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I've written before on this log about wanting to get a motorcycle. There are a lot of reasons why, ranging from the fun aspect to the economic and environmental impact of driving a car to and from work daily. A few weeks ago I took my Basic Riders Skills course offered by the BMV and passed the examination, so as of last week I have a valid motorcycle endorsement on my driver's license.

Now, my original plan had been to buy a new bike. I was looking seriously at Royal Enfield, as the price is incredibly low for what you get. I'm also a huge fan of classic British motorcycles and the Enfield's, while made in India, trace their heritage back to Britain and have retained their classic styling. They're simple designs for the most part, which also appeals to me.

Back in October last year my fiancee's car suffered catastrophic engine failure. It did end up being covered under warranty, but due to the time it took for the shop to fit her car in we had to pay for three weeks of rentals so she could get back and forth to work. The warranty did pay for one week, but the dealership and warranty company took a combined month to diagnose the damage, decide if it was covered and get it into the shop and fixed. Much of that money happened to come out of my motorcycle fund.

I thought that I had scraped enough together to be able to still buy an Enfield. I had $1200 USD for the down payment. Then I found out about how high the dealer fees were. We're talking in the range of $1500-$2000 in destination charges, setup fees, battery maintenance fees, etc, on a $4500 bike? WTF? That put a new bike back out of range for me.

So it was that I found myself on the used market again. I was looking for a 400-750cc Honda if possible, and there were plenty of them ... at first. Every single one I tried to look at was gone before I could get to it. Seems that pretty much everyone thinks like I do and wanted a midsize bike. Now, I really didn't want a 250, because they just can't keep up on US highways. I was reluctant to go bigger, but in the end that's what I wound up doing anyway because frankly the season is already here and I'm tired of waiting.

What I found was a 1979 Yamaha XS Eleven Special. Now, the regular XS was actually a bit of a special bike to begin with, even though it's largely forgotten today. It was the largest of the Universal Japanese Motorcycle designs to date and the first production motorcycle to do a sub-12 second quarter mile on the drag strip. Basically, in the 70's, as soon as Honda released a new design Yamaha, Suzuki and Kawasaki quickly followed with nearly identical designs. The XS Eleven was Yamaha upping the ante on the pattern Honda had found so much success with in the CB750-four. A transversely mounted four cylinder engine with an upright, neutral seating position and a smooth shifting five speed gearbox. The XS added a shaft drive, which for the time was a novelty, and sported dual overhead cams with four valves per cylinder. My new bike, when new, made 95 horsepower and was the fastest thing on wheels of the day, at least in a straight line.

Now, this is significantly more bike than I started out wanting, but after taking it out for a first ride yesterday I have to say, this is going to be a fun summer. It's not as economical as I wanted, true, but it's significantly better than my truck (and handily beats your average modern SUV) in both gas mileage and emissions just by virtue of having so much less to carry around. I'll get my smaller bike eventually, when money is less of an issue, at which time this bike will be reserved for longer trips when I want to cross state lines on the highway. But for now, holy mother of god this thing is fun.

New Motorcycle

2024-05-08

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