The little Suzuki is an RV200 Vanvan. It has a rear tire on the front and an ATV tire on the rear… actually the same tire sizes as the TW200 and similar displacement and power (a widowmaking ~13 HP) but it’s lower, less dorky looking, and fuel injected rather than carbed.
A while back a friend of mine offered me custodianship of a CB750 Four from the late '70’s, but I declined owing to already having a small mountain of bikes and I was not relishing the thought of owning something with four inline carbs. I un-mothballed the thing for him after it had not run since 1997 so he could sell it, and taking it apart once was enough for me. I got the bastard starting on the first kick, though. I don’t know where it went after he wound up selling it to a local dealership.
At the moment I have:
Yamaha FZ6R
The KLR650
Honda Shadow A.C.E. 750
Suzuki RV200 Vanvan
Honda CH50 Metropolitan (the scooter)
Orion/Nicot RXB250L
Bashan/Raven BSR250 “Enforcer” (actually 229cc, but who’s counting)
The Sportster on the end of that lineup is my neighbor’s, he stores it in my garage over the winter.
I knew that Yamaha was familiar. One of my friends who is an old time Yamaha / Honda employee and is retired had one. His son became a great motorcycle mechanic and when he was a teenager in the early 2000s, he used to ride his father’s FZ6 all the time. I’d go visit them and find his name written with melted tire rubber on the pavement on the backroads leading to their house. He did that for a summer before he realized it was easy to pin stuff like that on him if the neighbours started to complain to the police … lol.
I also thought that was a Shadow … when I bought my Vulcan two years ago, the guy I bought it from was also selling a Shadow and it was a toss up for me between the Vulcan and Shadow … only reason I took the Vulcan was that he had tried to customize the Shadow so much that he wanted it to look like a Harley complete with the logo (I’m not a big Harley guy but I do know that other die-hard Harley riders don’t like it when people do that to their bikes)
Really curious about the Orion and Raven … aren’t those Chinese or Asian bikes? … I’m not against them because I think of them as being the same quality as what bikes would have been 20/30 years ago. I also suspect that they are probably just copies of 20/30 year old Honda and Yamaha technology … which means that they are probably pretty good.
Love that Suzuki Vanvan … looks like a classic old bike (which I love) but with those big fat tires, you could take it anywhere. A weird bike for sure because it looks like some sort of weird trials bike
And the Harley Sportster is probably the only Harley I would ever buy. I love the look of Harleys, I would just never buy them. I had an old motorcycle mechanic who owned several Harleys and his first piece of advice was to tell me - never buy a Harley, as they are a mechanics nightmare. They’re good if you can work on them yourself but a pain and expensive if you ask someone else to do the work. The Sportster is one of the least problematic of the Harleys.
Wow … what a line up … thanks for sharing … ride safe and good luck to you out there … the roads are a lot more dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, just from the shear number of vehicles out there the problems are just multiplied, so it puts all us riders in danger everywhere. But whatever happens, as long as you got an engine and two tires under you, you’re doing good.
Damn, you’ve got some fine tastes!
The little Suzuki is an RV200 Vanvan. It has a rear tire on the front and an ATV tire on the rear… actually the same tire sizes as the TW200 and similar displacement and power (a widowmaking ~13 HP) but it’s lower, less dorky looking, and fuel injected rather than carbed.
A while back a friend of mine offered me custodianship of a CB750 Four from the late '70’s, but I declined owing to already having a small mountain of bikes and I was not relishing the thought of owning something with four inline carbs. I un-mothballed the thing for him after it had not run since 1997 so he could sell it, and taking it apart once was enough for me. I got the bastard starting on the first kick, though. I don’t know where it went after he wound up selling it to a local dealership.
At the moment I have:
The Sportster on the end of that lineup is my neighbor’s, he stores it in my garage over the winter.
I knew that Yamaha was familiar. One of my friends who is an old time Yamaha / Honda employee and is retired had one. His son became a great motorcycle mechanic and when he was a teenager in the early 2000s, he used to ride his father’s FZ6 all the time. I’d go visit them and find his name written with melted tire rubber on the pavement on the backroads leading to their house. He did that for a summer before he realized it was easy to pin stuff like that on him if the neighbours started to complain to the police … lol.
I also thought that was a Shadow … when I bought my Vulcan two years ago, the guy I bought it from was also selling a Shadow and it was a toss up for me between the Vulcan and Shadow … only reason I took the Vulcan was that he had tried to customize the Shadow so much that he wanted it to look like a Harley complete with the logo (I’m not a big Harley guy but I do know that other die-hard Harley riders don’t like it when people do that to their bikes)
Really curious about the Orion and Raven … aren’t those Chinese or Asian bikes? … I’m not against them because I think of them as being the same quality as what bikes would have been 20/30 years ago. I also suspect that they are probably just copies of 20/30 year old Honda and Yamaha technology … which means that they are probably pretty good.
Love that Suzuki Vanvan … looks like a classic old bike (which I love) but with those big fat tires, you could take it anywhere. A weird bike for sure because it looks like some sort of weird trials bike
And the Harley Sportster is probably the only Harley I would ever buy. I love the look of Harleys, I would just never buy them. I had an old motorcycle mechanic who owned several Harleys and his first piece of advice was to tell me - never buy a Harley, as they are a mechanics nightmare. They’re good if you can work on them yourself but a pain and expensive if you ask someone else to do the work. The Sportster is one of the least problematic of the Harleys.
Wow … what a line up … thanks for sharing … ride safe and good luck to you out there … the roads are a lot more dangerous now than they were 20 years ago, just from the shear number of vehicles out there the problems are just multiplied, so it puts all us riders in danger everywhere. But whatever happens, as long as you got an engine and two tires under you, you’re doing good.
Here’s the 2001 BMW R1100R