Well, I didn’t but I knew what I liked. On offer was a 1985 example with 5000 miles on the clock and one owner. The owner was at least reasonably honest, he explained that the 5000 miles was really 105000 miles... I had already gathered this because the machine was in a bit of a state. Faded and rusted paint, white alloy where the black had worn off the engine, a Motad exhaust that had holes in the silencer, back disc that was seized, front disc pads that were worn down to the metal, tyres down to the carcass. The general air was one of a machine that had just about worn out.
The engine ran, the bike accelerated with an outrageous urge to my CB500T trained mind, and steered with a precision that was shocking after all the old hacks I'd owned. The owner said it had a nearly new top end, cylinders and pistons at 60000 miles but was otherwise untouched. The gearbox could have been called notchy but it was no problem to myself, used as I was to Honda boxes with more neutrals than gears.
He wanted a thousand notes, I had half that! No deal but I left my phone number. Three weeks later he phoned, I had added another hundred notes to the pile and it was mine! Then it was down to trekking around the breakers. It was quicker to swap wheels than rip tyres on and off. In fact, I swapped a whole front end with an ‘88 model which solved several major problems in one go. It cost £150 to solve all the faults and a weekend's hassle in the garage with a spray gun to get the bike looking like new.
The engine produces great gobs of torque at low revs, by the time seven grand are on the clock your helmet’s being crushed into your face and your arms yanked out of your sockets. No one would believe the bike had only cost me £750. I kept rushing round with a huge grin on my face, whacking open the throttle and overtaking everything in sight. I quite often saw 150mph on the clock, which was 50% more than I could get out of any of my previous bikes. I was in a kind of heaven. Even the fuel consumption, at 45mpg, was no worse than many old hacks.
A month later I was not so happy. 1750 miles had worn out both tyres, nearly new Metzelers. The chain was shagged and there was a nasty clanking from the engine. A dealer balanced the carbs for £20 and the noise went away. After 2500 miles the front pads started clanging and I almost had a heart attack when I asked the local Kawasaki dealer how much a new set were back to the breakers.
I do a lot of town work and hurling 500 odd pounds of GPz was beginning to get tiresome. The bike was also a bit on the wide side and I often had to sit in traffic jams where previously I would slip through on a smaller bike. To cheer myself up, I started perfecting the art of wheelie-ing. Great fun, until I gave it a bit too much stick and the damn thing went so far back I thought my head was going to scrape along the tarmac. I quietened down a bit after that. Wet weather work was no fun, I had to lope along at low revs, there was so much power that the back wheel would squirm all over the place if I tried to accelerate hard. I began to miss the joys of thrashing bikes to within an inch of their life. There was no way, unless you were completely insane, that you could ride the GPz900 flat out everywhere.
I went on a long tour around the UK on the bike, packing 500 miles into every day. The bike itself was fine, comfortable, economical and able to cruise along at ridiculous speed, but it went through tyres, pads and chains so quickly that after three days on the road I had to start hunting around for replacements. I had been used to changing consumables every 12 to 15000 miles - not a tenth of that.
It soon became clear to me that if I wanted to do high mileages, for which the bike was ideally suited, there was no way I could afford to run it. If I wanted to just run around town it was quite reasonable on consumables but too big and heavy to be any real fun. A cheap GS125 came along and I started using that for local work, actually getting places faster because it was so much easier to run through the traffic jams. The GPz sat, looking impressive, in my garage for most of the week, only taking to the road on sunny weekends.
Then the motor started misfiring. The ever helpful dealer diagnosed one of the black boxes on the way out and quoted almost as much as I had paid for the bike. Breakers shook their heads sadly, not a chance, sonny. Back to the dealer, the bike running decidedly poorly at low revs - did he want to make me an offer for it. By then it had 17500 miles on the clock, needed yet another set of consumables but at least looked pretty good. He offered £750 and we eventually agreed on a grand in used fifties. The last I heard, he was advertising the bike as low mileage, only two owners, a snip at £2500. I bought a genuine low mileage CB650 with the money which I am happily thrashing everywhere and which is a lot cheaper to run.
Eric Williams