Always remember the first...

After a long drama to get the registration papers sorted out she's finally been taken on a decent breakfast run.

Sunday saw myself and a number of other souls heading out towards Simonstown for a nice breakfast. We departed from Caltex at the Waterfront just after nine, and it was great getting back into the group riding dynamics after being off a bike for so long.

The initial ride saw us struggling through town traffic, which is never much joy during the festive season. Over De Waal Drive towards Bishop's Court and then up to Kirstenbosch heading towards Hout Bay, then taking a sharp left going down towards Constantia.

I was following a lady on a Honda RVF400 to whom this stretch of road is like her backyard, and even with a pillion (yes on a Buell) although maybe not riding as extreme as the RVF I was keeping up pretty nicely without much effort at all. She really is an easy bike to ride, and corner entry speeds often catch you off guard purely because you think you are going much slower.

The moment we turned off towards Constantia I no longer knew the road and toned it down quite a bit. Of course my bike had just over 700km on the morning so she was still being run in. Surprisingly after some initial teething troubles the bike is great with a passenger. The effects of the pillion are much more noticeable than on other bikes, especially with regards to braking as the weight transfer to the front really puts strain on the brakes. Fortunately engine braking is such a pleasure with that barbarian bark from the exhaust that knocking down few gears is never a problem, and always offers a smile.

Somewhere during this part of the ride the leader of our group became a rather relaxed Scotsman on a Kawasaki ZX9. Travelling through town at a relatively sedate pace offered me the opportunity to do lots of roll-ons from low revs. Bearing in mind that she is still being run in, she doesn't fancy pulling from anything below 2500rpm and with a passenger I would generally try and keep her above 3000rpm. That might not sound too friendly for a V-Twin, which is suppose to have so much low down torque, but coming from a Japanese Inline 4 it suits my riding style perfectly.

We headed up and over Ou Kaapse Weg, where the wind immediately became noticeable. The interesting thing about the wind is that it remains completely constant on the Lightning. Fact of the matter is that you will always have wind from the front due to the low screen, and when you make peace with this fact it's really not much of a problem. Lateral winds on the other hand have virtually no impact on your ride however, most likely due to the low centre of gravity. I will more than likely still opt for the Zero Gravity Extended Flyscreen, even if just to test, but I could easily see myself doing long rides comfortably cruising at 150km/h.

Coming down on the other side of Ou Kaapse Weg we realised that we had lost the rest of the group. Turns out someone had gotten lost and the rest were waiting for them to catch up. It gave me a good twenty minutes to reflect on the ride up to that point.

I had been playing around with the suspension quite a bit and in the process managed to induce a headshake at 140km/h. Now I'm no expert in this regard, and I only jump between the different factory settings for weight classes, but it seemed like I had finally sorted it out for riding with my girlfriend at least. At least I thought this at the time, but going home later on I changed my mind again.

Eventually the rest of our group caught up, and it was in fact the Harley Davidson 883 Sportster that held things up. Not because it was slow, but because it deviated from the course. Interesting to note the extreme differences between the Sportster and the XB9 which share so many common parts. Amazing how different applications of components, can have completely different results.

Moving along into Simonstown we found a nice place at the docks to have some breakfast.



The Buell has a spectacular presence, and even amongst these superbikes it hardly holds back in the personality department.

I had my doubts that I might miss my GSX-R600 amongst this company, but I can honestly say that I felt a proud Buell owner throughout the entire morning and did not once wish I was riding one of the other bikes in our group.

And judging by the onlookers that walked past it's most definitely a crowd pleaser.

Breakfast done, the plan was to spend the rest of the day in Scarborough with the owners of the Kawasaki ZX-10 and Honda RVF400.

On the short run over there I realised that the bike has just passed it's running in period and being all warm up the moment had finally come to push her well over the 5000rpm limit that had been imposed on me for the past few weeks.

What a shocker to find that there is something resembling a powerband between 5500 and 7000. I suspected that revving the bike that high would offer nothing more than a smile on my dial, and in fact a loss of power. I was pleasantly surprised to find quite the opposite, and never thought that I would ever bother trying to dodge the rev-limiter on this one.

Every time I get on this bike I find something else that I just love about it, and the few minor distractions to that rule seem to completely disappear in the background. The jump from a high-revving Japanese 600 isn't nearly as difficult as was expected, and it offers much of the same character without all the discomfort.

After spending the day in Scarborough the ride back home was very quick, due to my girlfriend not feeling too well. The bike was perfectly happy travelling most of the way at 150km/h odd, and didn't once complain. I did realise that the suspension still needs some work though, as a number of bumps felt very soft all of a sudden.

After quite a hard ride it was also nice to find that the fuel economy wasn't adversely affected by the nature of the ride, and if anything I should at most lose about 20km on a tank under hard riding conditions.

As every day before this one, I still feel absolutely spectacular about my decision to buy a Buell. I think the only other bike I'll ever buy, will be another Buell.

At long last...

She has finally arrived.

Very late, and very dirty.

The moment I took her for a ride all the issues surrounding the delivery immediately disappeared. Only problem now is that I'm still waiting for all the paperwork to arrive, and thus the bike is unregistered and not exactly road legal.

Eventually opted not to have the exhaust modification done, when Buell Johannesburg informed me that although they have sorted the 12's out quite nicely they are still playing a little with the 9's. That being said the stock exhaust is a lot beefier and louder than I remember it, maybe it's been helped along a little for 2007.

Also my headlight grill seemed to have gone missing in action somewhere during the trek down to Cape Town, or it was never fitted in the first place. For a long moment I thought they had sent me a 12 and I was just going to keep quiet about it.

Initially I wasn't too crazy for the "cut" stickers on the tank, but in due time they have grown on me and now it looks quite funky. Also the aluminium airbox trim I ordered with the bike makes it look stunning.

I love the fact that the bike looks completely different in daytime, having a nice charcoal or graphite look to it, and then at night it goes completely black. Very radical look, and definitely the most badass naked around for miles!

Lets make some noise!

So my friends at TopBike were kind enough to supply me with the new magazine just before the weekend, and inside I found a lovely little article about the Buell Ullyses.

They opted to have what I initially thought of as a backyard mechanic job, exhaust modication done on their longterm bike. When I was in Johannesburg to test ride the XB9SX they told me about this mod their dynotuning guru Malcolm does to the stock pipe, to make it virtually identical to the Buell Race Exhaust which is no longer being manufactured due to treehugger regulations.

Of course being the prat that I am, I wasn't too bothered listening to the story, as I generally believe in buying from supposedly reputable sources, and already had my eye on the Micron Serpent full exhaust replacement for my new bike.

Well I quickly changed my tune after reading the praises for Malcolm's work in Topbike, and having a very long ogle at the Power & Torque curve changes. Malcolm completely gets rid of the low down flatspot and adds quite a few horses which I can't remember off the top of my head now.

I had a long talk on the phone with this Malcolm fellow from Buell Johannesburg. Basically he makes a Buell Race pipe from the standard pipe, by cutting it open and modifying or replacing internals. Naturally he won't give away all his secrets, but he promises me that the outputs are virtually identical to that of the Race kit, and that even though they need to cut open the pipe they clean it up and repaint it so nicely that you would never notice.

At the top of my priority list with regards to the modification is fuel economy. I was quite suprised to find that it makes virtually no difference in the real world, especially with the air filter swopped out as well. The stock ECU and oxygen sensor makes the system completely dynamic, and thus compensates for the modification. The Ullyses which is a 12 has an average fuel economy of 5.76l/100km which means the 9 should be on par or possibly even better.

Naturally the biggest reason to do any exhaust modification has nothing to do with power, and it's got everything to do with making a noise. Well no dissapointments there then, since the barbarian noise coming from this baby will make the earth move beneath the cages long before they even need to see me. You see, it's all in the name of safety!

All of this for a mere R 2 500 including the new air filter(which won't need to be replaced), compared to the Micron Serpent system which would work out to almost R 10 000 inclusive of labour, and doesn't really offer all that much more.

So essentially Buella will be dynotuned and modified straight out of the box, and costing me almost R 90 000 after the modification, fitting of swingarm sliders and fork protectors and not to even mention the mandatory registration fee.

Do you see me complaining? NOT AT ALL!

Decisions...Decisions

So after a very long winded internal debate I decided to change my mind on the colour.

I've opted to rather get the Kick Ash (doesn't that just sound so much better?) over the Hero Blue. The logic behind this change of mind is that aftermarket flyscreens are either available in black only, or the Blue can't be colormatched properly.

At the back of my mind I've also had the idea of swapping the tank for the Cherry Bomb colour from the XB12 at some stage, and then the Blue detailing on the Cheese-grater/Tea-strainer would be a bit off.

Sadly the instrument panel is still blue, but then again that matches the blue spring in the suspension and it breaks the all black colour a bit.

Now we just need a couple of polished aluminium extras, and then we've got a real Terminator on our hands.

Welcome!

So last week after postponing for much too long I finally got to ride a Buell Lightning XB9SX CityX.

Fortunately I was escorted by a fellow Bueller who showed me around the unknown territory of Johannesburg(South Africa) which greatly improved my ride, as I didn't need to worry about where I was going, but only needed to focus on my riding.

Sadly me only managed to cover about 120km, of which about 80km was in horrendous traffic. Initially I wasn't all that keen on lane-splitting with a bike I didn't know, but I meshed so well with the CityX that in retrospect I've very happy that I did do so much traffic riding.

The bike is an absolute dream to ride, and within a few minutes I felt more comfortable with it than I did on my GSX-R600 after almost a year of riding it. Yes it vibrates the crap out of you, but I actually enjoyed that because it tells you there's real power between you legs, unlike the Japanese Four that just make a whole lot of noise and doesn't have much to show for it.

The demo bike I had ridden was a '05 with factory Race Pipe, which makes a ridiculous(in a good way) amount of noise, and inspires a lot of confidence because you know cars will hear you, long before they need to see you.

I managed to lock up the rear in the middle of traffic, because like an idiot I downshifted it like a japanese superbike and just dropped the clutch, very quickly being reminded of the huge amount of torque that I'm playing with. Even in those circumstances the bike was a breeze to control, and I felt well with in my own abilities.

At higher speeds the rear tyre did feel a little bouncy, but afterwards I was told this was because the suspension wasn't specifically setup for me. The wind problem wasn't hardly what I expected it to be after reading some reviews, and I found it's perfectly fine to sit bolt-upright, and that crouching behind the flyscreen was in fact counter productive.

The only thing that I didn't like was the 1st to 2nd gear throw was a bit too long, especially for someone like me who broke three toes not too long ago, and was constantly reminded of that fact. I have been told however, that the 2007 models have had a significant clutch and gearbox upgrade which should sort out this little problem.

Needless to say I am now a Buell convert, and I've already placed my order. The bike is unlike anything that I've ever ridden before, and I look forward to spending many miles riding it. Hopefully my bike will be here before end of October, or at worst beginning of November and then I'll be able to post some more comments here.

So expect this Blog to turn into a Buell Journal, with ride for ride updates as I go along.

And after much deliberation I've decided to go for Hero Blue!