Category: Tim’s Motorcycle Diaries

It was a cold and windy ride through the Superstition Mountains yesterday.  The route we took after taking Gaylen’s advice at azride.com gets you out of the city and into the desert quickly and lets you bypass most of the urban sprawl east of Phoenix.

Our trusty mount was a Kawasaki Concours 14.  I thought it would be interesting to compare my 20 year old Concours to a younger one.

After I got myself turned around and rode ten minutes the wrong way into Phoenix, we got moving in the right direction and soon found ourselves on the Bush Highway, a twisty, bumpy highway that doesn’t go anywhere – I guess that’s why they named it that.


It took me some time to get used to this unfamiliar bike.  The gear shift was very close to and felt lower than the foot peg which made for awkward shifts, and the brakes felt very (dare I say over?) assisted unlike the old-school hydraulic brakes on my classic Concours.  When you applied the front brake you stopped in a hurry causing my pillion to plough into the back of me a number of times until I got really ginger with brake application.  The other off-putting part was that each time I used the front brake it was accompanied by a loud electrical whining noise like a cicada chirping.  Sometimes it would stop when I let go of the brake, sometimes it would keep whining afterwards.

I was unsure if this was a Concours 14 thing (doubtful) or an azride.com maintenance thing.  CoG didn’t suggest any known brake electrical noise problems so I suspect this is a maintenance issue.  The azride.com website didn’t mention what year the Concours was (unlike other rental sites which tell you it’s a 2015 but show you a five year old bike), but based on the body the bike we had was a pre-2011 model.  Maybe it’s starting to get cranky in its old age.

Taking a water break on the Bush Highway.  It was about 15°C, comfortable riding weather. Up in the mountains it was 5°C when we stopped for lunch.

After owning three Kawasakis I have to say, man do they know engines.  Every one I’ve owned or ridden has had a jewel of an engine and this Concours was no different.  Passing through the tunnel leading out of Superior, the engine sounds echoing off the walls were spine tingling – it sounded like something straight out of MotoGP.

With that big wobbly wind screen up high you’re in a big air bubble, but it looks ungainly.  Fortunately you can lower the screen in town to restore a sportier look.

The engine didn’t disappoint in power either.  My Connie does the business with carburators and 300 less ccs, but what this bike does with the monsterous ZX14 1300cc lump is truly ominous.  I’ve ridden fast bikes before and this is one of the fastest.

On mountain roads this newer Concours felt smaller than my bike though they weigh the same.  The newer bike is much narrower and quite wasp wasted compared to the chunky older model.  That monumental engine that produces sixty more horsepower than my bike probably helps with that feeling of lightness too.

Wind-wise, I was able to ride in jeans all day into single digit Celsius temperatures without a problem.  The heat that pours off my Concours was absent on this one, though it was a cold day so it wasn’t something I’d notice anyway.

The windscreen is electrically adjustable and at the top it stopped all but the top of my head getting hit by wind (I’m 6’3″ and I had given up on windshields doing anything for me).  My bike gets me squarely in the shoulders and up all the time.  I didn’t like how much the windscreen wobbled at speed, it looked flimsy, not to mention goofy in its highest position.  Once I was back in town I lowered it back to a less Jurassic Park look.  Goofy or not though, it made a cold ride through the mountains much more bearable.  A transformable windshield is a piece of magic, though a more solid feeling one with manual adjustment would do the job better.  I’d rather not have the added weight and complexity of the electrical one.

You can see just how ridiculously high the risers are in this view of the Concours back in the lot. The big googly-eyed headlights don’t do much for me either.

I’ve got a 32″ leg and find my bike a bit cramped.  The ZG1400 was a bit more relaxed in the legs.  After a couple of hours in the saddle I had no problems.

The ergonomic problems began where azride.com made changes.  The huge risers they installed on this Concours looked like comedy units off a 1970s banana seat bike – huge bull horn things that put the grips right under my nipples, or so it felt.  They pushed me so far back that I was riding more on my tailbone – cruiser style – than I otherwise would have.  The narrow Concours 14 seat wasn’t build for this contortion and it became quite uncomfortable.  It makes me wonder how the stock handle bars would have worked.  I have low risers on my old Concours and have a slight forward lean, which I prefer to a bolt upright or reclined stance.

No fancy paint, electrical wind screens or whining electronics, but it’s a solid old thing that does the business with gusto.  I’m still wishing for the bike bag to magically whisk my bike along.

All of the electrical noise from the brakes and fuel injection made me cross.  I don’t mind electronics (I teach computer engineering), and my Ninja had EFI that was bullet proof, silent and efficient, but when the electronics are whirring away it is intrusive and just reminds you of another expensive thing that will break on you.  I don’t feel that this Concours 14 gave me a fair idea of what the breed is capable of.  I’d especially like to try a newer one to get a better sense of the machine.  Maybe Kawasaki will be doing a riding tour again next year and I can try a 2016 model.

That whacky old-guy handle bar riser (and accompanying sore ass) conspired to make me long for my own bike.  It might not have the heat management, or easier reach to the ground (which I don’t need anyway), or fancy moving windshield, but my old Concours feels solid, is usually the fastest thing on the road when you twist the throttle and offers a satisfying mechanical simplicity that I missed on this electronically whinny newer machine.

I’ve been trying to understand this since reading the advertising, um, I mean buyer’s guide in BIKE last year.

I’m trying to get a handle on PCP financing that seems to be popular in the UK right now. If you’re going to buy a Kawasaki Z1000 with ABS in the UK, you’re looking at a price of £10,389 ($17,453CAN). The on the road price in Canada is about $16,000, so you’re already almost $1500 ahead, but cost of borrowing is where I get really confused.

If you PCP (personal contract purchase) you’re paying a £2500 ($4200CAN) downpayment and then £147 ($247CAN) per month for 36 months. At the end of that time you’ve got nothing, all while paying 5.9% interest and having to ride the bike under mileage and keep it pristine to keep your investment intact.  You’re also hit up for financing paperwork fees.  If you go over mileage or the bike is in any way less than mint when you return it you suffer additional costs. I imagine the same goes with any farkling you might want to do – don’t. When you hand it back you’ve paid $13,092 Canadian dollars in interest and what basically resolves itself as rental costs; you own nothing. That’s when they ask you if you want to do it again with another bike or now pay a balloon payment equal to the current value of the bike (assuming it’s in perfect shape).

If you buy the same bike in Canada and put the same amount down, you’re looking at a monthly payment of $348 Canadian (£207), and at the end of the 36 months you own the thing. There are no mileage restrictions, no worries about keeping it stock and perfect and if it is in good shape you’ll have spent about $550 in interest and have a vehicle that UK Kawasaki says is worth £3628 ($6095CAN).

The pure costs of borrowing in the UK would be the down payment plus the monthly interest costs. That’ll be £2500 down payment + £465 in monthly interest, all for the favour of giving you this great deal. The pure costs of interest on the PCP deal is £2965 ($4981CAN). The amount of interest you’re paying to own (rather than borrow) the same bike in Canada is $460.

The context of borrowing in the two countries is quite different. The UK happily followed the US down the rabbit hole that caused the 2008 financial crisis by deregulating banks. That never happened in Canada where interest rates and the cost of borrowing has always been held to reasonable standards. Canadian banks still make huge profits (they now own a number of US banks that crashed in 2008), but they don’t break the financial system in the process and people who live here aren’t subject to the ridiculous costs of borrowing that British people seem to think reasonable.  I frequently see ads on UK TV for credit cards with interest rates that would be illegal in Canada.

With that in mind, maybe throwing nearly five grand Canadian to borrow a bike for three years (that’s $139 a month just in borrowing and rental costs!) makes sense, but it sure doesn’t from this side of the Atlantic.

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After the ride to Indy I have a much stronger opinion about the Concours’ stock seat.  It’s soft and comfy on short rides, but on long rides it turns into a kind of torture device.  There are options for Concours seats that I can’t justify on an $800 bike, but the cheaper option arrived, so yesterday during the rain I gave it a go.

It’s tedious, but loosening the staples with a screwdriver makes for clean removal with needle nose pliers.

The process took about an hour and a half to swap out the seat cover.  The seat fabric is held down by industrial staples.  I loosened them with a small flat-head screwdriver and then pulled them out with needle nose pliers.  It’s time consuming because there are a couple of hundred of them holding the seat to the plastic base.

The cover peeled off relatively easy, only sticking where the Gorilla tape I’d used on the torn seam was touching the foam (that stuff is mega).

With the foam exposed I tried fitting the new seat skin and found that it had much more extra material on it.  I was looking to firm up the seat a bit any way, so I took the gel pad I got on the Indy trip and found it would fit under the new cover.  It would also raise the seat slightly, which would do my knees some favours.

Attaching a new seat cover is a tricky business.  The vast majority of swearing happened while doing this.  Rotating the seat so you can put weight on the staple as you squeeze the handle of the stapler helps seat it properly, but it’s a pretty muscley process.  Getting the edges tight requires some practice.  This one came pretty close, but future ones I’ll be pickier about and get even snugger.

In the meantime I’ve got a seat that feels firmer, sits a touch higher and isn’t covered in tape.  I think the end result looks pretty good, and for thirty bucks plus shipping, it’s a good cheap alternative to those sweet Corbin seats.

I found this seat cover maker on ebay.  The seat arrived quickly and is as advertised.  I can’t speak for its toughness yet, but installing it I found that it was made of thick vinyl and the sewing was very strong.  It’s a cool sunny day today, I’m going to give it a whirl and see how it does.

The stock seat tore on the stitching, Gorilla tape did the business until I could find a better solution.

It’s alive…. ALIVE!!!

After fiddling with the speedometer gear housing I was told to make sure I have the line on the back of the suspension and the housing lined up.  I put it back together that way and still didn’t get anything, so I took it apart again and tried putting it on 180° from before and bingo, the speedo began to spin.  If you’re having trouble with speedo gear housings, try putting it on the other way and turning it to line up with the fork housing mark.

Love that red – the Connie will be getting panels refinished over the cold months…

All the gauges on the Connie work now, so I’m going to begin to reassemble it after changing out the oil and filter.  I’m hoping to have it back together in the next week or so and then I can take an honest run at a safety and see how it does.  Everything else seems to be in good form.  It starts at a touch of the button and idles steadily after a moment on choke.  The throttle is clear, sharp and very responsive now.  The
brakes feel strong and sure.  After reassembly and a final cleanup, hopefully it’ll fly through safety and then I’ll have to make some hard decisions about the Ninja.  

It would be nice to get some miles on the Connie before the snows fall.

New speedo cable runs in behind the bottom of the front shock from the right.  It reads accurately and runs quietly.

Hard not to love that big one litre engine… it burst to life with a growl and revs with surprising eagerness.  Smooth as butter too…

Everything comes to life and reads accurately now…

Horizons Unlimited is having a big meeting in central Ontario in May and it’d be nice to go.  It’s a three hour ride from home but only about an hour and a half from the inlaw’s cottage.  I looked into staying over but it’s a pretty penny.  Staying at the resort it’s at is north of eight hundred bucks for the cheapest condo type place available.  Even assuming I could find some people to divide the cost with, that’s more than I’m willing to pay.

Heading up Friday I could do a loop around the Kawartha Highlands on some twisty, Canadian Shield roads before landing at the cottage.  The whole thing would be about 850kms over a long weekend.  A day of riding up there, a day at Horizons and then a ride home on Sunday – entirely doable.

The ride around Kawartha

They structure the pricing to get you there for the whole weekend, so even if I just went for the day it’s still seventy five bucks, but then I guess I could always go back Sunday if it really did the business.  I’ve had friends attend before and really enjoy it.  If there were wild camping opportunities in a less resorty location, I’d be more willing to commit, but refugee camping (in rows, on a site) isn’t my cup of tea, and the alternative staying in a building ends up being money I’d rather spend elsewhere.


Still, for seventy five bucks, it might be a good way to get a sense of the overlander adventure club, I just wish they offered a first time taster’s package.  They say ‘come to an HU event and find your tribe’ – but I tend toward a tribe of one.  I want to believe, and I want to go, but I don’t want to end up spending a mint on something that ends up not being a fit.  The aspie in me wants me to just go for a long ride in the Haliburton Highlands – I’m trying to use that to convince him to go and meet people… something he really isn’t fond of.

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It’d been a long, hot night in lodge.  Putting on a tuxedo isn’t exactly comfortable at the best of times, stewing in one for three hours was worse.  I’d finally sprung free from cleanup and was looking forward to a cool, dark ride home.


Even now it was still well above 20°C, but the warm night air over mesh pants and jacket was dramatically cooler than a room full of guys in suits.  The Tiger fired up at first touch, eager to make some wind.


Riding at night doesn’t happen very often, and when it does it tends to be the end of a long day where the goal is to get home, but the magic of night riding quickly reaches out and grabs me.  The smells are different and strong.  Reflective eyes follow me from every hedgerow and the stars are wheeling overhead.  Ground fog flashes past in low lying areas and my headlights tilt dramatically as I round corners on dark country lanes.


Suddenly, without warning something hits me in the visor – more precisely, I knock it out of the air with my face.  Whatever it was hits me hard enough to get off the throttle and coast while I assess the damage.  Insects attain Jurassic Park sizes in Canada in the summer, but this wasn’t that.  Whatever it was bounced off the visor and hit my right shoulder, where it scratched desperately at my mesh jacket before the wind blast threw it over my shoulder into the dark.


Tiredness and heat exhaustion had been washed away with a surge of adrenaline.  I had big eyes behind that scarred visor.  Was it a cicada?  A June bug?  Those things grow baseball sized up here.  That desperate scratching feeling over my shoulder was still freaking me out.


I got my head together and pushed on into the night.  With no moon the Milky Way arched overhead.  Closing in on the one horse town of Oustic I tried a night time 360° photo which came out blurry but cleaned up nicely in Photoshop (on the right).


I rolled into my driveway well past 11pm.  As I rolled the Tiger into the garage and took my jacket off I discovered that it was splattered with blood.  My best bet is that I knocked a bat out of the air with my face.  He was probably doing his thing picking those Jurassic Park sized bugs out of the sky when my head came flying through space and took him out.  If I’d have seen him coming I would have ducked, but black bats at night are hard to pick out.


Better a bat than the rodent of unusual size I saw on the road half an hour later.  I don’t know what that was either, but it gave me a long look with reflective yellow eyes before it ambled off into the undergrowth.


Riding at night is magical, but not without its dangers.

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