October 24th, 2013

As the sun was shining and I had the afternoon free, I took the chance to take this Monster out for a spin. As you may remember, I saw it when I went to test the Hornet a few weeks ago and to be honest I had thought about it a fair bit, especially as winter is drawing nearer, which in its own way has heightened my desire to get another bike. Why not use a car? I hear you say, well the problem is that driving in and out of London is okay for a day or so, but any longer than that, the almost constant clutch action needed badly affects my ankle, specially the tendons around the side and the back. Its one of the reasons I've having an MRI on it this coming Monday. Anyway, back to the bike

The bike is a 2006 one owner model and had a full service history and its in pretty good condition. The belts were done fairly recently, but the bike is due a service and if I bought it, it would be done before I picked it up. There are however some small problems. The tyres, for want of a better word, are awful. Its looks and very much feels that the bike was hardly ever leant over as when tipping into corners, you can feel the bike slide on the hard shiny rubber. The brake and clutch both feel like they need a really good bleed. It's been dropped on its left side, with a mark on the brake reservoir, the bar end and it looks like as a result the tank has been resprayed, fairly poorly it has to be said as there are several bobble marks showing through on the top. At first I thought they were water droplets. Those end cans, although it good condition, don't seem to have been set up for the bike. Don't get me wrong they sound lovely and look fairly decent to, but they have resulted in a very lumpy delivery between 4k & 5k. Hopefully this could be ironed out, or at worse, I could hunt down some original cans to pop on. Just a thought. There is no underseat storage. Absolutely none and finally, the side stand it tucked right up under the foot peg, making it tricky to get easy access to.
Now the good points. It is really really comfy. The long stretch to the bars suits me quite well. The mirrors work, the screen is effective and it has some lovely old school clocks.
I like it. Its at the very top end of the money I was looking to spend, but the bike is really nice, but not nice enough that I'd worry about riding through the winter. Basically, just like the Ninja.
Here are some more pictures. Oh and did I mention it was exactly the same colour scheme as my 1098s?