JamesL wrote:Well I had one for 15 years and turned it in, but just couldn't get over it.
Steve, very smart! Do your panniers have locks? Mine seem not to!
Thanks James, yes the pannier locks work fine, although as they're the mid 80's design the keys are fiddly to get into the locks....
Originally the bike came into a Kawasaki dealership I was looking after with a mere 425 miles on it. The original owner was a plasterer, I think, who had pockets of cash in hand money he needed to get shut of. So where better than the local BMW dealer, Coombes of Guildford. His reasoning was BMW made fast cars so they must make fast motorbikes .... hmmm not so much in the mid 80's
So they tucked him up with the panniers, crashbars RS kit etc etc..... I'm a bit stunned they never foisted the heated grips too, perhaps they were out of stock at point of sale
So he turns up at his mates and they all fall about laughing a they've all got GPZ1000RX's, ZXR750's, Exups, GSXR's etc .... so he then comes to the Kawasaki centre looking to p/x it for the then new ZX10 .... he lost a bundle on it.
My uncle, had a gorgeous R90S in smoke grey but was looking for a change and I knew he'd test ridden an RS before and raved at how fantastic the fairing was. So a quick call resulted in him having it. He only had one arm, having lost the left arm in a mining accident when he was 21, so had to have his bikes converted so there was a small clutch lever actually on the twistgrip. His artificial arm would clip on the left bar. His mate did the conversion and also some neat model aircraft linkages to move control of the left switch gear to the right hand side.
Cancer took him a couple of years back.
The bike's now mine and still has low mileage, about 25000 miles or so if I recall. I've moved the clutch lever but left the little linkages and have gotten used to using them, in honour of my uncle Les. A fantastic, inspirational guy and one that I could only just keep up with most of the time, even though he only had one arm he was one hell of a fast rider!!!
This was my Uncles other bike, that he had all of my life. Sadly it got sold via Bonhams and I believe it went off to Australia