First Bike Since 1986. . .

[whiskeyjack]

. . .and that one was a Honda CB400 from 1979 or so.  I could just barely touch the ground with my toes on that one and didn't keep the bike very long.  Not safe.

I'm short. Twenty-eight inch inseam; 5'4" tall.  The idea for buying another bike was to offset some commuting expenses.  But most bikes in my price range didn't fit. . . .and the ones that did were entirely too expensive.   So it came down to a decision between a Suzuki GZ250, a Rebel 250 or a Nighthawk 250.  I found a 1994 Nighthawk for $1150 with 5K miles on Craig's List. 

This is really a totally new experience for me.  I'm usually a pretty reserved guy except for the odd ride in small aircraft for photographic purposes or the backpacking trip (alone) to the wilds of northern Minnesota and/or Jasper, Alberta. 

The first thing I did when I got the bike home after I licensed it was to get in touch with somebody who knows about bikes.  He checked it over really good and I got some maintenance education.  The rear tire was a bit raggy so we pulled it off only to find rust around the inner-tube and the rim band evenly, severely indented by the spoke ends, which also showed up on the old inner tube.  It was past time for a new tire, tube and rim band. (thanks Dennis Kirk).

Did you guys know that Dunlop tires, (and probably others), are designed with rigid sidewalls to prevent loss of control when the air leaves the tire at highway speed?  I had no idea.  I'm hoping it's not a theory.   We checked the front tire too - good.

The chain needed just a little tweak but there's a lot of adjustment left to go.  The o-rings look good and the sprocket teeth are dead center not showing any wear.

It needed an oil change.  We also found the plugs were gapped to about twice the spec.   Replaced plugs with the right gap.  Purrs like a kitten now.

The bike is in good shape but it has been layed down 'gently'.  There are some scratches on one of the handlebar ends and one area of scrape on the right side of the engine where the brake pedal was pushed in and the foot peg end was scraped.  It had to be a low speed affair.  The rest of the bike is very clean.  No dents, a couple superficial scratches to the plastic seat cowling probably by a passenger.

I'm excited but cautious.  It's only a Nighthawk 250 but, from my  standpoint, it's a Harley Classic.  A FF helmet should be here next week. I've got gloves, a jacket and chaps but I haven't taken the safety course yet.  While I might practice running through the gears at slower speeds, I'll be waiting until after the safety course to get up to highway speeds.
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I've got a Memphis Shades windshield coming, (the one that extends down  behind the turn signals - smoke).  And I've tried two configurations of bags trying to thread the yoke under the seat.  The first problem was the seat latches: the bags' yoke needs holes to accommodate the seat latch hooks.  Then, when I found a set with holes in the right place, the dimensions of the bags placed them barely 3/4 of an inch off the end of the exhaust.  Saddle bags over the seat are a possibility but I don't know how to make them stay put.  And the other thing. . . .there are no saddle bag supports for this bike like there is the Rebel series and the Suzuki.  I think I'm stuck with a back pack unless there are other ideas.  And that's ok.
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Sorry for such a long first post and if you made the trip until now. . .thank you for reading.

[xxxbotchlaxxx]

welcome jack!

glad you got down to maintainance right away, I have had mine for two years and I haven't touched anything that wasn't already falling off!

[happycommuter]

 
Returning riders often scare me, but that is because they are usually un-frozen cavemen: older men with minimal, outdated riding experience who figure the kids have moved out, time to buy a giant 1400cc v-twin and ride around in a t-shirt and no helmet.
But you seem to be doing things right:
1. You've picked a machine that fits you physically and performance-wise.
2. Wearing gear. 
3. Waiting for training.

I took a mere four years off from motorcycles, and knew I needed a refresher course.  They reminded me that returning riders are still new riders. 

Congratulations on actually finding a 250, as it's a hassle to find something twice the size last few times I looked.  For luggage, I like magnetic tankbags for carrying daily items around. There are also tail-packs that go on the seat; I'm partial to Luggage Locker.

Good luck!

[detdrbuzzard]

hello and welcome to nighthawk forums wiskeyjack, sounds like you have taken the right path back into motorcycleing with all the steps you have taken. very thoughtful. more than i was. i just got some gear bought a bike ( two actually ) and away i went after not riding for 10yrs. i never gave up my cycle endorsment though.

[whiskeyjack]

Thank you all for the welcome!!  And certainly the encouragement!  I was going to take some pictures tonight but rain got the better part of the day.

Happycommuter:  I can't help but feel that that read is worth posting again here.  Absolutely Hilarious!!

(Original article was in City Bike) www.citybike.com

By Gabe Ets-Hokin

I just quit working as a motorcycle salesman, so now I can bitch about these guys to you. I call them “un-frozen cavemen,” in honor of the hilarious character invented by Phil Hartman on “Saturday Night Live.”

On the show, Hartman plays a 20,000-year-old caveman who was frozen in a glacier and then is thawed out in modern times. Our modern ways “frighten and confuse” him. My un-frozen cave men (UCM’s) sheepishly wander into dealerships all over the USA daily. They have just thawed themselves out from 15 to 40 years of motorcycle-less hibernation and are looking at motorcycles again for the first time since Nixon bombed Cambodia (to protect us from terrorists, of course).

They usually describe pretty limited motorcycle experience, and aren’t even sure of the model of bike they owned. (“Oh, it was a Honda. I’m pretty sure it was a Honda. Anyway, it was my brother-in-law’s. Man, was I crazy!”) Today I met the man who just 15 years ago had a BMW R75S, the only one ever known to have existed. He must have had a good relationship with BMW, for them to make a unique one-off bike like that for him.

The UCM’s gave it up because they bought a house, or they had a kid, or simply because the wife asked them to.

Frequently, they have an inflated image of their past selves. Sometimes they were the fastest guy on Mt. Tam. Other times they were the top motocrosser in the state. The common thread is that they had to abandon such craziness before they got their fool selves killed.

Running through my salesman’s list of steps to move the customer towards a sale (or maybe just to weed out the timewasters, which is what 75% of these guys are), I’ve now determined their riding experience, and now I want to find out what they want out of a motorcycle.

“Well, I just want to have something to putz around on.” is what a huge number of them say.

Putz around. “Putz” is Yiddish slang for the male reproductive organ, and is more commonly used to describe an oafish or stupid man. Yeah. Judging from the rare UCM who actually buys a motorcycle, “putzing” involves wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and boat shoes while wobbling down the street on a motorcycle with under 1000 miles on it. A man can do a lot of putzing (or putting) on a 50cc scooter, but they don’t want that. A 250 Virago or Ninja won’t do it either. I’ve seen a lot of putzes on scooters, especially in San Francisco, so it would seem an ideal putzing tool, but apparently not. I’ve never sold a small scooter or a small displacement bike to a UCM. “Putzing”, as an activity, needs to be done on a motorcycle with far, far, far more capability than the putzer could ever possibly use. It’s wacky, huh? Sort of like using a Porsche to pick up dry cleaning. Actually, they do that a lot, too. At least in Marin, which is probably the only place outside of Stuttgart where you can see actual traffic jams of Porsche 911’s.

Once I figure out what kind of riding style they’re interested in, I show the UCM a model or two. And it’s here the fun begins, as I have to explain every single technological advancement in motorcycle technology since 1968, starting with disc brakes. By the time I work my way up to liquid cooling, I’m ready to fake an epileptic seizure so I can stop talking to this guy.

“Liquid cooling? I don’t need that! I’ll just be putzing around on this thing. I won’t be racing or anything like that.”

I can just imagine a frustrated salesman talking to some prospect in 1910. “Rubber tires? With inner tubes? I’ve been riding on steel rims and wooden spokes since 1885. I don’t need any of that fancy crap! It’s not like I want to be riding around at 20 miles per hour or anything like that!”

Seriously, re-entry riders really need to be mature and intelligent about their re-entry purchase. Sure, a 30 horsepower Bonneville with drum brakes and barely-functioning suspension was OK back in the ‘70s, when the Bay Area’s population was a third of what it was now, and the roads were smooth and well-maintained, and most drivers were insured and driving well-maintained and relatively slow cars. But now the roads are heavily trafficked with SUV’s and monster trucks driven by inattentive sociopaths at breakneck speeds.

Introduce a putz on a modern motorcycle, a motorcycle with a power-to-weight ratio far better than anything available in the 1970s into the soup and it’s a recipe for lots of crashing. Especially when you consider that these guys never get any kind of advanced motorcycle training, much less a license.

The UCM is unable to comprehend the technological advances of the last three decades, so he just goes by what he knows about. This usually fits in with what I call the “I’m a pretty big guy” syndrome.

PBGS is a condition where the UCM’s creeping weight gain has convinced him that he needs a huge amount of horsepower to propel his expanding ass at a sufficient speed. The manifestations of PBGS are disregard for any motorcycle smaller than 750cc and a preference for “comfortable” seating positions. This means the UCM usually rejects any handlebar lower than nipple height as being “one of them Ninja-bikes.”

“I’d probably kill myself on one of those things.”

The UCM will usually tell the salesman that he had a 750 or a 900 back in the day, so he needs something at least that big. The salesman will try to explain that even the slowest, cheapest 600 today makes more horsepower and weighs far less than the most extreme, exotic, high powered liter bike 30 years ago, but the UCM’s primitive higher brain functions cannot comprehend such a concept. Big guys get big bikes. Manly men get the most powerful bike they can afford. A 750 is more powerful than a 600, and the 1400cc Harley must be the baddest, most fearsome bike at all.

It’s not like he’s buying a Kawasaki Z1 or anything like that! I remember I rode one of those things once, and I could barely control it, it went so fast!

Anyway, a pretty big guy needs at least a 750 for putzing around on. That’s just a basic safety issue. And I’m just being sarcastic. If these were real concerns I had, then the average age of motorcycle crash fatalities would be rising steadily over the last decade as more and more UCM’s re-discover the joys of ‘70s style unregulated, untrained motorcycling with the help of no formal training.

[whiskeyjack]

. . . .I have had mine for two years and I haven't touched anything that wasn't already falling off!

Two years, eh.  I don't know what to expect from this bike just yet or whether I'll outgrow it.  These seem to be like an outboard motor: do some minor maintenance and they should be good for many years.

Congratulations on actually finding a 250, as it's a hassle to find something twice the size last few times I looked.  For luggage, I like magnetic tankbags for carrying daily items around. There are also tail-packs that go on the seat; I'm partial to Luggage Locker.

Ya.  I hear ya!  I almost bought a Rebel last November for $1100 with 4K miles on it.  That same bike today is selling for around $2000.  There's seems to be a big demand right now for smaller cc bikes. . . . and there's some junk selling for way too much money.   But with the high price of gas, maybe we're being forced to finally pick up on personal strategies in Europe ($8.75/gallon) and the Pacific Rim countries ($?/gallon): more two-wheeled transportation to cut personal costs. 

. . . .And thanks for the Luggage Locker link.  It looks like there's a magnetic piece of luggage in my future.

. . . hello and welcome to nighthawk forums wiskeyjack. . . .

Thank ya.  I'll be lurking and maybe posting to anything interesting that might help my understanding of the bike and riding. 

[Puppysnake]

Welcome aboard! 

[MrF]

Welcome!  And thanks, HC, for the pretty funny read!