Tell me about your first motorcycle......

[fidgit]

my first was a 1982 Yamaha XJ650 Maxim- great bike, shaf driven, plenty of power runs like a champ and is 3 yrs older than i am! I paid $680 for it on ebay, and have put about $2k into it (probably NEVER see that $$ back, but thats why ill never sell it )
Its got custom forward ctrls, K&N pod filters, euro bars, drop shocks etc etc etc...

heres when i first got it;


after a TON of $$ and sweat;

[SpeedCostsMoney]

My very first ride was a little Honda 50. I was a kid and mowed lawns for a couple of summers, plus my Christmas to get it, I road that sucker down trails on it all the time with friends.



One time I was riding down a trail not paying attention and a tree branch took me right off the bike. The bike ran into a tree and crashed. I never could get it fixed right so sadly I sold it. I didn’t get back into bikes till way later with a Kawasaki 500 Ninja, when I was 16.

Unfortunately I wreaked that too. I stayed away from bikes till about 3 years ago then took the MSF class. I'm 30 and NOW I finally, know how to ride.

[mdm44]

It was a 1948 Cushman motorscooter. My parents bought it for me in about 1956 to ride around the yard and neighborhood when I was twelve. I loved that old beast.

That's quite a difference from the technology in the 2007 Nomad I bought yesterday!

[CycleDude]

My first bike is my current one in my sig line.

[B.rad]

1st ever bike was a 74 Yamaha TY80 that my Dad bought me new. To many dirt bikes to remember since then.

1st street bike was my 84 Gpz750 I bought new and still have. Don't remember what it cost, but the dealer let me take it and make payments to them until it was paid off.

[bretsk2500]

"my" first bike was a 1978 KLX250... I didn't actually own it, it belonged to my uncle, but I rode that bike EVERYWHERE, I knew the trail system here like the back of my hand.... I was riding it from 90ish til 92ish when I wrecked it.... I went bike less until last summer when I bought my 250r and then my ZZR... trying to make it through this year w/o buying another bike

[Michael600r]

Used Ninja 500, had the money in savings. Commuted on it, rode the twistys on it and after a year the 636 was calling my name.

[jbsmd]

Honda 50, in 65, given to me by my brother. Only rode it to and from school. Not sure what ever happened to it.

[de002e2277@blue]

My first bike was a BSA Bantam with 3 speeds & a plunger frame.
I bought it second hand for £20 ($40) from a neighbour in 1968 with savings from my newspaper round and a summer holiday job. I rode it for about 6 months before swapping it for a Triumph Tiger cub

[aaronrkelly]

Bought my first bike in August of 2007. Same age I am, 1980 KZ1000. Probably wasnt the best choice for a first bike but the price was the key factor.

Paid $900 cash for it and rode it a few weeks as is.

Then I busted a clutch cable...while it was in the shop I had them put new tires, fix an exhaust leak and do a few other general repairs. New chain and swingarm bearings followed.

I went on my first PGR ride on that old Kaw. It was a sight....all these shiney new Harleys, Vulcans, Goldwings etc.....and my old beater bike. Oddly enough almost everyone came up to me asking about my bike....either they had one when they were younger or they wanted one. Had a soldier come up and ask me if he could set on it and hear it run - hell yeah you can...ride it if you want (he declined but did set on it and awhile fiddling with the throttle). He had one at home he was working on. That was on Labor Day weekend.

My uncle had been riding for years....when I got home from that PGR ride (it was a few hours ride on the highway to get there) he was utterly astonished I would even try that on Labor Day.....let alone on that old bike. Guess I never even thought about it....I just rode.

Rode the hell out of that thing till I bought my second bike in November of 2007. Now I just ride it occasionally.

Since then I havent done much mods to the bike....just kinda left it as is. I have a cheapy tank bag, thats handy. I run a headlight modulator and tail light modulator as well. The previous owner did some performance upgrades. K&N pods, lowered shocks, Kerker 4 into 1....who knows what else. Everytime I do something to the bike I find somone else has been there first. Thats mostly been a bad thing......but it does run strong.

I did recently take the turn signals off, they never worked right anyways, taking them off was easier then making them work....only had the rears anyways, fronts were already gone.

[thejoker1290]

my first bike was a 1991 kawasaki 250el. i paid $250for it from a friend who kept it in his name for me till i got my motorcycle endorsment. that was probely 4 years ago. i rode that bike everywhere. but my friend lost the title for it an didnt want to go get a new one so i just picked up a 2001 ninja 250 with a blown motor the girl who owned it left it in second gear an destroyed the motor. i picked it up for $300 never dropped or anything. so im putting in my old 250 motor.

[curth1d]

ok this is my first post here.My first bike 1973 Kawasaki H1D .
Payed 650.00 for it in 1979.had lots of fun on that bike.what a street bike to learn how to ride on.even took my motorcycle test on it,what a day that was.
rode it hard dumped it several times,but always got back up and kept going.Not much could catch me on it back them if you know what i mean.
I blew it up twice (pistons)and ran out of money and no how to fix it so I just stored it.In 2007 I decided to restore the old beast .this is what it looks like now with 3700 miles on it since rebuild.

[HoopleHead]

My first “solo ride” was on an old cushman scooter at age 14, but I actually learned to ride on my best buddy's 1949 Harley Davidson 125. It was red and black and sounded like snorting through your nose. Slow but at age 15 in 1956 it was the ultimate for me!

My parents wouldn't let me buy a bike, even though I worked several deals with guys to buy their old ones to “fix up”.

So I didn't get to buy my own bike until I had left home and joined the USAF. I bought it in 1962 in Scotland. It was a 1956 Matchless tandom twin 500 and looked very similar to this one:

I slash-cut the silencers and gutted them and it could be heard coming from a long distance! I painted it gold and rode it all over Scotland and even down into England once. I took it places where it had to be lifted onboard various boats to go from place to place in Scotland. I gave this bike away after a couple of years because I was involved in a crash that killed a motorcyclist while I and the entire family were going to the Highland Games in a rent car.

The next bike came a few years later. It was a 1965 Honda 305 Dream and looked like a miniature cop bike. White, windshield, etc. Worst buzzing bike I ever rode! Absolutely hated it!


Some of my other more memorable bikes were:

'80Yamaha 650 Special rebuilt and painted black after a pretty bad smash-up, turned out pretty nice, don't you think?



'83 Suzuki GS1100ES, LOVED this bike! Eventually got stolen.


'87 Yamaha V-Max
http://w1.bikepics.com/pics/2004&#37...204255-320.jpg
but I didn't keep this one long because it cornered very badly and often got the shakes under hard acceleration!

Believe it or not, my favorite bike I've ever owned is my 07 Vulcan 900 Custom. Comfy and reliable and having fun with cheap customizing.

Second place would have to have been a 1990 Katana 750. I know these were badly dissed, but if you learned the ins and outs of this bike, how it handled and how to keep it in it's powerband, you could easily make jaws drop!.. Got me laid many times! Hahah

[insolentminx]

Ooooh, my first motorcycle I bought waaaaaay back in December 2007.
It was/is a '07 Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom which cost me the princely sum of £4700 ($8360), which was by far the cheapest new Custom anywhere in the UK at the time. I bought it outright from money I'd saved over various jobs, and partly from money i received in damages for breaking my neck in a car crash i was involved in.
I've ridden around alot on it, just over 6k all through the year, I've been to France twice and ridden all around England in 18 hours (12 of which was heavy rain).

This is her on the day i bought her 7th December 2007 (very cold day):



This is what I've done since then:
Fully debadged
Highway Hawk saddlebag supports (soon to be replaced by Easy Brackets)
Moved licence plate up 3".
Clear Alternatives clear lenses all round
Hepco & Becker Engine Bars
Fiamm AM-80 horn
Saddlemen Profiler Tattoo seat
Arlen Ness Slingshot mirrors
Kuryakyn Pilot pegs
Kuryakyn Mini-Pilot pegs
Kuryakyn ISO grips
Cobra smooth dash plaque
Barons Flame master cylinder cover
StreetFX blue LED kit & remote
Kuryakyn Pro-R hypercharger
Fi2000r
Cobra Shorts
Triple Headlight
2x ShowChrome bullet lights

And this is her now:

[HoopleHead]

Great gallery, Minx! Almost like I was there watching you customize your bike. I have GOT to start carrying my camera with me.

[insolentminx]

awww shucks.
thanks. yeah, i love how the bike's changed... especially when i bought it and didn't want to change a thing!!

[Musgofasa]

Originally Posted by SpeedCostsMoney

My very first ride was a little Honda 50. I was a kid and mowed lawns for a couple of summers, plus my Christmas to get it, I road that sucker down trails on it all the time with friends.



One time I was riding down a trail not paying attention and a tree branch took me right off the bike. The bike ran into a tree and crashed. I never could get it fixed right so sadly I sold it. I didn’t get back into bikes till way later with a Kawasaki 500 Ninja, when I was 16.

Unfortunately I wreaked that too. I stayed away from bikes till about 3 years ago then took the MSF class. I'm 30 and NOW I finally, know how to ride.

Wow! I had that exact same little monster when I was something like 9 or 10 years old! It was my first two wheeled vehicle. I rode it all over our little farm till I couldn't stand it anymore. I even set up little jumps in the yard and stuff. I never graduated to dirtbikes though.

My first real motorcycle was a 85 (I am still not sure if it was 84, 5, or 6, lol) Honda Shadow 700. Some guy was at my dad's shop getting his car worked on and offered to give us the bike for the repair work on the car (probably $200 worth of work). The only drawback was that it didn't run. Thinking back, this would have been in 1989 so the bike wasn't very old. We went over to his house and looked at it. It was DIRTY. Covered in dust. We took off the tank and pulled the carbs and sure enough they were covered in gunk. Dropped them in carb cleaner for a while, put them back together, put them on the bike, cranked it up and rode it home, lol. You should've seen the look on his face when I rode off on a bike he thought wasn't good for anything but the junkyard, lol. We actually offered to give him $1000 for the bike, but the guy wouldn't hear of it. He brought his car back for service a few times and we did it for free, but he was actually very happy that we liked the bike. I think he was scared of it or something. I put about 20,000 miles on it before I graduated high school and then sold it for something like $3K. Used the money to buy a car and didn't get another bike for a while. Now I wish I had used the money to buy another bike, lol.

[Ole Yeller]

'82 Suzuki GS650G. Good looking, black. Very nice and reliable, we had a lot of fun riding in the Santa Cruz mountains. I got in '84 I think and paid $1500. It only had 600 miles on it. In '89 I sold it to a guy where I worked who had always admired it.

[iron pony]

Mine was a SUZUKI TS 125 Enduro.
Got it on a Saturday, man I was stoked.
I was about 13 years old.
Remember the feeling when the bike dealer & I pulled up to our driveway in a white van & rolled that baby out.
All my buddies were standing in the driveway waiting to hear it & get a ride.
Cut yards, worked at the school for a summer job, man those were the days.
Cost about .90 to fill her up. [ lol ]
Livin at Home, livin the life back then.
My dad had passed a few months earlier & the new bike kind of help get me out of the funk.
Mom has passed on now too, thanks mom for the great memories !

[jaseman]

My very first motorcycle was an 82 KX-80. I was 10 years old, and I have no idea how much it cost, since my father paid for it. My uncle had raced enduro/hare-scrambles for years, so he and my father decided it was time for me to learn.

That first bike lasted me 3 years, and it, me and my father and uncle rode every weekend we could. They took me everywhere they possibly could to ride. Fire access roads, forested trails, abandoned strip mines, you name it, we were there. If there was a major race that my uncle was running, we tagged along. Most memorably, the Blackwater 100 in West Virginia. I helped pit-crew with the guys we were with on Saturday (extreemly memorable for an 11 year old kid), and then we rode some of the course on Sunday. Got the little 80 stuck up to it's cases in "the Bog", and we had to pull it out using a tie down strapped to the back of my dad's KTM 495. But instead of turning around, I insisted on pushing through the bogs to the other side. Got stuck twice more, but learned how to properly get a woods bike through the mud in the process. Also learned on that trip how to cross deep water (with the front wheel floating across the top), how to get up steep, rutted hill-climbs, and run fast through tight, technical trails. That trip to Blackwater Falls was the most memorable experience on that little KX-80. Period.


First streetbike was a 1980 Honda CB-650 Custom. It was also my first form of legal on-road transportation. I was 16, and again, my father gave it to me. He had been riding it for a few years, on gave it to me when he decided to buy a nice used KZ-750. I got the bike for free, but had to pay for the insurance, gas, and any upkeep needed. That bike helped me define who and what I was to become as a rider.

When I first took it over, street riding to me was all about looking like the hard-a$$es I saw riding around on HD's. So I 'cruisered' it out with a sissy-bar, buck-horn bars, leather bags, a big ol' windsheild, and some sweet candy red paint. But the bike had other things to teach me!! For an 80's UJM, that bike wanted to run, and run hard. Now, it was no sportbike, but the suspension was decent for it's day, it was relatively flickable and solid handling, and that 650 inline-4 wasn't happy until she was revving high into the RPM's. Growing up around sportscar racing, this bike my young brain everything I wanted in a sporty form of transportation. And it taught me how to ride an old standard well enough to keep up with my friends who were on the more modern, mid/late 80's sportbikes.

By the time I was done with it, it had transformed from the 'wannabe cruiser' it started out as, into a nice little cafe bike. The buck-horns were scrapped in favor of clubmans, a 4-into-1 pipe was added, the airbox was replaced with pod filters, progressive springs were placed in the front forks with shocks sourced from a CBF 750 made to fit out back, and the sportiest tires I could make fit the rims. It was no longer the bike I though I wanted at the beginning, but rather the bike that fit my riding style to a T.

That 650 got me everywhere for 5 great years. School, work, friends, you name it, it took me there. The only time I drove my car was if there was ice on the road, and the prom (which I would have if my date would have let me)! It was versatile enough to let me cruise around town, tour 5 or 600 miles, or spank the kids in the IROCs all over the Western PA backroads. It let me figure out who I was as a rider.