anyone here have a bike that runs?rode this month?

650ed wrote:

RedlineJunkie wrote:

650ed wrote: Beautiful bike & scenery (love the S&W's). Ed

Thanks Ed. The dampers are marked "Monroe" and I'm pretty sure that's what they are. They came with the bike and in IMHO are severely lacking damping. I'm getting a pretty good wag in the back when cornering hard and the swingarm bearings have zero play. I'm really interested in how the "new" shocks with adj damping will perform on the KZ. I had them on my KZ650 back in the day (late 80's early 90's) and I kept up with everyone in the tight corners back then.

No issues with triple digits speeds in a straight line even before the front and rear suspension mods, but then again I'm not letting the bars go and sitting straight up at 120 either. :woohoo:

S&W shocks was a Monroe company or division. They are truly great shocks and were the hot setup used by many racers back in the day. I still have a set I bought new back in 1979 and they also are marked Monroe. Here's a picture of mine from a couple years a go before I switched to Hagons. The S&W shocks were still working great, but I switched to Hagons because I wanted to return to the stock look. Don't toss yours. Below my pic are just 2 examples of race bikes with S&W's.

Mine

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Craig Vetter's Rickman

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Kenny Roberts' TZ750

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Damn Ed, I did not know that! All the S&W's I recall seeing and installing back in the day were black and blue and I don't recall the "Monroe" stamp, but then again, there's a lot of things I don't remember from back then. :woohoo: They're leaking pretty bad right now and the springs are sagging too. Are seals and springs still availible?

rstnick wrote: I get out about twice a week.
Last Thursday night I hit a couple of bike meets.
On the way to the 1st, came upon a Classic Car meet:

Then onto our last stop, a meet at Tim Horton's downtown Toronto.
Usually a few hundred bikes here, mostly crotch rockets:

Then home. 250 kms round trip.

Great pics! Thank you.

I'm not positive, but I believe Progressive Shocks took over S&W. It may be worth contacting them to see what, if any, rebuilding is posssible. Ed

Need I say more... Thanks Craiggy!

I did a 2500 km (1550 mile) trip on my yamaha last week. It hadn't rained for over a month so when I left I didn't even bother to check the weather. At the end of day one it started raining, so I got a hotel room. It was 11:300 at night anyway. The following morning it was still pouring out. That's how it stayed for the entire day. At times it was raining so hard whenever a semi went past it was like someone took a large blanket, soaked it in water, and then slapped you with it as you went by. Anyway, 8 solid hours of that.

During this part of the trip there is a short cut I always take between a town called Leader and Kindersley. The road is usually bad but the worst part only lasts about 15 kms. Little did I know they were "fixing" the road at that time. So basically the ashpalt was all gone and it was down to clay. This road was so bad due to the rain there was a semi truck and trailer stuck in the middle of the road. So it was 5-10 miles an hr with both feet out as the bike wheels kept sliding out from under me.

The trip home was better. Left at 7 am and arrived home at 9 pm. Almost 800 miles. Lots of gas stops and one midday stop for lunch.

To avoid the bad portion of highway going home I took a detour. This is about the time it started raining again. To add to this the wind was blowing crosswind and extremely hard.

It turns out this portion of the highway was under construction too. About 80 kms(50 miles) of highway. This road was good. The last portion of the road had been recently oiled and was smooth as glass. Between the smooth freshly oiled road, the strong wind and the rain the bike would occasionally slide sideways as I was going down the highway. Stopping didn't seem like an option as it was in the middle of now where and I felt I needed to just get through this part asap. Luckily the group of vehicles that were traveling the same section of highway had slowed down considerably. The wind was still pushing me sideways but it was manageable.

Anyway, that's my ride this month. Sorry no pics.

cool pic's Craige.

it would be neet to see how they built that bridge into the rock cliff.

mark1122 wrote: cool pic's Craige.

it would be neet to see how they built that bridge into the rock cliff.

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It's not as complicated as you might think Mark. The large vertical concrete support piers a that are at 1/4 span are likly resting on drilled piles in a pocket that was cut out of the rock for the pier. Since the concrete is bearing on solid rock, there may not even be any drilled piles under the piers. Still, it's a pretty cool engineering and construction feat

Damn RLJ, that's a sweet KZ1000! That background scenery doesn't hurt either. I need to get back to Colorado.

RedlineJunkie wrote:

nice 1000,nice view also!