I have been slowly assembling a collection of pics of bikes that I have owned over the years.
Semi-random aside #1: I assume most people who have a passion for some type of ... thing, be it art or cars or motorcycles or airplanes or whatever -- are like me, in that I wish I had been wealthy and had a large heated building of some type where I could have kept and retired every, single, motorized two-wheeler I have ever owned.
Semi-random aside #2: Here's a link to one more pic I can find of this bike, which I digitized and posted here many years ago. I think it would have been taken in 1986 or 1987. It also discusses my transition from cruiser to sport bike thinking.
Added bonus: there is also a pic of the 1985 GPz900 shown in the entry following this one.
I recently rediscovered a few pics of my GPz1100 in an old photo album (For younger readers, these were collected, pre-digital, paper photographs created from a roll of processed film), and damn, I forgot how good looking that bike was. It's been so long since I've seen it, I'm now remembering how much I loved it. Except for the pressurized gas tank, which if I didn't pop the cap to release the pressure when I put it away in the garage, it would ooze a tiny bit out at the base near the hinge, which eventually stained the tank. I replaced both the fuel cap and then later the entire tank. Never resolved...
Since the
pic on my Flickr site, the one above and below were taken at my parents house in 1984 shortly after I purchased this bike, best case scenario is they were taken with my Dad's Minolta SRT101, which I had some time with in the late '70's.
I had read a lot about this bike in Motorcyclist and Cycle World magazines when the 1983 update was released by Kawasaki. I decided to buy the 1984 model over the FJ1100 and brand new release of the Ninja 900.
This bike was physically huge, and had tremendous power for the time. It was the first motorcycle I achieved an indicated 160mph on the speedometer. After I made that run, the bike was not performing well. This was a fuel injected rather than carburated engine, which was not common at that time and had a computer behind the seat in the tail section. I told my mechanic what I had done and he told me that there were 2 burned out sensors for that engine computer he had to replace.
At the time I got this bike, I was living in a complex in a duplex ranch. For the couple years after I bought it I used to ride it up onto and store it on my end of the covered front porch with a bike cover over it. My neighbors never complained, to me, and I was always amazed that the landlord never told me I had to take it down from there.
One weekend, under cover of darkness, I brought it inside for a couple days, just 'cause.
Is that shag carpet, bay-bee...
