Hi iam new to the fourm, and new to street bikes and i have a few questions.

I want to start to ride a bike as my primary type of transportion and i have a few questions. First I would only need to ride a couple of times a week and the millage on those trips would mostly be under 20 miles each way. I have a decent amount of experiance on dirt bikes ranging from some small 80CC to larger 250CC, but i only have about 3 hours of experiance of riding bikes on the street and iam wondering whats a good school or training program to get me started(seattle WA area)? Ive been looking at bikes and have found the 91-94 CBR 600 to be a pretty good canidate for price relibility, and performance. Any opions on this any ideas for maitnance and any good places to buy one? The reason i want to start riding is from a variety of reasons the main ones being i love the performance of bikes, iam primarily a car guy and i just dont have enough money right now to get them to the perfromace i want and a bike is a very cheap alternative, and another benifit is cheaper insurance and gas which is always a consideration. Thanks

 

Well get ready to have the insurance hopes smashed to smithereens. But everything else is pretty close to the truth.

The F2/F3/F4 bikes are good starters, but any bike can kill you if you're retarded. What's your price range? I'd try for an F4i since they're pretty attractive and a little quicker than the others. Heap the R6 and Gix6 into that category too. You might get tired of a 600 though if you're looking for straight line performance. I'm sure I'll get flamed by everyone who wants to jump on the bandwagon, but you could even start on a liter bike. Liter bikes are pretty much exactly the same as 600s, just with a deeper reserve of power on tap and consequently they're easier to flip over backwards. You don't want to wear your bike like a hat. You can still do the same thing on an F2. I've done wheelies on those before. Harder to get up, but it's still pretty easy. So higher top speeds and it might hurt if you roll your wrist back a little too far or too quick at the wrong speed. But you won't get tired of it at least.

Keep a level head and take it SLOW when you start riding (lots of time in the neighborhood going about 15mph, take an MSF course, things like that), and you should be fine regardless of the bike. I started on my 900 and things went fine. A friend Justin started on an R6 (complete squid) and his bike has been down more times than I can count. Nobody will even ride with him around since we figure it's only a matter of time before he does something stupid and takes a few of us down with him. Some people just don't belong on bikes, and even an anemic 600 is too much: http://videos.streetfire.net/hottest...66008639F6.htm

My point being that you should just get the best bike you possibly can for your price range. And have the mentality that you'll probably go down at some point, so don't be too upset when/if it happens. Everyone goes down eventually. Take it slow and grow into the bike.

 

I believe some naked bikes are cheaper to insure than a fully faired sportbike. Does anyone know the real answer to that?

If you are a 'car guy' like I was, you'll be amazed at the performance of a 600cc bike. A liter bike can be simply ferocious. It will warp your sense of reality about how quick a human should move on two wheels. My F4i gets 43mpg if I don't beat on it that bad.

enjoy

 

The reason i think a 600cc bike is enough is one iam just starting and two the fastest car that i drive right now runs a high 14 sec 1/4 plus i dont want the to get into to much trouble and i know liter bike will make it way, way to easy to speed.

Does any one have any good reads on buying used bikes, and any ideas on where to look for some used ones.

My buget is going to be around 3K for bike and gear, do you think thats enough?

 

Hello & Welcome!!

 

Welcome