Show us your first bike!

My first DGR on my '74 Z-1 900. Circa 1981, LOL. Actually, taken on my way to work outside my dorm room building.

Ha ha, excellent brilliant first bike the pic reminds me of the bit in cannonball run 1983 when the guy in the suit rides out the back of a plane on a dirt bike then sings " I wanna be free!"

Not exactly mine - not beat-up enough - but after working the summer of 2013 on the farm I bought a ‘93 KX250 for $1,100. Water in the oil, kickstart gear mostly shredded, no coolant - I was totally clueless on mechanical stuff, so it was merely a financial learning experience.



Much happier with my KZ!

Still a good bike plenty of fun to be had on a kx250

we did not take many pics back then so I have none and had to steal a photo off the web but the bike is the same. Got this the day I turned 16 off a friend and had a blast taking it everywhere with nobby tires. It also had a home made stainless exhaust can that was bullet proof. Only downside of this bike was the shitty rubber diaphrams in carbs that would wear and tear too easy and have to be replaced always at worst time possible.
Bike was bombproof though.

Stylish little bikes and a rare sight in the uk:) we had millions of cb250 dreams, superdreams and 250n's then cb400s but a couple of times I have seen this uk registered 350-4 which is extremely rare here!

Oh dear it's upside down! :silly:

My first bike was a 60's Honda CB77. It had CB350 pistons in the overbored cylinders. Engine was somewhat disassembled and out of the frame. This is about '77 and I was a young Airman in the USAF living in a Dorm/Barracks. I assembled the engine in my room. The roommate wasn't around much. Wonder why? Not that I cared. Got the engine assembled and installed back in the frame. Somehow got it to run pretty good too. WHOOPS, time to go to England. Never took a ride on it. My first ride was on either my CB 175 or the '74 M-66 Ural w/sidecar.

My first bike (in 1980) was a 1972 Suzuki AC 50 that my dad taught my brother and I to repair.
We learned how to lead-wipe the dents in the tank - jeeze, nobody told us lead was toxic back then!
Then came spray painting training, engine tear-down and re-build....followed by expansion chamber design and fabrication using the ubiquitous 2-stroke tuners handbook by Gordon Jennings. Marvellous!
Learned to ride that bike on the front verge of our suburban home!
The attached pic is not the actual one, but quite accurately represents what I remember it looking like back then (before it was repaired)
That was the beginning of my love for all things mechanical, and especially petrol powered!

Ah the superhawk, like a smaller black bomber, nice quality bikes from when the big four were working hard to earn a good reputation on the world stage ,a very smart business strategy which kawasaki utilized well, in the beginning you use the best materials possible and the best machinery to make the components and you build bikes that are as reliable as possible with good quality alloy and steel and over engineer the thing, each bike costs so much to make that the company doesn't make much on each unit sold BUT you build brand loyalty and you win over riders who might have never considered a Japanese bike, within about 10 years you have millions of fans and you build the bikes cheaper but you keep reliability and in another 10 years you build them cheaper again, more plastic used, thinner alloys ,no more roller bearing cranks etc but you charge strong money for the bikes so profits are incredible. of course motorsport plays a very important part too and that's why the likes of Suzuki kawasaki and Honda have invested heavily over the years , all in all the Japanese bike industry is a good example of Japanese business sense in general, like they say most company's look at the next quarter whereas the Japanese look at the next quarter of a century! :laugh:

I jumped right into the deep end. My first was a ‘76 Kz900 LTD big bore... 16” X 150 rear tire with short shocks... drag bars... 1075 kit with 28 mm Z1 carbs, Dyna S... Bought in 1981... I had friends ride it that came back pale white and you had to pry their fingers off the grips... Back then it was by far the fastest thing on the street.

Wow what a beauty that 900 was, that's definitely meanness set to music! Excellent blue flame paint job, I bet bikes like this frustrated the hell out of cops back in the day, imagine trying to chase it in a Dodge Polaris or something :laugh: