Well I recently traded in my tired old Bandit for a lovely new Kawasaki W800 and what a fantastic bike it is. Picked it up Friday but was working over the weekend so no chance to use it other than for commuting but I now have a week off so I took it out today and yesterday to play a little. Took it down my favourite back-water roads and along some light trails and had a whale of a time. Here are some pictures: Through the woods: Further through the woods: Along some broken up back-roads: And again: And by some waste ground: Hardly high adventure I know but it's my new bike, humour me.
What a beautiful machine... Wish they'd bring it here... Glad you have it and are having such a great time on it...
My God that is one gorgeous motorcycle!! Wonder if we could get Kawasaki to introduce it to North America if we started an email campaign?
One of the nicest bikes I've owned out of 60-odd, and just about the perfect big twin if you grew up riding British iron. I put over 6000km on mine in the first 7 weeks I owned it - then slowed down a bit while recovering from a minor accident on my Sportster. I'm currently rolling up about 1200km a month, but it has been a very wet winter. Fantastic economy, handles nicely and it is small and light with a lot of torque. I look forward to getting on mine every day - even riding to work is a blast. I run Dunlop K70s on mine now as I do a lot of gravel roads and they work far better than the TT100s. K70s handle well if you are used to them too. The one thing they do need is a decent sound - easily got by taking a hole saw to the muffler tail-pipe and cutting out the band around the inner pipe. (If you don't have a high quality hole saw you can use a small drill bit and simply make a lot of holes in the band and the cut it out with a small punch.) Once that is cut through the baffle simply wiggles out. Remove the remains of the band from the end of the baffle - and inside the tailpipe if you didn't cut it right to the metal - drill a small hole about 1 1/2" in from the end, and a corresponding hole in the underside of the tailpipe, slide the baffle back in and use a short self-tapping roofing screw to hold the baffle in place. Takes a bit of fiddling to get the inner pipe central in the tailpipe as the self tapper bites and screws fully in, but only a couple of minutes. That gives a low burble at idle and a deep burble underway. If you want to go for a slightly louder, deeper sound drill 8 x 1/4" holes about 2" apart in 4 equidistant (ie, quadrant) rows down the baffle. Neither of these make the noise level obnoxious - it is about on par with a standard BSA or Triumph system, and sounds very similar. Leaving the baffle out entirely doesn't make it overly loud, but the sound is a bit harsher. You might also want to stick a marble in the air injection hose between the cylinders as it causes a lot of popping on the overrun as the air goes into the exhaust. (Sounds similar to a badly leaking exhaust gasket.) Not worth removing all the bits and using block plates, and the EFI requires the air-injection electronic unit under the tank to be connected anyway or the error light will come on.
Just a polite question but why was this moved? Considering there are more than a few photos, some off-road, I thought pics pics pics was the correct place. Enlighten me so I know the difference for future reference. Thanks.
That looks like a perfect bike for general daily use.Kind of reminds me of an old Honda cb450 from the 70's.Our lust for technology has forced us into riding complicated fashion statements.I lke the riding position of these kind of bikes.A buddy had a Ducati equal to this(light weight.long seat) that was a nice ride but too expensive.I am getting old and I dont like having to adapt my body to a bike.I like the drum rear brake-no brake fluid to leak .I could throw the giant loop bag from my dual sport bike on it and do a week or 2 of riding.If gas ever got really expensive in rhe USA (above $10/gallon) Kawi could sell a few of these
Yeah, tubes but that's the price we pay for the pretty spokes. Nothing wrong with a drum rear - it'll lock the rear tire and I can't remember when I overheated a rear brake. I do 90% of my stopping with the front.
I am not too fussed about it in principle either. But when I took W800 for a test ride I thought the brakes were the weakest part of this otherwise lovely package, and I'm not talking about the drum - I don't expect much from the rear brake anyway. It was the front that seemed very, very weak to me. It probably does the job in the end... but it had me worried.