'm not sure about the style, as I rounded the corners in a way that may be a stylistic clash with the rest of the rig.

Sun, 12 Mar 2006

I got the Z750s all washed up last night, and took some lovely pictures for use on the (not yet really posted) for sale page. I can't decide if I want to keep those CRG bar-end mirrors and bar-end weights or not. The mirrors are worth $170 or so all by themselves, and I put easily 5 hours of work into the bar-end weights (mostly learning how to turn something on a lathe, but 5 hours nevertheless).

Part of the problem is that the CRG mirrors aren't really what I was hoping for. They're small enough that they have to be sharply convex to have a wide enough view -- this makes everything look really small, so it's hard to identify anything further than tens of feet back. They're fine mirrors, and well designed, but not really the optical quality I want when looking out for braindead drivers behind me.

I also haven't decided exactly on price. I suspect the $6200 I have posted is too high, and I don't want to have to sit on this bike too. Suffice to say I'm not buying any more motorcycles until I sell at least one. (Where would I put it?)

I went up to PsychoBarn's sale they had this weekend, where they were advertising that they would sell any bike on the floor for their cost (plus reasonable freight and setup fees, of course). I went during the designated 2 hours, and asked one of the salesmorons what their out-the-door price on a new Ninja 250 would be. In reply I got:

"Well, see, what we do is, we fill out the paperwork with the normal price, and setup and freight and tax and all that, and then we take it back to the sales managers. They slash the price a bit, but you're not going to see the same kind of discount on a three thousand dollar bike like this that you would on a ten thousand dollar bike, right? I mean, the salesmen don't know what the price will be, we have to take it back to the sales managers, and they tell us what the price will be..."

It went on like that for far longer than it should have -- he could have said, "I don't know, we'd have to fill out the forms and take it to the sales managers" and that would have been enough. I finally cut him off and said, "that's fine, don't worry about it."

I had asked Jesse as we were walking in what percentage chance there was that I'd buy a bike that day. I said I was figuring about 3%, and he agreed that that seemed likely. I can't stand CycleBarn's sales practices, they're high-pressure and low-intellect. If you go back far enough in these pages, you'll find the story of them trying to tell me a 2 year old Ninja 250 with 5000 (or something) miles on it was worth $2999 (or, list price). Uh, no. What particularly galls me about that interaction was that they basically told me, "no, we'll find someone stupider than you to buy the bike." And they did.

Anyway, I can't stand the way their salespeople treat customers. So, I figured there would be a very minimal chance they'd somehow tell me they'd sell me a new Ninja 250 for $3400 or something, and I wouldn't be able to resist. Not to be so. The whole "fill out the forms and see what the sales manager says" game is a load of crap designed to get the buyer into the mindset that he is committed to the deal now, and usually ends up in people feeling fleeced after the deal is done. Not where I want to be.

The guy at Lake City Kawasaki said the usual out the door price on a 250 is about $3800, which sounds high, but not unreasonable. He also said sort of off-hand, "there's only about $150 in them anyway." That was interesting to hear, since I now know their invoice price on the bike (although I'd already heard it was around $2850).

Someone on the Ninja 250 board reported getting a 250 for $3400 out the door at Renton, so it's tempting to go asking down there and see if they'll repeat the deal. I think before I do that, I'll ask Lake City if they'll sell one to me for that price (which is a bit of a hit, although it's such a low priced bike to start with that it's not actually all that bad), see if I can play them off Renton. At least Lake City is close enough that I could reasonably ride the bike home without totally busting the break-in.

I was down at Boeing Surplus last weekend, and picked up some more aluminum sheet (probably 1/8" thick or thicker), which I'm going to use to make a windshield for the sidecar passenger. Right now, there's far too much wind hitting the passenger in the face, and it would be much more comfortable with something deflecting the wind. I was originally going to use plexiglas, but the same size of plexi would cost around $50. I paid about $3 for the aluminum. It'll be a good excuse to try out my new riveter, too.

The challenge with the sidecar windshield will be making it adjustable. I really want to allow the passenger the freedom to change the angle, and the best idea I've had so far is a sort of Y arrangement where the vertical leg on the Y is threaded, and the arms go up to attach to the shield. Finding or making the threaded bit will be the difficult part. I'll have to see what I can find at Lowes.

Mon, 06 Mar 2006

I finished the Z's seat last night. It actually turned out quite
well. It looks very nice, and it's a huge improvement over the stock seat. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a staple gun suitable to shoot staples completely into the plastic seat pan. Even using the shortest staples, most of them went in part way, or bent up strangely. It's not a functional problem, but it looks unprofessional. I guess the seat pan material on the Z is harder than on the Ninja 250.

Speaking of Ninja 250s, I noticed that CycleBarn is having a "dealer cost" sale next weekend. That is, maybe they are. They're kind of evasive about it on the phone. I called and asked the salesman who answered for details about the sale (the website says "call for details"). He immediately said, "oh, we don't have any details, the sales managers haven't told us anything yet." When pressed, he explained that it was probably (but not for sure) a sale in which they sold bikes for their cost, probably plus freight, maybe but probably not plus setup. ("Do I have to pay for setup as well?" "I don't know... I don't think so.") When further pressed: "What's your cost on the Ninja 250 then?" he replied, "I don't know what our cost is on that bike."

So, basically, it was a useless phone call. However, once we'd established that he wasn't going to tell me anything because he's apparently clueless, he started wheedling me to "come on down" because it's got to be the best sale in town. I mean, right? It's dealer cost, so it's got to be the best price! Right!?

Ugh. So much for CycleBarn (again). I'd rather pay $500 more for a bike at a dealership which doesn't make me feel like I've just been slimed. I giving CB chances to prove they're not complete slimeballs, and they keep proving how slimy they are.

Fri, 03 Mar 2006

I noticed a touch of frost on the bike as well, until I got around and had a close look at the seat. There was a "puddle" of ice. No problem, I tapped on it and freed it from the cover.

In other news, I went home via Ducati Seattle to check out a used Monster 620 they had on their website. It was sold yesterday, so I didn't get to see that bike, but they did have a demo bike which I test rode.

The bike struck me as being much like the SV650 I rode earlier this week. It had a nicer throttle, without the on/off lightswitch effect of the SV. On the other hand, the ergonomics were even worse. The seat was pretty low, but the pegs were even closer. The handlebars were further forward and wider, all of which conspired to make the ride fairly uncomfortable.

For the price, it's definitely not the right bike. The SV650, which felt functionally similar to me (I'm sure I would have noticed differences with more time) costs more than $1000 less new, and is easy to find used.

I'm glad I took the time to ride it, though. The Monster 620 is one of those bikes I've been curious about for a long time, although I've always suspected it'd be too small for me. It's good to have actual experience to back it up.

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.