Off-road motorcycle riding is an exciting and thrilling activity that requires a capable bike to handle the rough terrain. The Kawasaki KLX 230 and KLX 230S are two of the most popular off-road motorcycles available on the market today. Both bikes are designed to provide riders with an impressive off-road experience, but they have their differences in terms of features and performance. In this head-to-head comparison, we will discuss the similarities and differences between the Kawasaki KLX 230 and KLX 230S. So, let’s gear up and dive in!
Engine and Performance
The Kawasaki KLX 230 and KLX 230S both come equipped with a 233cc, fuel-injected, air-cooled, single-cylinder engine that produces a horsepower output of 20.5 hp. The KLX 230 is designed for recreational off-road riding, while the KLX 230S is equipped with a few enhancements, such as fuel injection, more top-end power, and a smoother throttle response, making it suitable for more aggressive riding.
Chassis and Suspension
The KLX 230 and KLX 230S have a similar steel perimeter frame chassis, but the KLX 230S has a more advanced suspension system with a 37mm inverted fork and rear uni-track mono-shock suspension that provides a smoother ride with better adjustability. The KLX 230 has a standard telescopic fork suspension at the front and a swingarm suspension at the back, providing adequate off-road capabilities.
Braking System and Tires
The KLX 230 and KLX 230S have the same front and rear disc brakes for excellent stopping power and durability. However, the KLX 230S comes with a larger 300mm front brake rotor, providing improved braking performance. The KLX 230 comes standard with 21-inch and 18-inch front and rear wheels, respectively, while the KLX 230S has larger 21-inch and 18-inch wheels and high-performance tires with more aggressive tread patterns.
Weight and Dimensions
The KLX 230S weighs slightly more than the KLX 230, with a curb weight of 294.3 lbs as compared to the KLX 230’s 291.1 lbs. The KLX 230S has a higher seat height of 36.2 inches, while the KLX 230 has a seat height of 34.8 inches, making it more suitable for riders of all sizes. Both bikes have a ground clearance of 9.8 inches, which is sufficient for navigating off-road trails.
Conclusion:
The Kawasaki KLX 230 and KLX 230S are both excellent off-road motorcycles that provide a thrilling riding experience. They share many similarities in terms of engine size, horsepower, and ground clearance, but the KLX 230S has enhancements that provide a smoother ride with better adjustability, higher performance tires, and a larger brake rotor for improved stopping power. If you’re into more aggressive riding, the KLX 230S is probably the better option for you. However, if you’re looking for a recreational off-road bike, the KLX 230 is a great choice. Whatever you choose, you’re guaranteed an enjoyable off-road experience with any of these two Kawasaki bikes. So, gear up, and hit the trails!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
Hello there, it’s Peter. In this video, we’ll be discussing the advantages of commuting to work on an e-bike. Rather than just diving into the technical details, we’re going to illustrate the benefits through a story. E-bikes have features that set them apart from standard bicycles, making them better suited for commuting. While the most obvious advantage would be less sweat, there are more personal touches that can be added to make commuting a lot easier. It happens to be World Bike to Work Day, and I believe there are three types of people- those who will bike to work no matter what, those who think biking to work would be nice but impractical for them, and those who have already decided not to bike to work. This video is for those people who fall in the middle category- those who would like to bike to work but do not know if it is right for them. However, they might find that an e-bike, specifically a Pedego e-bike, could work for them. In this video, we shall take a look at three different bikes as examples. Even if some of the examples are not suitable for you, I hope you stick around and listen to what I have to say. There is a vast array of Pedego bikes that can cater to every individual’s specific needs. So, grab a snack and a drink and enjoy!
We’ll be discussing three bike models today, starting with the Pedego Avenue. While it may not have all the benefits of an e-bike, it’s a standard-looking bike that draws newbies in. This model has a few nifty features such as alloy wheels instead of spoked ones and both a front and rear accessory racks.
The Pedego Element is another model we’ll be examining. It’s slightly more advanced with added perks like pedal assist, making this option great for those looking to upgrade from traditional bikes. And finally, we’ll take a look at the shorter height boomerang, which has its own unique features.
Welcome to Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, where the Pedego line of electric bikes is available! If you’re interested in learning more about Pedego e-bikes or have any questions, you’re in the right place. Subscribe to the channel and reach out in the comments, and I’ll be happy to share insights and information to help you discover these amazing bikes.
I want to share some basics about e-bikes. They come with a battery, electric motor, and a computer system that determines the functioning. The bikes have a display that helps you track your journey. You can ride an e-bike just like a regular one, but e-bikes offer five levels of power assistance to help you cover more distance with less effort. Level one helps eliminate the extra weight from the motor and battery, giving you the feel of a regular bike. As you move on to levels two and three, you will feel a boost of power when pedaling. Levels four and five offer a significant amount of torque, allowing you to travel at a speed of up to 32 km/h effortlessly. If you’re a true cyclist, you might opt for a different motor system, but for the average non-cyclist, a hub motor is the superior option. Its key benefit is a throttle that makes riding e-bikes more enjoyable.
A throttle is crucial to an e-bike’s power-assist feature, as it eliminates the need to shift gears. When coming to a stop sign or a stop light, you give it the throttle to power up to max speed and then start pedaling again. This saves you the effort of shifting gears, which is a big plus. Similarly, if you’re riding on flat terrain and hit a slight incline, you can use the throttle to push forward without changing your power levels or gears. Using the throttle to negotiate small dips and inclines makes your journey more enjoyable and hassle-free. Want to hear more about how these commuter e-bikes can make your life easier? Stay tuned for our discussion on two more options!
This is the basic display in the pedal lineup, but more advanced displays work the same way. To turn it on, simply hit the power button. It takes just a few seconds to come to life. The display shows the pedal assist system, which you can set to miles or kilometers per hour. The plus and minus buttons adjust the level of assistance you get while pedaling.
At level zero, the bike is like any regular bicycle. At level six, the throttle is active and you can control your speed with the throttle. The throttle is located on the right side handlebar. The inside of the throttle determines the level of power you get while pedaling.
To optimize your biking experience, adding strength training into your routine is essential.
The smooth transfer of power between gears makes an e-bike effortless to operate, but that’s just the beginning of its benefits. Whereas traditional bikes prioritize efficiency and lightness, e-bikes can afford heavier frames and convenient features without sacrificing function. That’s why the Pedago bike brand adds weight to create practical models, like the Avenue. Equipped with front and rear racks, this e-bike caters to commuters’ needs, allowing them to carry more items with ease. Plus, studies indicate that owning an e-bike leads to more usage than owning a regular one since it provides an enjoyable and practical experience.
Unsurprisingly, the Pedego Element model is one of the brand’s bestsellers. Previously unfamiliar with e-bikes, many customers quickly appreciate their newfound capabilities. In contrast, the Element would fall short if compared to standard bikes.
There are a few downsides to e-bikes, including their fat tires that aren’t very efficient, and smaller wheels that require more pedaling effort. However, a closer inspection reveals that e-bikes have some remarkable advantages as well. For starters, these big, fat tires make it incredibly easy to switch smoothly between pavements, sidewalks, gravel paths, and even grassy terrains. While they do make the bike a bit heavier, the electric motor more than compensates by helping you climb hills with minimal effort. Because the e-bike comes equipped with smaller gears and faster speed gear ratio, you don’t have to worry about hill climbing, no matter how heavy the bike is. In fact, e-bikes like these can keep up with larger bikes without breaking a sweat.
It’s important to note that e-bikes in Canada are limited by law to 32 kilometers per hour of assistance. This compact bike comes with a few impressive features that make it an excellent choice no matter where you’re headed. Its small wheels are aerodynamic, helping you pick up speed faster, while the gear protector lets you lay it on any side without worry. You don’t need to worry about shocks, either, because the fat tires provide enough suspension to keep you steady on uneven terrain. And because you sit more upright while riding it, you’ll find it even more comfortable than traditional e-bikes designed for speed and weight optimization. Whether you’re carrying the bike in the back of your SUV or you’re navigating rocky hills, this e-bike is practical, comfortable, and up for any adventure.
Let’s talk about practicality for a moment. I want to showcase another bike to drive that point home. The Element is one such bike – an electric bike that seems impractical as a regular bike but makes perfect sense. You can add a rack so you can carry stuff to work, and even add a basket on the front for more convenience. But let’s say you want a fat tire bike, just not with smaller tires; well, Pedego has got you covered with other options. In fact, different combinations of bike components you’d like or dislike can be found elsewhere in the Pedego lineup.
Now, let’s take a look at a more traditional bike. Although, if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that this too is a deviation from what’s considered ordinary. This one has smaller 24-inch wheels, but you can still get the same frame design with 26-inch wheels. The 24-inch wheels lower the bike’s center of gravity, which is a plus point. The boomerang design is noteworthy and features an ultra-low step-through that’s well-suited for beginners.
Another cool feature found in other bikes from Pedego is a quick-release handle that adjusts your handlebar height on the fly. If you feel like leaning forward, adjust the handlebar accordingly, or if you want to sit more upright, you can do that too.
This particular bike may be too small for me, but it’s great for folks looking for a comfortable position on their bike ride. The relaxed position means your weight falls away from your hands, while your curled-back hands naturally position the handlebar. The seat is wider and comfortable, with a suspension seat post to make your ride cushioned and smooth.
The Pedago e-bike is a futuristic marvel that incorporates a standard rack and hydraulic disc brakes, making it unique among its peers. With the battery located at the back of the rack, it ensures a well-balanced weight distribution, which is vital for maintaining stability and avoiding accidents.
The lightweight wicker baskets with fabric inserts are an innovative addition to improve practicality and style. They can be quickly attached to the rack and carried around with ease. Fenders are also available to render commutes trouble-free even in inclement weather conditions.
The lighting system is integrated into the bike’s battery pack, and the lights run as long as you have power in your e-bike. The system comprises of powerful headlights and a massive rear light that ensures optimal visibility and safety.
The Pedego e-bike is geared towards speed and efficiency, and good brakes are imperative for safety. Hydraulic disc brakes are part of the system, ensuring optimal performance even at high speeds.
All in all, the Pedego e-bike is a luxurious and unconventional choice that ensures speed, comfort, and practicality, making it the perfect ride for any adventure.
One of the biggest advantages to having disc brakes on an e-bike like the Pedago model is the consistency you can expect in the braking process. Unlike traditional cable-based brakes, these disc brakes don’t stretch over time, ensuring a more predictable feel and stronger pull.
In addition to the benefit of consistent braking, Pedago e-bikes are also praised for their comfort and rideability, allowing riders to explore new neighborhoods with ease. Even riders who would typically shy away from long or hilly rides have found that their Pedego e-bike lets them keep pace with the “spandex crowd,” all while wearing comfortable clothes and taking in the sights at a more leisurely pace.
So, whether you’re looking for an easy and environmentally-friendly commuter option, or just want to have more fun on your weekend rides, the Pedego e-bike is definitely worth checking out.
E-bikes can be a gamechanger for those looking for a comfortable, practical and enjoyable ride. Adding big, comfy seats and adjustable suspension seat posts can go a long way in enhancing the experience, not to mention the convenience of a quick-release stem. Pedego leads the pack in this industry, with their line of bikes and specially designed accessories that cater to every need.
But before you make a purchase, it’s important to do your research. Don’t go for a cheap model from a big-box store, as you’re likely to face issues with replacement parts and repairs. Instead, invest in a reputable brand and dealer who can offer the support and care you need. Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports in Fredericton New Brunswick is a great place to start, with demo bikes you can try before you buy.
The beauty of an e-bike lies in its versatility. Whether you’re commuting to work or out exploring new trails, there are endless possibilities. With Pedego, you can even customize your ride with accessories like child carriers, phone mounts, and bags designed to fit their bikes perfectly.
So if you’re ready to experience a whole new level of cycling, consider an e-bike from Pedego.
Are you a motorcycle enthusiast looking for a practical and sporty ride? Look no further than the Kawasaki Versys line! The 2023 Kawasaki Versys 650 and 2023 Kawasaki Versys 1000 are two incredible motorcycles with a ton of features that make each bike unique. In this in-depth comparison review, I’ll help you understand the differences between the two and help you decide which one is the best for your needs.
Let’s start with the engines. The Kawasaki Versys 650 is equipped with a 649 cc liquid-cooled, DOHC 4-cylinder engine that delivers 68 horsepower at 8,500 rpm and 47 lb-ft of torque at 7,000 rpm. On the other hand, the Versys 1000 is powered by a 1,043 cc liquid-cooled, DOHC inline four-cylinder engine that cranks out 118 horsepower at 9,000 rpm and 75 lb-ft of torque at 7,500 rpm. The Versys 1000 clearly has the edge when it comes to power, but the Versys 650 makes up for it in fuel efficiency, with an estimated 50 mpg compared to the Versys 1000’s 41 mpg. It’s up to you to decide if the extra power is worth the decrease in fuel economy.
Both bikes come with advanced electronics, including a six-axis Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), which allows for advanced rider aids like lean angle-sensitive traction control and ABS. Additionally, each bike comes with three ride modes (sport, road, rain) as well as a customizable rider mode that allows you to personalize the bike’s settings based on your preferences. However, the Kawasaki Versys 1000 has a few additional features, including electronic cruise control, heated grips, and a quick shifter.
When it comes to the suspension, the Versys 650 has a traditional telescopic fork in the front and a single shock in the rear. Meanwhile, the Versys 1000 has more advanced suspension with an inverted fork in the front and a remote preload-adjustable shock in the rear. This means that the Versys 1000 has a more comfortable ride and better handling on rough roads, but it also makes the bike heavier.
One of the most noticeable differences between the two bikes is their weight. The Versys 650 weighs in at 476 pounds (full tank) while the Versys 1000 is a bit heavier at 549 pounds (full tank). The added weight makes the Versys 1000 feel a bit more stable when cornering, but the Versys 650 feels more nimble and easier to handle. Depending on your experience level and riding style, you may prefer one over the other.
In summary, both the 2023 Kawasaki Versys 650 and 2023 Kawasaki Versys 1000 are incredible motorcycles with a ton of features that make each one unique. If you’re looking for a bike with more power and advanced electronics, the Versys 1000 is the clear choice. However, if you’re a more fuel-conscious rider who values nimbleness and maneuverability, the Versys 650 might be the better option. Ultimately, the choice is yours, and it all depends on your preferences and needs. Thanks for reading, and happy riding!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
If you are an avid rider and love to navigate tough terrains, the Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS is a machine you should not miss out on. This four-passenger side by side is all about powerful performance and capability on the toughest trails. In this blog post, we will review the 2023 Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS and discover what makes it a highly exciting ride. So buckle up and let’s get started!
1. Performance: When it comes to performance, the 2023 Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS Model delivers a powerful punch. It comes with a 783cc V-twin engine that offers a top speed of 50 mph. The engine produces a whopping 47 lb-ft of torque and comes with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). The Teryx4 EPS Base Model is built to tackle tough terrains, and the engine delivers a smooth ride, even in challenging conditions.
2. Design: Our Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS is designed for adventure with its aggressive outlook and sporty style. The base model comes in vibrant colors and a robust design, offering optimal protection on rough terrains. The LED headlights offer clear visibility during nighttime, enhancing safety on the trails. The Teryx4 EPS features four-wheel drive, which can be easily engaged with a flip of a switch.
3. Suspension: The Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS is equipped with Fox Podium 2.0 shocks that provide excellent handling on all kinds of terrain. The suspension includes a double wishbone system and a five-way adjustable preload, making it easy to adjust for individual riding preferences. The suspension delivers impressive performance that handles jumps and obstacles with ease, ensuring maximum comfort and control.
4. Storage Capacity: The Teryx4 EPS comes with ample storage capacity, with four cup holders and multiple storage compartments for all your gear. The cargo bed can be easily utilized to store equipment and gear, making the vehicle highly functional.
5. Safety Features: The Teryx4 EPS comes with safety features that make it a reliable machine for off-roading. The vehicle is equipped with standard seat belts and a rollover protection structure (ROPS), keeping passengers safe on rough terrains. The vehicle also features traction control, ensuring maximum grip on challenging trails.
Conclusion:
In conclusion, the 2023 Kawasaki Teryx4 EPS Model is a remarkable machine that delivers an extraordinary riding experience. From its powerful engine to its sporty design, the Teryx4 EPS is built to conquer the outdoors. It comes equipped with top-notch safety features, ample storage capacity, and a robust suspension system, making it a highly functional machine. If you are looking for an off-road side by side that can tackle any terrain, then the Teryx4 EPS Base Model is a must-try machine that you will love.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
Are you an adrenaline junkie looking for the ultimate adventure on two wheels? Look no further than the 2023 Kawasaki Versys 1000 LT SE. This bike was designed for those who crave an unforgettable experience, with features that will keep your pulse racing and your mind focused. From its powerful engine to its advanced electronic package, the Versys 1000 LT SE is the perfect choice for any adventure.
1. Engine and Performance
The 2023 Kawasaki Versys 1000 LT SE is powered by an exciting 1,043cc in-line four engine that delivers 120 horsepower and 82.6 lb-ft of torque. This engine is mated to a six-speed transmission and features a slipper clutch, which provides smooth downshifts and prevents wheel hop during aggressive riding. With this kind of power and performance, you can tackle any road or trail with confidence.
2. Suspension and Handling
The Versys 1000 LT SE features long-travel suspension, with adjustable rebound and compression damping, and a hydraulic spring preload adjuster. This suspension setup ensures that you can handle any terrain, smooth or rough. The Kawasaki Electronic Control Suspension (KECS) and Skyhook technology take things further, adjusting the suspension in real-time to provide optimal performance and comfort. The sporty 17″ wheels wrapped in high-performance tires offer excellent grip and stability on any surface.
3. Electronics Package
The Versys 1000 LT SE boasts an advanced electronic package, including Kawasaki Quick Shifter, electronic cruise control, and advanced traction control. Its advanced IMU-enhanced electronics package includes cornering management and intelligent ABS, which all work in unison to provide optimal braking and stability. The multi-function TFT colour LCD screen offers clear display and easy navigation, and smartphone connectivity lets you stay connected on the go.
4. Comfort and Convenience
The Versys 1000 LT SE offers excellent comfort, with an upright riding position and ample legroom. The 28-litre hard saddlebags with KQR mounts provide plenty of storage space for all your gear. The all-LED lighting, including cornering lights, ensures that you can see and be seen at all times. The bike also comes equipped with a centre stand for easy maintenance.
5. Style and Design
The Versys 1000 LT SE is a stunning bike with a distinctive design that is sure to turn heads. The bike is available in two colours, Green/Black and Pearl Stardust White/Metallic Spark Black, both of which look amazing on the road. The attention to detail is remarkable, with high-quality finishes throughout, and the unmistakable Kawasaki logo on the tank.
The 2023 Kawasaki Versys 1000 LT SE is the ultimate adventure bike, with a powerful engine, advanced electronics package, and superior handling. Whether you’re on the highway or off-road, this bike will provide the perfect ride for any adventure. With its comfort, convenience, and style, the Versys 1000 LT SE is a must-have for any motorcycle enthusiast looking for the ultimate adventure on two wheels. Answer the call of adventure and hit the road with the Versys 1000 LT SE today!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
Do you love to stand out in the crowd and turn heads wherever you go? Look no further than the new Vespa Primavera Color Vibe, which combines the classic Vespa spirit with a vibrant and trendy look. This bike is perfect for anyone who wants to add a touch of irreverence to their daily ride. In this blog post, we’ll review the unique features of the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe and help you decide if it’s the perfect fit for you.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a two-color livery that creates a playful and unique game of contrasts. The body is bold Orange Color Vibe or White Color Vibe and is paired with a footwell in Ottanio, a particular shade of turquoise. This color is also featured on the typical “tie” on the shield and the exclusive wheel rims, made for this version in a special shiny metallic finish.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a celebration of the playful Vespa universe, combining originality and a desire to redefine trends. The bike perfectly captures the youthful Vespa spirit that is all about experimenting and being original. Jump in the seat and go beyond your every expectation with the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe sports the characteristic 50cc engine that allows for an enjoyable and safe ride in any condition. The bike also features a single-cylinder, 4-stroke, 3-valve engine that delivers the perfect balance of power and fuel economy. The bike also features an ABS braking system that ensures maximum safety during your ride.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is perfect for anyone looking for a bike that is both timeless in its design and youthful in its spirit. The bike’s unique color scheme perfectly captures the Vespa’s adventurous spirit. The bike is perfect for anyone who loves to ride with a touch of irreverence and originality.
The Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is a perfect celebration of the fun and playful Vespa spirit. The bike beautifully captures the youthful vibe that Vespa has become known for. If you’re looking for a bike that is both timeless in design and vibrant in color, the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe is the bike for you. With the bike’s unique color scheme and its perfect balance of power and fuel economy, you’ll have a ride that’s perfect for any occasion. Don’t wait – jump in the seat and experience the Vespa Primavera Color Vibe today!
The 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan S is a powerful and versatile cruiser motorcycle that is designed to offer riders a thrilling and comfortable riding experience, perfect for cruising through long distances. With its refined aesthetics and advanced engineering, the Vulcan S is a bike that is tailor-made for the modern motorcycle enthusiast. But what makes this motorcycle even more appealing is the extensive range of accessories that are available to customize it just the way you want.
One of the most significant advantages of the Kawasaki Vulcan S is its countless accessory options that riders can choose from to enhance their riding experience. These accessories are designed to make your motorcycle more functional, practical, and personalized to your preferences. They also provide riders with the necessary tools to beef up the bike’s performance, handling, and overall style.
In terms of practicality, the Kawasaki Vulcan S offers several accessory options, including saddlebags, windshields, and backrests. These accessories offer a lot of storage space to carry your essentials over long distances and promote more comfortable and effortless cruising. Adding a windshield to your Vulcan S will also help protect you from wind and elements while also enhancing aerodynamics while cruising long-distance rides.
For riders seeking a sleeker custom look, there are several options available, including a tail cowl, headlight visor, and frame sliders. These accessories add a unique personal touch to your bike while also making it stand out from the crowd.
Adding heated grips to your Vulcan S can help keep you toasty on chilly rides, which is a must-have accessory for the all-weather rider. Floorboards, lowered seats, adjustable footpegs, and passenger seats are other optional accessories that riders can add to the Vulcan S to enhance the riding comfort and ergonomic fit of the motorcycle.
The 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan S is manually adjustable to accommodate riders of all heights and body types, which is why it offers a vast array of available accessories. These accessories allow riders to personalize their motorcycles according to their specific needs and preferences, providing them with an incredible ownership experience that perfectly aligns with their vision.
In conclusion, the 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan S is an excellent motorcycle for riders who seek power, comfort, and convenience, all while maintaining riding style. The availability of a wide array of accessories makes customizing this bike incredibly easy, allowing riders to tailor the bike to their individual needs and preferences. Visit a Kawasaki authorized dealer and experience the thrill of owning and personalizing the Vulcan S.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
For motorcycle enthusiasts who are looking for an adventure, finding the perfect bike can make all the difference. The right motorcycle should be reliable, comfortable, and powerful enough to take on any terrain. Whether you are looking for a lightweight and nimble bike or a touring bike that can take you and your passenger on an unforgettable journey, Kawasaki has got you covered with two of its latest models: 2023 Kawasaki Versys 650 and 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300.
First, let’s discuss the 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300. This adventure motorcycle boasts a nimble and lightweight design that makes it easy to maneuver through different terrains. The Versys-X 300 is powered by a 296cc engine which delivers a maximum output of 39 horsepower and 26 lb-ft of torque, making this bike perfect for both urban and highway adventures. With a fuel capacity of 4.5 gallons and an average fuel consumption of 71 miles per gallon, you can embark on long journeys with confidence.
The suspension of the Versys-X 300 is designed to handle all kinds of terrains with its 41mm telescopic fork and bottom-link Uni-Trak monoshock with a 5-way adjustable preload. Additionally, with a ground clearance of 7.1 inches, you can tackle off-road trails without any difficulties. On top of that, the Versys-X 300 features a comfortable saddle that can accommodate two riders, making it perfect for solo or duo journeys.
Next, let’s explore the 2023 Kawasaki VERSYS-X 300. This bike is designed for the ultimate touring experience and promises to take you on an unforgettable adventure. With an improved frame and a refined engine, you can embark on long journeys with confidence. The Versys 650 LT is powered by a 649cc engine that delivers a maximum output of 68 horsepower and 47 lb-ft of torque.
The Versys 650 LT boasts a long-travel suspension that can handle all kinds of terrains, whether you are on the highway or off-road. With its 41mm Showa cartridge fork and Showa shock with remote preload adjustability, you can adjust the suspension to meet your riding needs. The Versys 650 LT features a comfortable saddle that can accommodate two riders, and with a fuel capacity of 5.5 gallons and average fuel consumption of 50 miles per gallon, you can embark on long journeys without having to refill frequently.
Both the Versys-X 300 and Versys 650 LT offer touring accessories, such as luggage, heated grips, and a center stand. Additionally, both bikes come with a digital instrument cluster that provides useful information such as fuel range, gear position, and more.
2023 Kawasaki VERSYS-X 300 – Your Perfect Companion for any Adventure
Powerful 296cc Liquid-Cooled, Parallel Twin Engine: One of the best features that make the Versys-X 300 stand out from its competitors is its powerful 296cc liquid-cooled, parallel twin engine. This engine is compact but delivers impressive power and torque, making it ideal for any terrain. The engine’s power is delivered smoothly and progressively, ensuring an enjoyable ride, whether you’re commuting or touring.
Long-Travel Suspension: Another outstanding feature of the VERSYS-X 300 is its long-travel suspension. The front suspension is a telescopic fork, and the rear is a Uni-Trak system with adjustable preload and rebound damping. This suspension system can handle all kinds of terrain, making it a perfect companion for adventure riders.
Upright Riding Position: The VERSYS-X 300 is designed to offer a comfortable and upright riding position. The handlebars are positioned higher, creating an ergonomic design that ensures the rider sits in an upright position. This design helps reduce fatigue during long rides and gives you complete control of the motorcycle at all times.
Low Seat Height: The seat height of the VERSYS-X 300 is only 32.1 inches, making it easy for riders of any stature to find their perfect seating position. This low seat height also makes it easier for riders to maneuver the motorcycle in tight spaces and when taking sudden turns.
Front Cowling with Tall Windshield and Convenient Rear Carrier: The Versys-X 300 comes with a front cowling with a tall windshield, which provides excellent wind protection and reduces rider fatigue. It also has a convenient rear carrier that allows riders to carry all their adventure gear without worrying about carrying capacity issues.
If you’re a motorcycle enthusiast looking for an adventure companion, the 2023 Kawasaki VERSYS-X 300 is your perfect choice. With its powerful 296cc liquid-cooled, parallel twin engine, long-travel suspension, and ergonomic design, you’re bound to have an unforgettable experience. Whether you’re commuting to work or touring the countryside, the Versys-X 300 is ready for any adventure. So, what are you waiting for? Embrace the open road and explore new horizons with the VERSYS-X 300.
The VERSYS 650 LT boasts a compact 649cc parallel twin engine that is built to deliver power, performance, and efficiency. This powerful engine is lightweight, delivers responsive acceleration, and comes with a unique gear configuration that ensures maximum low-to-mid-range torque. This means that you can easily accelerate and maneuver your way through the traffic, no matter how congested the road may be.
2. Slim, Upright Riding Position:
One of the defining features of the VERSYS 650 LT is its slim, upright riding position, which allows for maximum comfort and control, even on the longest of rides. This riding position provides a relaxed posture, reducing rider fatigue and discomfort, so you can enjoy your ride for longer periods of time. The natural seating position also enhances the bike’s handling and stability, making it an ideal choice for both experienced and novice riders.
3. Long-Travel Suspension with 17″ Wheels:
The VERSYS 650 LT comes with long-travel suspension that is designed to offer plush, comfy ride quality, even on the roughest terrains. Thanks to its 17″ wheels, this motorcycle can easily tackle even the most challenging roads, delivering smooth and stable performance in any condition. The advanced suspension system also ensures that you and your passenger enjoy a comfortable ride, regardless of the distance or terrain you’re navigating.
4. Kawasaki TRaction Control (KTRC):
One of the most innovative features of the VERSYS 650 LT is its Kawasaki TRaction Control (KTRC) system, which is designed to provide maximum traction and stability, enhancing your riding experience. This system analyzes and controls the engine output to prevent wheel slip and enhance stability, giving riders more confidence and control, even when riding in challenging environments.
5. Hard Saddlebags Featuring KQR Mounts:
The VERSYS 650 LT comes equipped with hard saddlebags featuring Kawasaki Quick Release (KQR) mounts, which allow for easy installation and removal of the bags. These saddlebags provide ample storage space for all your essentials and come with a durable, waterproof construction that will keep your belongings safe and dry, no matter how long the ride.
Whether you’re an experienced adventurer or a novice rider, the 2023 Kawasaki VERSYS 650 LT is the ultimate bike for your next big adventure. With its enhanced touring features, powerful engine, comfortable riding position, and advanced technology, this bike is built to conquer the road, no matter where it takes you. So what are you waiting for? Get your hands on this magnificent machine and start exploring!
Conclusion:
In conclusion, Kawasaki has done an impressive job with its latest adventure motorcycles, the Versys-X 300 and Versys 650 LT. Whether you are looking for a nimble and lightweight bike or a touring bike that can take you and your passenger on an unforgettable journey, you can now choose the bike that fits your unique adventure needs. With their reliability, comfort, and power, these motorcycles promise to take you on adventures that are limited only by your imaginations. So, gear up, and hit the open road with your new Kawasaki Versys!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
If you are a motorcycle enthusiast, you know that choosing the right bike can be quite tricky. There are several things to consider – engine performance, design, budget, and most importantly, your riding style. Two bikes that are currently generating a lot of buzz are the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and Ninja 650. What sets them apart? And which one should you choose? In this in-depth comparison, we’ll look at the key differences between the two bikes and help you make an informed decision.
The Ninja ZX-4R boasts a liquid-cooled 399cc inline-four engine that can churn out around 45-50 horsepower. This is an increase in power compared to the Ninja 650 that has a liquid-cooled 649cc parallel-twin engine that delivers around 67 horsepower. If speed and power are your top priorities, then the Ninja ZX-4R should be your pick. However, the Ninja 650 offers a smoother ride with its parallel-twin design and is ideal for long-distance rides.
Design and Ergonomics – The Ninja ZX-4R has a more aggressive and athletic design compared to the Ninja 650. It has a single seat and a sharp tail section, which gives it a sporty look. Its clip-on handlebars are positioned lower than the Ninja 650, which offers a more aggressive riding position. On the other hand, the Ninja 650 has a more relaxed riding position with a slightly raised handlebar and a 2-seater arrangement. If you plan on doing a lot of highway riding, the Ninja 650’s more upright riding position is more comfortable.
Brakes and Suspension – Both bikes have similar front suspension but differ in their braking systems. The Ninja ZX-4R boasts dual 310mm disc brakes with aggressive monobloc calipers, while the Ninja 650 has a single 300mm disc brake. The Ninja ZX-4R also comes with advanced electronic rider aids such as a quick-shifter, traction control, and multiple riding modes. These features are not present on the Ninja 650. So, if you are looking for a high-performance bike with advanced technology, then the Ninja ZX-4R is the bike for you.
One of the most significant factors that affect the buying decision is, of course, the price. The Ninja ZX-4R has a starting price of around $9,999 MSRP and the Ninja ZX-4RR is $10,999 MSRP while the Ninja 650 starts at around MSRP $9,699- 9,999 depending on colour. However, if you consider the advanced features and performance of the Ninja ZX-4R, at no extra cost. the choice becomes just a personnel decision. Both bikes come with a 12-month limited warranty.
Choosing between the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and Ninja 650 can be a tough decision. Both bikes have their unique features and benefits. The Ninja ZX-4R offers high performance, aggressive styling, and advanced technology. It’s ideal for riders who want a thrilling ride with plenty of power. However, it may not be the best choice for riders looking for a more practical bike for long-distance rides. The Ninja 650, on the other hand, offers excellent build quality, comfortable riding position, and fuel efficiency. It’s ideal for riders who want a more practical and versatile bike for daily commuting or long rides. Overall, both bikes offer value for money and are excellent options for their respective target audiences.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
If you’re a motorcycle enthusiast, you probably already know that Kawasaki has always been a company that never fails to impress. From their iconic Z line to their powerful Ninja series, Kawasaki motorcycles have always been synonymous with speed, power, and outstanding design. Well, guess what? Kawasaki is about to take things to the next level with their latest offerings- the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR. These two superbikes are set to redefine what we know about Kawasaki’s engineering prowess and, if you’re anything like us, you’re already excited to see what they have to offer.
Let’s start with the basics- the engine. The 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR are both powered by a four-cylinder, 400cc engine that delivers impressive power and speed. While this may seem like a small engine, don’t let that fool you. These bikes are not for beginners and are designed to satisfy even the most experienced motorcyclists. The engine is fast revving, and the power output is more than enough to get your adrenaline pumping.
One of the most notable things about the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR is how comfortable they are. Kawasaki has designed these bikes with ergonomics in mind, and as a result, both bikes provide an incredibly comfortable ride. Whether you’re taking them on a long distance trip or just commuting to work, you’ll appreciate how comfortable the ride is.
However, the comfort doesn’t come at the expense of performance. In fact, the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR come loaded with more tech than the current Kawasaki ZX-6R. For a start, both bikes feature a powerful traction control system that keeps you safe and in control while you’re racing around the track or carving through corners on the street. Additionally, the bikes are equipped with a quick shifter, making it easier than ever to change gears on the fly.
Of course, these bikes are designed with performance in mind, and they do not disappoint. Whether you’re taking them to the track or the streets, the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR are incredibly agile and handle exceptionally well. The bikes are designed to be lightweight and nimble, which helps to make them stand out from the competition.
Conclusion: All in all, the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja ZX-4R and ZX-4RR are without a doubt, two of the most exciting motorcycles that we have seen in recent years. Kawasaki has outdone themselves with these two superbikes, and we cannot wait to see them hit the market. If you’re a motorcycle enthusiast looking for a bike that combines comfort, performance, power, and an impressive design, then you certainly won’t want to miss out on these two amazing machines.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
For Ninja bike buyers looking for the ultimate thrill on the road, the 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R is a must-have. Released in 2022, the bike’s stunning appearance is enough to lure anyone to splash their cash on this exceptional two-wheeled machine. But, why is this bike so great? What makes it so unique and worth the investment? Well, in this blog, we’ll delve into the details and tell you exactly why the Kawasaki ZX-10R is a force to be reckoned with.
1. Design
It’s impossible to discuss the 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R without first speaking about its design. From the first glance, you can tell that this bike is made to move. The new design attracts the eye with an aggressive dual LED-headlight and sharp bodywork that’s punctuated by well-placed ducts and subtle changes in the shape of the fuel tank, and a revamped exhaust system. The lightweight frame is made from pressed aluminum that’s designed to keep weight to the minimum. Simply put, the design is fresh, modern, and boasts of an active aerodynamics package.
2. Engine
As a rider, there’s nothing more thrilling than a bike that can deliver an excellent performance on the road or track. The 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R is no pushover when it comes to performance. Under the engine’s hood is a four-stroke, liquid-cooled, DOHC, 998cc engine capable of delivering a massive 202 horsepower! Additionally, the bike also features a six-speed sequential manual transmission, ensuring direct and immediate power delivery. Thanks to the state-of-the-art electronic motorcycle management systems, the Kawasaki ZX-10R delivers quick and seamless power delivery, giving the rider ultimate control.
3. Suspension and Brakes
The 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R comes equipped with some of the best high-performance suspension and braking systems. The superbike boasts of fully adjustable race-style Showa suspension that guarantees excellent handling and stability even during high-speed riding. Additionally, riders can adjust the suspension to their specific driving style. Concerning stopping power, the bike features Brembo brake calipers and discs that provide immediate and powerful braking performance, ensuring the rider stops at nothing.
4. Electronics
The driving experience of the 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R is further enhanced by the bike’s electronics. The bike comes equipped with an array of sensors, including an IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit), a quick-shifter, and traction control, working together to ensure instant responses when you need them most. Additionally, the bike also boasts of a TFT (Thin Film Transistor) instrument panel that displays all the necessary rider information, ensuring you’re always in control of important stats like speed, gear selection, and more.
5. Price
Finally, with all it can offer, riders might assume that the 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R would come with a hefty price tag. While expected to launch around $16,500, it’s safe to say that it’s worth every penny. The bike is the epitome of high-performance sports bikes, and with its awe-inspiring engine, design, and electronics, riders are guaranteed an exceptional experience on the road.
Conclusion:
The 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R has officially arrived, and it’s an absolute beauty to behold. With its aggressive styling, high-performance engine, electronic management systems, and impressive suspension and brake systems, the Kawasaki ZX-10R is a force to be reckoned with on the road or track. While it might come with a price tag, we’re confident that this bike will provide an unforgettable riding experience you won’t find anywhere else. So, what are you waiting for? Put your helmet on and give the 2023 Kawasaki ZX-10R a spin. You won’t regret it!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
If you’re stuck between the 2023 Kawasaki Z400 and the Z650, this blog will cover all the differences between them and how those features affect riding experience and this video is even better… enjoy..
When it comes to zippy and thrilling lightweight sport bikes, Kawasaki is one of the top manufacturers that comes to mind. Kawasaki offers a range of sport bikes for different types of riders, including the 2023 Kawasaki Z400 and the 2023 Kawasaki Z650. Both models are mid-sized bikes, but they have significant differences that riders should be aware of before making a purchase.
Engine Performance The Kawasaki Z400 is powered by a 399cc liquid-cooled parallel twin engine that produces around 49 hp and 28 lb-ft of torque. On the other hand, the Kawasaki Z650 is powered by a 649cc liquid-cooled parallel twin engine that produces around 67 hp and 48 lb-ft of torque. With more power and torque, the Z650 has a higher top speed and quicker acceleration than the Z400. However, the Z400’s smaller engine is better for urban riding and offers better fuel economy.
Design and Build Both the Kawasaki Z400 and Z650 have a similar design with an aggressive front, sharp bodywork, and sleek profile. However, the Z650 has a longer wheelbase and wider tires than the Z400. This gives the Z650 more stability at high speeds and better handling when taking turns. The Z400 has a more compact and agile design, making it a great option for city riding and handling tight corners.
Riding Comfort and Ergonomics Both bikes have different riding positions that cater to different sizes and types of riders. The Kawasaki Z400 has a more upright position thanks to its higher-mounted handlebars and pegs, while the Kawasaki Z650 has a slightly forward-leaning riding position with lower handlebars and a lower seat height. The Z650 also has a wider seat, providing better comfort for larger riders. The Z400, on the other hand, has a narrower seat, which is better suited for riders with smaller builds.
Price Price is always a factor when it comes to purchasing a motorcycle, and the Kawasaki Z400 is a more affordable option compared to the Z650. The Z400 has a much lower starting price. However, the Z650 has significantly more power and features, so it may be worth the extra cost for riders seeking a higher-performance motorcycle.
Conclusion;
When comparing the 2023 Kawasaki Z400 and the 2023 Kawasaki Z650, it’s apparent that both bikes have their unique features and strengths. The Kawasaki Z400 is a great option for newer riders or those who value fuel economy, nimble handling, and an upright riding stance. On the other hand, the Kawasaki Z650 is better for riders who want a higher-performance motorcycle with a sleek design, stable handling, and more power. Ultimately, the decision between the two bikes comes down to the rider’s preference, purpose, and budget.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
The LT model adds accessories, but it also adds an extra year of warranty!
The 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Classic LT is not only a great cruiser, but it’s also an exceptional value compared to other models in its class. The LT model adds a collection of accessories to the base model, including a windshield, saddlebags, backrest, and engine guards, but it also adds an additional year of warranty for your peace of mind.
One incredibly convenient feature of the Kawasaki Vulcan Classic LT is the tank-mounted instrument console. The console features a large-faced speedometer, fuel gauge, warning lamps, and multi-function LCD window that displays an odometer, trip meter, and clock. This feature makes it easy for riders to keep track of their motorcycle’s performance and provides them with critical information to make informed decisions on long rides.
Adding to the bike’s attraction is the Pearl Storm Gray/Ebony coloring scheme which makes this Vulcan Classic LT stand out from the crowd with its sophisticated, classic look that is sure to turn heads. The luxurious color and style gives a true taste of luxury to riders.
The Kawasaki Vulcan Classic LT is equipped with a 903cc V-twin engine that supplies excellent low-end torque and provides a smooth riding experience. Riders will appreciate the dynamic performance and easy-to-handle riding associated with the motorcycle’s 5-speed transmission. The bike is also equipped with dual-channel ABS, adding to the bike’s safety and helping with precise control of the vehicle.
The Vulcan Classic LT’s ergonomics are designed to promote comfort during even the longest of rides. The spacious seat and handlebars provide a relaxing ride, and the floorboards contribute to the rider’s comfort on the road. The fuel gauge, trip meter, and high-visibility tail light add to the bike’s functionality features.
In conclusion, the 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Classic LT is the perfect motorcycle for cruising enthusiasts looking to combine power and beauty with functionality and convenience. With its luxurious Pearl Storm Gray/Ebony scheme and added accessories the LT model brings with it a great value for your money too. Featuring a tank-mounted instrument console, dual-channel ABS and 24-month warranty, there are few bikes that will offer such a complete riding experience.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
Are you in the market for a reliable, affordable scooter for cruising around town? Look no further than the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50! Both entry level scooters offer great features, dealer support, and a budget-friendly price tag. In this in-depth comparison, we’ll take a closer look at the pros and cons of each scooter to help you decide which one is right for you.
Let’s start by examining the similarities between the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50. Both models have a 50cc single-cylinder engine that delivers around 4 horsepower. They both have storage compartments under the seat for your personal belongings, and come with a year of roadside assistance for added peace of mind.
When it comes to differences, the Piaggio Liberty 50 has more of a classic, vintage look with its round headlights and chrome accents. It also has a larger fuel tank, allowing for longer rides without needing to refuel and fuel injected. On the other hand, the Piaggio Typhoon 50 has a sportier look with its angular front design and aggressive stance. It also has a larger front wheel which provides better handling and stability but is carburatted with auto choke.
In terms of user experience, both scooters are easy to operate and maneuver. They have a twist-and-go throttle system and a simple dashboard with speedometer, odometer, and fuel gauge. The Piaggio Liberty 50 has a slightly more comfortable ride with its contoured seat and adjustable rear suspension. The Piaggio Typhoon 50, on the other hand, has a shorter wheelbase which makes it more agile and easier to handle in traffic.
When it comes to pricing, both scooters are affordable options, but the Piaggio Typhoon 50 comes in at a lower price point. However, the Piaggio Liberty 50 offers more value for your money with its larger fuel tank and more comfortable ride.
If you’re looking for an entry level scooter that combines style, reliability, and affordability, the Piaggio Liberty 50 and Piaggio Typhoon 50 are both great options. In the end, it comes down to personal preference and what features matter most to you. Are you looking for a classic, vintage look and a more comfortable ride? Go for the Piaggio Liberty 50. Or are you more interested in a sporty design and better agility on the road? Then the Piaggio Typhoon 50 is the scooter for you. Either way, you can’t go wrong with these reliable, fun-filled options from Piaggio.
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Piaggio and Vespa scooters and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, we aim to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
If you’re a motorbike enthusiast, you’ll know that the 2023 lineup of Kawasaki retro bikes is something special. They have really nailed the whole concept of retro-style motorcycles. But what does it actually mean to be a ‘true’ retro bike? Let’s compare two of Kawasaki’s offerings – the W800 and the Z650RS – to find out what sets them apart.
Visual Appeal When it comes to looks, both bikes have classic styling. The Kawasaki W800 takes its cues from British heritage models such as Triumph’s Bonneville, while the Z650RS has a more modern twist on old-school styling. Both bikes feature vintage-style bodywork and headlight designs, but there are differences in the paint schemes and other detailing. The W800 offers classic colors like black or metallic brown, while the Z650RS comes in darker shades like dark green or blacked-out matte gray. The W800 also has some chrome detailing on its fenders and exhausts, giving it a slightly classier look than the Kawasaki Z650RS which is more understated with its all-black design.
Performance Performance wise, both bikes offer plenty of power for urban riding. The W800 is powered by an 803cc air-cooled engine producing around 48 horsepower and 60Nm of torque at 6500 rpm. On the other hand, the smaller 649cc parallel twin engine in the Z650RS produces around 65 horsepower and 64Nm of torque at 7600 rpm – making it more powerful than its older sibling. Both engines offer excellent fuel economy too – with over 50mpg achievable on either bike – so you can enjoy your ride without worrying about burning through fuel too quickly!
Handling & Ride Quality When it comes to handling and ride quality there are some differences between these two bikes as well. The lighter weight of the Z650RS makes it nimble and easy to maneuver around town while still offering good stability at higher speeds thanks to its stiffer suspension setup compared to that of the W800 which can feel slightly softer when cornering hard – ideal for long rides but not so great for tight corners! That being said, both models offer good feedback from their brakes for confident stopping power when needed most!
Ultimately, what makes a true retro bike is down to personal preference – whether you want classic styling or modern performance features will depend on how you plan to use your bike. In terms of looks alone, both models offer attractive options but if performance is your main concern then perhaps opt for something like Kawasaki’s Z900RS instead! Either way, make sure you do your research before choosing which one will suit your needs best!
Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports in Fredericton has been helping its customers fulfil their powersports dreams. From a wide selection of Kawasaki’s and more, to superior customer service. Jim Gilbert’s know how to make your shopping experience unique. Whether you’re an experienced rider or brand new to the industry, Kawasaki Canada’s #1 Selling Dealer aims to meet all your needs and exceed expectations when it comes to quality of product as well as guest satisfaction. So if you’ve got an itch for adventure then take some time and check out what Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports Fredericton have in store!
2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 vs 2023 Piaggio BV 400 (Beverly)
Touring motorcycles are among the most sought-after rides for long distance travel. However, many people shy away from these bikes as they tend to be heavy, bulky, and not very practical in town. Fortunately, there are other options on the market that are more nimble and versatile, and in this blog post, we’ll take a close look at two of them – the 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and the 2023 Piaggio BV 400 Beverly.
The Kawasaki Versys-X 300 is a fantastic lightweight touring motorcycle that is perfect for city riding and long-distance trips. The bike is powered by a 296cc parallel twin engine, which delivers a smooth ride while also providing decent power. The Versys-X 300 is also equipped with a 6-speed transmission that’s easy to shift, making it an ideal choice for both beginners and experienced riders.
One of the things that make the Versys-X 300 stand out is its impressive fuel economy. With a fuel tank that can hold up to 4.5 gallons, this bike can easily travel more than 200 miles before needing refueling. Its ergonomic design makes it comfortable for riders to sit on for extended periods, and the bike comes with a useful windscreen that helps to protect you from wind, rain, and other weather elements.
The Piaggio BV 400 Beverly is a unique bike that is often overlooked by people looking for touring motorcycles. At first glance, it may not look like a touring bike, but this bike has everything you need for a long-distance trip. The Piaggio BV 400 comes equipped with a fuel-injected 399cc engine, equivalent to what you’d find in a mid-sized bike, and a CVT (Continuously Variable Transmission) that smoothly transfers power to the rear wheel.
Another standout feature of the BV 400 is its robust build quality. The bike is incredibly easy to maintain and is built to last. The BV 400 comes standard with a lockable glove box and a spacious under-seat storage compartment, which provides ample space to store your gear, tools, and other essentials.
The riding position of the BV 400 is upright and comfortable, making it easy for riders to stay comfortable throughout long-distance rides. The bike also features a large windshield and comfortable seat, both of which provide excellent wind and weather protection.
When it comes to choosing lightweight touring motorcycles, the 2023 Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and 2023 Piaggio BV 400 are both excellent choices. They both offer excellent performance, long-distance capability, and great features. However, each of them has its unique strengths.
The Kawasaki Versys-X 300 is an ideal choice for riders who want a versatile and nimble bike that performs excellently in the city and long-distance rides. On the other hand, the Piaggio BV 400 is a unique bike that combines the best of a scooter and a motorcycle while also offering plenty of storage space and practical features.
Whichever bike you choose, both the Kawasaki Versys-X 300 and Piaggio BV 400 Beverly are excellent options for anyone looking for a good touring motorcycle that can deliver comfort, performance, and practicality in equal measures.
To conclude, these are by far some of the best options out there for low-displacement touring. The lighter weight, simpler design, and ease of use makes it appealing to anyone looking for an enjoyable ride. Ultimately, we can create a community where touring bikes come together—and this is a great place to start. If you’re interested in checking them out in person and learning more about the Versys 300 X or Versys 650LTand other options available, visit Jim Gilberts PowerSports, Kawasaki Canada’s # 1 Dealer.
They offer expert advice on choosing your next touring bike and even provide competitive financing options should you ever decide to take the plunge. Don’t worry if you’re unsure of what you want; they’ll help you find that perfect match! So don’t wait any longer—make sure to head over to Jim Gilbert’s soon!
Hey everybody, it’s Peter, and in this video we are gonna go really, really in depth with the 2023 Kawasaki Versys 650 LT. So the Versys 650. This is a bike where I think I reviewed the 2022 in September of last year. It’s very late March of 2023. This is a bike where I’ve owned this bike. Now, slightly different version. The previous, uh, body style to this one, this is one of my favorite bikes. It’s still probably one of the best bikes in lineup. Certainly one of the best bikes in its class. And in this video I’m gonna go over a lot of the things that the other videos aren’t showing you about this bike because I think there’s a lot missing and I wanna talk about sort of how it fits, how it works, uh, everything about it. So this is gonna be pretty in depth.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
I’ve sprinkled this bike in with, uh, comparison videos throughout, uh, compared to the Kawasaki KLR 650 compared to some other bikes along the way. But it deserves its full, its own full video again. So that’s what we’re gonna do. And again, if you wanna see this bike in person, I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals. If there’s a question that you have about this bike that I don’t get to in this video, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports gives me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. So if there’s something you wanna know about this, let me know when the comments below and I’ll make sure I get back to you both in the comments and in future videos because I can continue to make videos to make sure we fill out sort of a database of information. But every bike here, every vehicle here.
All right, let’s get going with this review. So the first thing I wanna do is talk about where this fits in the 650 lineup within Kawasaki’s lineup because there’s actually a number of differences. Yesterday we did the Z650 and the Ninja 650, which are the most up to date versions of the six 50 class of bikes. This one actually has a slightly older frame involved and you can tell that because the shock over here is off to the right side of the bike instead of centered in there. Uh, this is actually very similar to the Vulcan S, which you’d never believe because a Vulcan S has that crazy low seat height, the cruiser style, and this one is the tallest seat height of the six 50 s with a, you know, very non cruiser style. That being said, even though it’s a slightly older frame, this has been fully updated in 2022.
It includes a new dash new software, it’s got traction control, whole bunch of little things. And we’re gonna talk about some of the things are new and some of the things that aren’t quite new on this bike, but it also has upgrades like a fully adjustable front suspension, which is necessary in this class and this bike does it well, again, having owned this bike, I could talk a little bit more in detail about some of those things. So we’re gonna go through in detail some of those things. It’s kind of mid pack for frame, it’s a leading bike for um, things like technology in here. And then you know, there’s some mixes and matches and then it’s got a lot of leading pieces and parts when you come to accessories. This is a bike you could accessorize up very easily and we’ll talk about the key ones that I think you may wanna consider if you’re buying a bike like this.
But let’s just first start with the front wheel, work our way back and then we’ll get into the riding environment. So the first thing I wanna point out is something that becomes obvious when you look at the front wheel here. A lot of people think that this is an adventure class motorcycle. In other words, an on and off-road motorcycle. It is not. The tires alone will tell you and the rims as well, which are the alloy rims, they’re not built for off-road riding. The tires are not off-road tires. What this is is an adventure style seating position in a sport touring bike. And it is excellent for what it does. So again, if you’re looking more that adventure bike, you can look at the um, something like the Klr 650, which is a different six 50 engine, but it’s really built, it has a legendary status and it’s really built to go off-road.
This is an on-road bike and you’ve got a lot of great on-road components here. So there’s a lot to look at. Let’s just start, like I said, tires here. Sport performance tires, not super, super high end. They could be upgraded, but again for the price class for what you’re doing with the spike, very, very good. Then you’ve got the dual disk brakes in here. Now they do have the pedal style rotors. We’ve talked about pedal style rotors in the past. I believe that these were originally brought out. You know, the theory was that the pedal style dissipates heat in addition to the um, drilled rotors here, I think it’s more style. We have more high performance bikes, faster bikes than this, um, that have, you know, the round rotors now instead of the pedal style. And so that just tells me that this is pretty much style, but again, very good brakes here.
Dual disk system with abs, you also have the upside down forks here. Now if you don’t know a lot about upside down forks, a lot of times this suspension piece will be up higher. What this is in theory is a little bit stronger piece up here. What it is in actuality is it gives you less unsprung weight. So you’ll notice on something like the uh, ninja 650 and the Z650 we looked at yesterday, this is actually a higher end component, both the upside down side of it. And again, we talked about the adjustability, which we’ll show you in a second here. So front suspension’s very good and you have longer travel than a lot of bikes. So while this isn’t an off-road bike, it does give you the ability to go down rougher roads and feel totally secure, feel totally confident. So really good overall system in here.
Now when we say not an adventure bike, there is a little bit difference out here. You’ve got your oil filter right down here, it’s in line with the wheel and that’s really one of the reasons you don’t want a gold crazy off-road. Now I used to own a versus six 50 with Answ Motech engine guard here. So in theory you could shoot dirt up and that kind of thing in there, but it is something to keep in mind. It’s an on-road bike, just not just from the tires but the overall way it’s designed. Let’s move our way back to the engine area here and keep heading back from there. So this is a bit of a busy shot, but I wanna show it because it shows a lot of unique things on the Versys 650. So first of all, let’s start with what’s common.
This engine here is a twin cylinder six 50 cc engine and it is basically the same engine used in every other six 50 bike in the Kawasaki lineup, with the exception exception of the Klr very good engine. They talk about this being tuned a little bit differently. Uh, however it’s not tuned as differently as something like the Z 900 and the Z 900 Rs, which are many, many, many horsepower apart. This one is within a couple horsepower either way. Of course Kawasaki doesn’t list horsepower, but around the world, you know, generally agreed upon specs, uh, is that this is basically the same amount of horsepower either way and I call this engine the perfect street motor. It is plenty sporty. Um, you know, you could use it on a racetrack and even on a bike like this, uh, you wouldn’t think of taking a bike like this to the racetrack. But I’ve seen, uh, videos on YouTube of people, you know, dragging saddlebags on a bike like this around the racetrack. So you’ve got all the Sport, You need reliability, it’s a really good engine for what this is. Moving on back here, we already talked about the shock here Off to the side on this Model, it’s a little more centralized in the um, Zen six 50 and the Ninja six 50, but you have upgraded suspension here over any other 650 in the lineup shown right here. You have that a remote preload adjuster. What’s nice about this is you can take extra weight on the back, whether it’s through luggage or extra passengers, you can dial up that firmer or softer suspension, uh, just right there on the preload and you can do it on the go, you can sit there, you can actually reach it while you’re riding to just uh, dial it up or dial it down. So really nice piece there, sort of this trellis type frame here, uh, that you’ve got to carry up the back end and then down here as well, you’ve got a few features that you may not notice but they add to the riding enjoyment.
You’ve got the exhaust that comes out under the bike and cuts short. You don’t have any big exhaust coming up that leads a lot of room for your gear up here, has no heat near your uh, luggage there as well. And it gives it a pretty cool look. You’ve got this cool looking swing arm down here, which is displayed out in the back. You’ve got the pedal style disc as well and you’ve got abs brakes all on the rear. So a lot of really solid components in here. And again, the big thing is front and rear suspension are upgrades over any other650 model in the Kawasaki lineup right now.
Alright, so we should talk about the luggage you have here. First of all, these are Kawasaki branded bags. They are part of the Kawasaki K Q R series. So Kawasaki quick release series of bags, they’re standard on the verse six 50, standard on the verses 1000. You can get them on the ninja 1000 and I think that’s the only one. The maybe other bikes that I’m not thinking of right now. Maybe the uh, XX 14 I believe. But the point of this is they are 28 liter saddle bags. They do uh, work with the uh, ignition key there. So they’re all set up like that. You open them up, they can fit a full face helmet in there, no problem. They’ve got this little uh, elasticized thing to help hold things in here. If you wanted to, you could get accessory bags that fit inside there as well.
So you can take just the inside bags off, uh, and take that in with you to a hotel or something like that. However, these also come off now I’ll be honest, when they come off the very, very new bikes, they can be a little sticky here. So we’re gonna try to show you honestly how it is. And I’ll tell you honestly if I made a cut, I think this piece right here is gonna stick on me a little bit on these brand new bikes, but I haven’t really tried it yet. So let’s try it. So you pull this up and you can see when that orange is up, I can’t take the key out, I can’t spin it because it’s up there. So it’s warned me that it is loose. Gonna give it a little nudge here Comes Back and then you’re gonna try to pull it outta here. And exactly where I thought it would stick it is sticking. So usually I Stand on the other Side. Let’s just see if I can get it out of there. And again, because it’s a brand new, we’re gonna make a little cut here, let’s pull it right out. There we go. No cut. Let’s just do that. So again, you’re giving me a little bit of a shove here. What’s going on is this little piece here sticks there when it’s brand new you can kind of, you know, wear it in a little bit once they become new. But then you can close this down and you can carry that bag away. So again, very difficult or a little harder to do when it’s brand new but very easy to do uh, after that, to put it back on, it’s pretty simple. You’re putting this piece in and this piece in that little orange label, if you see that tells you it’s out of uh, whack.
And then this piece here has a little uh, area on the foot peg there that fits into. So again, we’ll show you how that works by unlocking it, pulling up this piece here, dropping it in here, getting everything lined up and I didn’t get the front in there. There we go. Front’s lined up. Back’s lined up. Give it a little bang and push it down and it locks in place. Pretty simple stuff. So having 2 28 liter saddlebags is quite a lot of luggage space for someone like me. That should be all you need. But there are two little holes here on these nice little handles that again are mounted to hold those Kawasaki quick release bags. Uh, two little uh, handles here. Have two little sections right here where you can add a rear rack and then a top case on the back. So the top case on the back can do two things for you.
Obviously give you a lot more luggage space, but it also works with this really comfortable rear seat. And this is probably the best angle to fill in the rear seat here, but this is a, the one of the largest, most comfortable rear seats in the six 50 class. And if you had that uh, back uh, top case on, you would have a backrest for that person as well, which makes this a very capable two up touring bike. So now we’re gonna move to the cockpit driver’s environment, handlebar section, whatever you want to call it. We’re gonna work through a number of features that you see here bit by bit because they do things very, very well on the verses six 50. Now again, I used to have a verse six 50 with an adjustable windshield. It used to have little knobs on the outside, very difficult to operate, obviously you can’t operate, you shouldn’t be operating while you’re driving.
But they did create a simpler system to adjust this um, uh, windshield. Now there’s a little button right down here and I believe it’s fully high, so we’re gonna raise it down like that. I was a little aggressive with it there and then it locks in place. This is a big deal because you can press it and adjust it and lift it. You shouldn’t do it while you’re driving and that’s why it’s kind of difficult to do. It’s a two-handed matter. They don’t want you trying to do that when you’re driving. But it is a very quick release, very simple to use system and this is very good because when you’re riding on a touring bike, the way the wind hits you can really vary based on the strength of the wind, the angle of wind, all kinds of things. So on a hot day you can lower it down, but also you can get sometimes some weird buffering off a windshield depending on how tall you are, where you’re sitting and the speed of the wind, the speed of the bike. So being able to move this uh, windshield up and down really allows you that full comfort, uh, in, in all kinds of weather, in all kinds of winds. So you can adjust where that buffeting hits you so it goes smooth over your helmet or smooth into your helmet or that kind of thing and it just really makes a difference to be able to adjust that. But they’ve done some nice things here,
This little bar right here, something that you don’t really see on camera that is a bar where all kinds of mounts fit. And you could put things like a GPS up here, uh, foam mounts, other kinds of things and it gives you a little bit of strength I’m sure, but it also becomes a mounting point separate from your handle bars, which just gives you options for having, you know, something like a GPS behind the windshield right in line with your TFT display here. So let’s continue to look at all of the features in this area and we’ll kind of put it all together as we go. So let’s look a little bit uh, at some of the accessories you can put on. So we’re looking down on the left side of the dash here. You can see that we’re gonna zoom in here if I can do this the right way.
There we go. As we zoom in, you’ll see this can be set up for a couple different things. These are dummy switches right now there’s nothing to them but this could be a 12 volt or USB port right there, which of course could power a device up on the windshield. It could power device over on your handlebars. And then this is where you could put an extra switch. Now that switch is commonly used for extra set of fog lights which you could mount to the front of the bike here. Now the nice thing about adding some of these accessories is that something like fog likes when you buy ’em here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, if you wanna buy ’em up front, of course you’ll save some money on that, you’ll save some money on labor, but you’ll save the same percentage off of the um, parts and the labor as you would if you bought it new if you buy it a year down the road, five years down the road.
So you can add those accessories in, you don’t have to add them right up front. And of course buying wheels and deals doesn’t cost you anymore. Either way you get that v I p discount once you’ve bought a bike here you can add them with the bike when you buy it or you can add ’em later. So nice on this side. There’s also one more on the other side. Let’s try to show you that right now. So on the right side of the bike here, the exact same positions we just showed you on the left side you have this very large piece here. This is uh, something that comes standard on the K L R adventure sort of filled in. This is a soft rubbery cap when you have it filled in with a U USB port inside. So it’s like a rub water resistant cap with another water resistant cap inside of that for USB port. So again, 12 volt port extra switches, USB port, it’s all preset and ready to go. And a lot of the wiring is there for just sort of a plug and play accessory install with the Kawasaki systems, which is really nice to have. So you’re already set up with a great windshield, a mounting point for a gps, PowerPoints, lights, all the kind of things you might need to add. And we didn’t even talk about the suspension up front. Let’s show you that while we’re looking in this area. So what I found is although you can easily reach this suspension area here, it’s tough to get a good filming angle in there. So this is adjustable suspension and it’s different on each side. So we’re gonna call it tension because that’s what it’s called on the uh, bike here. You can adjust the tension over here and you can adjust the preload on the other side there, which has a different style cap to it.
Maybe we should just show you that cap in a second here. We’ll take a picture of it and throw it up on screen. The idea here though is when I bought my verses six 50, I found the front suspension to be relatively soft. So I was able to firm up that suspension, dial it in exactly the way I want to. And on a touring bike where you’re taking lots of different types of roads, you’re taking lots of different weight, whether you’re taking a passenger, no passenger gear, no gear, that kind of thing, having adjustable suspension really makes a difference to dial in the ride to the type of ride you want. And it’s a bit of a luxury that people don’t see in the six 50 class and like I said, no other650 bike in the Kawasaki lineup for 2023 has the adjustable suspension.
So you’ve got some nice things here that you wouldn’t expect that make a difference in the writing environment. Now we’re gonna see if we can zoom out here just a little bit to the risers here. Let’s just kind of zoom back here again. There we go. Those are the risers for the bars. The verses six 50 is a fairly tall bike but it also has a very upright seating position. And again, when you’re sharing platforms across various things, you uh have to make adaptions adapt, you have to adapt a little bit. So the risers here are sort of custom for the verses. So there’s not any other uh, six 50 bike that has these, but it makes for a very comfortable riding environment. We’re gonna show you what it looks like to sit on the spike in just one second. Uh, but yeah, again, unique risers, unique suspension, very good job here on the Versys 650.
So I have the camera a long way back because a lot of people want to know about, you know, the ride height here. This is a taller bike, it has a fairly wide rear seat rear of the seat here and narrow enough through here. I’m about six feet tall. I think it’s about a 32 inch in steam or so this is a bike where I can easily just about flat foot. I mean yeah, both my feet are flat footed now comfortably wise, when I sit back a little bit, you know, I’m a little bit tippy toe there kind of thing, but it’s not as intimidating as some people think. The weight is balanced down low. Again, that exhaust down low helps with that weight balance down low. When you have a full fuel tank it is a little bit more noticeable. Something like the uh, Zed six 50 I believe has like a 15 liter tank. This is a 21 liter tank. So filling that fuel tank does add significant weight up top because it’s such a good size fuel tank, which is what you want for touring. But let’s just generally talk about the riding position here. So couple things when I’m up like this, again, as a fairly tall rider, very, very comfortable. Even if you’re shorter rider, you’re gonna be comfortable that adjustable windshield makes a difference to a lot of people. The other thing that people don’t realize is the advantage of these hand guards here, both for wind and weather protection as well as debris protection, it does keep you a little bit more comfortable in the cooler weather. And one thing that people don’t realize is this body work does a pretty good job of putting your legs inside of the wind blast, which means that for a cold weather bike, this is a very capable bike.
Now you can also add heated grips to this. I don’t know that you would need heated grips with these, um, with these uh, extra uh, wind guards. But keep in mind if you just wanna wear thinner gloves, you have the wind guards and heated grips, you could ride this into very cold weather and I’ve done that. So again, wind and weather protection is very good. We talked about the suspension riding position is also all day comfortable. You’re sitting square and upright, you’ve got fairly high foot pegs means you can still lean the bike over in turns, you can drive it fairly aggressively. And my argument is for most people on the road, this is as sporty as you would need for something like a ninja 50 if you’re driving it on the road. So this is a very sport capable bike, very uh, you know, fun to flick back and forth even though it’s a taller bike.
So think of this less as an adventure bike and more as a taller sporty bike sport tour. That’s what it is. The other thing you have is your mirrors, unlike the ninjas, they’re not mounted out here on the ferrying, they are mounted up close to you, they clear your shoulders. Anytime you have the mirror close to you, you have a little bit wider angle view. So that gives you that street performance to you. If you were to go into a full tuck, of course they’d be behind you, but you don’t really need to go in a full tuck because you’ve got this adjustable windshield that’s going to give you that clearance. So all of this is very, very good for touring, very good for city riding as well because it’s a very manageable bike and you know, any kind of riding you’d wanna do, this is good.
Let’s take a look at the dash. Now. The one big upgrade that I really like is this TFT display. It’s just got a lot of good things. So the verses that I had was the model year before they brought in a gear indicator but it still had the old style dash, the same dash brought in the gear indicator. This one is all new and it’s good in a whole bunch of ways. So first of all, really clean display. If you want to invert the colors, you can easily do that. So the white can be black, the black can be white. Uh, this uh, tack shows a little bit more blue on camera, it’s actually gray. Uh, you can see where it revs to. You can set this to blink. So for instance, when you’re doing the break-in process, I think it’s set to about 4,000 rpm.
It’ll start to blink on you. Um, you can set it wherever you want. So if you wanted it to blink, not necessarily at red line but at like 8,000 rrp, you can set that uh, to kind of blink a little bit. Gives you a visual warning in your peripheral vision without having to glance down attack where you’re at. So lots of nice features just in the overall display gear indicator. Of course there right now it says neutrally. You still have a neutral light, uh, one through six, it’s a six speed transmission. Uh, speedometers there as well. And then we’re gonna go through the odometer here and the uh, um, displayed on there. So odometer is pretty basic stuff. You’ve got the trip a, trip B and the regular odometer Down at the bottom you’ve got an instant fuel efficiency rating. So it’s currently set to kilometers per liter.
You can do liters per a hundred kilometers, you can do miles per gallon us, you can do miles per gallon in uk, all kinds of things. But that is your instant readout that you’re looking at right now. So instant fuel efficiency, average fuel efficiency and then you have range. So that’s range to empty it, it can change based on how you’ve been driving. Again, 21 liter fuel tank is gonna take you a long, long, long ways. So um, having that range there is really kind of nice, especially for longer trips. And you’ve got your average speed, which actually is very nice on a longer trip. Um, that average speed gives you a sense of you know, are you making the time you wanna make total time you’ve been out there, the battery at 12 volts right now and then back to the instant fuel efficiency.
So really nice dash here. You have the controls that I’m using on the handlebar, which can use it. We can also set uh, various settings using the buttons over here, uh, when you’re parked. So again, you can operate that no issue. Let’s take a look at the hand controls here as well. I’ll show you the switch that I was using to change everything up there. Alright, so pretty simple stuff here. Typical, um, high and low beam right there, there is a little trigger switch here off camera that allows you to flash your high beam, which is kind of nice to have. Um, just sort of triggered on and off. Uh, signal lights there, horn button there. You do have hazard warning lights, which on a touring bike is quite nice. And then again to adjust that odometer. So odometer trip a, trip B, you select up here the lower display, which was the average fuel efficiency range, uh, average speed, those kind of things you’re using this to cycle through.
So it’s the same switch, top display, lower display. And then I didn’t show you the traction control. The traction control is on this bike as well. It’s level one, level two or off. And you can hold this down to get it flashing and go up or down to move between your level ones and level two. So you can adjust the traction control on the fly, which is really nice. Now what I found is I didn’t really need traction control on this bike when I had it. Uh, although in uh, certainly in poor weather it’d be very nice. So traction control level one is probably where I would drive this bike all the time. Level two, if you’re in slippery conditions. And again, you have the ability to turn it off if you want, but you can adjust that very quickly. From here while we’re at this view, I should point out that both levers, both the clutch lever here and the brake lever can be adjusted for reach.
Now the one thing on this bike that they don’t have that they do have on many of the other six 50 s is the slipper and assist clutch. So this is not a heavy clutch by any means, but you will notice it is a little bit heavier clutch than the slipper and assist clutch on most of the other six 50 s in the lineup. I think only the Vulcan does not have that slipper and assist clutch. Now, uh, the Zed six 50, Zed six 50 Rs and the Ninja six 50 s certainly have it. So, um, again, not a heavy clutch, but you will notice the difference between the clutch bowl between this and something like a 2023 Zed six 50. It just is kind of what it is. So with the redesign that happened in 2022, there are a few things. Obviously color schemes change.
The beak over here kind of modernized up a little bit. The biggest difference you’re gonna find on this bike compared to the one that I owned previously is you have l e d headlights. There is an l e D taillight, which is unchanged, which was nice, but the headlights are a big upgrade. You used to have one side on and one side off for your low beam and the, so it’s low beam on one side, high beam on the other side. Now you’ve got high beam and low beam on both sides here. And then l e d lights of course have that cleaner white light. That white light is closer in color to daylight. And what that does is helps your eyes identify what it sees, which makes this a better lighting environment. I had the accessory lights on on my bike, which I could set up a little bit wider.
Gimme a really wide view with the extra switch here. This one’s got the switch area built into the body work, which I didn’t have on mine, but that can really give you a ton of light for traveling in all conditions. So let’s talk about where this fits in the verus lineup and where it fits overall in motorcycling. The verus lineup for Kawasaki is a little bit confusing because all the bikes look very similar, but the 300 is a Versys 300X that X indicates it’s a little bit more of an off roadie style bike. And if you look at the tires, they’ve got those tires that are a little bit better for dirt roads than something like this. Then at the other end of the spectrum you have the thousand cc in Canada. That thousand cc has everything electronic cruise control, electronically adjustable suspension, and overall that bike loses some of the sporty character of this bike.
It’s a little bit more of a long distance cruiser because it’s a bit heavier bike. Its immediate responses aren’t quite the same as this. What I like this bike for is a really good do-it-all. I’ve called this in the past, the ultimate one Person sport tour. Now just because you can tour with two people, putting the second person on does lose some of the playfulness of this bike. But again, you can absolutely take that second person. Where this is good is exactly in that. It’s hard to find a sport tour that is both playful, like something like the Ninja six 50 but capable, like something like the versus 1000. And that’s the sweet spot of where this hits the engine is perfectly capable. Take you the oversized fuel tank, the seating position is comfortable. You’ve got rubber pegs for your, uh, for the um, driver and the passenger.
Everything about this is really done well for its intended purpose. The updated dash, the traction control, all those things are key components to keep this really competitive. And there’s probably no better bike in motorcycling in this class to do what this bike does. That’s why it’s one of my favorite bikes. So if you have questions of something I didn’t cover in this review, make sure you let me know when the comments below and subscribe to the channel because we’ll keep coming back with this bike and other bikes just like it. And if you wanna see this bike in person, you can swing by Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, that’s Canada’s number one volume Kawasaki dealer. They have these in stock, you can check ’em out for yourself. Thanks Eric for watching.
Hey every body, it’s Peter, and in this video we are gonna do an in-depth review of the Piaggio Typhoon 50 CC Scooter. And we’re filming here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports where if you wanna know more about this vehicle, I will be able to bring it back on video again and again and again. So if you are interested in this vehicle or a Vespa scooter or another Piaggio scooter, the Liberty, make sure you subscribe and let me know in the comments the types of things you want to know about these scooters because I’m able to come back and answer your questions in both the comments section and on future videos. Now here’s the thing that’s a little bit tricky right now with the typhoon. The typhoon actually has a few things that are not what I think is correct on the website. Uh, there’s a spec sheet on there that’s a little bit outta date.
It has the wrong size tires, and underneath here it says that there’s a USB port, but I can’t find one. So I think there’s a couple updates that need to happen to that website. And what I’m gonna do is show you what we’ve got here, tell you the things I like and don’t like about it, tell you the things that I think are similar. But to be fair, like I said, some of the specs I’m not a hundred percent sure on. And then what we’ll do is we’ll come back to this vehicle again, again with your questions to make sure that I answer both my questions and your questions before I make my next video. So again, there will be more information on this scooter. It is a popular scooter and it’s one that I would probably recommend. It’s the entry level in the Piaggio lineup.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
I quite like a lot of features about it, but like I said, there are things I need to know and instead of me just going and asking those questions right now, we’re gonna get your questions as well and make sure we answer every question we can to build sort of a database of information. So let’s get going with a review of this vehicle right now. So let’s start by giving just a general overview of what we’ve got here. To start, let’s just hop on here. First of all, I’m about six feet tall. Of course, on a scooter you can be much shorter than me and be comfortable. Right now it’s on the center stand, which of course lifts the rear wheel off the ground. Gives it a higher seat height, but it does make it easier for me to sit on it with both feet up in the video here.
Couple nice things you’ve got here. Unlike the Vespa scooter, which is one of my favorite scooters, the Vespa is a little bit more expensive. And like I said, this is a lower, uh, price point than the Vespa, but unlike the Vespa, you have a fully flat four floor. So that’s just like the liberty here gives you a little bit more space to walk around. Now the Liberty and the Vespa will have a storage compartment in here. This one does not appear to have one. It has a little panel here, but I think I played with that a few times. I’m pretty sure that’s just fuses and other things. Uh, probably mechanicals, that kind of thing. So there’s no storage compartment here and that allows you to put a headlight in here or it allows them to put a headlight in there instead of up here.
So we’ll talk about the overall styling, but you can see here at six feet tall, very, very comfortable. This seat does appear to me to be just a little bit squishier than the other two seats. They seem to be a little bit firmer. As far as passenger accommodations, this is always a little trickier and jump back, you’ve got your foot pegs there. They say they are extractable, I believe on the website. Um, I don’t know what extractable means. I think it means fold out. These are not fold out, uh, um, pegs right now. So they’re just mounted there on the Vespa. The body
Work kind of gets in a little bit of the way, so your heels are just touching the body. Work on the Piaggio, it has the fold out foot pegs. Um, on the, uh, liberty, excuse me, on this one here, it’s kind of an in between. They’re not fooled out. The body work isn’t there, but there is some body work that touches your legs here. Either way, your passenger’s gonna be perfectly fine for what you’re doing. It’s a 50 fe, 50 cc scooters. So in North America you’re usually not taking a passenger very far. Other parts of the world, obviously they can load all kinds of people on here, um, and they go everywhere. But in North American roads with North American speeds and laws, probably you’re taking the second passenger just very briefly around town, which I think this works fine for. And then of course, as a driver, you’ve got a lot of comfort here.
I will say that the mirrors are very good. They clear my shoulders here, just a tiny bit of my elbow in there, but that’s probably more adjustment of the mirror. Yeah, actually they clear very well. So nice. Uh, good mirror position. We’re gonna talk about the dash here, but let’s start with the front wheel, because the front wheel is where you get something different on this scooter. And even though this is the entry level price, it may be something that you’re looking for that you don’t get in higher price scooters. So let’s start with that and we’ll work our way back. So taking a look at the front wheel here of the typhoon, you’ve got a lot of things going on here. So let’s just start with the brakes. You’ve got kind of a cool gold coloring here. Two piss and caliper on a disc brake Some of the discs on the other models will have drilled rotors. In other words, there’s circular drilled holes through them for ventilation. This one has the same idea with sort of an oval shaped, um, ventilation. The reality is for a 50 cc scooter, you don’t need a ton of ventilation like you would on, um, you know, a high performance sport bike or something like that. So this serves a purpose. And then a lot of this is just about style and frankly, from a style perspective, they do a good job. Unlike the Vespa, this is more like the regular PIH where you have the two fork tubes, one on each side. Vespa has everything all on this side, but this is your typical suspension mount. So again, pretty simple, pretty standard stuff, nothing kind of crazy in here. What I do like though is you have these one 20 by 70 by 14 wheels. So let’s translate that for you. One 20 is the width of the, uh, tire that are width of that tread. 70 is a, uh, percentage of the sidewall that will leave that for later. But 14 is the big number here. So a Vespa has a 12 inch rim, and the piaggio on the front tire is a 16 inch rim. This one is 14, so bigger than the Vespa. And the difference between the Vespa and the Piag Gio, uh, the Piaggio Liberty, excuse me, is that the Vespa has a little bit wider tires. The Piag Liberty has a little bit narrower tires. This one is both larger diameter than the Vespa and wider than the Vespa. So although it’s a little bit down in diameter from the 16 inch front wheel, you have a 14 inch wheel here. And the Vespa, or sorry the Piag Liberty has a 14 inch rear wheel.
So does this. And it’s also a fairly wide wheel, so you end up with this motorcycle width type tire. Uh, a lot of sport bikes are a one 20 millimeter width, so very standard motorcycle tire type thing. I mean smaller in diameter, but standard width, which allows you, in my mind, a little bit more rubber on the road, uh, gives you kind of that nice curvature to it there for the angle. And you’ve got a little bit deeper tread to me, to my eyes compared to some of the other ones. So you’ve got a nice little tire here, uh, sort of appropriately sized. If you, um, think the Vespa wheels are too small, this is larger and that just gives you a little bit of an option there. Let’s work our way to the back now. So here’s the area where I’m a little bit unsure about componentry and how they mix with the liberty.
Like I said, the specs that I have are not fully up to date. So what’s interesting is this panel here, you could have it as a shared piece on the Piag Gio and on the Vespa it actually says Piag Gio down here on both of those models. This one has the same panel here without the nameplate here. Uh, both the other models have a little, um, black plastic plug there. This is a little bit greasy there, there we go. They have a black plastic plug there. Um, but this one has the actual Kickstarter. So what you do is you pull this out and you can kickstart it. Of course it doesn’t need to be kickstarted, it has an electric start. You can hit that button. It also has on the other models a four T down here with a little, uh, air cooling area down there.
This, it looks a little different on both of them, but there are absolutely some shared components here, at least to my eyes, between the Vespa and the Liberty. And the reason I point that out is because these are, this is the less expensive version, so you’re not full fr clean slate here you are absolutely sharing some components between the higher priced models and you’re getting them here at a lower price. You’ve got a single shock here down there, and it is a, um, adjustable for Preloads. You can spin this around and if you have a lot of weight on there, you can kind of restore that, uh, uh, ride height and that kind of thing. So good stuff through here. And again, for an entry level scooter, you’re not looking for crazy high-end stuff. You’re looking for basic transportation and this does that very, very well.
I do wanna show you the front wheel here from the opposite side of the brake. Again, the rear wheel has the, uh, transmission on the one side, the ga, the uh, exhaust on the other side or the muffler least on the other side. This one’s a little more open and you can really see that automotive style wheel. Now hopefully I can move this camera around here and kind of get the angles here. It’s pretty cool. Yeah, you can sort of see that there. It’s a little bit harder to show when you look at it from this angle here. Excuse me, I’m trying to work with my tripod. Uh, you can see that there’s just kind of some angles in here. So a really high end looking wheel. It’s got some style to it, it does not film well, but it does look pretty cool in person.
A lot of people were say, sort of saying this to them looks like the sportier version of some of these scooters compared to others. And yeah, you could certainly make that case with the style here. So taking a look at the seat here, you can see you’ve got some texture in here, some detail in there, no real stitching, at least not stitching for style like you would have on Theves button, frankly, some of the uh, pi gio liberties as well. Uh, but again, very good seat and like I said, a little bit of a cush to it. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna throw the key in here. I’m just gonna work my way around the tripod here. So if I look like I’m a little uncomfortable, that’s why we’re gonna zip that open. We’ve got owner’s manual in here. Now again, the current website lists that there is a USB port in here.
Uh, I don’t see that. I’ve spent a lot of time with scooters and I feel like I should be to find this on my own and I haven’t been able to find it. So I just wanna be clear that, um, the, uh, side that you can’t see on this side here looks identical to that side here. They claim you could fit a full face helmet in here and that wouldn’t surprise me. You can see that it does have that shape where you could put the helmet down. It is nicely carved out in the top here. So, um, while every full face helmet may not fit in here, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if, um, you could fit a, uh, full face helmet. It does look like it’s a very good size over here. One thing you can see, maybe just actually you can’t see.
Let’s scroll a little spin a little this way just off camera here. There is your gasoline fill there. So of course that is locked underneath your seat. Now one thing I do like on the liberty and on the Vespa scooter is there’s little tabs down here where if you wanted to leave your gear in here, you could put the D-ring on a tab here and fold the seat. That’s something that’s not available here. So if you wanna lock up your helmet, uh, the only place to lock it would be inside here, not hanging off the side of this one. Uh, of course there are ways to, you know, handle some of that stuff. But just so you know, there are a couple little minor, minor little details that are different here that, um, you know, might justify just a slightly lower price. When it comes to taking cargo on a scooter, of course you have lots of options, scooters, especially in the piag o inve lineup.
They do have a clip like this. Now this is the better clip in my opinion, on the, uh, liberty. They have this the best, but they have a different style. This one you can see, you can slide a bag in there and it clips together. So whatever bag you have, whether it’s a backpack, a grocery bag, whatever it else it is, uh, you can clip the handle through there. You can put it between your feet. And of course, because it’s a flat floor there, it’s gonna sit securely between your feet as you’re riding. And of course the top end nicely locked in here when you’re not using that just clips in there. So again, typical scooter stuff. One thing you don’t have here is the, um, both the Vespa and the Liberty do have an opening compartment here. This one doesn’t. But again, this is basic transportation.
You can take a backpack, you can take things with you and make it work. And I quite like the way this, uh, scooter lays out. So let’s just take a look at one thing that is gonna show you this is a little bit less expensive than the liberty or the Vespa. So here it is. This is the gauge cluster that you’re gonna be looking at. And this is really the symbol that you bought. The less expensive model, the more modern liberty and Vespa do have nicer gauges will show you a picture of them, at least one of ’em. Right now they’re very similar on both the Vespa and the Liberty. However, here you have the old traditional dial style odometer, which again, is not something you see on many vehicles anymore. Uh, the needles, again, a little bit dated. So you’ve got a nice fuel gauge here.
Uh, clear and easy to read. Absolutely, you’ve got lights in there for your high beam, for your, uh, low beam and your signal lights in there. But this is a thing you’re going to look at all the time. Now, to me, if you’re looking for an inexpensive scooter, you’re buying a lot of quality in this piaz GIO branded Typhoon, um, rather than some, you know, cheaper, cheaper brand. But like I said, you are always looking at these gauges. I’d like to see them update this, but again, I understand why they don’t. They’re hitting a price point. This, and again, you’re, you’re sharing components here with a higher trim vehicle. This is just the one thing that is not to me up to current, uh, modern day scooter standards. But again, fully functional. You’ve got your speedometer, that’s really all you need. You’ve got a fuel gauge, which is great odometer, so there’s no triple odometer, that kind of thing on this, where you would get that on the higher trim lens with more of a digital, uh, odometer display and again, analog gauges.
So take a look at that. Let’s look at some more shared components with this and the, uh, at least the pi. So where we compare this to the liberty, you’ve actually got identical buttons for your high, for your headlights here. Again, you can flash to pass by pressing that down. And then of course, lock it in high beams like I just did up there and regular low beams like that. And then of course your signal lights as well. You’ve got your signal light left, cancel signal light, right cancel like that. Simple, simple stuff. The only bit difference in um, this and the liberty is the horn button. Horn button here is a little different style and you’ll see the same thing over on the other side when we talk about our kill switch and our start button right side throttle side, your grips are the same as the liberty.
Your brakes feel very similar or the same to me. And then you’ve got an identical kill switch here. Again, the styling here of the start button, and again, this is an electric start even though it has a kickstart, uh, uh, handle down there. This is electric start. This button is the only real difference, uh, for controls this button in the hoard button from the more, uh, you know, sort of up up the line liberty. So let’s take an overall view of this bike again. So if you’re looking at a scooter like this, let’s just talk about overall some of the differences. We talked about the seat here. You have a little bit higher end seat here and a little bit higher end seat here on the Vespa and the piaggi Liberty. Now this one is a special edition model of the, oh I’m gonna say it wrong, b a c Ibai, uh, chocolate, I think.
Uh, oh, well I’m saying that wrong I’m sure, but it’s the special edition one here. But you can see there are some style options within the Liberty lineup and certainly Vespa is known for its style as well. The Vespa does have an L e D headlight. Both of these are gonna be just halogen lights. So again, you’re paying more, you’re getting a few different things. The Vespa style, the frame here is actually part of the body. So what you see here, the body is part of the frame, I should say, where the Typhoon and the Liberty are built a little bit more like a modern sport bike. They have a frame and they have plastic fairings on the outside to give it that shape and give it that style. You’ve got that classic chrome everywhere kind of styling on Vespa. You’ve got a lot of gloss black over here.
Here you have some gloss black, but you have some differences here while you’ve got a rear rack here of sorts. And uh, little handle grab there, you still have the handle grab here, but no rear rack. So you’ve got some modern styling here. I really like the look of these fat, fairly large wheels. But you can see here that’s a 16 inch wheel that’s narrower, that’s a 12 inch wheel that’s you know, in between for width. And this is the largest front tire. This Liberty has a 14 inch rear wheel tire, which is similar in diameter to or same in diameter as this one, but I think they are slightly different. Yes, this is only a 100. So again, wider tire again on the um, typhoon here as well. And then the Vespa has 12 inches front and rear and I believe they’re actually identical size. Didn’t check that exactly. So a 50 cc scooter performance is going to be similar. There’s not massive differences in power, but there may be some differences. We’re gonna have to look into that. Like I said, the spec sheet I have on this one isn’t perfect. Couple things I like from the seating position here. Seating position on all three of them. Very comfortable. Both of those ones have round mirrors. This one has a little bit more similar style to something like the Kawasaki Ninja style. Little bit more elongated mirrors here. Uh, yeah, objects and mirror closer than they appear on both sides here. So again, slightly wide angle mirrors here. Slightly wide angle mirrors on both of those.
But again, those ones are round, this one’s regular. So there are differences in style and there are differences in some pricing things. There are reasons to move up to these two, but again, if you’re just looking for a basic scooter, the typhoon has a lot to offer. These do not last a place like New Brunswick here. You can drive this at 14 years old after taking a written test. If you have a car license, you can also drive this. Uh, if you’re 16 years and older, as long as you have a car license, you can drive this, uh, without a motorcycle license here. And that makes that cheap transportation option a really good option. And that’s what this is. Now, there’s not a whole lot more to move up from there, but again, this is my first time seeing the Typhoon and I think it’s pretty impressive.
I’d like to see the dash update a little bit. Uh, the website mentions a USB port and I think that’s a good thing to have on a scooter as well. I’m not sure that it is on this unit cuz I can’t find it. So again, what I’m looking for from you is what do you want to know about this? I’ve gotta reach out to Piag because there are some questions I have about the information on their website currently as I’m filming this in early 2023. But if you have questions, let’s get your questions in as well so we can come back on this, uh, in the future and make an even more in-depth video cover all the questions that you have, all the questions that I have and we can talk more about this in the future. So let me know what kind of questions you have on the Typhoon and uh, I’ll make sure I come back. And of course, if you wanna see these bikes, uh, coming on down to Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where pretty much every Vespa, pretty much every liberty or Piaz, Gio, all the trim lines are in stock. And of course the new Typhoon 2023 model has just showed up for the first time. This is my first look at it. We’ll have more. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter and this is gonna be a good one. This is one I’ve been looking forward to do for a while. So in this video we are gonna compare the ZX6R versus the Z900. Now I happen to pull out the SE model, which is the most expensive version of that Kawasaki Z900. However, it’s still a little bit less than this, so they’re kind of the same price class. And we’re gonna talk fast bikes and I’m gonna focus on fast bikes for the street. This is gonna be a little bit of a leader on the track, but on the street each one has its advantages and you may want one over the other. So in this video we’re gonna talk about technology, we’re gonna talk about seating position, but we’re also gonna talk about all the little details that the other videos aren’t showing you to make sure that you know which one of these is best for you.
And if you have questions, hit the subscribe button because we’re gonna be following these bikes through. And I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and they give me complete access to their entire vehicle line. And my job is basically to ask you what you wanna know about these bikes, see it in the comments, I can answer it in the comments section and I can make future videos just for you so that you get to know each of these bikes even better than you do right now. So make sure you ha if you have comments and questions or if you’re interested in these bikes that you do, hit subscribe. Let’s get going with the review. Alright, so speaking of bringing up things that other videos don’t always mention, Kawasaki does not give us horsepower or torque figures for these vehicles in North America.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So I Googled it, and if you google them, you’re gonna find a variety of results and it can depend on, you know, the dyna, the test them, whether it’s crank horsepower or wheel horsepower. So I got numbers that are relatively comparable, but again, somewhat debatable and that’s fine. The idea is this one here has about 134 horsepower at 13,000 rpm. That’s the ZX6R. And then you’re comparing that to about a hundred and twenty five, a hundred twenty seven, depending on the stat you look at. But at 9,500 rpm, so a little bit down on horsepower than the Z900, where you see a real difference is torque. This one’s around 52 foot pounds of torque. This one’s around 72 foot pounds of torque. And what that means is you have similar horsepower numbers, but more torque on the larger motor. But of course this is the super sport, right? So one should be faster.
Well this one’s about 12 430 pounds, this one’s about 470 pounds. So there’s a weight advantage to each to the, uh, lighter bike as well, which a little bit less horsepower, but the way they make their power is what matters. And that 13,000 RPM for max horsepower here, 9,500 RPM over here, and 11,000 RPM for torque and 8,000 RPM for uh, torque on this one. Those are numbers that change the character of the vehicles as they drive. However, they’re both a whole lot of fun. They’re both very, very quick and they’re both a lot of fun on the street. So we’re gonna talk about some of the details and really get into things now, uh, so you can help sort of decide what you like and what matters to you. So before we dig into the technologies of each of these bikes, because there’s a lot of similarities, but differences within those technologies, let’s just cover the first difference that you’re gonna have to deal and one that may make a difference to you.
ZX6R seating position is more aggressive. Now the XX six R is what they call a cheater bike. It’s in that 600 cc super sport class, but it’s 636 cc. So it’s actually above the 599 that you usually CC for those race bikes. And this was built as a super sport bike for the street. It’s not incredibly uncomfortable. It’s definitely, you know, we’ve got people that do, you know, thousands of miles a year on these things, uh, without any issues. But you can see you’re leaned over. This is as upright as I get. You’ve got high pegs and if you are going to the racetrack, this is a hundred percent your bike. In my mind. And again, I’m gonna show a little bit of bias to the Z 900. I bought a Z 900 Rs, which is the retro sport version of that bike. So I’m gonna have some biases there. But in my mind, there are very few road situations that you’re reaching the capabilities of this bike that you can’t also reach on that. So you have to kind of decide what you want. I absolutely love
The look of a proper sport Bike and the problem I have with the Zed 900 is I can’t photograph it well enough to make it look as good as it does in person. Now, even on the Kawasaki website doesn’t really, you know, I impress me that much, but when I see it in person it looks really good. Sport bikes, there’s really not an angle that you can’t get a good picture of it. So they look great all the time anywhere. And that’s a lot of times why people want a bike like this. It’s the looks and the performance. So you’re definitely getting sport bike look here, but you’re also getting a sport bike seating position. Now let’s jump straight across to the Zed 900. I’ll walk over to this side here. Whoops,
Tap the mirror there. It’s okay. They fold if we have to do that. All right, Coming in here, You can see right away Much more upright, much more comfortable CD position. Now again, you still have high pegs, but You have a more upright riding position and Little bit wider bars. We’re gonna talk about some of those Advantages as we go on But this one is, You know, there’s really no way to avoid it. This one’s more comfortable For the road and that might matter for you if you’re gonna do long, long drives, long tours If you’re kind of nimble and you know either one is still good, then let’s start Talking About the technologies of each one because they each have their advantages. So let’s zoo In a little closer. Let’s start with suspension. So we’re taking a look at the ZedX six R right now. Left Side fork two, we’re gonna move to the right side a second. And you’ve got a preload adjuster right here. Now let’s just first of all cover adjustable suspension On something like this. On a Track bike, you’re gonna really want to dial in the suspension if you’re talking about winning races. So let’s see if I can keep the same shot. We’ll go over to this side over here. There we go. Oh, I’m gonna hit a little tough spot on my, my tripod has a little tough spot there. But anyways, you can sort of see here you’ve got the preload adjustment on the other side and then you’ve got the tension and compression over here. We’re just gonna go with what the, what it says on the shock, rather than talking about really the specifics here. But on a race bike, this is really valuable stuff to have really good adjustable suspension because what you’ll find is that you can tweak the suspension Just there to get those extra tenths of a second around certain corners, around certain braking and that kind of thing, uh, in order to get a better lap time. Now if you are a street rider, if you’re a set it and forget it kind of person, then adjustable suspension loses some value for you. For me, I’m not quite a set it and forget it person, but I’m not gonna play with my front suspension as much. So just something to keep in mind that you do have fully disable suspension here. Let’s take a look at the Z, or sorry, the Z900 and show you the suspension there. Take a look at the right side fork tube on the Zed 900. We’re actually looking at it from the front of the bike and you can see it’s hard for me to get an angle to film it at.
I can come in through the top here and get to it, uh, easily, but this is just the tension adjustment on both left and right side. So you have to do the left and the right side equally at the same point. And it’s harder to reach. And I think the reason it’s harder to reach is because they understand that, again, for most people’s street riding, it’s a little bit more set it and forget it with a tweak here, a tweak there. You’re not coming in after doing a couple hot labs, making a tweak, going right back out to see if it made a difference. So a little bit tougher to reach, a little bit less adjustment in the suspension, but you still have adjustable suspension front and rear on these bikes. And you can check out the website, we can talk about adjustable suspension further, but like I said, both have it, it’s more accessible and a little bit more advanced on the XX six.
Let’s look at the re, let’s look at the rear suspension now as well. So back to the ZX 6R here, looking at the rear suspension, this is also a little buried, but again, the adjustment is fully reachable. So preload, you can see that you’ve got lots of adjustment in there. Uh, again, fully adjustable rear suspension here, buried in here because of weight. And we’ll talk about that, we’ll take a zoom out later and look at some of the geometry of all this stuff. But again, fully adjustable rear suspension that is adjustable with tools. Now you do have a slight advantage on the Zed 900 SE that I’m about to show you because the SE has a, uh, extra suspension upgrade over the regular Zed 900. Let’s take a look at that right now.
So taking a look at the Z900, again, this is the SE model with the upgraded Olin shock or Olin shock, however you wanna say that. Uh, they actually have the same design, the horizontal backlink for your suspension, which basically means it’s on a link here, puts all the weight forward, but of course a little bit more accessible here. You’ve got an open frame here compared to the other, uh, frame as well. So we’ll talk about some of those differences in a second. But the big thing you’re getting here is a preload adjuster right here, which allows you, it’s sort of a remote preload, which means as you add weight or a passenger to the back, you can dial in that suspension really quickly with uh, without tools. And of course you can adjust your suspension down here and up there as well. So you’ve got lots of adjustability here on the rear suspension.
And I will say that the SE may be worth going for if you are a performance rider, these olein suspension, it is an upgrade, it is a better ride, uh, you know, for road holding, for comfort, for all kinds of things. These are, you know, high end shocks here and of course the SE is the only Z 900 with that uh, upgraded shock there. So rear shocks, again adjustability. Same thing on both as far as you know, having a very good adjustability. So let’s talk about the brakes on both these bikes. First of all, we’re looking at the ZX six R here and you can see the radial mount calibers here. So they’re coming in from this angle, bolting in this way. I’m gonna show you just, uh, for comparison purposes, a Ninja six 50, which is a less powerful two cylinder bike. This is a four cylinder bike, but look at the way it’s mounted there and then we’ll fade back into the way this is mounted here.
And this is more of a performance mounting. So you have real performance type brake system here. They do have pedal style rotors. Now I believe that pedal style rotors were brought in to help dissipate heat. However, there are a lot of very powerful bikes that don’t have the pedal style rotors and I kind of think part of it is for style. Something like the ninja 1000 has moved to a, um, solid uh, disc and we’re gonna show you on the Z 900 as well. The non petal rotors, of course you’ve got lots of ventilation in here. Everything about this is a performance braking system. The advantage on the ZedX six R is this Gibbs KA Kawasaki intelligent ABS braking system. Um, this is a more advanced ABS braking system than on the Z 900. Both are very good, but of course this one is better.
So that might make a difference for you, especially when you’re riding at the limit. Uh, but now let’s just take a look at the ZED 900 or or Z 900 se again, the SE is going to have upgraded brakes. We’ll show you them right now. So taking a look here, you can see no pedal style rotors. You do see brembo brakes. Now that might be something worth uh, mentioning. Again, that is only on this SE model. So SE has the upgraded suspension, especially that Olin shock at the rear and it has the gold fork tubes here, which you can just actually, yeah, maybe you can see. Note you can’t see ’em, they’re off screen. But you also have the Brembo brakes. So Brembo brakes, of course the performance name and brakes. Very, very, very good brakes on this bike. Not that they’re any better or worse than the ZedX xr, but of course for the street, not many street bikes have Brembo brakes.
So that is a big uh, step up. You can see the same radial mount, whether you get the brambles or not in the Zed 900, you’re still having that radio mount. And of course their dual disks here, you can’t always see that on the camera. Both bikes have the dual disks. This one has ABS brakes. You can see the sticker right here. You can see that little uh wheel in the backside there. Um, the sensor wheel right there that helps your abs or that is your ABS sensor. But uh, quality brakes on both these. So we’ve basically got similar suspension, similar brakes, similar horsepower. Let’s start pulling out now and seeing some of the differences. So I wanna talk about the differences in engine character and this is where you could kind of get into the weeds in performance bikes. So we’ll get to that in a second because there is a difference in the way they work.
And then we’re gonna move to the dash where you’ll see some of those differences in the engines shown on the tachometer. So when I say we’re getting into the weeds a little bit here, this is a bike with less torque than this one. Now generally be speaking a bike with more torque, you’re not gonna have to downshift to make a passing maneuver. Now if that’s the only thing I say, it’s completely misleading because both of bikes are extremely high performance vehicles. You’re not gonna have to downshift to pass anyone. However, to get into your power band on this one, you’re going to have to be higher in the revs, which sometimes can involve a downshift. Alternatively, you might be just driving this bike a little bit higher in the revs. None of that’s a problem. But down lower in the revs, and you’ll see it on the tachometer here, there’s just not a ton of power.
In fact, the first 4,000 RPM are bunched together. You’re really not driving below 4,000 RPM on the Z 900. You have a very broad power band, which means that any speed at any gear, you’re gonna have torque, pulling you through. Torque is that pulling power and that means that you may do less shifting to get some of those passing maneuvers or that hard acceleration from when I say passing maneuvers simply because I’m talking about not the zero 60 speed but that sort of 50 mile an hour, 80 kilometer an hour, the acceleration power there, you could be in many different gears and have max acceleration here, whereas here you’re gonna have to keep it a little higher in the revs. So there’s a difference to the character. That being said, these bikes are so high performance when you’re talking about on the street, you’re well beyond legal limits, you know, to really get into some of those types of things.
So it’s more of the character when you’re driving than the actual ability when you come to the street riding. This one is gonna be quicker on track in part because it handles, but this one does have that torque. And if you’re both at, you know, 5,000 RPM and give it this one and a similar gear, this one’s going to pull away. So now let’s take a look at the dash here and show you some of that information visually through the dash. And there’s a real difference in the dashes here as well. So stay tuned for both and we’ll show you some of the differences. So taking a look at the Zanax six R before we turn the bike to the on position, you can see that first 4,000 rpm, they’re bunched up. So really you’re living in that six to 15,000 RPM range and your mid-range is eight 10, you know, that kind of thing.
It’s, it’s visually demonstrated to you on the tack even though it does rev from zero to 16,000 RPM red line. Really you’re living in that 8, 10, 12 range as your mid-range. So you have a higher revving engine here. Let’s turn the bike on here on the ZedX four R that’s about to come out. You’re getting a TFT display, you’re gonna see that same TFT display on the Z 900, but here it’s a little bit old school, whether it’s due for an update or not is up to you. You still have all the information you need. So this F down here is full and low power. You have a full power mode and a low power mode. Both bikes that we’re looking at today have that you don’t have rider modes here, you will have rider modes on the Z 900. But as far as information goes, although it’s displayed in a different style screen, it’s all here for you.
So we can go through all the different settings, trip a, trip B, fuel efficiency, all that kind of thing. Um, actually we’ll just stay on a tip down here. So let’s go fuel efficiency kilometers per liters in instant reading. You can change that to the type of uh, mileage reading you do, whether it’s liters per a hundred kilometers, miles per gallon, that kind of thing. Then you have the instant average, we’ve gone to the average there, then your’s arranged empty, then you have a temperature gauge and you have an intake air gauge as well. So that’s kind of interesting stuff. On the bottom. On the top is just trip A, trip B, that kind of stuff. Uh, you can cycle through those as well. So gear indicator right there in your tack speed over there. Fuel gauge, temperature gauge, lots of things there, all the basic stuff.
And you’re gonna see the same information on the Z 900 right now, but it’s in a TFT display which may be your preference for some people. So now we’re taking a look at the TFT display on the Z 900. Now it’s not on right now and you can see we’ve got a mirrored finish here. Now there’s a couple things that help prevent that mirrored finish. You can see there’s like a dual image of my hand in there that is gonna help you, uh, see the screen better in a second when we turn it on. And keep in mind that filming a screen on a camera adds a whole bunch more glare. But even with those disadvantages having the white wall behind me, which is what you see the white wall on the sign, you’ll see that when I turn it on, even in bright sunlight, even in unreadable conditions, you would think it is very clear both in person, again, much clearer in person but also here on camera.
So again, all the same information is here. There’s a full and uh, a high and low power mode on this bike. There’s a road which is our riding mode. So there’s uh, rider road sport, uh, and rain in there. And then you have your tachometer, which only goes to about 11,000 rpm. And you can see there’s no real tight spacing in there. The numbers are 1, 2, 3, 4, but you know they skip five, they skip seven, they skip nine. Uh, but you can see that the spacing is relatively equal, which means you can really kind of vary in there. Now there are some nice advantages in here. You can set this whole tack to blink at a certain rpm. So when you first buy the bike during break-in period, I think it’s around 4,000 rpm, it’ll start to blink at you, uh, for that short break-in period.
But you can set that anywhere you want. So if you want it to set your blinking at maximum torque around 8,000 rpm, you could set that to blink, uh, or you know, power 9,500 rpm. But really your peak power is in that range, but you’ve got strong power throughout this whole range, which makes a difference as far as information. Let’s just see the same kind of stuff in here. Um, you’ve got your average kilometers per liter. So again, average fuel efficiency and instant fuel efficiency is there range down there in the very bottom of the screen in case you’re not running or looking. Average speed is something we don’t have on the other bike. Of course they have the NK temperature. Uh, total temperature or sorry, let’s go back. Oops, average range, there we go. Average speed, total time battery condition. And then there’s the instant fuel efficiency.
Then I hit above. And same thing on both bikes. You’re gonna have odometer trip a, trip B right there. Fuel gauge. Uh, the temperature gauge is, oh, maybe there’s not a temperature gauge, just oh there we go. Temperature right there. So the temperature with the um, readout instead of a gauge, you’re gonna have the exact temperature you have as a temperature gauge. So again, information is really the same between both. It’s gonna depend on what you will like the older school. ZX six really isn’t the fully latest screen, but it does have all the information. This one is the up to date screen in the Zed 900. We’ll take a really brief look at the left side controls. If you’re buying this bike, you probably already know what everything does here. One thing I won’t, uh, that you can’t see on camera is there’s a little trigger here to flash your L E D headlights.
Both these bikes have L e D headlights and of course all your controls through here. This outside is controlling those two displays. Hitting the select is gonna control your rider mode, traction controls, those kind of things on both bikes. They both have adjustable levers here, whether it’s the clutch lever or the brake lever. You’ve got adjustments in there. Both have hazard lights as well. So same basic controls here. Now you can see the mirror stock is coming off of the handlebar here. That’s gonna give you advantage in a tuck position. Lemme just explain that to you right now. So when we talk about mirrors, this is pretty consistent versus ninjas. Ninjas here and zed class bikes across the Kawasaki lineup. The ninja bikes have the mirrors mounted to the faring. They also have the instrument cluster in the faring and that means when you turn the handlebars, your mirrors and your handlebars stay put on the Zed class bikes pretty much across the lineup, not just the Zed 900, the instrument cluster, the headlight and the mirrors, they all turn with the handlebars.
Now there are a couple advantages to each of those, but the mirrors in particular, when you get on a ninja, if you get in a tuck position like this, first of all, the tank here is curled out for your helmet chin bar on the ZedX six R. So you can get very, very, very low like this, but no matter how low of a tuck you get in your mirrors are still in front of you. They’re way out of adjustment here. But the point is here, they’re way in front of you no matter what you have use of your mirrors, whatever you’re riding position. So as you jump across to the Zed class bikes, you’re gonna have a more upright position and there’s an advantage to that as well. So lemme just show you that right here. Let’s talk about the negative. If I get in that tuck position, you can see here the mirrors are equal to my face, therefore they’re behind me.So it means if I’m in a full tuck like this, they are not within my line of sight. Now the flip side is the benefit of that is they are closer to you. So the ninja still offers you great visibility with them up there on the faring out in front of you. But when they have a mirror closer to you, think about a little handheld bathroom mirror. When you hold it close to you, you can see a wider angle of what’s beside you. These are gonna give you a little bit wider, a little bit broader uh, perspective because they’re closer to you up on the handlebars. So pros to each one, cons to each one. But that is one thing that I think a lot of people forget to point out when they talk about their mirrors. So if you’re a motorcycle nerd like me, you can go on and on about some of the differences here.
There’s a different style frame here, little differences. Even the pegs over here are steel pegs. The pegs over here are rubber mounted, at least for the driver position. There’s a whole bunch of little tweaks and advantages to each one. But let’s just start with who these bikes are for. If you’ve always wanted a Kawasaki performance bike, you’re getting that feeling from both of these for me, and I’m gonna be told in the comment section that I’m wrong, but for me, this isn’t a bike that I would take on as long of journeys simply because maybe I’m old, maybe I’m spoiled, whatever. But the riding position, while very fun for a sporty position, is a little bit less comfortable for a regular everyday ride. And that’s where a bike like this comes in. The Z 900 is available in a whole bunch of trim lines. This is the top end trim with the oland suspension.
This is the SE model. But even without this, if you didn’t like the style, there’s the RS model, which the same frame I bought the SE with the same uh, revised front fork settings, the oland’s rear suspension, the BREMBO brakes, you can get that in the Rs, which is a retro sport model that’s a bike that you’ll see on screen right now. I am gonna, I own that, I just bought that this summer and I’m gonna follow my entire ownership experience on there, uh, right here on this YouTube channel. So subscribe if you wanna see that. But there are options to get that Kawasaki performance bike in something that is a little bit more upright, a little bit more comfortable. Now that doesn’t mean that this isn’t comfortable, this is still a very comfortable super sport bike and it is something that is very track capable.
If you think about going to the track, you can absolutely do that. This one comes from the factory with slightly better track tires. They’re gonna wear a little bit quicker, but they have a little bit more grip over here. Like I said, plenty of grip, but they will last a little bit longer as well. So you have options. Again, tires can always be upgraded or changed when they wear. Uh, so you’ve got, you know, the ability to mix and match there. I think it’s the same front size tire, uh, slightly different, uh, rear tire as well, A little bit wider on the Z900. But you’ve got lots of options in the performance bike category from Kawasaki. So if you’re like me and you’ve always dreamed of this, but by the time you get to this stage, maybe this isn’t the comfort you want. Something like this will definitely work and the extra torque in this engine to me actually makes it a little bit more enjoyable.
So lemme know what you think. What do you wanna know about these bikes? Again, I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports . I can come back to these bikes again and again and again. I’ve done reviews on each of them several times and I wanna make sure I’m building a database of information of your questions, making sure we answer them both in the comments section and in future videos. So let me know what you think and if you’re interested in either of these bikes or you wanna follow my ownership experience of the Zed 900 Rs, make sure you hit subscribe. Let me know what you think. I’ll see you in the next one. Thanks for watching.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and in this video I’m gonna talk beginner bikes. And I do so cautiously because this bike in particular and that bike also, I always shy away from calling them beginners bikes because especially this one is really good for keeping a very, very, very long time. It’s very quick. This one is not quite as quick and there may be a reason to move to a faster bike from that. However, I’m a, I’m an experienced rider and I could keep that bike in my garage for a long, long time. I love that bike. But these are two bikes that are really good for beginner riders. And since I’m here filming at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports and they’re about to host a entire motorcycles show essentially here on Saturday, which is an open house to come check out motorcycles.
I thought I would talk about what makes a great beginner bike. So whether you’re interested in these two bikes or not, I’m going to use these two bikes as examples of what makes a great first bike. And also because I like these ones, like I said, you could probably end up keeping these bikes and not just have them as your beginner bike. You may want to keep them in maybe all the bike you ever need. So what we’re gonna do is do an in-depth review review of the Ninja 400 and the versus X 300. These are both 2023 models. We’re gonna go through what you can get in a fully modern bike and we’ll go through, talk about some details that the other videos aren’t talking about and hopefully I can give you some context into what I think makes a really good first bike so that you are better equipped if that’s where you want to head into your first motorcycle.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So let’s take a look at both of these bikes. First of all, this one is kind of classed as an adventure bike. It’s a very upright, comfortable bike. A lot of adventure bikes are gonna be a little bit better off-road than this, but this is certainly a bike that you can take down, a dirt road down some of those trails, but it’s also very highway capable and I think that’s important for our first bike. You don’t want to go so small that it’s not highway capable. And generally we look at size in the engine size department, but there are some differences. For instance, this is a 300 cc and there are other 300 ccs in the Kawasaki lineup, but this is a twin cylinder that’s gonna give you a little bit more horsepower and that’s gonna give you a little bit little better highway capability.
Now what’s interesting is this Ninja 400 used to be available as a Ninja 300 and it actually shared the same engine as this, but they upgraded this one a few years ago to the 400 and the 400 makes more power, significantly more power. It’s one of the more powerful 400 twin cylinder engines, but they also made it a lighter bike and that turned it from a pretty good little entry level sport bike to a good all around sport bike that is very easy to drive and very good. And that’s why I say with this one it’s going to be a little bit faster bike, it’s gonna have a little bit more top end, it’s gonna have better acceleration and it’s the kind of bike that a lot of, it’s kind of like a cult classic, a lot of experienced riders like this for the reason that it is so lightweight you can’t replicate the feel of this bike in a faster and therefore heavier bike with a bigger engine. So a lot of people
Love this bike simply because it’s fun. Now this one is one that I really quite like as well and I’ll be clear, this is usually what I recommend for beginners. This one’s a little taller, but what I like about this bike is you can explore every type of motorcycling so it doesn’t look like a cruiser, but every kind of ride that a cruiser can go on, you can go on this, you can also get luggage on this, get accessories on this. You can do overnight camping trips, you can do travel for days, you’ve got good wind protection and like I said, it’s highway capable but it’s also great around town because it’s very lightweight. So we’re gonna talk through both of these bikes. We’re gonna start with the versus X 300, move our way to the uh, new color here for the Ninja 400 and then we’ll wrap it up from there.
So starting with the Versys X 300, I’m gonna get the one negative out of the way, but if this is a deal breaker for you, stay with me in this video because a lot of the features of this bike may be things that you wanna look for in your bike. So first of all, the one negative is this is a little bit of a taller bike. Now I’m about six feet tall. I’m gonna get the kickstand on my way here. Even a six feet tall, I am fully flat feeding footing this, you don’t have to be as tall as I am to ride this. There’s probably lowering kits to get this a little bit lower down. Part of the height of this bike is the styling. It is an adventure style bike and part of it is to give you that little bit extra capability.
Now tall bikes can be intimidating for people, but this is not an intimidating toll bike. And to be fair, it’s really not that tall of a bike because it’s got a fairly narrow seat here. Narrow tank here, you’re very much in control and it’s very, very, very lightweight. So a heavy bike that’s tall is a tougher bike, but a bike like this for most riders, even if you’re shorter than me, it’s not gonna be super intimidating. Now if you’re five foot three, this is going to be a tall bike for you and that’s where something like the Ninja 400 would still work where this doesn’t. What I like about this bike though is there are several things that are difficult to learn on a motorcycle or more difficult. And the first one is slow speed maneuvering. And one thing is this bike being so light, but two, having really broad handlebar and a fairly upright seating position, your eyes are always in the right position.
You’re not lean down looking at the bike, you’re sitting up looking around. So sometimes they’ll sell you these, you know, little sport bikes as a first time bike and they’re not that comfortable and they’re actually a little bit harder to steer slow speeds, they don’t turn as sharp. This one turns very sharp, so does so. Sodas. Sodas, the Ninja 400 and both of them are still sitting fairly upright, but this one being very square is very nice. Having a handlebar here I set of clip-ons, we’ll talk about that in a second. You can add accessories in here, we’ll get to the dash in a minute. But you’ve got that slow speed cornering type thing. And then the upright seated position is very in command. You’re sitting sort of like an suv, you’re looking up a traffic above traffic, it gives you great visibility. The mirrors here are fairly close to you, so that makes it give a more of a wide angle view behind you. And the overall position is very comfortable and very good. So seating position matters, but you’ve also got, like I said, the ability to sort of have
Some control because of the positioning here. Wide bars make it really easy. So something to consider, uh, moving on. But let’s take a look at some of the features that I think you should look for. And we’re gonna start by taking a look at the front brakes and moving our way through the spike before we jump over to the Ninja 400. So let’s take a look at the front wheel here of the versus X 300. This one’s a little bit larger than the average sport bike. That’s what they do on some of these off-road type bikes. A little bit larger wheel can help you. This is a 21 inch wheel so it’s quite large compared to a 17 inch diameter wheel that you see on most sport bikes and pretty common on most uh, road going bikes. So what you wanna look for in your first bike, if you’re considering this is a BS brakes.
Now how do you tell if it has a BS brakes if it doesn’t have an a BS sticker like this? You’re looking for this type of panel here in the disc. Brake disc brakes are pretty common on just about everything. Now this one has a single disc, it’s a pedal style disc that’s uh, partly for style it could help dissipate heat, but these holes are really about dissipating heat there. But this little ring here is the A BS sensor when you’re first driving a motorcycle, if you jam on the brakes, it’s kind of a tough, another tough thing to learn is uh, braking isn’t too bad normally, but if you jam on the brakes in an emergency, you can lock your tires, you can have all sorts of things and if you lock your front tire you’re probably going down. So AVS is gonna keep you from locking that front tire and that means as as you practice you can kind of feel that a b s pulsing instead of feel your wheel locking.
And it just gives you a little extra layer of security as you’re learning your bike. And of course as you’re learning to emergency brake your bike, so a BS front and rear available on both these bikes, that’s definitely something I would look for in your first bike. So now we’re gonna take a look at the seat of the versus X 300 and there’s a lot going on here that you wouldn’t think about for a first bike. First of all, if you compare this to the average sport bike, you can see that first of all it’s a very big comfortable seat and you have a large rear seat here. Now you’re not gonna be taking a ton of passengers in your first little bit of riding on a brand new bike. But the nice thing with this is you can take passengers if you want to and they’ll be fairly comfortable here.
And again, they’re sitting fairly upright, not leaning forward, leaning on you, but the versus X 300, what I like about this whole area is it gives you a lot of versatility so you can discover the kind of motorcycling you like. If you want to add on accessory hard cases that are lockable, which means you can go into the store and lock your stuff up on your bike and with your bike you can do that here. You can also, if you don’t wanna buy the accessories right off the bat, use this whole area, you could strap like a tent down here and hang other stuff off and go camping on this bike. So it really allows you to discover that kinds of riding you’re going to like to do. It allows you to take things with you. If you’re used to always driving in a car, you’re used to carrying a lot of stuff with you, having a bike that can take extra stuff with you means that you’re gonna take this more and it makes it more usable and it makes it something that can, you know, maybe replace your car instead of just being there for fun.
So Versys X 300 has some really nice things on here. It has accessories that can bolt into this rear rack, but it’s also got little hooks back here that you can just bungee anything to. You can strap anything to so you don’t have to spend money on the accessories but they’re there for you if you want to get stuff like that. And it makes it a really versatile package and there aren’t a lot of beginner bikes that give you this kind of versatility. A lot of times they’ll narrow you into, you know, a slow low powered cruiser or you know, something with sport bike styling but not always sport bike feeling. Uh, and that limits the versatility of where you can ride it, how often you can ride it and what you can take with you. So the versus X 300 does have some nice things here.
We’re gonna look at the dash on this bike first and then we’re gonna move over to the Ninja 400 and show you some of the features that I really like on that bike. So I’m gonna start looking at the versus X 300 sort of zoomed back so you can see a few things I like. Now again, the handlebar that I was talking about, you’re gonna see a little difference here in the way the handlebar is done on the 400 on the Ninja 400, which we call clip-ons. Handlebars are nice because you can mount a whole bunch of different accessories to hold your phone or do something like that. And if I turn this just a little bit here, you’re gonna see, oh there we go, we’re fine. Hit the tripod there. Uh, you’re gonna see this here that is a punch out where in the future if you want you could put a USB or a 12 volt port, so gonna leave this sitting kind of like that.
Um, and then of course you have your controls over here. What I like about the controls, you have a hazard light, which is nice to have. Not every uh, bike has that, which is just something if you’re ever stopping you can’t see. There’s a little trigger here to flash your high beam or you can lock your high beams, all like that. That trigger can really help you get people’s attention because it’s right there. You can flash it on and off and I kind of like that feature as well. Horn signal lights, that’s all pretty standard stuff. So let’s turn the key on. We may zoom in here a little bit. Yeah, let’s just try zoom in here a little bit. So we’ll zoom in there. Alright, so this bike revs exceptionally high. Now again, these are very small pistons that travel a very short distance.
High revving bikes aren’t a problem. Um, when I did a whole other video talking about that, so don’t let that skew you. If you come from a car and you see in a 12,000 RPM red line, uh, this one makes power higher up in the res, but again, small pistons moving a very short distance, it’s just not an issue. And that’s how you get some of the power out of this bike. What I think you should look for on a beginner bike is right here a gear indicator. So this one tells me I’m in neutral right now. Now neutral has a green light, you can sort of see right there. There’s a green light as well, but every other gear is not labeled. This is a six speed transmission and it’ll tell you one through six exactly what gear you’re in. It’s just very helpful to know what gear you’re in when you pull in the clutch and uh, you ke you know, you’re trying to figure out what gear you need to be in to go into a corner, come out of a corner.
Other than that, you’ve got pretty basic stuff in here. We can cycle through odometer is trip A, trip B and the regular odometer. And down here you’ve got the range, uh, kilometers per liter, which is fuel efficiency. You can set that to liters per a hundred kilometers, miles per gallon, other things like that. And then you have the average fuel efficiency. So that’s instant and average fuel efficiency. And then back to that range, which is distance to empty and it’s gonna calculate that based on how you have been driving and give you a basic calculation of roughly how much you have left. There’s also a clock in there, so pretty simple gauge cluster, but again gear indicator is definitely something I would look for. Now let’s just talk about the clutch because the clutch on these is different and I think it’s a good important thing to look for in a beginner bike.
So what I’m looking at right now is the clutch lever. So of course on the motorcycle it’s a manual transmission. Instead of using a third foot pedal, you’re using a clutch here. And the clutch lever on the versus X is one of the lightest clutch pulls I’ve ever felt, uh, on a motorcycle. Now that’s pretty good because if you’re moving in and outta traffic or if you have a lower powered bike, you’re going to be shifting more and having a lightweight clutch makes it easier to drive. Now there’s a reason that this is lightweight. It’s not just that it’s got extra, you know, sort of different setup to make it light, the lightweight clutch here is part of a slipper and assist clutch. And if you were to mess up a downshift and dump out uh, you know the clutch when you’re doing a aggressive downshift, in theory you could have enough engine braking to skid the wheel.
And what this slipper and assist clutch does is it allows you to dump that clutch. Maybe it’s a mistake or maybe you’re driving really aggressively and it’ll allow the clutch to slip instead of the wheel. So it can help prevent a wheel slide and the side benefit of that system which was developed in racing. And its great for beginners and great for all riders really. Um, the side benefit of that system that keeps that wheel from sliding also gives you a lighter clutch pull. Both these bikes have that, it’s a slightly different uh, feel on the uh, ninja 400, but they’re very light to pull and that makes it fun to zip through the gears and also less tiring to drive through traffic, which is something you’re gonna be doing a lot a bike like this. So now let’s take a look at the Ninja 400.
For a lot of people this is a little bit more exciting bike to look at and to be honest, it’s also a little bit more exciting to drive. You will lose some practicality and some versatility by going with a bike like this. But this is the bike that I recommend more often as a good beginner bike and in part because of something like this, this really low seat height. So I say really low but again my feet are flat on the uh, seat here. There is a slight bit more forward lean, but again, some of the wind that’s hitting you is gonna take some of that and it also gives you that sport bike kind of feel. You’re not so leaned over that you’re gonna be uncomfortable in any way, but you do have a sense of control at speed on this bike. Whereas the other one you’re gonna have a little bit more of a control in the parking lot.
Now again, two weeks into riding each, either of these bikes are gonna be just as easy to ride as the other, but you have a little bit more of a tucked in. You have that sport bike feel and again, the lower seat height helps for a lot of people. Now in that seating position, of course the smaller rear seat, your rear seat passengers are gonna be a little bit less comfortable and in my opinion, sometimes the geometry of certain sport bikes not so much with this but some of them uh, can make that that rear passenger sit up high and it can kind of throw the weight balance off a little differently than on something like an adventure bike where it’s kind of built in there. Uh, it just kind of sit when you’re sitting square it seems to fit a little better. So it depends on what you wanna do.
But as a solo bike, this one is a really great bike and like I said, it started off as a Ninja 300 and the Ninja 300 engine. Even though you know one third smaller than or one quarter smaller than this, uh, you know, the 300 was a heavier engine that made less power. This is a lighter engine that makes more power, which a lot of people if you do is research on the versus X 300 are saying that bike needs this engine. Would it make it better? Yeah, it would, but that’s not a bad bike at all. It just would have a little bit more speed and maybe handling would be a little different. What this bike is really good at though is the powertrain in it is very easy to manage. So if you’re a newer rider, although it’s quite quick, it’s very easy to manage.
And when I say quite quick, I’m, I’ve never done a top speed on this, but there are people on YouTube that drive this up to around 200 or so kilometers an hour. So highway capable and then some, I would never drive this bike that fast. But the bigger point with this bike is it is really fun in the handling department. Think of it like sort of lightweight sports cars. Um, you know, there’s a lot of cars like a mini Cooper, a Mazda Miata, um, Scion or or Subaru B rz, those kind of things. They’re not crazy powerful but people love ’em because they’re a lot of fun to drive. That’s kind of what this is. And like I said, when you move to a bigger engine you don’t get the same feel of handling that this bike has and that’s what makes it good. So there are some practical things.
We’re gonna look at the dash, we’re gonna look at the back end here because while you lose some racks for storage, there is some ability for storage here, we’ll talk about that. But I do wanna show you the dash to start and then we’ll move back to the storage area. Alright, so taking a look at the dash here, very bottom right here, you have all the exact same controls but you don’t have the four-way flashers or those or those hazard warning lights. It kind of is what it is. Take a look at the dash though, you do have a little bit more of a modern design here. We’re gonna zoom into that as well. So let’s just do that again. Alright, so there we go. Overall full screen, again a very high revving engine just under 12,000 RPM red line, uh, you know, but very uh, you know, good power throughout and it’s sort of a smooth even build to the power, which is different than some of the uh, say four cylinder super sport bikes that really don’t make a lot of power down low at all.
They make it all up top. You’ve got decent mid-range power and good upper power as well. And again, same basic design here. You’ve got your gear indicator in there. Again, neutral light is already lit but one through six gearing in there and the same information up through here. Trip a, trip B odometer, go back to trip A and then we’ll go down here to your incident. Average fuel efficiency and your range. So same thing there, but it does look a little more modern I guess with this sort of bluey type color. Um, and again, easy to read all you need nothing more. Alright, so if you’re like me, you’re sitting there and you’re looking at this bike and you’re going, okay, I really like the styling of this, I like the way it’s gonna ride, but I wish it had some versatility like the cargo capacity of the Versys X 300.
Well you do have this little hook back here which is designed exactly for that for carrying luggage and there’s a second hook behind here behind the rear um, foot peg that allows you to put bungee nets and put stuff up here. But the other thing is there are a whole lot of aftermarket parts that you can take off this rear seat and mount bags and things and all kinds of things that sort of clip in underneath here. So you have the ability to take some luggage but you won’t have the ability to take as much luggage because there’s no factory option for side bags here or for a rack on the back you’d have to go to the aftermarket for that and that can change the look of the bike. But you can absolutely use uh, things where you pop off this seat and uh, connect up some luggage with the seat on underneath as the base for that.
Uh, so lots of options to carry stuff. You just have to go to the aftermarket and decide. And then most of these luggage here is not gonna be lockable like you would be able to do on the versus X 300. So you still have some practicality but you’re gonna lose some of that. The Ninja 400 also offers one thing that the versus X 300 doesn’t and this might matter to new riders as well. You have a lot of color choices and I’m a huge fan of this one right here. Now I’m gonna show you up close to the stripes here. Uh, overall I think the white looks great and I can be honest while I’m filming here, a number of people have walked by said they really like the look of this bike, but I wanna show you something that’s pretty cool. This stripe down here, as I’m looking at it from this angle, I see silver, you can see it’s green right there on the camera a little bit there.
And as we go through here and kind of go through, hopefully this works, you can kind of see it changing to a purple color like that and the wheels do the same thing. It can look silver, it can look purple, it can look green, uh, it can actually look black as well, the sort of the very top there. It looks kind of black on your screen there and it looks silver at times too. So that’s just one thing with the striping of this bike. But the overall color choices on the Ninja 400 are very, very good. All right, so we’ve talked a lot about these two bikes, but let’s reel it in now as beginner bikes. One thing I should have mentioned here, you do have a power port here or a potential power port, uh, where you can sort of pop out a plastic thing just like you did in the versus.
So you could put a phone on both of these. Now if you’re a new rider, I don’t want you putting phones on your handlebars when you’re new. However, if you’re planning to keep these bikes for a while and you want to add something like a GPS or something like that, usually your phone is the cheapest way to do that. So you can power both of these up. So let’s talk beginner bikes. Couple things I think you should look for. ABS brakes we talked about. I think that’s important, not just for beginner riders, I think that’s important for all riders, especially as you kind of get used to riding, you feel pretty good about yourself and then all of a sudden emergency happens. It’s common to lock up a wheel front or rear, which can cause traction issues. Having ABS really helps you with that and it teaches you as well because if you do hammer on the brakes too far too hard, instead of locking that front wheel or rear wheel and possibly going down, you feel that pulsation.
And once it pulses you kind of know, hey, I’ve hit that limit and it teaches you to ride. I think ABS is important. I don’t think paying for something like traction control on either of these bikes or this class of bike would matter. You can usually manage the power on these bikes. A lot of bikes have a ton of power and traction can become an issue, especially in rainy conditions and that’s where traction control really helps. You can’t always drive normally. Not that you can drive normally, but you know, I don’t think that’s the technology worth paying for on these bikes. I do think l e D lights make a lot of sense. This one does not have an L E D headlight, but you can add L e D accessory lights. This one has an L E D headlight here. Uh,
The of an L E D light helps your eyes identify things better. They’re nice and bright, that’s really good to have as well. Biggest thing you should look for in a beginner bike. And I think the biggest thing that gives people some confidence is a comfortable seating position. That’s a lightweight bike. Now this is a sport bike. Some sport bikes are not nearly as comfortable as this. You’re gonna wanna ride for a long time and if you’re gonna enjoy motorcycling for a long time, you want something comfortable for a sport bike. This is very comfortable for any bike of any class. This is very comfortable. So who would I recommend what for? Well, if you’ve been dreaming of sport riding, if to you the idea of a motorcycle is a sporty ride, this is worth going for because a lot of people will just tweak up the suspension and make this their full on racetrack bike.
The abilities of this are well beyond a beginner’s abilities. And like I said, a lot of experienced riders really like this because they can really bring the bike to its limits and it’s not beyond their own limits. So you’ve got this kind of nice melding of a lightweight, lightweight, good handling sport bike that’s a lot of fun. You do lose some practicality over this. Why I would go for this bike is if you’re not sure the type of riding that you want to do, this allows you to go anywhere. If you want to explore, and by the way, there’s a little dirt road that connects between the two roads you’re looking for, this one can head down that dirt road. If you want to go camping, you’ve got ability to take things just like it is. But if you want to add accessories on like lockable hard cases, you’ve got factory approved lockable hard cases that you can put on here.
And having some wind protection can matter if you’re doing a lot of highway trips. Higher speed stuff, a little extra wind protection can be very nice sometimes. And the body work here does keep your legs a little bit more tucked in. And on the cooler weather days that can make a difference. It can keep you a little bit warmer. So this is a bike I recommend for people who just want get into motorcycling overall, it’s a great first bike. You may find that this doesn’t have the power you want in time again because there are so many faster bikes out there. This one, again, you may not run outta power as quickly, but you may lose some of that practicality. So it’s up to you on which one you wanna choose. So if you’re looking into getting in motorcycling and you wanna know things, let me know the types of questions you have as a new rider so that I can help you out.
I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. This is the largest volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and they have a massive showroom full of all kinds of bikes that you can compare them, hop on them, see them side by side. And that’s really the best way to get a sense of which one you like. And of course, if you have questions, let me know because I have complete access to the entire lineup of bikes and power sports and vehicles here at https://powersports.wheelsanddeals.ca/, and I will answer your questions in the comments and make future videos based on those questions. So thanks everybody for watching. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter, and in this video we are gonna review the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja 650. And right up front, I’m a huge fan of this bike and it’s improved for 2023. So we’re gonna talk about the differences. We’re gonna talk about things and there are some new colors to celebrate. We’ll get to them in one second. But first of all, I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. So if you have questions about this bike or you just want to follow it and learn more, this is not the only video I’m gonna make on these bikes. I’m gonna be able to make more and more and more. So make sure you subscribe if you’re interested in these bikes and let me know on the comments if there’s something that I didn’t cover in this video that you want to know about, let me know because I’ll answer you both in the comment section and in future videos.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So like I said, I’m excited about the spike, I’m perfectly happy to make more videos on it, uh, because I like it. Uh, but we’re gonna talk about this. So first of all, before we go too far, I’ve got my cam or my computer off screen here because let’s talk about the colors and Kawasaki colors, really hard to memorize names of. So over here far left side we have the metallic matte graphine steel gray slash ebony. So in other words, Ebony, the black color and the gray color is called that. This one here really stands out. I really like this one here and I’m gonna have to make a little click on my screen here. This one is called Pearl robotic white Metallic Flat stone Raw, sorry, metallic flat, raw graystone and ebony, which I’m gonna call white, but it actually is white and orange. And I didn’t hear anything about orange in there cuz I don’t think flat raw graystone, I think that’s what this is, is different than the little bit of orange in there. Really cool color. We’re gonna choose that one probably mainly in this video. This one here is the K R T edition. Normally the K R D K R T paint job is a little bit more expensive. Lemme put my computer back here for a second. Normally this is a little bit more expensive and you can feel that extra paint. You know the extra cost of that when you feel sort of on here. All of these um, colors are sort of clear coated in right here on the naming and on the side we’ll show you that a little bit later And you can still see the same thing here. The Kwa sag here is right underneath the clear coat, whereas this one not so much.
It feels maybe more like a sticker, that kind of thing. But that pearl color really looks good. It looks good in the sunshine. When I do a video again on these, we’ll get ’em outside and the sunshine we’ll show you. And I will say that this color here, this gray color here does not appear to be the same color as that gray down there. Now I could be wrong but it doesn’t seem to list that like that. So really kind of a cool standout color. And that’s just the colors. There’s lots of features on these bikes and I’ve always been a fan of the 400 and I felt like the 400 was just so close to the six 50 for most people’s riding. I feel like now they’re stepping it up. First of all, you’ve got some better colors. There are certainly reasons to move to the six 50, but they’ve added traction control for 2023 and the overall package here is a really good package, better tires, great dash.
So we’re gonna talk about all those differences that really separate it from that 400 now and really make it a really good, they also handle wealth, they’re just a lot of fun and they give you the look that you want. They’ve really nailed the look of these. When you see these things in person, it’s hard to show on screen and on camera and just, you know, general internet research. But when you see these things in person, they really stand out as kind of that sport bike you’ve been dreaming about. These ones really give you that. So let’s get in depth with these ones. I’m probably gonna use just this white one here as my main one, but if there’s other things you wanna see, I’ll try try to get some pictures at the end of the video, uh, showing all the colors and uh, we’ll go from there. So let’s dig in. Alright, so before I go too far, I just wanna make sure that I was clear. I don’t remember if I said this, but the gray model is about $300 cheaper than this model and the krt. So like I said, K R T usually costs more. This one is extra $300 and like I said, I think there’s value there for the paint scheme, it is what it is. And then the gray one of course is more of that entry level. If you like the gray, you can save 300 bucks and uh, if you like these ones, there is a bit of a cost, but I think there’s value in that. So let’s talk about the six 50 and where it’s placed in the lineup and just in general MO cycling. So first of all, you’re getting full ninja race bike styling, but this isn’t a ninja race bike.
So there’s a couple options. There’s the ZX65R, which is more expensive, significantly faster and much less comfortable. I’ve done a video on that already. And now for 2023 there will be the ZX4R and the ZX4rr. There’re not a whole lot difference in price than this. I have to double check that exact spec, but a lot of time it’s kind of in the realm of this one. Now that one’s gonna be a very limited edition, it’s gonna be hard to get and that 400 ZX r r is a four cylinder. This is still a two cylinder. That four cylinder is going to be likely more powerful, probably a lot less torque than this, but it’s gonna have more horsepower than this. Uh, and that is in that full race tuck position. Now the thing I find with this is a lot of us have dreamed of Kawasaki sport bikes of owning one and then we get into that Z lineup that Z, Zfour and you find that they’re just not that comfortable for everyday riding.
So what this bike is, is an absolutely perfect street sport bike that you can take to the track but it’s comfortable and it’s really, they do a good job of comfort for on a lot of fronts here. So first of all, here’s my seating position. You have an appropriately sporty kind of lean to it, but there’s not a lot of weight on your wrist. You’re not way down like this. So if you see the XX six this video than I did, the handlebars are down here. That’s my upright riding position on that. So you still have essentially clip-ons here, but you’re sitting more upright and much more comfortable. The passenger seat also is an upgrade over most of the sport bikes in this class, uh, or in in the Kawasaki lineup. Even the 400 has a smaller seat. You’re not gonna be taking a ton of passengers on the 400. This one you can take a passenger with some comfort and it’s still, you know, for a sport bike, it’s still sport bike, very comfortable. Obviously the, probably the versus six 50 is the best engine like this with a passenger, same engine, uh, if you’re taking a passenger regularly but staying right here, you have a nice sporty kind of feel to it. All the controls are in here. We’re gonna look at the dash, you have a TFT display, we’re gonna talk about that kind of thing. But you can see here the sporty position. Your legs
Are nice and tucked up high. You can really lean this bike over in a corner and have some fun with it. We’re gonna talk about the tires, which are again an upgrade over something like the 400, which give you a little bit more sporting capability. There’s a lot of pieces in this that give you the sporting com sporting capability while still being very comfortable and I think that’s a real key piece to this bike. So let’s start digging into some of those sporty components. Then we’re gonna take a look at some of the technology in this and then we’re gonna come back and sort of wrap up with sort of an overview of a number of different things. So let’s start at the front wheel. So as we take a look at the front wheel here, there’s a few things I wanna point out. First of all, just talk about a style thing.
You have this sort of orangey color that’s also on the top of the tank. We’ll show you that a little bit later. A lot of time when there’s a deckle on the wheel and a lot of these bikes, they have it sort of in one section and then dashed in another section. It’s completely way around all the way around here. I kind of like it, it looks pretty cool. It may not look as cool on camera but it, when you see the bike from a distance in person, it just kind of gives you that little bit of an offset from the tire to the rim. The black rim there. You’ve got thin spoke rim, so you’ve got some nice lightweight rims here as well. And then you’ve got a lot of things going for you for overall sporting capability style. A lot of things they do right here.
So let’s just talk about sporting capability first. You have the road sport two tires. Now I’m gonna be honest, this one kind of bothers me. The Ninja six 50, the uh, Z650, the Z650Rs. They use these road sport two tires. I just bought the Zed 900 Rs, the SE model, which is supposedly the sporting edition, the special edition. Um, it’s got upgraded brakes, upgraded suspension, and it doesn’t have as good tires as this. So you’ve got really good sporting tires here and you can actually feel the difference in the rubber here. So they’re probably a dual compound here. A firmer rubber up top here, which is gonna give you good uh, durability, good wear. And then down here you can really feel on the side. This is definitely a grippy rubber. So good tires here. And again that plays into the how you’re gonna be riding this.
You can really lean this bike over the foot. Pegs are nice and high and you’ve got the tires to do it down here with the the disc brakes. You’ve got a few things going on as well. You’ve got the pedal style rotors. Now we’ve kind of figured out over time we used to talk about these pedal style rotors. They dissipate heat and while they do what they, what Kawasaki is doing is they’re moving away from some of these pedal style rotors in some of their bikes. Something like the Ninja 1000, obviously more power than this. It actually has the sort of the round rotors. No, no indent on the outside. This pedal style on the outside. So really these are about style, although the drilled holes there, they’re about ventilation as well. So I, I kind of like that they did the style like this because it just makes it look like a sport of your bike.
They’re just, they’re cool style, they work well and of course it’s a dual disk system so it’s a step up from the 400 where you have a single disk, now you’ve got dual disk. So you’ve got better breaking capacity, not just for a little bit extra weight and a little bit extra speed, but just overall for that better breaking feel. And of course these are abs brakes. So we’re gonna talk about the abs and traction control system in a second here. So keep that all in mind. That’s all part of giving you a really sporty, advanced kind of riding feeling here. And then just nice little aerodynamic details here. And again, I love this color in person. You have to see in person. It doesn’t film as well as it looks in person.
So I kind of zoomed in awkwardly on the bike right now just because I wanna show you some things and sometimes they’re harder to show The body work here is styled great, it looks great in person. You’ve got a lot of little details of little fins of extra things that just make it visually interesting. And that’s one of those things when you’re designing cars or bikes, it’s the little details that give you that visual interest. So when you’re looking at it, it’s the kind of bike when you get off it, you’re gonna walk away from it, you’re gonna look back at it. But it also, in addition to the style has some practical benefits. So the styling here does wrap in, which means when your knees are over here, you’ve got a little bit of extra wind protection here on the cold days. Not only is it more aerodynamic, it also like I said can keep some of the little bit cooler wind off you just a little bit.
You’re still out here but you’ve got some protection in there. As we’re looking down here, one of the things I really like here is sort of an underrated thing. A lot of people don’t realize that most of the exhaust from emissions controls from an emissions control standpoint is now done on a lot of bikes underneath here. You don’t need the tailpipe anymore. So what they do on the Ninja six 50 here is they bring it down and put it underneath and they just have give you a little stubby thing there. So that does a couple things for you. First of all, from a style perspective, it allows you to see this really cool swing arm down here. Not a straight uh, you know, square tube. It’s got some style to it, it’s got some sporting function, it shows off your rear disc brake here with those abs uh, sensor down there.
It just looks really cool. But the other thing it does is it takes the heaviest components of all this stuff and instead of sticking them up high into the side, it takes them right underneath the bike. That’s all gonna contribute to a really good handling bike because you’ve got the weight down low and centralized, which is really good. They do the same thing with a suspension here, you can barely see it. They used to put suspension down here on older bikes and they move it all the way forward. So it’s all up in here sort of buried into the body work, which again moves that weight forward, keeps it low centralized and it’s a good, you know, monoshock there. And then I’m not gonna sort of advocate for tail tail tidies. I mean some people want them, some people don’t. But if you did get a tail tidy on this, you can see you’ve got a nice sort of stubby rear end here which really kind of exposes the wheel and gives you that sporty look and kind of again centralizes that weightt. Good passenger seat, which we already talked about. You also have rubber foot, um, pads for both the driver and the passenger in here and little extra hook down here if you had a little cargo net. Now of course there’s a lot of ways to mount um, cargo to these types of seats. Lots of manufacturers have come out with sort of aftermarket stuff. I think Kawasaki has a tail bag as well that’ll fit on this. But lots of options to take some, some luggage if you want. So now let’s talk about this engine. This is a parallel twin liquid cooled engine that they use in just about everything and when they use it in everything else, they talk about it as the Ninja six 50 engine. Now it’s on various states of tune for most uh, bikes. Sometimes there’s a couple horsepower difference here and there. But at the end of the day the reason they call it the Ninja 650 engine is cuz it was designed for this bike. It is both a torkey engine, which is really good and it has good high-end power. It’s a really, really good
Street sport bike, uh, street sport engine. So again, on a racetrack people can take these through the racetrack, you can do that. But really where that power band is good is on the street a lot of time. A super sport bike really has no torque down low and you have all your horsepower way up high and by the time you’re up that high, um, you know you’re well beyond speed limit. So this makes it a really fun to drive, uh, unit that also gives you great power, pretty good efficiency as well. And again, that weight is all centralized. They use it in this, they use it in everything. I had this on the verse six 50 that I own for a number of years. It’s a lot of fun. Let’s step back out, we’ll talk about some technology. Alright, so when we talk about technology, let’s talk about the traction control, which is new this year.
Now there’s various types of traction control in the Kawasaki lineup. So this one, what it has is we mentioned those ABS sensors and you probably can’t see ’em from that shot. Maybe I’ll take a picture here and show you. There’s a little bit of a, you know, slotted piece here on the disc brakes, that’s your ABS sensor. And the software can also use that for traction control. So the way it works on a bike like this is it senses how fast, say the rear wheel is moving and it compares it to the front wheel and it kind of knows, okay, we’re not slipping here so this bike isn’t really gonna do a power slide out in normal dry road conditions. Uh, you’d have to, you know, really dump that clutch and really get at working to do that. But you will find um, cer certainly in wet weather that you can have some slippage there.
So you have the ability for the bike itself before you can even sense it to be able to start reacting to what’s going on with wheel speed. Now this is also a bike that’s not gonna accidentally power wheely. It’s something that you know, it can do wheelies but it’s not gonna totally surprise you unless you’re really dumping that clutch and that kind of thing. On something like the Ninja 1000, they have the IM u the IM U is not on this bike that senses lean angle over all kinds of different angles and also can sense that uh, bike comes up. So do you have wheely control with traction control essentially, again, I’m speaking for myself, not for Kawasaki, but essentially you still have some of that wheely control here, which again, this bike’s not gonna power wheely without you really kind of wanting to wheely. But because when you do something like a wheelie, it’s gonna sense this speed is you know, spinning at a or this wheel spinning at a certain speed and this wheel is slowing down. In other words, the ground’s not pushing it. It will sense that and it is able to help you bring that wheel back down. So if you’re concerned about doing a wheelie cuz you’re aggressive and that kind of thing, that tractor control can help you. But mostly what it’s gonna do is keep those slides a little bit more under control, especially in poor weather. Uh, I drove a bike with this engine again, it was a verus it was a heavier bike, didn’t really find the need for tractor control in really dry conditions. But absolutely when the tires are cold, uh, it is something that you could want with the amount of power on this bike and uh, having it is just such a great safety feature. So we’re gonna show you how the electronics set that up in here now, but that’s how it kind of works as far as a mechanical piece. So now we’re
Looking at dash of the Ninja 650 and this is a TFT display and a lot of time I try to move the glare from the studio lights outside of the area here. But with these TFT displays I kind of like to show you with some glare here because you can really see first of all, a camera doesn’t film a screen as nearly as clearly as your eyes can see that screen. So I wanna be clear on that even though you still see some glare with the camera from a visual perspective, using my actual eyes instead of the camera, you can really see that this is a clear easy-to-read display. So first of all you’ve got a tack that springs nice and wide here. Uh, so you can really kind of tell at a glance where you are. You can set this up to flash at a certain RPM if you want it to warn you before you hit red line or something like that, which is helpful, but let’s just stay with that traction control for a second there.
So right now you can see K T R C Kawasaki, which is a K T R for traction, C for control. Uh, K T R C is their brand name for their traction control. You can see it sitting there. I’m gonna press the select button here and then I can move it up to off or I can move it down to level one or level two so you can see level two and I can select that. So what’s nice is you can adapt this and do it while you’re riding. I’ll show you the controller in a second on the left hand handlebar, we’re gonna leave it at one right now, which is probably how I would drive this bike all the time. Now of course if you want to turn it off, you absolutely can. Um, but what’s nice is if you reach a stretch of road where maybe it’s just some rainfalls or something like that on the fly, you can set up the traction control to work with you to make sure that you’ve got some extra protection when you need it and uh, you can back it off if you want as well.
So again, nice to have that layer of protection. But let’s talk about the rest of this dash here. You’ve got everything you need. So using the same selection switch but a different style, well again, we’ll show you that switch in a second here. I’m gonna show you some of the information down in here. So I’m gonna cycle down here. You can see at the left side you got trip A, we just came from, sorry, we got trip A, trip B and you’ve got odometer right there. So again, that’s this controller there. Trip a, trip B and the odometer and then I accidentally already switched this one. This is your average fuel efficiency. Now it’s listed as kilometers per liter. If you’re American it’ll be miles per gallon. I believe there’s a UK miles per gallon as well. I like switching mine to liters per hundred kilometers. So that’s what I did on my bike here. But currently it’s set up for kilometers per liter. That’s your average efficiency. Then you have your range, then you have your average speed, which is nice to have as well total time. And then you have the battery volts and the instant, so instant here for instance fuel efficiency, average fuel efficiency and then you cycle through the rest of them. There you always have a clock visible no matter what and uh, you have a temperature uh, gauge there, which reads its temperature as well. And of course your fuel gauge. This is a, actually I kinda like that it’s low right now, shows you how it works. It is all of these bars will light up more white and then of course it’ll be the last bar just lights when the last bar is flashing and your fuel light’s flashing, then you’re very, very low.
So you don’t have to necessarily fill up just when you’re on that last bar, but when it’s flashing, that’s your last indicator overall this dash is clear, it’s crisp, it’s easy to read and it gives you all the information you need at a glance. Of course, having traction control, you can tell at a glance if it’s on and what level it’s in. So you know whether your tires are cold or whether you’re hitting, you know, areas where you think traction is gonna be an issue. You can just dial it up or down as you need to, which is really, really helpful. So I’m gonna pan just a little bit left here on one shot. This might be a mistake here, but let’s just try that. This bike also does have a uh, availability of a 12 volt or USB port in there. So if you’re planning mounting your phone somewhere, you can power it right through right there.
It’s already kind of built in. That’s another advantage of moving to the ninja from the Z650 here. Uh, you have that port there and again, unlike the Z650 on the ninja, your dash is mounted to the faring. It does not turn with the handlebars and that allows you to just have a, you know, sort of a nice consistent look there as well. We’ll talk about the mirrors in a second here as well, but let’s look at the controls first. All right, normally when I film the left side controls there’s kind of a lot going on and I usually kind of zoom in closer, but I kind of wanna show you everything all at once here. So let’s see if this works from a visual perspective and maybe I’ll never do the skin. There is a little trigger switch right here. That trigger switch will flash your high beam.
These are L e D lights, we’ll talk about the lighting in a second in this video. Uh, but if you just wanna get someone’s attention you can just flash that back and forth or you can just flash the pass if you wanna lock your high beams on, you do it right there. Signal lights, this is all typical stuff. Again, we’ll show you lighting, they’re L E D lights, which is really cool horn down here and you do have a four-way flasher or hazard lights, which I think is really nice to have. So here’s that selection switch. This is what’s different. If you have this selection thing in the middle on a Kawasaki bike, that usually means you have traction control. So to get traction control to activate, I tap this and then I can move up or down to move the from level one or level two or off.
If I don’t select this, this moves that odometer. So a trip, a trip B and odometer and this moves the bottom display. So upper display and bottom display. This was the fuel efficiency, average fuel efficiency, the stuff we just showed you. So very intuitive once you figure out what you’re doing can be confusing for a second or two, but once you’re on the bike you can adapt it and without even thinking you’ve got everything you need right there. Now the reason I’m showing you this view is a couple reasons. You’ve got your clutch lever right here, which has the adjustable lever. So the adjustability is really nice to have because you can adjust it for reach, uh, five different areas here. And I believe you have the same 5 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, yes five on the uh, brake lever as well. So you’ve got the ability to adjust this for reach and the brake lever for each, which means this bike’s gonna fit you.
Now I kept the mirror in the shot. You can see my camera that I’m filming with right now. The reason this is kind of nice to have the mirror here is as we zoom out just a little bit further, we’re going on a full wide angle view. If you’re in a full tuck position here, the mirrors on the ninja are in front of you. If you are on the Z650, the mirrors come up off here. And when you’re in a full tuck position, your head is kind of in this area and you don’t have mirrors. So one of the benefits of moving to the ninja is if you go in that tuck position, if you’re gonna do racetrack days or you just wanna drive in that tuck position every now and then you still have your mirrors within view, which is something that’s nice to have on a sporty bike. So before we move on to the lighting, let’s just flesh out a couple things that we’ve seen. When you Have TFT display, you also have a level of smartphone connectivity, smartphone connectivity, uh, with your radiology app. So you do have some integration here. Ability to see when you have messages or emails or those kind of things and a number of other things. Various Kawasaki bikes have various levels of connectivity with that uh, system here. But like I said, you have that so it’s available to you. So that’s one nice feature to have and we’ll do a video in the future about the radiology app. The other thing with the clutch lever, although it’s adjustable, that’s nice to have. It’s also a slipper and assist clutch. And since you’re buying this bike with traction control, traction matters to you, a slipper and assist clutch is also part of that traction system. So the way it works and on a slipper and cis clutch is if you’re messing up a downshift it, it comes really from the racetrack.
But if you mess up a downshift or do a really aggressive downshift and dump that clutch on a bike without a slipper and a cis clutch, sometimes you can have enough engine braking that the wheel will essentially slide or go into a slide and that kind of thing. So you don’t really want that. And I’ve done this on this type of bike, my verse six 50, I came into a corner hot and uh, you know, I took a tight corner, it was cold tires on a cold day dump that clutch and that bike that I had did not have a slipper and a cis clutch and the rear wheel just stepped out on me. Now it could have been worse. It’s not a big deal if you’re used to riding, sometimes you can, you know, do that on purpose, get that wheel to slide a little bit.
It’s not the end of the world but the slipper and assist clutch instead of having that wheel slide on me. What it allows it to do is when it has a lot of engine braking, it’ll allow the clutch to slip just a little bit on its own, which allows your wheel to stay in control and have good traction. So between the traction control and the slipper and assist clutch, you’ve got a number of things that are gonna help you maintain traction, which makes you drive faster on a racetrack and safer on the roads. Now the side benefit of that slipper and assist clutch is because of the design of it, it’s able to have a lighter clutch pole lever, which makes this bike more enjoyable to drive in town because it doesn’t have a really heavy clutch lever. It’s just nice and easy to put in and out. And then, and then of course when you’re zipping through the gears, your hand’s not getting tired and you’re really precise on that. So it’s just good all the way around. So really nice features there. Now let’s take a look at the lighting on this bike. So headlights are a little bit tough to film, but some of the older Kawasaki bikes used to have a, you know, low beam here and a high beam there. They’ve fixed that when they went to all L e D lighting. So all L E D lighting is good for a whole lot of reasons. One, it just looks cooler. Two, that whiter light is a little bit brighter, but it also is closer to daylight in color, which means when you’re driving down the road, your eyes are used to seeing things and identifying things or your brain reads what your eyes are telling it, it iden your brain identifies things in a daylight color. That’s what it’s used to doing. So when you’re driving at night, if you had a halogen light with that yellow tint, it actually takes your brain longer to decipher what you’re seeing. This being closer to a white color, uh, daylight type color allows you to identify things early so you feel safer even if it’s not brighter in lumens because
Your eyes are able to identify what you see right away. So of course this is the low beam right there. We’re gonna flash that high beam for a second there. I don’t know how well it’s aimed just below the camera. So again, they don’t film well. Uh, certainly very, very bright. If we were to aim it directly at the camera, you would see that. Now the other nice thing here is you have a full L e D turn signal. In fact we have hazard lights. Let’s use them right here. And again on this bike on the ninja, they’re built into the body work. Something like the Zed six 50, they’re out on stalk. I think this looks cleaner, looks more modern. It’s probably a little bit more aerodynamic, but it looks pretty cool. And again, those LEDs are that instant on, instant off. They just look really sharp.
So from a styling and safety perspective, things look good. Let’s check the lights on the back now. So taking a look at the back here, of course you’ve got uh, this kind of cool design here with the taillight. It is a bright, bright L e D taillight, uh, and you know, bright light of course, right? So you’ve got the really nice bright light there. It gives us some style. Again, this bike’s all about style as well as function. And you get both of ’em here. Those bright LEDs work well but they also give you that cool style and then four-way flashers or hazard lights. Again, you have something here that I don’t have on my Z 900 Rs. These are proper L E D lights. So they’re instant on, instant off. They’re gonna catch your attention better than the incandescent lights in my mind. And they give you that fully modern look.
So you’ve got that full modern sport book. Look, the only thing I think they do wrong is I’m pretty sure this is an, yeah it is. It’s an incandescent bulb on the, on the license plate light. Would’ve liked to see that one as an L E D light. Of course I’m sure the aftermarket could take care of that, but that is something that I would’ve liked to see here. Uh, given that everything else is L E d, so let’s talk about who this bike is for. Now, normally at this point I talk about the features. We’re gonna get to that in one second. But one thing I’ll always leave out and you know, I think it’s important too, if you want a bike that looks great, this 2023 ninja in these new colors, depending on the color scheme you want, it really does look great.
It looks the part, it looks sporty and it also drives the part. So again, this is not the XX four rr. This is not a super sport bike that’s uncomfortable but extreme. This is a bike that is absolutely a blast to ride on the street everywhere. It handles really, really well. The way the weight is kind of sitting there. You’ve got the weight down low, the torness of this engine along with the good horsepower numbers and again they use this engine in everything. It’s really, really good. Now one of the downfalls, you can really use this bike for everything. It’s comfortable enough to do day tours or something like that. If you’re doing two up touring and you wanna stay in this class, the verse six 50 is going to be a better option. You can come and check this bike out and compare it to the Zed six 50, which is essentially the same thing in my mind. Has a little bit less style but you may like that upright or that uh, different seating style. The handlebars are slightly different position, neither more or less comfortable, but it is slightly different. There’s also the Zed six 50 Rs, which is a retro sport, still uses the engine, still uses the brake, still uses the um, suspension Of essentially this bike. But uh, that retro sport kind of looks. You’ve got a lot of options in the class in this uh, type of thing in this type of class. But this bike is all about someone who wants that sport bike feel sport bike look all the up-to-date technology because like I said something on the retro sport, it’s got retro style gauges that RS model. This one you have the TFT display, which again, you still get in the verses you still get in the Z 650 as well. Adding traction control was a good feature to have on this bike. Between the tires, the upgraded brakes and the uh, TFT display, it does differentiate itself from the 400 as well as something like a little bit bigger passenger seat. Having more power, you can take a passenger probably more regularly than you might on something like the Ninja 400.
So it’s really well placed in the lineup. If you want something that’s peppy and energetic and really handles well, that 400 is there for you. But you’re not just stepping up in power when you move to the 650, like I said, the better brakes, the better dash, a little better seating capacity and it’s a slightly larger chassis. So you have a little more foot room here on the 400. The exhaust comes up here and it’s, you know, if you have really large feet it can be really tight because it’s giving that compact feel here. There’s no exhaust there. So it fits larger riders well I’m just a huge, huge fan of this bike because I think it’s really versatile, it’s really comfortable and it’s just a really good bike. So if you’re interested in it, let me know. Let me know when the comments below if you ride it, if you like it, tell me what you like about it so we can kind of build a database of information.
And if you have questions, let me know in those comments section. Hit to subscribe, follow along cause we’re gonna do more videos on this bike. And remember I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. You wanna come see this. They have every color. I think they still have a couple 2022’s in stock as well. So you can get some discounts there and see everything. 2020 twos will not have that traction control. Something to keep in mind. Uh, but yeah, you can come check them out here. And of course they give me complete access to their lineup, so I’ll be able to make you more videos. Thanks everybody for watching and we’ll catch you in the next one.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter, and in this video we’re gonna talk about the Kawasaki KLX 230 S and I’m really gonna talk about it as a first bike or as a secondary bike, so not your second bike necessarily. And this S version has really intrigued me because when I just look at the website and I think about, you know, how this bike would be used, I think, oh, okay, if you’re a shorter rider, want something more approachable, this is what you should get. But I’m about six feet tall and this might be the right bike for someone my size, especially if you’re a new rider or even if you want a secondary bike or a bike that’s gonna go through the family, that kind of thing. This thing is pretty impressive. And for 2023 it has a little update, something like an L E D headlight.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
The lower height is also new and I wanna talk about in detail. So here I am filming at And if you are interested in this bike or more about this bike, I have complete access to the entire Kawasaki line, in fact to every vehicle they sell here. And my job is to make sure that you get the information you need. So if you’re interested in this bike, make sure you hit subscribe and let me know when the comments below some of the things that maybe I didn’t answer for you in this video. And I’ll answer you both in the comments and in future video. So we can build a video database of all the information that you could possibly want. This is not the first time this bike has appeared on video. I did it with the 2022, this is the 2023, but I filled it with the 2022 klx, the little bit taller seat heights.
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You can compare those, uh, the height to Paris in between those. And I’ve also talked about, uh, the KLX line in the past. And like I said, I’m gonna continue to come back to it over and over again to make sure that we give you all the information you want. So let’s start with the review of this right now. So in my mind, this is a great first bike and a great secondary bike or bike to pick up later on that you can use for a variety of things. Let’s focus it in on it as a first bike. Traditionally, when someone says to me, what should I get as a first motorcycle, most people are thinking I want a bike that I can buy now and not get tired of and keep for a long time. And the bike I traditionally recommend is the Z 400 or Ninja 400.
Both of those have a lower seat height than this two 30 s. So even this shorter height seat is still a taller bike. It’s not that um, you know, it’s not that short overall, which makes me kind of reconsider this as I start examining this. The difference with those ninja and Zed 400 is they’re street oriented bikes. I’m a street oriented rider. I didn’t grow up riding dirt bikes or anything else. I grew up, you know, when I turned 16 I was driving street bikes and that’s probably part of my bias. This is a great first bike. And let me explain a little bit why. First of all, let’s address the size comparison. I’m about six feet tall and you can see here this feels like a street bike, but it’s not too short. I’ll put the kickstand up. It does compress on the suspension and it’s a very narrow seat that allows you to have an easier touch to the ground, potentially even easier than the Zed 400 or Ninja 400.
Although again, a little bit different there. What you also is really good control when you’re learning to ride a motorcycle. Higher speed stuff or medium speed stuff isn’t actually that hard to do. A lot of people think, oh, and I get up to 60, 70, 80 kilometers an hour. That’s really hard to control the bike at that point. The bike does a lot of the controlling for you. Certainly breaking and emergency maneuvers, there’s a whole bunch of things, but just staying balanced isn’t hard at speed. Slow speeds is where things get tricky and this bike does a lot of things right for you. First of all, a steering angle is way sharper than something like the Z400 or the Ninja 400. So you can turn it sharper, which means, excuse me, squeaking on the floor. You can turn it sharper, which does mean that you have more potential control.
You’re not gonna run outta steering lock in your slow speed maneuvers. The other thing with this one is being narrow. It’s also very light. It’s under 300 pounds. It just makes it really easy. And the problem with a heavy bike is if it gets leaning too far, you can’t pick it back up. If you had an 800 pound bike, there’s no way that someone like myself could easily pick this back up. If this one falls over, I can also very easily pick it up. And because it’s dirt bike plastic instead of street bike plastic, it’s kind of designed to take some impact. You can see this is designed to Flex Street bikes. Plastics not really designed to flex. If you scuff this up, hey it’s a dirt bike, no big deal. Love dirt bikes go down on the dirt. People are expecting that if you ever went to resell this, it’s not the end of the world to see a little bit of scrapes up here.
And the whole design of the bike is designed to be dropped. It’s, there’s pieces of this bike that hey, things can go on. You’ve got really flexible signal lights here and they’re not expensive to replace even if they did brake. So whether you’re on the road or off-road, some of the off-road components of this make it really great for that first bike. So let’s take a little bit closer look here and examine some of the, you know, easy to ride and simplicity of this bike that make it really great. So let’s start by taking a look at the front wheel here. Now if you’re looking at a first bike, there’s a few things you gotta keep in mind you could buy used. The problem with buying used is was that bike taken care of? Has it had its oil changes on time? Has it been overheated?
Especially with an air-cooled engine, that can be a concern. Mud fills up in the fins, you know, maybe a hot date of idling or sitting around or doing the wrong stuff. You can have issues. And the front end here to the suspension, same thing. You don’t wanna pay for crazy high-end suspension on your first bike. You’re just probably not gonna be able to have the skills to take advantage of a really high-end suspension, but you don’t want it too softly sprung. And the nice thing about this bike is the suspension is really well sorted for an entry level bike and we’re not gonna try to kid around. This is an entry level bike. You can move up from this, you can get better but sometimes better. And the cost that is associated with it doesn’t equal more fun, doesn’t equal better for you. So you do a 21 inch tire here. Now again, not being a dirt bike, this is a road legal tire. Sometimes dirt bikes or other bikes, especially if they’re used, they’ll throw on a dirt bike tire which is not road legal and it can have trouble at speeds. And of course this one’s all set up. You also have disc brakes on here, which I’m a big fan of. They work really well.
Older bikes have different style, you know, most bikes have disc, but you’ve got discs front and rear here. And then again a little fork tube covers here just to keep the um, you know, as the fork moves up here and dirt and bugs and all kinds of stuff sits here, that’ll just keep it nice and clean. So all of this stuff, being new componentry doesn’t cost you a ton. And when we think about cost, yes it’s more to buy this new than used, but it also holds its value quite well. So if it is something that you wanna learn to ride on, practice your skills and then move on from, you’re not taking a huge financial hit. And if you have more people in your household that can ride, this is a great bike for multiple people to ride. And if you’re blessed enough to not have to sell this to buy your next bike, having a dual sport bike around, uh, if you moved on to another street bike is really nice because you have that dirt road capability.
You can use it just like a dirt bike without a license or you can uh, have it on off road as well. So a lot of nice things here. This big 21 inch tire, again, even though it’s a shorter ride height, you still have a full size tire. You’re not losing that sort of rolling ability of uh, you know, by shrinking the tire size down to get the lower seat height. So taking a closer look at the bike here, kind of looking at everything all at once, gonna focus here on the engine. Now I’m a fan of liquid cooled bikes. I think for your street riding, that kind of thing, that’s what you should be looking for. However, an air cooled bike is really good for a beginner because it is simple, simple, simple. If this was to go down, there’s no coolant lines that can leak out.
And then you overheat, if it goes down, you pick it up, you’re totally fine. And you can see the whole bike is designed to sort of have impact because it’s designed like a dirt bike. It doesn’t have a sort of the automotive style oil filter hanging down low that you’ll find in the road only bike stall tucked into here. And the frame itself, this would be considered a non fully UpToDate frame in the street market just because the design, it’s not a high tensile diamond shaped type thing, it’s sort of a cradle frame, but that cradle frame gives you a lot of strength underneath there. If you’re going off road and you want to head down trail or something like that, you can bash this into thing and not be bashing your engine, you’re actually hitting just your frame. So you have some abilities there. But if you’re looking for a street bike, you wanna be able to take passengers and you do have the ability to take passengers here you have the rubber coated, rubber mounted, uh, foot pegs. This little area here keeps your passenger’s feet away from some moving parts a little bit. Just gives them a little bit of a vi uh, you know, a physical barrier there. But it also could be used to tie things down. You can tie things down around this area, there’s frame underneath here and also use that to sort of, you know, bungee strap or get a bungee net things to hold extra gear on here if you wanted to. So you have a lot of little things that kind of blend that on and offroad thing. And again, being such a lightweight bike, it’s very easy to handle on, very easy to learn on.
So with an entry level bike, you get a few entry level things, no fancy l e d lighting out here. Now keep in mind L e d lightings can be more expensive if you crash them and I’m gonna count contradict that in a second. But you have a regular uh, halogen type light out here. You have the regular halogen type signal lights out here. Very bright though I will point out. They’re quite bright, they’ve got a nice pattern to it and again, they’re easily mounted. These are very inexpensive. If something were to go badly and they were to break, still get your license plate mounting down here you’ve got the reflectors which are mandatory in uh, pretty much everywhere, uh, to have the side visibility. Uh, so you’ve got very good overall modern lighting here, but tucked in nice and narrow. So again, if you were to drop something, not likely to damage anything enough that you’d have to break it and pay for more.
Then again, I’m talking a lot about dropping stuff, but you know when you’re riding a bike and you’re learning to ride, if you’re concerned about doing those kind of things, this one you don’t have to be nearly as concerned about for uh, dropping if you were riding. Now let’s take a look at some of the controls. Actually let’s go lighting out front and then we’ll go back to the controls. So for 2023, the big thing here is you have this really, really bright white L e D headlight. This is up to date. Now again, l e d lights as a housing can cost more to replace than a regular um, you know, halogen bulb. But I think for the most part, this isn’t something that traditionally breaks on a bike that are of course very strong can handle impacts to the front. And there are six centrally located with handlebars around to protect them.
I think the bigger safety benefit here is the visibility. Now of course we know with white l e d lights, you’ve got that, we’ve got the high beam up here, we’re aimed a little bit crooked so you may not be able to see how bright that is. We’re not quite aimed at the camera, but you can see that it does have that extra high beam there. The biggest benefit with this is that white color. So that white color isn’t just brighter to your eyes, it’s also closer to the color of daylight. And that means if you’re zipping around a trail or zipping down a country road or something like that, your eyes are used to identifying things in the color of daylight. And because this is close to the color of daylight, you can tell if that thing on the side of the road is a rodent or a rock, those kinds of things.
And it helps you identify things which just keeps you safer. So I really appreciate that for 2023 they put in that L e D light on this. So now let’s talk instrumentation here on a road bike, you wanna have your instruments here. And again, in some ways this is budget friendly, but let’s just show you what we’ve got here. Not gonna lie, there are better dashes in the Kawasaki lineup, but this is actually the same dash as the K L R six 50, which is a legendary adventure bike. Now it doesn’t have a tachometer at first, that kind of me, but single cylinder bikes tend to make a lot of torque down the mid-range and down low. So you don’t really need attack, uh, because this isn’t like a Kawasaki sport bike where you’re making all of your power up high in the rev range.
You’re gonna figure out very easily where to shift. And again, very simple display. So you do have a fuel gauge here, which is very nice. You have an odometer there. You also have trip A, trip B and that’s it for the odometer over here. I wish this was a gear indicator, that’s actually a battery light indicator. So if you had a battery problem it would show up in there. It does not have a gear indicator. And again, that is something you would get if you move to more street oriented Z 400 or Ninja 400. Uh, but you do get the basics here. Big clear speedometer. This is capable of highway speeds. It’s not something you’re gonna wanna do a long tour at highway speeds, but I think you know, if you’re looking to drive absolutely anywhere on the roads, short chron shortcut across dirt roads and head on the light trail, this bike will do that perfectly.
Take a look at the controls here. Let’s start on the left side here. Of course you’re clutch levers right there. So you of course if you’re learning manual transmission, that’s you’re gonna be learning to play with quite a bit and this nice feel to this, again, fairly light, uh, fairly simple, nothing fancy in there but just uh, works very well. Your headlight is always on your high beam. Turns on like that. Signal lights of course left and right, turn right there. And the horn, let’s hit it. Why not nice and loud. So again, even though it’s a smaller bike, you can certainly get people’s attention with that horn. Hard to show you how loud it is on uh, camera, but you can trust me. Nice loud horn over here on the throttle side. First of all, same grips as you would have on pretty much all the dirt bikes, which means if they do get dusty or dirty, this little diamond type uh, fine pattern there gives you a lot of grip even if it gets wet or something like that
So whether you got gloves or no gloves, which you should probably wear gloves, you’ve got a good amount of grip in there over here. Kill, switch, start, switch, front break. And that’s it. Just wanna take a look here at the uh, sort of left side of the bike here, the chain side of the bike. And you’ve got a lot of nice things like we mentioned that air cooled engine. So no hosing or routing for your liquid cooling in there, which means you know, just less things to worry about, less maintenance and uh, you know, less things to break if something did go wrong. You’ve got your uh, shift labor down here, your solid steel really uh, heavy kind of um, uh, spring on that to hold the hold your feet there. You do have kickstand here and coming along back here, you’ve got these chain guides here, which again, if you do decide to go, you know, quite a ways off road, this is just gonna keep that chain in line.
Keep everything where you wanna do. So you got that, some of that dirt bikey type stuff, which really makes this versatile. I wanna talk about that. Dirt bike onroad versus off-road feel there as well. I dunno if you had a good view of the uh, pegs in the past, but there’s the passenger pegs there as well. So let’s talk about this, about how to use it and who maybe it’s for and where it’s best and where it’s maybe not so best. So let’s talk about who the spike is for how it’s used, what it’s good for, what it’s not. Now I spent a lot of time here talking about if you drop the bike, which is something I never ever do. But I do find sometimes when you talk to certain new riders, that is their big fear. What happens if I drop it? I don’t want to ruin it.
KLX 300Well that’s why I went through this. The flip side is this is one of the hardest to drop bikes because you have this lower seat height. And again, even though it’s higher than the ninja and Z400, it does compress a little bit on the suspension and it’s so light and so narrow. It’s not something that you’re likely to drop compared to bigger bikes because like I said, that bigger problem with dropping bikes is you end up leaning it too far over and you can’t bring it back like this. So the heavier the bike, the hard that’s gonna be and that makes it a little bit easier to ride. The other reason this is great for a new rider is if you’re unsure about the type of riding you want to do. For me, I always knew I wanted to be on the streets, but if you’re unsure, maybe dirt riding is kind of your thing. Maybe road riding is kind of your thing. This bike is great for that and the shorter seat height is absolutely fine for most on and offroad. Now if you know that you’re gonna lean more off road, you may wanna consider the taller suspension because it does give you a couple extra inches of travel. This is over six inches front and rear. You would have over eight inches
Front rear on the exact same bike in the taller mark. The other thing is if you know you’re gonna be going on a lot of highways or more high speed, the KLX 300 is very similar to this bike. It does give you a tachometer, it does have a little bit bigger engine, it does give you liquid cooling, but it’s the same principle as this bike. And that’s gonna give you a little bit more speed. Not a whole lot heavier, but it is also a little bit taller than this particular bike. So you’ve got options that way. But the benefit of this is if you wanna learn on a bike and really nail your skills, a lightweight bike is great to do that. And because this is on and off road, you can figure out what your next bike should be, should you focus more on the road, should you buy an adventure bike next because you like doing those lighter off-road trail And this bike, as far as the where it can go, is very similar to a modern adventure bike. Adventure bikes can’t really go jumping on dirt just like you know, some dirt bikes can, but you know, the lowered suspension of this kind of gives you the same abilities that a modern adventure bike. And if you only use dirt a little bit, you could keep this as your dirt bike and move over to a street bike to have better street handling. So you have options. The other thing is, if there are people in your house that are going to learn to ride a motorcycle, this is something you can give them to try to learn on. And it’s, you know, it’s not too intimidating, not overwhelming power, not overwhelming anything else. Very easy to ride. And because of its lightweight, it’s easy to figure out your mistakes without having problems get better and better and better.
So when you move to a bigger bike, you’re ready for it. So there’s a lot of reasons to love this bike. And again, this shorter version, I really encourage you to look at it if you want more of that street height when you’re hopping on it. So you move that from that dirt bike, it’s really tall bike to more of a street height seat and it allows you to kind of figure out all the kinds of riding you want. So even if you’re taller, I think this bike makes sense. But let me know what you think. Do you like the two 30? Do you like the two 30 s? Are you glad they came out with it? If you own one of these bikes, tell me about how you like it, what kind of riding you do with it, and uh, let’s sort of build a database of of information for people that are looking at this. And again, if you have questions, I’m here filming at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. They can be complete access to all of their bikes and I can make sure I do more videos to make sure you get the answers you need. So make sure you subscribe, stay tuned and we’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter, and in this video we are gonna review in depth the Kawasaki Jet Ski Ultra310x. Now I know what you’re thinking. I wanna see this thing on the water, not some guy in a showroom talking about it. But what I’m gonna do in this review is show you a lot of the details that they don’t show you in some of the other reviews because they’re too busy showing you, you know, it whipping through the water. If you wanna see this thing on the water, make sure you subscribe because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. And this is not the only video I’m gonna do here. I’m gonna be fully upfront with you. I am not a jet ski expert, but there are a whole bunch of people here that are, and my goal today is to show you things in this video that again, other videos aren’t showing you.
And then if you have questions or comments or things you wanna see, I’m gonna come back. We’re gonna go on the water with this. We’re gonna show you it on the water and we’re gonna make sure we really kind of fill out all the information that you want. So again, if you’re interested in this, hit subscribe. We’re gonna do a future video on the water, but in this video we’re just gonna show you some of the things that we can’t show you if we’re just zipping down the river. So let’s get going with this in-depth review. So the first thing I wanna talk about is just the general whole design of what this is. Again, showing on the water is gonna be one thing, but I think you should know that a lot of manufacturers can build something like a jet ski that goes over smooth water.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
And frankly that’s what some of them do and they just build stuff that’s great for smooth water, great for small lakes and that kind of thing. What’s cool about jet ski is they make these for any type of water, salt water, fresh water, and especially for rougher water. And that’s really what sets it apart from some of the other competitors is if you’ve got something that’s only good on, you know, mild ripples on the water, then yay, that’s great. But this thing can go out, you can have a blast in it if the weather turns on you, whether you’re in the ocean, whether you’re in a big lake, a small river, wherever you are, this thing can handle it and you’ve got a whole ton of power. So we’ve got this really advanced HU design really made to go fast over really rough water, which is rare.
And then you’ve got the motor in here, motor’s a 1.5 liter give or take, but it’s supercharged. And if you don’t know anything about supercharging, turbocharging, anything else, supercharging of course adds extra power. We kind of all know that turbocharging is another option, but turbocharge has turbo leg. Supercharger is instant, which means you get Ely monstrous power out of this and it is an absolute blast. The thing with this model overall is it’s built with a lot of the luxury features of the top end of the class, but it’s designed to be fun. It’s not just a spec sheet filler, it’s designed from the ground up or the water up to be a whole lot of fun. So whether it’s the engine, whether it’s the hu, whatever it is, you’ve got that built in here for great performance. That’s all stuff you know, that’s all stuff you can see in the other videos. What I wanna do is start digging into some of the practical details of this to show you things that you’re not gonna see in the other videos. So let’s just start with some of the storage. So we’re gonna show you storage in a second. It’s up here and it’s up here. But I wanna point out a couple things. This is not the fully top Of the line version. The full next top of the line will have some driving lights in here. It’ll have the stereo, which you could add to this. And it also has a backup camera, which again you can add to this. So you’re gonna find some features on this, that one maybe are missing from the very top of the line. But again, you’ve got the same hole design, so that’s where your backup camera could go there. So there are a few features missing from this and like I said, you can add them either as options or you can move up a trim level and get some of those involved like in there as well. First thing I wanna show you is just some of the basic storage here. So this is really nice because you can reach this from the cockpit area, from the driver’s area here.
So again, hard to show you this overall size of all these things, but good size storage right in here. You’ve got a nice gasket to keep some of the water out there. This one’s open, we’re gonna go around the other one in a second. So just remember that the other one has an extra piece in here, we’ll show you that, but that’s kind of open. We’re gonna open up the front here. Of course, this is more to be reached when you’re uh, at the dock, but of course massive storage in there. Lots of storage, like really good. Uh, again, hard to show you everything in there, but you know all the space you could possibly need. And of course your fuel cap is right there here. So if you’re driving this on the trailer, this is uh, driver’s side fuel cap. So that’s the same as many, many vehicles, especially any trucks or anything that you’ll be towing this with.
If you’re towing this, the wet weight is just around a thousand pounds without the trailer and that includes, uh, pretty much a full tank of fuel. So, uh, easily towable by all kinds of vehicles. And same thing with trailers. If you’re looking for a trailer, Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Powers Sports can set you up with whether it’s a single trailer, dual trailer, whatever you need, we can get that all sorted out for you as well. Gonna come around the other side here and just show you that extra storage component right here as we uh, swing away this little tag there. I was gonna get that outta the way. Alright, let’s uh, take a look. So let me go wide angle for a second here. So I’m gonna skew the view just to sort of get it here, but you have the same style storage container on this side as the other side.
This is when I said I had something a little extra if you would get the stereo that would be in here, but without, you still have an extra sort of gasketed area here that is inside this gasketed area here. So this is a gasket and this is a gasket here. So you have that little extra space to put maybe your keys, maybe your wallet, whatever else you need that just gives you a little bit extra water protection. So what we’re gonna do next is we’re gonna hop on, there’s a digital TFT display here, which is really, really excellent. We’re gonna show you some of the features there. So I’m gonna take my shoes off and we’re gonna hop up here on this and take a look at some of the features as we get up there. So I’m gonna approach it from behind to board it, uh, on this little stand here.
But before we do it, let’s just take a look at what we’ve got back here. A whole bunch of little things. Obviously your tie downs for your trailer, if you’re driving this in salt water, there’s your uh, rinse, uh, right over here. You can uh, take care of all that so you can clean out really quickly whether it’s salt water or regular water. And then you’ve got a nice little things here. So first of all, I’m gonna board with this and I wanna show you one thing that’s pretty cool. I’m gonna jump up here, put all my weight on it and you can see that is all my weight on there and it is easily strong enough on this boarding ladder to take care of all the weight. So I’m about 175 pallets. Obviously you can do even more than that. Then you’ve got extra little grips down here to get on the grip here to get on.
And then of course you have your little toe hook here. This thing can tow without any problems. It’s got tons of power and you can tuck your toe rope in underneath this area here. So you’ve got all that right there. Let’s just jump up and walk across here. So I’m hold onto here and it is a three passenger. Let’s go full width there. So we’re gonna go wide angle again just to kind of show you. I’m gonna walk down the center so I can sit down on the seat and show you what it looks like here. Now this might be a two per two-handed operation, so I might have to do this, uh, with some assistance here, but this is a tilt, um, handlebar. I was gonna say tilt steering wheel, but of course it’s not a steering wheel, it’s just a handlebar. So lemme just see if I can do this.
I think, yeah, we’re gonna have to second hand down there. Alright, so we’ve lowered it down to a lower position and there are several settings in between there. So that’s something worth noting here. The other thing I really like here is you can see that there is a mirror right over here. Let’s just zoom in back in again. Both mirrors are wide angle and they’re very well positioned. I am sitting farther back. I’m in the second of three seats right now just to give you a bit of a view here. So the fact that I’m in the shot shouldn’t skew your idea. You can see here if I sit where I should be, you have a really wide view there, Zack, walking through the mirrors there and Zack will come over here through the mirrors there probably. Oh, there he is. See, there he is. All right. Zack’s one of the sales guys that can help you out. But those mirrors are really good. And again, both wide angle mirrors. So what we’re gonna do here is we’re gonna take the two keys. Now there is one key for a slower sort of learning key, uh, that of course, uh, slows us down and makes this, uh, reasonable for beginners, which is what I should be driving with. But because I’m indoors today, and we’re gonna use this key here and bear with me, I gotta take a peek where I’m doing. Alright, so we’re gonna turn it on. It’s gonna beep at us a little bit here. And this is when that TFT display comes alive. Now what I’m doing here, it’s not a touchscreen. There are handles down here or buttons down here that I can use control. So I’m gonna hit okay here.
It’s not angry. It’s a little unhappy with me because uh, I didn’t start it. I’m doing, uh, you know, things aren’t land as opposed to in the water. So it’s sensing, hey, things aren’t right right now. Let’s just see if we can zoom in here a little bit here. Oh, maybe we can come back. Let’s see. Oops. All right, so we’ll try to be as steady as we can here. This TFT display. First of all, screens don’t film well. So I want to be clear that the clarity of this screen is fantastic. You can read it in daylight, you can read it, uh, you know, in at nighttime, whatever you want. And there’s all kinds of stuff here, some of which I won’t be able to change without starting it up. And obviously sitting in the showroom here, I’m not gonna start it up, but you’ve got good information.
So you’ve got forward reversed and a neutral setting here, which you can tell exactly what, uh, what position you’re in or what gear you’re in, I guess is sort of one way to think of that. You do have a compass over here. Compass is really just helpful on the water just to get a sense of, you know, which way was home, which way is, uh, going out. And then you’ve got your dry modes here, your trim down there. We can try to adjust some of those in your power mode. So let’s just change, change your power mode down there for a second. Uh, FPO is full power, then you’ve got a medium, then you’ve got low, and then you’ve got slow, which is like a wake free zone. You can do that. You can uh, play with that right there. Showroom here, apparently it’s only 66 degrees, so it’s a little cooler in here. Of course that can be set to um, Celsius as well if that’s what we want. You’ve got a clock in there
Actually that might be, yeah, sorry, That’s oil temperature, outside temperature 68 degrees. So you’ve got monitor your engine, that kind of thing. And there’s a number of settings you can cycle through here. Uh, you can also dig into a menu system where you can look at things like if you had the backup camera installed, you’d have your backup camera showing here. Uh, you can control all kinds of things right there. Coming down here, I’m just gonna show you the controls here. Let’s, uh, there’s a start button out there. I’m not gonna touch that button right now, although it would not start right now if it’s uh, not set up to go. Let’s just come right back out here, zoom out, let’s go full wide angle here. Down here you can see your stop button right there. And then you’ve got your trim adjustments here so you can adjust your trim right from your left side here, the mode button all there.
Again, everything’s easy to reach. Uh, simple, simple stuff. And jumping across here, what I really like is you have your cruise control. So again, electronic cruise control kind of set up the same way a motorcycle would be. Um, very easy to use. And then if you look down here, you have your reverse and you can see that this is actually tied together so you can get to it reverse and uh, you can help, uh, slow you down as well. Um, and I, oh, I forgot the name of it right now off the top of my head, but I’ll flash it on the screen, the actual brand name of how this works of course. So, uh, what that does is just allows you to redirect that jet and uh, help you with parking. This thing help you with uh, slowing down, change in direction, everything you need, super easy and you control again, if I had the right hand on here, you could use your thumb if I had my right hand instead my right hand on the camera. Or you can use your trigger finger. So very, very easy to control. You’re very in command down here. There are some cup holders out front there, you can see left and right and of course a nice clear View over the bow. Easy, easy to See. So let’s just step back for a second and again, we should show you some of the controls in here. Oops, they just shut itself off. There we go. It doesn’t like that I’m sitting there on it without starting it up. So it closed down on me already automatically. But you have this control here, which is a select by pressing and then you can, uh, also move through the controls there and that’s what’s gonna control this, uh, display So really simple, Easy to use, but a lot of good information in there.
So before I talk about who this is for, let’s just point out that there’s a lot of things I didn’t point out and I will be doing that other video on the water with this and then probably someone else driving this Thing so you Can really see what it’s all about. But let me know in the comments below this video the types of things you wan Me to include in a Future review of this. Because Again Watercraft and jet skis, It’s not my first Thing, it’s not the thing I know best. Usually I’m a little bit better with the motorcycles, so I wanna know what you wanna know to make sure that we give you the information you need. So let me know that. But now let’s talk about who this is for. Well obviously this is a premium unit. It may not be best for your first Unit. The really, the Good way to look at this, especially me who thinks of motorcycles first. This is like your ultra superbike. This is gonna be one of the fastest things on the water and it is very accessible power. It’s very easy to operate that full power. It will accelerate Like nothing else. And of course, like We said, that hole design is that Advanced hole design that can Really handle that power and handle those waves. But that much speed may not always be for everyone. So you’ve got that slow key so you can drop it in if you were teaching rider to use this. However, the performance of this is a lot and that’s a lot of fun for some people. For a lot of people this is what they dream about. But it also gives you the option to take three people, take your towables, you know, you can take it out. And the whole idea of this is, this is about all kinds of fun in a premium unit. Again, there is a step up from here which is gonna give you things like that driving light, a different color package. It’s gonna give you the backup camera standard. It’s gonna give you the stereo standard. Some of those things you can add to this unit.
So you could equip this up if you just wanted the stereo on this or if you just wanted that backup camera. Little things like that you can add. Uh, but there is another step up. But as far as the hull and the motor, this is as premium as it gets from Kawasaki. And of course Jet Ski is a very well known brand for a big reason. They are all about performance the same way you think of a Kawasaki ninja, that’s the way you should think of a jet ski. These are awesome performance. So if you wanna know more, let me know the kinds of things that you wanna know so I can do some research. Pull in some people here that are way more familiar with this than me and we can make sure we continue to fill out this information. Sort of a database of information on this and we can make future videos to give you everything you need to know. Remember, I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. This is in the showroom right now. We are filming mid-March and the showroom is packed with all kinds of things for summer. So if you want to get into this, you can make sure you reach out to them and, uh, you put your name on this and make it yours for this summer. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we’re gonna take an in-depth look at the Teryx S, the Teryx 4 S. We’re gonna look at them in various stages of completion. And here’s the deal, if you are interested in these vehicles, I’m gonna be making a whole bunch more videos on these, especially as spring arrive right now, it’s mid-March, there’s a snowstorm outside. These happen to be inside and I was gonna do this video in a few weeks, but you know what? Let’s just get it outta the way right now. If you have questions about these vehicles that I don’t get to in this video, make sure you subscribe and let me know in the comments below, because I’m gonna be taking these out on Kawasaki way, which I’ll tell you about in a second. It’s an off-road test track here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports and here’s the thing, I’m filming at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. I have complete access to their entire line of vehicles, whether it’s power sports, whether it’s vehicles, whatever it is. And I can take these any time I want out onto Kawasaki Way, which is that test track that’s available to customers here at this destination store. This is Canada’s number one volume Kawasaki dealer. And you can take these out on the same test track. But before I do that, I kind of want to do a quick overview of what these vehicles are. Now, I don’t have 20, 20 threes in the, this might be a 2023, but I don’t have 20, 20 threes in the shot. I will have 20, 20 threes that I can show you as they’re being built here. But as far as I know, they are carryover vehicles. So it should be all the same stuff.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
What I’m gonna talk to you about in these ones particular is just an example of some of the things you can do to customize these up. I think these are underrated vehicles in the class. I think they’re excellent and I think they really come alive when you start to accessorize them up a little bit. So these ones here, that one should be a stock, actually that one’s not fully stock. We’ll show you a couple things on that. This one’s accessorized up. And again, we’ll show you the 2023that are being built that you can have for yourself. We’ll cover what we can for you. So this will be a relatively brief overview. Normally I do really, really, really in-depth stuff. So if you wanna know more about these, this is the channel for you. Let’s get going with this review. So let’s start with this Teryx s S or some of the people here call it, they call it the T-Rex s. Now this is a step down from the Krx 1000. That thing is wider. It is more high speed capable over huge bumps. It has massive suspension travel, but on this one still you have over 10 inches of travel front and rear, which is pretty good. This one happens to be the two passenger one. The four passenger version of this has the same wheel base, but it’s a few inches longer. And it’s really back here in the bed. Now the bed is actually a little bit smaller. I believe I, it’s hard to tell exactly. I have to check that speck, I apologize. Uh, but the bed moves back a little bit here and you stick in. Yeah, it’s definitely smaller and you stick in four passengers here. So you’ll have extra seats.
We’ll show you what that’s like in the next one that we have just off camera here. And uh, what I like about these is they are fully trail capable. They’re not that much bigger than an ATV or a, you know, traditional, um, you know, traditional four-wheeler. But they really allow a lot more versatility. They’re not full working units. And I say working as in like on a farm, doing true hard work. We have the mules for that, which we can glance at in a second here. It’s inside as well, but they’re still fully work capable. This can tow 1300 pounds so it can move stuff around. It does have the bed here, but they’re a little bit more trail friendly, sport friendly than something like the mule. It’s an V twin 800 cc. It’s got plenty of power for what you want to do with it.
And again, you can see them equipped up various ways. So this one’s of course has the roof. We’ve equipped this one with a windshield, which we’ll talk about in a second. Then we’re gonna look at the other one here, which is really fully, fully, fully done up. So let’s take a little bit closer, look at just a couple little features and try to show you some things that maybe the other videos aren’t showing you. So let’s start right here. Basically we’re looking at what would be the back door in the four door model. Of course, in the two or in the two four passenger model. This is the two passenger model. It looks like there’s a door here, but it’s fixed in place. You’ve got a bed here as well. The bed can get out of the way, but even without moving the bed outta the way, you have these storage compartments here, which I’m trying to stay outta the shot.
They are very, very, very deep. In fact, let’s just move the camera closer. Let’s just stay on the same shot. Hey, we’ll be a little bit, uh, a little bit, uh, unsteady here, why not? So as I look down right there, you can see that storage department that I had open. Now if I open it up here, I’ll try to stay outta the shot here with my arms. It is very, very, very deep. So you have this whole area that would be the foot, well for the four passenger. That gives you a ton of space in the two passenger version here in addition to a usable bed. So let’s talk about that bed for a second now as well. So if you need one unit to do it all, this is probably the one because you’re gonna wanna do great trail riding and I think this is the best suited for trail riding.
So we’re gonna open the bed here. You can see that’s pretty simple to do down here. If it’s flat, you’ve got the cup holders. Lemme just see if I can see that in the shot there. Uh, yeah, you can sort of see that. So there we go. You’ve got the cup holders in here. Let’s take the wheel chalk out of here. And then of course you’ve got tie downs, uh, built into the bed here. So tie downs on the bottom, 1, 2, 3, 4. You do have a little bit of a drain plug in there. So if some water gets in, it can come out that way as well. And then you have the rails across here. Now, not only do you have that if you are working, you have sort of a counterbalanced uh, bed like that. So lemme just sort of see if that shot gets everything in.
Yes, you can raise that up. You can use it as a dump bed and it’s very easy to access from the driver’s side. Now the two door has this dump bed, the four door will not. So it’s just something to keep in mind that you have a fairly large practical bed. I’ll give you the dimensions on screen here of this bed of the length, width, height and that kind of thing, at least from the Kawasaki website. But again, fairly usable bed with that extra storage inside there. You do quite well, uh, with uh, what you need to do as a working unit here. Obviously the four passenger’s gonna creep into this a little bit. You do have a little bit of bed moved on the back and that one won’t be the dump bed. So that’s something to keep in mind. While we’re at the back of this unit, let’s take a look at the suspension.
Now again, the suspension is carry over to whether it’s a four passenger or a two passenger. And you can see this model here, fox shocks. And it’s not just fox shocks, Fox piggyback shocks. So you have a number of things going on. So first of all, the reason you have this is as these are bouncing up and down quickly, it’s gonna create some heat in there. It’s gonna kind of decrease performance of the shock if it gets too hot. What they do is they move the heat over to here, they move the oil over there. That allows you to have um, really consistent performance. And of course Fox shocks give you a great ride overall. They’re also adjustable compression adjustments up here. You can move these for preload and other things. So you can really tune the ride of this thing to be how you want.
You can soften it up, you can, you know, stiffen it up. You can kind of make it for the ride you want. And you can see really beefy components in here. So good travel, like I said, over 10 inches of suspension travel front and rear. And that kinda gives you that balanced ride over there. Everything in here, the weight is centralized, you can see even the exhaust comes out the center. So you’ve got everything centralized, good long arms there and you’ve got that hitch box. Now nice thing about this is it’s a standard receiver. Uh, so you can put your uh, regular stuff in there. You can toe, like I said, up to 1300 pounds. So versatility as well as sort of playability. It can, you can work, it can play, it can really kind of do it all. And that’s why this is one of my favorite uh, uh, all-wheel drive units in the Kawasaki lineup.
So we’re moving over to our TerraX four s. Now this is uh, the one at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports here. This one is done up a little bit. You can see obviously windshield obviously enclosure. What you may not notice is we have enlarged the wheels on these a tiny bit. You can do that as well. It gives you a little extra ground clearance, just the same as you would do to something like a Jeep. Gives you just a little bit extra off-road ability. You can change that tread up if that’s what you’re looking for. So again, this one’s done up as sort of a show model. It’s got some funky lights on the back that are currently not lit, but we can maybe show you that a little bit later in the video. But what I wanna show you a couple things up front, first of all, no matter what level of tes you get, you can get a winch in them.
So these ones come standard on this trim level, but you can also add that. So it’s built for that. Same with these crash bars, they’re standard here. You can add that as well if you wanted to as well. A couple little things I like, again, Fox shocks up front here, you brake lines, they are braided steel brake lines on a motorcycle. You normally do that for feel on this. They understand how you’re gonna be driving this. So you’re really probably looking at some debris, um, capabilities. You know, make sure that uh, it’s a little stronger if as it hits debris cuz it can go off-road and be fun. So a lot of business kind of, you know, trail side here in the front end. Let’s take at the look at the lights as well. I wanna show you that because it really is interesting how they do this.
So let’s just turn the vehicle to the on position for a second here. Inner and outer lights. So you have low beam lights and low beam lights and then you have high beam lights and high beam lights. Now as it’s set up, both all the lights are on on this model, they’re full l e d on some models you’re gonna have an l e D one here and uh, ooh I think, I can’t remember which one, but one will be l e d one will be halogen. Now that’s something to consider, especially if you are doing a lot of winter driving. LEDs aren’t gonna create any heat. These are cold to touch or at least not a lot of heat, whereas the halogen lights create some heat if you’re doing things in the winter, mounting a plow, the different things like that, um, sometimes the halogen lights can be helpful in certain snowy conditions because they will help melt some of that snow.
That being said, I like the L E D lights and again, because they’re both low and high beam, you really can have a lot of spread without adding any accessory light bars. But you could add accessory light bars if that’s what you want ’em to do. So lots of options to add things in these. Let’s take a look inside, actually just move to the side here and then we’ll move our way inside. We’ll look at some of the four door features as well. So we’ll take a better look at this enclosure in a second. But I wanna show you one thing. It does say pull to open here. It’s a little hard to read on the camera, but you can see exactly where you should grab to open now because I wanna show you this vehicle and I want the door to be outta my way.
I could pull this little Velcro tab right here. I can stick it to a little Velcro tab out the front here. And if you wanted it to just sort of stay open while you’re doing something, uh, it’s not hard to do. There you go. It’s stayed open. And of course you have the hard doors on the bottom there. So I’m gonna grab a camera mount here. We’re gonna kind of freehand through here just to show you some of the interior features on this uh, top line model. All right, so I’m gonna freehand the camera actually before we jump in, let’s just show you that enclosure here. Again, the enclosure of the other one wasn’t really a full enclosure. It had sort of a netted background there. Let’s just see if we can get that on camera. There you go. You can see it there. So just kind of uh, keep some of the debris out there.
It’s just uh, you know, I dunno if you can sort of see that netted background there. This one is more of a full enclosure, so we’ll take a look at the windshield in a second here. We’ve got a soft top that uh, holds on uh, on top here. So again, full soft top. Let me see if I can get that on camera. Oh boy, soft top. You can see that there. And then you’ve got the doors, enclosures, front and rear and the full proper uh, enclosure here. Now you do have a little breather here and that’s an important piece there. Uh, you don’t wanna block that vent that does that is an important vent to just sort of allow air to move through there. And then this one here has a box, an enclosed box on the back. Now we’re gonna talk about a few options here, uh, but that is a nice option to have to keep things sort of sealed up there.
Again, you will lose that enclosed boxes behind the front seats because you have rear seats there. We’ll jump in there in a second. Let’s just start with the front seat here as we roll in. So opening the door just down here. Super simple. These aren’t chinsy little doors. They actually, even every door is chinsy compared to the car doors. But these are certainly a better quality than some of the competitors. Again, this is a demo model. It’s got a little dirt in it, that’s fine. You can see here speaker, kit down here. So we’ve got uh, a lot of options in here. I’m gonna dump jump in and we are gonna go full wide angle. So it’ll skew the view. Oops, it’ll skew the view. Oh boy. Here we go. There we go. It’ll skew the view a little bit here. Uh, but you can see we’ve got uh, you know, nice steering wheel. It is a tilt steering wheel. So when I grab this, it’s actually a two-handed affair so I’m not gonna tilt it on video here. You can see if we look down in there, there’s your headlight switches. Oh boy, my camera’s having trouble here. There we go. There is your headlight switches there. So we’ve got outer And inner right there. We’ll leave ’em both off for now. We can actually, we’ll turn both on so when we turn the vehicle on, uh, we can see that. So let’s go back to wide angle there. There we go. Alright, moving over here is sort of the, you know, the key pieces to everything you’ve got here. Key is over here and then you’ve got four wheel drive, uh, sorry, two wheel drive, four wheel drive and the four wheel drive lock switch right there. Let’s see if we can get that. There we go. You can kind of see that there. And then your display screen here, we’ll turn that on a second here. 12 volt port, that standard stuff. And then you’ve got a whole bunch of extra accessories in here. This is your winch. This is the extra lighted whips. They’ve actually got a custom switch there.
I don’t know if you saw those blinking in the background. Uh, inferno car or cab heater. So you’ve got the cab heater here. There’s different styles of cab heaters you can get in the Kawasaki, um, uh, systems here. So again, with the enclosure on, you can stay a little warmer. Of course you’ve got the uh, stereo system in here and then just the typical stuff. Cup holders, there’s your gear shifter there. Low, high, neutral and reverse right there. This is not a parking brake that is your passenger grab rail. So when you’re driving down really aggressive trails, they’ve got a place to hang onto. And there’s your parking brake right there. What I like about this is you sit nice and square so your legs are straight and they drop straight down. Very, very comfortable seats. And as you can see, you know, there’s a lot of bench seats that maybe aren’t as comfortable.
These are bucket seats. They hold you in place with a little bit of side bolstering in there, but they’re very, very comfortable glove box in there as well. The display screen on this. Pretty simple, pretty basic stuff and that means it’s also pretty durable. Uh, you’ve got four wheel, oh, we’ve got a little bit of glare there. Let’s see if we can just zoom in a little bit and ignore that glare. So two wheel drive, four wheel drive. What’s cool is even though if I shift this knob into four-wheel drive, let’s see if we can do it right now and see if it doesn’t go. Yep. So it didn’t quite latch cuz we’re not moving. So even though this is in four wheel drive, oh boy, having trouble seeing the focus here. There we go. Even though that’s in four wheel drive, you can see over here, it will not tell, it will not tell you it’s in four-wheel drive until it actually is in four-wheel drive.
Again, we just have to move a little bit forward there. You’ve got a fuel gauge in here. You’ve got, uh, let’s just cycle through odometer, triple odometer, trip A, Tripp B and your hour meter and that’s about it. So clock down there as well. Warning lights, all the stuff you need. So again, everything you need, nothing you don’t. And durability’s the key here. Heat vents up here for the heart of that heater kit. What’s cool about this windshield here, let’s go a little bit wide angle and uh, you can see here you’ve got this um, windshield. So right now it’s fully sealed but if you wanna vent it out and uh, get some ventilation through here, you line up those there and you can see now I’m kind of opening them up. So you’ve got a really kind of versatile quick release windshield that either your passenger on this little tab here or the driver can get to, to open that up.
And then what I think is really important is this big wide angle mirror. You can see me in here and the reason I look small is because uh, it is a wide angle mirror. It’s a curved mirror. Gives you a great view of what’s going on behind you. If you’re trail riding with other people, you need a mirror like that, it works really well. So a lot of cool things. We’ll show you the headlights up here. I don’t know if this is the rest best room to show it. Sometimes they’re hard to film here, but, uh, there we go. So let’s turn everything off. So we got outside just one layer. You can see how the high beam comes in there and then the second light there and second light there. It really does light up your trail without having to go to go to accessory lighting, which is kind of nice.
So now let’s hop in the back seat. You know what, let’s keep it on the same cut here. Let’s keep rolling. Open the door here and jump out and we’ll swing this door open again. It says pull to open right here. I’m not sure if you can see that pulled open. I’m still on wide angle. So there’s those uh, flashing light bars there. Now this doesn’t appear to be a ton of room here, but again that seat was perfect, comfortable for me. I can move that up. You’ve got a really good grab bar in here and you’ll see when I jump in here, let me just kind climb up in here, try to hit my camera on anything. All right, so you can see exactly what I thought there was gonna be shut that door. There is going to be a little bit of a tight space here because this seat is a long ways back.
I can move that forward to drive. Absolutely. So I think this is in the full back position right now, but this grab bar is perfectly positioned for me to hang on anywhere. We’re going back here and be out of the way. You still have a 12 volt port down here. You’ve got some space down there and a big center cons or big center tunnel here to bring drive trains through the back and then a nice deep well and the, there are little vents in that to drain the water out. So if you were to get in a real trail situation where you had some uh, water, mud, all that kind of stuff in there, it will come out but not really. Come in. Take a look at the front again from here. Just kind of a cool view here. Lemme just flip the camera around for one second.
What I like here is pretty simple. You’ve got a really comfortable captain’s chair here. So again, not a bench seat. You know, you’re really comfortable room for your helmet. Even with this headrest type thing here. They’re, they keep that outta the way but it does go all the way up your back to give you comfort and of course a lot of room for your helmet up top so you can wear a helmet, be fully comfortable in here. And then if you can see here, the top of the seat here is well below where I am. It’s well below my seat as well. You’ve got a theater seating so I’m not only leaning to the side here to the center to see through. I can see all the way around even with a driver in place. So even though this is a four passenger, you haven’t got that crazy long wheel base, but you’ve got this really good view from here.
This is a fun unit to take out your friends. It’s a really good, uh, unit for that reason. So you really kind of win here. Now let’s show you a few other things in the 2023 models that are being constructed right now. So since everybody else is out snow plowing right now, I actually have full use of some of this shop and a couple of these are in here to be constructed. A couple of ’em are in here just because it was a storm. We wanted to keep some of the snow off so we can throw ’em right out and be ready to display them without having snow covered on them. But check out how these show up. They show up again without the roll bar. I think these might have been added. Uh, they’re in a little crate here, they’re well protected and they’re mostly assembled, right?
We’re just gonna put the uh, roll cage on. You can see here it is, Cummings comes with that winch there with that suspension out like that. And then back here you can kind of take a look at everything that’s going on inside. So let’s just quickly show you that again, this is the four passenger model. So it’s got the two seats there. You can see uh, the back rest still have to be added. This one doesn’t. Oh it does have the extra speakers as well. So you have that there. Down here you can start to see a better look at the floor area. So this is that Floor area of the four, uh, passenger, but it would be a little bit more, uh, the same type of space in the two passenger there. And then you can kind of take a look at everything back here from the top side, which I think is just a cool view. You can really see those shocks there. There’s that compression uh, adjustment right there. And uh, if we can zip around here, you can see the adjustment on uh, right there. So you’ve really got, you know, easy to work with stuff. Again, you can reach all that stuff from uh, from outside and again, again big wheels here but you can upsize ’em if you want to. So that one and this one are together. This one here has a uh, the box, uh, sort of already half assembled. So there are different levels of assembly here. And then I do have a mule here just because I want to point it out.
The mule is another option, it’s a little bit wider. It’s a six passenger instead of a four passenger. So this is the pro, uh, oh boy pro F X t. Gotta make sure I get those uh names right cuz you can’t say that again. Anyways, it’s got a similar style bed here and you can see there’s got a little container here that latches onto those side rails. This same container would work on the Teryx as well. What’s cool about this one is although it has a second row seat that we’re looking at right here, it actually has sort of an accordion fold out bed so you can lengthen that bed and uh, do that as well. So you’ve got options here with the mule as well. If you’re looking for something that will take your passengers and that kinda thing. I believe there are about nine different mule models forgetting the trim lines within that.
Uh, there’s only a few, uh, different uh, uh, well four of these. There’s the two door and four door of this on the TerraX and then there’s the Krx 1000 and then there’s trim lines within that. So although there’s only a few models of these, there are lots of options for whatever you’re looking for in a side-by-side type vehicle in the Kawasaki lineup. So let’s wrap this one up. Uh, explain what’s coming next. So there is still a lot more to talk about with these two units and I mentioned off the top that there is Kawasaki way. Now if you’ve never heard of it or can’t Google find it, it’s because it’s here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. We have an off-road test track here at Canada’s number one volume Kawasaki dealer where you can come and take these demo units off-road to get a sense of what they’re like.
It’s just part of the process here. This is a real destination store. It’s known as Canada’s huggable PowerSports dealer. They’re an absolute leader for a reason and I’m gonna be able to take these out on that trail to show you some trail riding. So this is just an introductory to these 2023 models and if you have questions, I’m hoping that you’ll let me know when the comments below so that when I’m making those videos I can make sure that I’m answering the questions you want and we can build a little database of information here. I can keep coming back to these vehicles again and again and again to make sure that you get the information that you need to figure out if these things are best for you. So I wanna thanks everybody for watching and like I said, hit the subscribe button because we’re gonna have more of this and uh, I wanna make sure that you see what we’ve got and especially if I can answer your questions. Thanks everybody for watching.
2023 Kawasaki Vulcan S vs 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Custom.
Which one would you prefer?
Hey everybody, it’s Peter. And in this video we’re gonna compare two different Kawasaki cruisers, the Vulcan S and the Vulcan, in this case, custom. Now, custom classic. You could vary on those, but the premise of this video is you’re looking for your first cruiser. Which one of these Kawasaki options might be best for you? And it’s an interesting comparison because both of these cruisers really go about a different riding style and there’s some surprises I think you’ll find between these two bikes. And that’s sort of my job here. I’m gonna dig into the differences between these bikes and show you some things that some of the other videos aren’t showing you. So first of all, if you have questions after this video is done, make sure you let me know in the comments section below because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where they gimme complete access to all of their vehicles.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
And if you have questions, I’ll answer your questions both in the common section and in future videos. So if you’re interested in either of these bikes, make sure you hit subscribe. I’ve already filmed a few videos on these bikes and I’m going to be filming more, so I wanna make sure I can answer all of your questions and continue to make content that hopefully you’ll find useful. So let’s start with the comparison between these two bikes. And again, we’re looking at this for the idea of a first cruiser. Let’s get going. So normally when I recommend a first bike, something like the Ninja 400 or the Z 400 is a very common bike that I will recommend. Also, it’s X 300, but none of those are anything at all like a cruiser. So if we’re talking about your first overall bike, in my mind, I would recommend this one before, I recommend this one.
But if you have a little bit of riding experience, you’ve driven dirt bikes or anything else, I think either one of these bikes could be good for a first cruiser. And there are some things to consider here. First of all, this is a 650 cc parallel twin. This is a 900 cc v twin. So a lot of time when you’re thinking about a first bike or you know, sort of an entry level into anything you think smaller ccs are gonna be, you know, a little bit less powerful. And in some ways that’s not actually true at all with this one, this bike here actually makes more horsepower than this bike over here. Now there are some differences in feel and we’ll talk about that as well. But even though this one makes more horsepower out of less ccs, it’s actually very easy to ride as well and in part because it’s lighter weight.
So we’re gonna talk about this bike in detail, but I also wanna mention that even though this makes less power and it is a bit or less horsepower and it’s a little bit heavier bike, it is also a great bike for someone who again, is used to riding but wants a cruiser. There are some differences. So let’s start here with the Vulcan S and talk about that. And then we’ll move into the Vulcan custom, which again could be the Vulcan Classic. The biggest difference between custom and classic is this front wheel here. I have a custom off there, uh, off screen there. We’ll show you that in a second. But let’s start with the Vulcan S. So the Vulcan S is a non-traditional cruiser. It’s really a cruiser unlike any other. It’s not the only parallel Twin Cruiser,
But it is a much more sporty cruiser than other parallel twin cruisers as well as other cruisers in general. What you’ll notice when you sit on this is it’s a fairly lightweight cruiser, nice low seat height. You can adjust it for different sizes. We’ll talk about that in a second. But the key here is this is the Ninja 650 engine. Now it’s tuned slightly differently, but the big thing is when you get a big V twin engine where the cylinders go like this, you end up with a rumble, you end up with uh, you know, a whole bunch of big moving parts that give you a different feel than a small parallel twin like this six 50. So the parallel twin has two cylinders that go up and down sort of side by side. It is a more efficient engine to get a lot of speed out of.
And when I say speed, I mean revolutions per minute. Revs basically this one revs up to 9,500 RPM and that engine can rev a little higher on different bikes, but you make power in the rev range. So it’s got good mid-range power for what it is. But you can continue to rev this up. A lot of cruisers, you know, 6,000 rpm is the absolute maximum on some of them, whereas this one you can really rev it out a lot more and that means that this behaves a lot more like a sport bike And when you’re riding it, it also has sort of a similar feel to a sport bike style cruiser. The handling on this bike is very good as well. So I’m gonna jump across it for a second and show you a couple things. First of all, I’m about six feet tall. I’m not exactly sure how this bike is set up, but it can be set up in a number of different ways.
Both the seat, the pegs and the handlebars can all be moved to different positions. So on the Kawasaki website they’ll talk about how it can be like for a short rider, a mid rider and a and a lo longer or larger rider. Uh, the difference is that you don’t have to follow those presets. You could set up your pegs to be closer, your handlebars to be farther. You can kind of customize your uh, riding position with this more so than any other bike in the cruiser lineup from Kawasaki. And what that means is you can be very comfortable, you still have that feet forward position, but a nice upright uh, riding position. You can get all the cruiser accessories you wanna do long touring on this. You can get a windshield up here, you wanna get some bags on this, not a problem. You wanna throw a rear seat on this. Not a problem as well. So you can do all the things that you need to do to turn this into a cruiser, but you’re still gonna find that this is a very easy bike to flick back and forth that handles very well. And again, when you’re driving it, you’re gonna be revving that engine out, which is kind of fun and it feels a little bit like more like a sport bike. You are going to surprise some Harley Davidson rider on this because this is quicker than many Harley Davidsons on the road today as far as zero to 60 and that kind of thing. So this is an interesting option that is both easy to ride and yet faster than, I can’t say the average cruiser, but faster than many cruisers and probably the average cruiser on the road today in 2023. There are definitely cruisers that make a whole bunch of power.
You’re not gonna be faster than everybody but for a 650 cc engine you really get value out of this for power. So let’s talk about the other as well and then we’ll start looking at the details like the dash and some other things. We’ll kind of dig into that. So let’s talk about the Vulcan custom. Now I’m gonna show you a picture on screen right now of the Vulcan Classic and show you that you can really decorate these up in a whole bunch of different ways. The one you’re seeing on screen right now that comes from the factory like you see and you, just a couple things worth noticing. It’s got the bags on it, it’s got the rear backrest, a larger rear seat than the bike. I’m gonna show you in a second here. It’s got a windshield on there and it’s got a totally different size front tire. So take a look at that front tire as I fade back to me now and take a look at this front tire, the bike you just saw. And this are actually the same bike and that’s kind of what the custom is all about. And the classic, the overall Vulcan, you can really tailor it to suit your needs. So both of the bikes I just showed you that uh, picture I just showed you and this one here are the same bike. They just have a couple different features on there. Uh, and again, both of those can be ordered from factory with zero options and that’s what those two are. But you can also customize this up. I chose this one for the video just cuz the front wheel looks kind of cool and it looks kind of sporty just like the Vulcan s. Now while this looks sporty, it’s a little less sporty.
First of all, it’s heavier. I’ll just jump across it here. Can I move it side to side? I absolutely can. I will say that this front wheel, although it looks cool, it’s gonna be a little bit tougher to do slow speed maneuvers on this bike than it is on the Vulcan S. The Vulcan s when you sit across, it feels like a sportier bike than this one. In simple terms, this one feels like a regular bigger cruiser, but it’s not so big that you can’t really handle it. So a couple features I like about this that, you know, I think again for your first cruiser, if you wanna get into a traditional cruiser, what you’re gonna find here is again, while this makes less horsepower, it makes more torque. You can see that vwe engine in here, one down there, one up here, there’s the cylinders in there that ride up and down.
A vwe engine is great for torque. That’s that pulling power. Think of like a pickup truck engine versus a, you know, Honda Civic type engine. Honda Civic can rev really high, relatively high. The pickup truck engine doesn’t rev it’s high, but it’s got that torque. Now again, even though this is bigger, it makes less horsepower than the Vulcan S and the Vulcan S is lighter. So that bike zero to 60, the Vulcan S that we started with is quicker. But you have a different feel here. And again, if you wanna get into big power and a big cruiser, you’re gonna get into a pretty big engine, which adds a lot of weight as well. This one has an intentional roughness to it. It’s not designed to be perfectly smooth, perfectly refined. The v2, an engine is gonna give you that rumble kind of feel. But this Vulcan is still a relatively smooth riding bike, although at idle you’re gonna feel that v you know, giving you that cruiser feel. So if you need a cruiser feel and you want the classic Vwe look, this is a very good option. And even though it’s a 900 cc bike, it’s not gonna be outside of your speed range or something like that. Again, customizations can be done to
Absolute, the Vulcan S has customizations, but this one is a much larger feeling bike. Big huge seat here, bigger than even the uh, Vulcan S. And you really have that sort of feel of the classic cruiser that will stay in style forever. Now there are differences in the instrumentation here as well and that may lead you to prefer one over the other. So let’s take a look at what we have here and then go to the Vulcan S. So taking a look at the instrumentation here, let’s just zoom out for a second so you can see where we’re looking. We are actually looking at the tank of the bike. There is no dash up on the handlebars, it’s down on the tank. So we’ll zoom in again here very carefully. Let’s see if we can get it right where I want to have it. There we go. And you can see this is your full instrumentation. So bottom light over here is your neutral light, your signal lights, and again, no separate uh, indication of signal lights. It’s a single light to tell you that your signal’s on your high beams there. And then you have your dash here with just a speedometer, just a fuel gauge and some warning lights. Now the key is actually down below the seat, so I’m gonna turn that on right now and you’ll see this dash come to life. Pretty simple stuff here. Nothing too advanced. You’ve got a clock in there, you’ve got odometer in there and you’ve got a triple odometer and that’s it. So again, no real technology, which again gives you that cruiser style and cruiser feel, but it does leave you without some of the things that a modern motorcycle might have. So you have to sort of decide what you’re looking for.
But again, why is there no tack? Because this is an engine that does not need to rev excessively for power. So really you’re not gonna be driving this anywhere near red line. You’re gonna feel where that power is, make your shift and off you go. Now let’s take a look at the Vulcan S take a look at the Vulcan S. You can see that there are a few uh, differences here. Obviously first of all the, the controls are mounted to the handlebars here. There’s a little bit of glare in there, but we’ll kind of work with that. Oh, maybe we have to turn the handlebars a little bit more to deal with that. Anyways, ignore the glare a little bit and you can see first of all you’ve got a real tack here and again it revs up to 9 9500 rpm. So again, this bike can continue to make power in that six, seven, 8,000 RPM range.
So you’re gonna want to have a attack to see how that goes. Your key here is down on the tank instead of underneath uh, the tank down by the side of the bike, turn it on and you’ve got a really complete dash here. So a lot of things I really like. Again, if it’s your first bike, having a gear indicator is really helpful, but even if it’s not, I just like that. So you can see the N right there tells me it’s a neutral. Of course you have a neutral light on both bikes, but the gear indicator will tell you first gear, second gear, that kind of thing. I don’t know if I can put it in gear, actually know what the camera tripods in the way, but I’m gonna change that. But the point is there’s a six speed transmission here. So you can zip through the gears, you still have a fuel gauge. Then up top you here you have some trip information. So let’s just cycle through the information here. Uh, trip A, trip B. So already you get an extra trip computer and you’re not losing your clock in order to get to that trip. A trip B. Then you have kilometers per liter, which I’m pretty sure can be set for leaders per a hundred kilometers as well. Average Kilometers per liter. So you have instant and average fuel efficiency and then you have range to empty, which in this bike of course because it’s not rolling, once it rolls it starts to calculate how you have been driving and tell you how much range you should have approximately and never uh, something to rely on completely. But again, you have that in addition to the fuel gauge and then you go back to your odometer. So a lot more controls here, a lot more modern technology in there. Uh, your signal to lights as well. You’ve got left side signal and right side signals. So you’ve got different lights up there as well as your high beam which uh, actually I can’t turn on until I start the bike and because we’re indoors won’t start the bike. But again very compact but a lot more information here and that may be something that some people prefer because although the classic look is nice, it’s nice to also have extra information.
So we’ve talked about the engine style, the V twin versus the parallel twin. We’ve talked about the overall bikes, bigger feeling bike, kind of a cruiser old classic style and something that’s a little bit more sporty. But there’s another few things that I think you should look for if you’re getting into a first cruiser or even a modern motorcycle, you can buy old cruisers, you can find them anywhere, you can usually buy them cheap. One thing that I like about both these bikes is they are liquid cooled. Now a lot of cruisers are gonna have this V twin engine. You can sort of see the fins on here. The fins are what they used to use for air cooling and you have the same look of the fins on here. Having these liquid cooled and I mean radiator up front here and a radiator up front here, just like your car.
I think that really matters especially if you’re getting into a bike and maybe it’s your first one or that kind of thing. If you’ve ever been stuck in traffic in an air cooled bike, that’s where they create the heat. It’s not the hot day when you’re driving, it’s when you’re stuck in traffic or idling or that kind of thing. An air cooled bike doesn’t warn you when it overheats or when it gets too hot. You just don’t know. You have to get moving and I’ve been stuck in traffic and start feeling the heat off that air cooled engine and you don’t know what’s going on. Liquid cooled bikes not only control that engine temperature, that helps with longevity, it helps with, you know, and, and again, if you buy an air cool bike that’s used, you never know has it overheated hazard issues. In fact the owner may not know if it’s been to a place where it’s started to overheat.
So you have good longevity built in because that liquid cooling is gonna keep this engine and that engine in a temperature range that not only preserves longevity of the engine, it preserves performance of the engine. They can get more performance out of it and it gives you more peace of mind. This one, although it doesn’t have a temperature gauge, it does have a warning light. And same thing over there, you’ll be warned if the engine is getting too hot or if there’s an issue with it. And I think that’s a modern piece of technology that’s really worth getting on a cruiser just because it’s gonna give you so much more benefit. Again, consistent performance, uh, protection from you know, idling away. And uh, also you know, the idea of are you in trouble or are you not? Not a problem. So liquid cooling something that I would look for on a first cooler on a first cruiser. So let’s talk
Who I think both of these bikes are for or who they fit better. And let’s start here with the Vulcan S. First of all, the Vulcan S is a great first cruiser. It can be used as a first motorcycle. And what I like about this is it can introduce you to all kinds of motorcycling. If you find yourself going down twisty roads and really liking that, and maybe this is your first bike, you could decide do you want to stay with a cruiser like this or do you wanna move to more of a sporting bike? This car, this bike can handle the sporty turns and curves and all that. So that is a real advantage of this. It’s also a little bit lighter weight and it’s going to be more comfortable for a lot of people who are new to riding slow speed maneuvers are more difficult on a cruiser than on other styles of bike. And slow speed maneuvers are when you often run into trouble with dropping bikes like this. So this one, again, much easier to move in a parking lot than most cruisers. This one’s pretty good, but you’re still getting into that cruiser uh, type feel, cruiser geometry and that cruiser weights. So you have that option and it’s just something worth keeping in mind. Now that being said, at speed they’re both gonna be very stable, very comfortable, but again, sport bike feel and that sport bike engine, if you’re buying a bike and you wanna keep it for a long time and you’re concerned, maybe you’re a bit of a speed demonn, you’re concerned that a bike will become too slow. Sometimes people make the mistake of saying, well the six 50 s gonna be too slow, so I’m gonna move to the 900. I would argue that this one, again, zero to 60 speed, you’ve got all the power you need here, you get to it differently.
But this is a great bike for, you know, if you want a faster bike, this one is going to be faster in time. So if this is faster and more nimble, why get this one? Well, the classic Vulcan Classic or Vulcan custom, whichever one, the classic cruiser is what a lot of people are looking for. The, the way the engine is situated and the way it works gives you that rumble, it gives you more of a basey exhaust note. It gives you that full cruiser feel and that’s what a lot of people are going for. You can still tour on this, you can customize these up in any which way you want. So whether it’s around town or uh, out of town or even overnight trips, you can do that on both of these bikes. This one does cost a little bit more and in fact you’re getting a little bit more motorcycle.
It’s a bigger overall everything here. But this one does give you that true if that’s what you want to call it, cruiser feel. I’ve had people argue with me on the internet that this isn’t a true cruiser because it doesn’t have that V between that kind of feel. So this one gives you that V twin feel and again, it’s still very torquey. It’s not like it’s not powerful, it’s just overall top speed and some of the acceleration with the six speed transmission and the quick revving engine that’s gonna be able to accelerate. But this one still has all the power you need to do what you’d want to do. Taking a passenger, again, horsepower versus torque. This one takes a passenger is fine, it’s got that torque to pull. Think about torque being what trucks have that pulling power. Um, you know, you’ve got the ability, and again, you can customize seats and customize things up like that. So this one’s going to appeal to a more of a traditional cruiser buyer where this one is gonna appeal to a little bit more of a diverse
Riding style and someone who’s open to a modern interpretation of a cruiser. So there’s a quick overview about potentially your first cruiser. Now there are things I left out in this review that I may have covered in the reviews I’ve done of these individual bikes. So make sure you check out my channel, check out these individual bikes and if you have questions, subscribe Because I’m into answering your questions, I wanna make sure that I’m filling the internet with the information that you wanna know. So if you have questions about these bikes you wanna know more, let me know in the common section below. If you own these bikes, tell me about how you use them and what you like about them. So we can sort of fill the common section with a database of information for people who are looking at these, considering these bikes. And remember, I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s powerSports. It’s March right now and the showroom is absolutely packed with 2023’s. These are both 2023 models. You can still see a few 2022’s as well. So make sure you swing by Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports to check them out. And if you want to know more, I can come back to these bikes again and again. So subscribe and we’ll make sure we get you more videos on these bikes. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we finally get our first look at a 2023 Vespa. This is the 2023 Vespa Primavera 50. Now we have a whole bunch of 2023 Vespas piling in here. So if you’re interested in all the new Vespas, make sure you hit subscribe right now because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and they allow me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup so that I can make sure that I answer all the questions that you might have about vehicles like this and all sorts of other vehicles that I review. So every single day I’m gonna do a full in-depth review and you can let me know in the comments what you want to know about these vehicles and I’ll make sure that I answer you both in the comments and in future videos.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So this one here, our very first look at the 2023, let’s talk about it right now. So the first thing you need to know about this 50 cc scooter is filming here in New Brunswick in Canada. This is a bi, uh, a scooter that doesn’t require a full motorcycle license. If you’re over 16, if you have your car license, you can drive this without any extra licensing. If you are 14 in this province, you can actually write a test and drive this as well. So this is really a perfect second vehicle, especially in cities where you can use it to get around. You can use it to have some fun. And my very, very, very first motorcycle that I rode in when I grew up, it was 16, you could ride when I was 16, I had a scooter. And let me tell you, they are an absolute blast and that’s what this is really about.
And the nice thing about the Vespa is you’ve got a real history here. This is an iconic vehicle around the world. So you can have that as, for instance, your first vehicle or a vehicle that you can keep because whatever stage of life you’re in, these are super helpful to have around, especially as a second vehicle that’s really, really fuel efficient. That’s a lot of fun and it’s super stylish and apparently it steers itself. We’ll talk about that in a second here. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna focus on the features of this vehicle and kind of go through it in detail. It’s got a really cool blue pink color that unfortunately I’m inside. Can’t see the metallic sparkle here, but that’s kind of cool with all these vessels is they have that really good style to them that, you know, fresh automotive paint, that’s just really good quality.
So what we’re gonna do though is talk about the individual features that sort of benefit your life. And then I’m gonna finish up with sort of summarizing why this is a great vehicle to own. So stay with me as we go through some of the technical details to get to some of the more fun stuff. So the first thing I’m gonna start with here is the iconic wheel here. Now owning a Vespa is a lot like owning, owning a Porsche nine 11. These things have been refined and refined and refined over time, but they’re instantly recognizable for what they are. And one of the unique design details on the Vespa, which is different than a lot of other scooters is they don’t have a second fork tube down here, like a regular motorcycle or like a bicycle. We’re gonna show you the other side in a second here, but what you do have here is this nice 12 inch wheel. Now you can get larger wheels on scooters, but this is really nimble. And on a 50 cc I think this is, you know, perfectly good size. What’s cool about the tires
Here is if you look at something like, uh, you know, a Kawasaki motorcycle sitting just off camera beside me here, you have a little bit more tread in here than you would on something like some of those motorcycles, especially something like a sport motorcycle. But you do have the same profile here, nice rounded profile, so you’re gonna be able to lean into turns and that’s what makes it a lot of fun. And you’ve got really good traction here. But the extra tread here also means that this is really good for all weather. And when we talk about all weather, scooters are great for that because you’re able to sort of splash through the puddles and instead of having your feet hanging out on foot pegs, they’re in on floorboards and they’re protected by not just this fender, but also the overall body work. So this becomes a vehicle that, you know, you don’t wanna have to take it out in the rain, but if you do get stuck in the rain, you can actually stay pretty dry with just something like a raincoat on.
So cool, look here where you’ve got the rim on display. Let’s check the other side where the business side of things are and uh, we’ll show you some of the technology that’s in there. So over here on the left side, you’ve actually got quite a bit going on. First of all, you have modern disc brakes and these aren’t like bicycle disc brakes. These are true motorcycle style disc brakes. So they’re vented, uh, which is pretty great because it helps, uh, deal with the heat, it helps expansion and contraction, that kind of thing. And you can see their nice, uh, you know, the caliper grabs right there. And then you have this really sort of advanced suspension piece. You can see the spring, the shock in there and this kind of extra piece. So what this does is it’s a bit of an anti dive suspension.
So when you jam on the brakes, it’ll work with you to sort of not really dive down, but it is a sort of iconic look and that’s bolted on exactly like an automotive wheel would be allowing you to have everything here on this side and then that open wheel displayed on the other side. So kind of a cool system that’s actually quite advanced when you consider, uh, what it does and how it works with quality brakes, quality suspension, and again, all of it mounted just on that one side. So r works really well and it kind of looks interesting as well. Take a look at the rear wheel here. You have a lot of the same concept here. A lot of your componentry is all on one side. Now what’s cool here is all of your drive components from the engine two transmission and everything is actually right here as part of the swing arm.
So if you look at a normal motorcycle, usually this is just a bar sometimes with a chain involved in there, but you’ve actually got a drive system here that’s basically maintenance free, unlike a, um, maintenance free for you for sure, unlike a something like a motorcycle where you’ve gotta keep that chain lubed, especially if you’ve gone through a rainy day, it’s all sort of sealed up in here and you’ve got everything you need. And again, it’s mounted to this side with a suspension and drive train all through here. So it kind of a, it looks complicated, but it’s sort of a simple system, simple way to do things. And because the engine is mounted low here as well and all the heavy components are mounted low, you actually have a very easy motorcycle to drive. Again, most motorcycles have the engine way up higher in the frame. So all of the weight down low means that it’s very easy to handle. And we’ll show you that as we hop on there. But this is sort of just the one side, we’ll show you the other side as well. So I love showing this side as well. Of course you’ve got the wheel in the background there. It’s not actually mounted here to anything. You’ve got your, um, exhaust hanging here,
You nice big exhaust deals with emissions. But when we talk about fuel use, if you think about an engine as bringing air in, having the, you know, explosion to get the engine running and then bringing that air and gases out, look at how small this little tube is. So when you talk about fuel savings, this is really fuel savings without any high tech hybrid. You got a lightweight vehicle, very small engine that allows you just a little bit of fuel to burn and pass through there, which means you’re gonna really save on fuel and you can kind of see that in just the sort of the design here. And again, this bigger, um, engine here or bigger exhaust here helps also muffle this. So this is a very quiet vehicle to drive, which means when you’re driving it, you can hear what’s going on around, you can hear the birds chirping, you can hear other things, a really unobtrusive vehicle to have in the neighborhood here.
The other thing I’ll point out is that they all come with center stands. Center stands are pretty cool because they give you that stability, holds it nice and upright, you know, it’s not gonna tilt left or right. If you have soft ground you have to park on, it’s usually not a problem as well. And it actually lifts the rear wheel just a little bit off the ground. So you know, you’ve got that, uh, little bit of, uh, relaxed on the suspension there. But um, you know, if it, if you’re parking this in a garage with a lot of snow and salt in the winter, that kind of thing and keeps that wheel right off the ground so it’s not in contact with anything you don’t want it in contact with. So as I approach the scooter, you’re gonna find out one problem with the center stand.
If you park it in a showroom on a tile floor, it’s a little tricky to get off because normally has so, so much weight there, it kind of rolls off, but because the tile is a little slippery to it, I gotta keep my toe right near it, pull it off. You can see it’s pretty easy to do if it’s on concrete or anything else. It doesn’t slide or anything like that. You don’t have to put your toe underneath it, but you can see this is very easy to control because again, that weight is down low. It’s a very unintimidating vehicle and you don’t have to lift your leg way over the top on the back. You can simply slide your, uh, legs across there, easy step through and it’s a fairly wide vehicle, but even if, uh, you’re shorter than me, you can sit much further forward or you can stand across and jump back up here.
So you’ve got a really wide platform here that’s comfortable even for larger riders and that’s pretty rare in the motorcycling world to have a small engine, really efficient vehicle that actually fits someone like myself who’s around a six footer. So you can see here if I put it back on the center stand and I’ll show you how easy that is, just uh, tow on the, uh, on the center stand, couple fingers here on the rail that wraps across and it very easily pops right back up. And you can see when I sit on it here, very comfortable and you can see if you have, if you’re looking for weather protection, you’ve got wind protection here as well. So on the cold, cold days, you can still drive this with protection from the wind that stays plenty warm, a nice uh, jacket and you’re good to go.
If you really want a more protection, you can add an accessory windshield up here. But when you’re sitting here, whether you’re or short, it’s really nice and the mirrors are mounted close to your body and they happen to be wide angle mirrors. So they say objects and mirror are closer than they appear just like the right side mirror on your car would be. And that means that because they’re close and because they’re sort of slightly wide angle, they allow you to have a really good view of what’s around you and what’s around. So you feel very safe in traffic. You also sit relatively tall sort of SUV height, so you’ve got a good commanding view of the road and absolutely no blind spots wherever you are. So kind of a great place to sort of see the scenery. So CD position, comfortable, you’ve got space for a second person, but let’s start taking a look at the dash here and then we’re gonna work into the storage compartment and the practical uses of this bike.
So I’m filming this on a little bit of an angle so you can just sort of see everything. You’ve got a little bit of studio like glare going on if I move it the wrong way. But as you can see that everything comes to life here. Now don’t be fooled by speedometer, that goes to 80 kilometers an hour. There are two engines that can go in this. If you have a spammer that goes up to one 40, it’s gonna go right around a hundred kilometers an hour. If this speedometer goes up to about 80 or so, it’s gonna be in that 50 60 kilometer hour range for a top speed with the 50 cc engine. So this is not highway capable with the 50 cc engine, but certainly country highway capable with that one 50 cc engine is an option. Again, we’re looking at the 50 cc today.
Down here you’ve got a very simple dash fuel gauge in there, easy to read, you’ve got trip A, trip B, and the regular odometer here and that’s it. You can see zero kilometers on this thing. This thing was just assembled for us and uh, uh, right outta the crate and sent to us here in the video bay. So simple, simple dash, but clear and easy to read. Now let’s take a look at some of the controls that you have on this bike. On the left handlebar here on a regular motorcycle, this would be a clutch lever, but this is exactly like a bicycle. This is a brake. So if you’re used Tori riding a bicycle, you can get on and ride this right away. There’s no gear shift changes, no anything else. You just twist the right side throttle. And this one is your brake.
So this would be your, uh, rear brake because there’s no foot pedal brake on this one. Now over here you have simple switches for high beam and low beam. Right there you have your signal switches, which can be turned on and canceled. And you’re horn down here kind of nicely set on chrome here. We’re gonna talk about the headlight in a second. It is a L e d headlight, which are really bright, uh, clean white light, we’ll talk about that in a second. But all your controls are right there. Let’s go to the right side and check out those controls. Now, right side fav everybody’s favorite control, this is your throttle twist and go. And that’s it. So that’s full off. That’s full on and that’s all you need to drive this. You’ve got a brake, like a bicycle. This is a kill switch which is required for every motorcycle.
You can uh, turn it off with key, but this will kill the engine off right away. And then of course that mode button was cycling through trip A, trip B and odometer right here. And this is how you start it. So you make sure this is on turn, the key on press that it starts right up nice and quiet. So we mentioned the lighting up front and I’ll show you down here, there are three little lights in here. None of this is on right now, but I just sort of wanna let you know before we turn it on. Three little lights down here, three little lights down there. They’re like your daytime running lights for whatever reason, they don’t film very accurately, but they are there. They do create some nice light and they won’t look great on film. You’ve got incandescent signal lights up here and then your headlight up here.
So we’re gonna turn the bike to the on position and you can see your headlight right away comes to life there. If we go to signal, we can sort of see your left side signal, uh, your right side signal there, we can kill that right there. And then your high beam light, again, this is a bright white L e d light, high beam light right there. Again, I’m not sure if the camera lined up to see a whole lot of more brightness in there, but you should be able to see the difference in the lighting there. Now one thing to keep in mind with l e d headlights is, first of all they’re bright, they’re excellent. Um, a lot of that is just good, but that bright white light because of the color of it, it’s closer in color to daylight, which means when it’s shining on something, it helps your brain recognize what it is more easily than something that would be more yellow tinted like a halogen headlight.
So really big safety feature for your own visibility and for being seen as well. Very, very good there. We’ll show you the taillight while we’re at it. Same thing with the taillight, as you would find with the front lights, they don’t film perfectly. This in, uh, person looks like a much more even kind of circular, uh, area there that’s evenly lit. It just, uh, looks a little brighter on the bottom just again because of the way the taillight’s filming there. But brake light there as well, instant on, instant off, that is a full l e d light. And again, it’s hard to show the brightness on camera, but it is absolutely very, very bright. These here, they’re just reflectors, they’re just style. And again, signal lights down low down there as well. Easy to see, uh, flashing signals right there. So you know, very good lighting on this vehicle. So now let’s talk practicality. This scooter is very, very practical, certainly for a motorcycle, extremely practical.
Visible parts of the, the body work as part of the frame. So you’ve got this big area here where it allows some steering to come down, but this is part of the frame that’s part of what makes these vespas just really, uh, solid feeling On the road. So one interesting thing in this, uh, component here is there is a USB charge port right there. So this is the kind of storage area you’re gonna use for your wallet, your sunglasses likely your phone as well because you can also keep that charged with the GPS in there. And if you wanna wear some earbuds or something like that or have a communicator of some sort, you can even get your GPS to speak to you even though it’s hidden in there. So lots of things you can do, uh, with that. And of course having the usb obviously keeping your devices charged is handy.
So one thing I wanna point out here on this particular model is this really cool colored seat. Now if you come into the showroom here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, there are so many scooters here and so many vespas and the the key piece with Vespas is that there are subtle style differences between all the different ones. So this one here has a sort of textured seat up here. You’ve got the nice stitching through here. Uh, some of ’em have sort of like a racing stripe look down the middle. Some of ’em have uh, several ribs across here. Every seat is a little bit different. Uh, this one’s not filming perfectly identical to the color I can tell by looking at it with my eyes and looking at it through the camera. There’s a slight difference in color, but it really does compliment this blue very nicely in person.
Now on a 50 cc Vespa, you have a little keyhole here on a one 50 cc. You won’t have this keyhole here, you’ll have a button on the dash here, but this of course opens up. So let’s just show you what that’s like. Opens up there and you have this big huge storage container here. Now what’s cool about Vespas is you can actually take it out and clean it there. So that’s your whole storage department. Underneath there is your engine, which is fun to take a look at. But this compartment is very, very large. It tucks in there nicely right there. And you can fit a three quarter face helmet. Now I would bet I could probably fit my full face helmet in here. Depends on the full face helmet that you have. Um, but certainly a lot of storage. So here’s what you’re gonna use this for.
All of your day-to-day stuff that you’re doing when you’re running around, you can stick it in here while you’re driving. Now keep in mind it can get a little warm, so you don’t wanna stick your, uh, you know, your sandwich in there for three hours when you’re driving around. Uh, but yeah, that is a storage part compartment that you can use that is lockable. Now you have a couple options when you get to your destination, you can take a bag out of there or put it all in a bag and pull the bag right out. Take that in with you and lock your helmet in there. However, you can also lock your helmet on these little tabs here. If you have a little D-ring helmet, you can hang the D-ring there. You can shut the, um, the uh, seat and the helmet can hang on the side of the bike right here or right there on the side using that D-ring to secure it.And you can still have this as lockable storage if you want to add more. This little loop around here can be replaced with a, uh, mounting bracket for a rear, uh, cargo box type thing. That can u be used as a backrest for your passenger as well as extra cargo storage. So for a motorcycle, you have tons of storage here. The other nice thing right here is where you fill it with fuel. You don’t need a whole lot of fuel in this thing. It doesn’t, uh, burn a whole lot, but you do also have it underneath the seat, which means that it’s lock able secure, it’s away from everybody. It’s super simple. All right, so now let’s have a real true, honest conversation. Most of the things I showed you, they’re kind of boring. I mean, sure it’s practical. The reason you buy any vehicle, at least this is my opinion, but especially something like a scooter is because you like it. And there’s something that’s super cool about Vespa being around them every day, being able to sit on ’em, use ’em, drive ’em, they’re an absolute blast to drive. And I showed you all the rest of the stuff because you need to justify this. It has to also work for you as a regular vehicle. Does it work in the rain? Absolutely. Does it work to carry your stuff around to go to work, go to school, do those kind of things? Absolutely. Is it safe? Yes, you feel very safe up here. You’ve got those wide angle mirrors mounted close, you know, it’s not that much more that much faster than, you know, a very fast bicyclist. So you’re really not going crazy speeds. It’s not like you’re, you know, being blown
Away like would on a sport bike where you have to just a, your brain has to adapt to a whole different speed capability. What this does though is it effortlessly takes you around town in something stylish, gives you reasons to go out. You’re not using enough fuel to even worry about it or think about it. You’ll go on those trips and the same way a motorcyclist will set out across the country to explore the country. You can go explore your town on this and find reasons to ride. And people on scooters do, I mean I used to own one and I would love to have another one because there’s so much fun to just easily hop on and go around town. They’re an absolute blast of ride. And the nice thing with the Vespa is you’re buying something that is truly iconic. If you buy it as a young kid, you can keep it in the family, other people can ride it in your household, but you can keep it for years and years and years and years and years. And people do. There’s a reason these things are iconic. The shape isn’t really gonna go outta style or anything of that. They’re gonna stay with this. But it’s just such a fun vehicle. It’s fun to look at. It’s a conversation piece, whether it’s sitting around at a barbecue in your driveway or whether you’re going out around town, swinging through the library, the stores, the shops, whatever it is you’re doing, they’re an absolute blast. And there’s a whole bunch of ’em here at Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals. So who is it for? I always kind of finish these videos with who’s it for? You wanna take a single person or two people? You can do that on here. Somebody who wants to have fun on something that’s easy to ride, practical and just a lot of fun. That’s who it’s for. Whether you’re a 14 year old that needs to get to school and maybe your parents don’t wanna have to drive you around everywhere.
( You can do that here in New Brunswick. Whether you are someone with a car license that just needs an extra vehicle in your house. Something a little to either have fun with or maybe to also be practical to use that as a second or third or extra vehicle and around. It fits in the garage easily. It fits in the driveway easily, wherever you want to put it. If you are storing outside, you can get a cover for it and keep it nice and pristine looking so many options. And then you join part of an iconic group of people literally around the world that drive, uh, Vespas as well. So here at Jim Gilbert’s powerSports, this is our very first 2023 Vespa. There are still 2022 s around here. So if you’re looking at this and you just want a little bit of a discount, 2020 twos, actually there’s one sitting right over here that’s the identical color.
So there’s lots of options here to come in. And again, it’s March in 2023 right now. You can walk through the Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports showroom and see all kinds of scooters. I’m looking at, there’s five there. There’s another five there, there’s three more there. There’s uh, three more there. I’m just in one section. I’m not even in the main showroom. They’re everywhere. You can compare the different styles, you can check ’em all out. And if you want to have some fun this summer, maybe it’s time for a Vespa. Thanks everybody for watching. Let me know what you think. If you ride a Vespa, lemme know when the comments, what you love about it. If you’ve had a scooter in the past, tell me all the fun things you’ve done with it. Uh, maybe I should do a video of all the fun things I can do. Maybe I should do a video of all the fun things I can do in Fredericton with these things I’ll love to see. Let me know what you wanna see and, uh, continue to watch. Make sure you hit subscribe. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
With its powerful V-twin engine and long list of features, this bike is perfect for anyone who wants an uncompromising ride. So check t out and see for yourself why the Voyager is one of the best bargains on the market today.
Hey everybody it’s Peter. And in this video we’re gonna do a complete in-depth review of this Kawasaki Vulcan Voyager 1700. Now this is the 2023 model. I have reviewed this in the past, and to be fair, I made a mistake on that one. So we’re gonna correct that here. But the point of this video is to go through this bike in detail to make sure that you see all the things that you would want to see, the obvious stuff and maybe the less obvious stuff that not every other video shows. And if you have questions, I can come back to this bike again and again and again because I’m here filming at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where they gimme complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. So if you have questions or you’re interested in this bike, make sure you hit subscribe and follow up with questions and comments in the comments section.
And I’ll answer those in both the comments section and in future videos. So let’s get going with this review. So when I start my reviews, I usually point out my biases at some point. If there’s a bike that I absolutely love, I let you know right off the bat. And this is a bike that it’s just not a style that I would buy, it’s just I’m not a big cruiser guy. However, since being here researching this, doing videos on it in the past and doing videos, now I’ve really come to appreciate what this bike is, who it’s for and what it’s all about. And what I like about it is it is not a modern bike on purpose. So things like the Honda Gold Wing, if you want your apple car play in the display, if that’s what a motorcycle is to you, this isn’t that.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
This appeals to a whole different crowd. This is gonna be more of that classic cruiser style, classic cruiser feel. You’ve got some nice sort of gauges that give you that sort of old timey kind of feeling. And what I like about it is in the automotive world, every time you have a new vehicle, they try to increase and improve and, and make it more refined and better and better and better. Whereas with this, they understand what’s better. There’s an unre refinement to this bike that is crucial to its character and that is what’s really cool about this bike. You’ve got great reliability, you’ve got a great value, and you’ve got the right amount of unre refinement to make it a exactly what you want it to be. But it’s not so unrefined that it becomes uncomfortable or problematic to drive or anything like that. So we’re gonna talk about some of those lack of refinement pieces that give it its character, as well as talking about some of the important safety and updated things that give it that, you know, ability to ride it all day long and make sure you’re comfortable and make sure you’re safe.
So let’s dig into the details here. We’re gonna start with the front brakes and then work our way back through here. Work our way to the dash, the storage, the luggage, and we’re gonna talk about some of the character in this throughout the whole video. So taking a look at the front wheel here, you’ve got typical cruiser stuff, 16 inch wheels, not seventeens like a super sport bike or something like that. But you’ve of course have a lot of sidewall here that’s gonna contribute to some of the ride of this, uh, as well. And nothing too fancy from the looks of it. Of course you’ve got the dual disks, you’ve got good stopping power, but where you get some fancy things is in the things you can’t see. So of course this little sticker sort of tell us all, but of course you have abs which Is Analog braking system that’s, You know, typical in this Kind of class. But this K act system Is actually a really interesting
System where, you know, most of this bike is classic, but this is a Pretty advanced system. So on bikes over 300 kilograms or about 661 Pounds, that’s what this System is designed for. And essentially it’s a linked braking system that monitors your speed and can link the brakes front and rear. So where it becomes a big advantage is if you Hit that, you know, grab A whole bunch of front brake lever, it will balance the brakes front and rear. So it can link front and rear brakes, it will, you know, apply some rear brakes. Same thing if you use that brake, the foot pedal brake, uh, with your right foot and you give maybe a little too much there. It will also balance. So it is speed related, it can tell what’s going on, but the whole idea is on these larger bikes, you wanna make sure that everything’s kind of kept in control, kept, uh, in place. So it can link the brakes at any point and it will, but really where you have that advantage is in the harder braking, that emergency braking, you’ve got that real balance braking so it’s not pitching too far forward, it’s not, you know, locking up rear wheels and that kind of thing. So between the abs and the ability to have those linked brakes, you really have a confidence inspiring braking system designed for these bigger, heavier bikes.
So braking is one piece of the balance and control and suspension is a really big other piece here. Now I can’t really get the camera to view this correctly and this is where I made an error in my last video about this uh, bike. And it’s really no excuse, I just didn’t read the owner’s manual. There is an air adjustable suspension here. So there’s a little uh, shrader valve right there where you can adjust the suspension. Now I mentioned that you could go to a gas pump just sort of flippantly. Do not go to the gas pump, go to uh, get a low pressure, um, pump here and you could put air back in here. Now the reason you’d want to do that is if you’re loading this bike down, lots of luggage, passengers, uh, weight, everything else back here, you can restore that sort of ride height and restore that suspension performance, whether you’ve got a whole bunch of weight back here or very little weight back here.
So it’s just a really nice feature, both, uh, shocks on the either side, have a little nozzle there, you can get a little pressure pump, add some uh, pressure to that and make sure you’ve got the suspension performing as it should and as it would, whether it’s empty or full. So really nice feature to have right there. And again, like I said, I’ll cover up that mistake in the last video. Do not use the gas, uh, hose pump or uh, gas station, uh, air valve. Just use that uh, low pressure air pump. Now since we’re back here, let’s take a look at some of the luggage back here, which is really one of the main reasons you’re buying a bike like this. So talking about luggage, luggage should be simple on a bike like this. And really that’s what this is. It’s got some nice features in here. You’ve got good storage and a lot of length in here. So you know, fitting Something like my tripod in Here quite easily fit. So a lot of space here. There’s no real compromises around the bike or anything, it just comes in a little bit around the suspension type area, but nice wide spaces and they open from the top, not from the side. So you don’t have anything falling out the side. You know, typical stuff, you’ve got the double latch system here, there, so it’s a really secure close, you know, works very, very well, fits what you need. And of course there’s the top case as well. So let’s take a look at that right now. Again, simplicity is the key here. There’s nothing too fancy about this. One thing I will note is that this antenna is a little bit adjustable. I like leaning it just to hair back for styling, but it also clears this uh, case as it pops up. Now of course you can lock that right here. It does move the passenger back rest. So you’re probably not gonna wanna have your passenger sitting there when you open this up, but if you open that up, it’ll clear that antenna like that. And you have simple space here. So again, that’s what you’re looking for. Nothing too complicated. Nice and simple. You’ve got the solid clasp here. You do have a gasket running along here along with the design of the top going over the bottom.
Should have good water resistance in here as well. A waterproofness, uh, you know, I think it would be pretty solid for any kind of trip you’d wanna take. And again, flat and open, you know, simple, simple to use. Of course it leans like this has this extra wire to catch the top and it leans this way. So as the bike is leaning on the side stand, everything that could fall out is gonna fall towards your top here. So, you know, simple design, nothing fancy and that’s really what you want. Something that’s simple works open design. There you go, it works very well. So let’s stay with the back of the bike here. Obviously it’s on its side stand there. You can see some of those pipes on the bottom here. Nice styling, but let’s focus on the lights for a second. So as we turn the bike to the on position, I really like that you’ve got the standard kind of brake light down here, taillight, but then you also have these cool lights across here. Now the way they film isn’t exactly the way they look, but you get the idea that this whole area lights up. And then when I say the way they, uh, look, uh, on film, you see exactly the sort of the dots in there. You see a little more of a diffused look in person, but it’s really impressive. Look, it looks nice and modern, but you still have the classic turn signals so you don’t have the l e d turn signals. It’s kind of the glowing on, glowing off, which to me fits the overall feel of this bike. Not super, super modern, not super, super fancy, you know, gives it that character. But for safety’s sake, having a lot of rear light is really good. But l e d lights are instant on and instant off. So when I tap the brake lever there, you’ve got a whole lot of breaking power and a whole lot of brightness there. So you’re very, very visible, which I think is really important. You could be traveling on a bike like this in poor weather, you know, if you’re traveling across the country or doing a vacation or something like that, you can’t always plan for perfect weather like you would in, you know, a bike that zips around town. So having those really, really bright lights and the entire rear end of this thing lighting up I think is a really nice safety feature as well. So really nice modern look here. Really, uh, you know, well done to go along with sort of all the classic lines, the classic pipes and that kind of thing. So now let’s talk about the real heart of this bike, what makes it special. And this is where we talk about that whole refinement versus unre refinement type thing. Now you have some nice, uh, just overall coverage right here.
We’re gonna work our way to the engine here, but let’s just talk about where we are first. You’ve got some body work down here to the cover. Something like the Vulcan Vaquero doesn’t have this lower body work and this will keep the wind off of you, but what’s cool is it sounds like it’s breaking on camera, but it’s actually not too bad in person. There’s a little lever here and you have four little levers there that can allow this venting to fully open up, allow cool air to come across your feet or you can close it on down and stay a little warmer with no air coming through there. So kind of nice to have that. You’ve got the crash bars here that come outside. One of the things I like here is these foot pads are rubber mounted, but they sort of are floating foot pads. So that’s gonna deal with vibration. And when we talk about the heart of this, the engine, remember we started off the video, we talked about not overly refined, intentionally unrefined in some ways, and that’s what a big vwe is. It’s designed to give you a little bit of a shake to sort of have that feeling of that motor, uh, underneath you. This is not an inline force cylinder, which is, you know, smoothing out. This is designed to give you that feel, but you want that sort of shake. You want that sort of the movement there without the vibrations. So you’ve got the, you know, ability to, you know, dampen the vibrations in the foot pegs there, but still have a feeling of a true v twin that you know that rumble that you want. So again, rumble, yes, vibrations no really well designed. So this V two and the 1700 c c big engine does not have to rev hard to work.
And then you’ve got a six speed transmission on this. The top two gears are overdrive gears. So you can really bring those revs down on the highway first through fourth is really your acceleration gears, uh, to sort of drive in. And then those, like I said, those two gears of overdrive help with just overall fuel efficiency and also just taming things down as you’re going down the highway. Again, when you’ve got a rumbling engine, you wanna make sure that it’s um, you know, very comfortable on the long drive and this absolutely is. So it’s a torque monster. The Vulcan lineup really has a lot of variation. The Vulcan s is a parallel twin, you know, Kawasaki ninja engine. It’s a, it’s a twin cylinder from the six 50 Ninja. Then you move up to the 900, which is a V twin. And then you move up to this and this is the real torkey, you know, the engine to have if you want a true big, you know, strong cruiser.
That’s what this is. Now what’s cool about it is it is a fully liquid cooled engine, but you have the styling here with the deep vents. These aren’t just sort of drawn on. They have a deep uh, sort of fin there. So very much looks like an air-cooled engine, but the convenience and the reliability of a liquid cooled engine, which is quite nice to have as well. Moving back here, I don’t know if it’s in the shot, lemme just take a look at the camera here. Yeah, you can see that rear foot peg here or the rear foot board here. Same idea with these. Um, they have that floating foot pad there. So you’ve got that real ability there to have the vibrations damped but not to have to deal. Um, you know, you still have that feeling of you’re on a true classic motorcycle.
So before we get to the controls, let me show you what it’s like to sit across this bike. Now, one thing I didn’t show on this side is there’s a heel toe shifter. Of course that’s kind of standard stuff. This is a big bike and it is something that you feel that when you’re pulling off the side stand, but once you get it level very comfortable, the weight is very balanced. It’s, you know, it’s something you can move around on your legs left and right without a whole lot of worries. Again, I’m not familiar with riding these bikes as much, uh, you know for, I really like the lighter nimbler bike, but the surprise to me is once you pull it off that side stand, it’s very comfortable, relaxed, there’s no real concern. The seat is nice and low but still nice and wide and comfortable.
So it’s not that intimidating sitting here, even though when you approach it you’re going, wow, that’s a big, big bike. So you know, obviously if you’re in the market for this bike, this is probably not your first big bike and uh, you’ll be fully familiar with it, but it is quite comfortable and you know, while I wouldn’t call it nimble, it’s lighter than it might feel in that upright position. So show you the overall seating position here. You’re gonna keep my left foot down on the ground there and uh, you know, quite comfortable seating position. This one of course, unlike the Vulcan Vaccaro, you have the full windshield up here. So that is, you know, four head height at least or so. So it’s gonna pull the wind right over your helmet and uh, whether you want to go with an open face helmet or anything else, you’re looking through the windshield on this Vulcan Vaccaro similar design, but it has much, much shorter windshield of standard.
Now of course you can swap all these things out, there’s accessories everywhere so you can decide kind of what you want to do. But seat position’s very good here. This handlebars come back to you nicely and we’re gonna show you the controls on this bike because again, you’ve got that real classic feel here, but there’s a couple nice modern touches and a couple little sort of, I call them secret features that you maybe not realize right away if you’re just glancing out in the showroom. So we’re gonna dig into this area here and talk about all the features right now. So the first thing I wanna show you here is the key. And instead of just showing you the key, I’m gonna turn the bike to the on position like that and then I’m gonna pull out the key to show it to you. Now there’s two reasons I’m doing that.
First of all, the key is shaped pretty cool. It’s kind of matching your side bags there so you can get it in focus there a little bit. But what’s cool is this bike could be running right now. I turned it to the on position and I took the key out. That is a feature of this bike. You can see the ignition switch is kind of shaped a little differently. This is the kind of bike where you don’t have to sit there and let all your keys rattle around in front of you. You can uh, turn it on, plug it in, pull the key out, throw the key in your pocket and do make sure that you keep the key in your pocket. You don’t wanna pull it out and you know, put it on a desk and drive away because once you go over your fuel stop you will need the key to turn it back on. But being able to pull that key out allows you to have that sort of clean look there. No rattles, no nothing. And when you want to turn the bike off, you have a design here where you can just do that as well. So pretty cool design like that. Let’s go on and show you the rest of the controls now. Great. So once the bike is on, again, this is not an apple car play kind of advanced automotive display. This is really what you want on a classic motorcycle, but there’s good information here. So fuel gauge over here, speedometer, tachometer and temperature gauge. There there’s a digital information display which we’ll get to in a second here. We’ll try to show you some of that information and get a different angle there. And then down below is your audio system here so we can turn it on and uh, the Kawasaki area disappears Right now it’s set to auxiliary so we can change that to different modes.
We’ve got uh, uh, FM there, we’ve got am there. We’ve got the weather band over here and there’s lots of other stuff as well in here. Uh, the ability to set up a communications system in here. So just uh, off camera down here, there’s a little hatch there with some wiring in there which you can hook up various components for, whether it’s communications, cell connectivity, all that kind of stuff. Uh, it’s all pre-wired and set up ready to go. If you turn this system off, it just reads Kawasaki like that. And then again that display in the center, which I’ll try to get a better angle actually, we’ll just sort of freehand some of that angle here for a second to show you what’s in that dash and then we’ll go over some of the controls on this motorcycle. All right, I’ve decided to kind of freehand this a little bit. I’ve got a little uh, steady camera mount here. Hope, hopefully be clear enough. So again, we’ll turn it back on here and let’s talk about this display here. Now as we turn it on there, let’s just turn it off one more time. I want you to look at the left side right here. Cause as it comes to life you’ll get a really good view of what you’re gonna see while you’re actually riding this bike. So turn it back to the opposition. There is your gears first, neutral, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then od up top overdrive. So really fifth gear and six gear overdrive. But you know that six gear is much more of an overdrive and you’ve got some good information in here. So let’s just sort of cycle through some of that right here. Uh, where am I on the control side here? Oh, I’m on the wrong side.
So what we’re gonna look at is you see leaders per hundred kilometers is the average right now. Now I’ve got to range right there and then you’ve got uh, the average in there. So, uh, that is your um, center display. Then I’m gonna go this way on it and you can see everything up top your trip A and I’m using the wrong hand here cause I’m holding the camera. So there we go. Trip a, trip B and then your odometer up top. So you’ve got just basic information left and right and all of that is being controlled right over here on your right side. So I’m moving this thing that way for one display that way for another display. Very intuitive, uh, to control that in right there. So again, nothing too fancy here. You’ve got your lights up there, low fuel signals, high beams, that kind of thing.
Cruise control as well. We can turn the cruise control on right now. That cruise control light lights up in orange once it’s set, that set light lights up in green and get a little tough to read the camera’s having trouble adapting there. But you can see that cruise light, I can read this, this is abs, um, that kind of thing. I can read that in person. You can’t really see it on camera. So pretty simple controls. Let’s just take a look at those controls here. Again, I’m filming with my right hand so I got the wrong hand on the throttle lever over here. Uh, you’ve got your um, your hazard lights right up on this side. Now that’s different than just about every other Kawasaki and that’s because they’re making room for some of these controls over here, including your cruise controls. Cruise control just works just like a car.
Let’s see if I can get up in there. There we go. You can see set and resume on or off button right there. Your start your kill switch and of course that control compl controls that center display coming around the bike here. Let’s just uh, come back and go, whoops, here we go. Almost had my antenna touch my microphone there. Over on this side you’ve got a lot going on, but it’s pretty simple stuff as well. So you’ve got your high beam here, low beam right there, your horn up top there, signals, and then you’ve got your audio control. So volume right here, tuning right there and your squelch for a CB radio, which you could put in in the future. So taking a look here, there is some storage over here on this side here, speaker there, little bit of storage there, we’ll open it up for you in a second. And then you have a 12 volt port that’s all standard. Let’s come back around to this side here where you have something similar speaker there as well. So visually these are identical from oops, cameras. My camera mount here is adapting. There we go Visually, you see an identical side here, but this is the one that has that wiring for that extra connections. Um, you know, the wiring’s inside for things like your, uh, communication system, that kind of thing. And then there is one button way down here for your driving lights. So that is down here. Uh, we can just turn them on. Actually why don’t we just come around there as we turn them on. Headlight is not on right now, but there are your driving lights, which again are quite bright. If we get down into the view pattern there, you’ll see they’re nice and bright, so they give good visibility, help you be seen as well as see others as well.
And you can see that the signal lights are also part of that. Um, sort of always on lights anyways, if I started the vehicle, the headlight would start, but of course indoors here, I’m not gonna be running it right now. So I’m gonna continue to freehand this. And this might be a mistake because usually I like to work with my right hand, but my right hand’s on the camera. Now remember, because you can take the key out of here. I have seen some people complain that they feel like this shouldn’t have a key lock. But remember you don’t need the key in the vehicle to uh, drive it. So you could pull your key out anytime here and you can open these up. Now obviously you’re not gonna do that while you’re driving, but both these, uh, pockets are pretty deep here and they’re uh, basically identical on both sides.
But this one is the one with your wiring to connect various uh, components. There again, all pre-wired for communication system and other uh, audio tapes, uh, systems there, all of that you can get the Kawasaki accessories to match it out there. So, uh, again, same thing on both sides, but again, like I said, some people said, oh, I wish I didn’t need the key to use that. And I get that. But again, you don’t need the key in the vehicle. So it’s not like you have to turn it off, you know, do that. You can be at a gas stop, leave it running, get that back in. I wouldn’t do it while you’re driving, but certainly, um, it’s not hard to get into there. There’s your, uh, key as well for your gas tank there as well. So we’re gonna turn this uh, thing off and let’s talk a little bit more about it.
So let’s talk about who this bike is for. Well obviously this should not be anybody’s first cruiser or first motorcycle. It’s a bigger bike, it’s a heavier bike. And you know, first cruiser, Vulcan, s first cruiser, even just a regular Vulcan 900, these ones get into a more heavier class. If you are regularly taking two people, this is amazing. If you wanna go across the country, this is amazing. But all of that, you know why this cruiser over other cruisers? Well first of all, if you look at the Honda bmw, that style of bike route, you’re getting into a higher technology, higher price range, which to a lot of people, some of those technologies don’t matter. And even further, the buyer of this bike, some of those technologies actually take away from the riding experience that you want. Again, you know, like motorcycles, they should make a little bit of noise.
These aren’t Honda Civics that you want to be more and more and more refined. You want some of that lack of refinement that gives you that feeling of driving something that’s sort of true to what it is. And that’s what this is. And what I love about what Kawasaki does is they build all these, you know, high refined bikes, high technology bikes, TFT display bikes, uh, with the, you know, full uh, screen display. They add all kinds of technology into the bikes and they get more and more. But then the design team of these kinds of bikes allow them to be true to what they are. You don’t have to update this every year because it is, you know, it’s true to what it is. This is a bike that’s going to give you that v twin rubble, that nice torque down low that really gives you that power to accelerate. But it’s not something that is, you know, high revving screamer like Kawasaki might be known for. The other thing that’s nice is the wind protection here is very effective. It’s not just classic styling, it’s very well done. This is a bike that’s easy to ride a long, long time, but still gives you that true character if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s that and it’s a really good value compared to other more classic type cruisers. You can get a new bike with warranty compared to buying a used bike that who knows what’s been done to it, who knows how many times the oil’s been changed, that kind of thing. Then that’s a real thing here. There’s a real value equation to this bike as well. You’ve got the style, you’ve got the feel, but you can get it in a brand new bike as well.
So again, I’m not a cruiser guy, this is not a bike I’m gonna buy for myself, but I understand it. I think it’s, you know, I understand the people who buy it. And again, you guys in the common section, let me know again, when you caught my mistakes in the past, if there’s things that you want to know about this bike that I’m not pointing out, or better yet, if you are an owner of this bike and think that I should add things to a future video about this bike, let me know in the common section below so we can kind of build a database of information for the people that are interested in this bike. Again, remember I’m filming here. Give Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. I can come back to this bike again and again to make sure we get all your questions answered on future videos. So make sure if you’re interested in this bike, you hit subscribe. Lemme know when the comments, uh, what you think about this bike, especially if you’re an owner of this bike. Let me know, uh, why you love it. And uh, yeah, we’ll just leave it at that. We’ll tune in for the next one. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter and this is the Kawasaki W 800. This thing is super cool and we’re gonna get into that as I do a complete in-depth review of this motorcycle. And I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where the best thing for you is if I don’t answer every question you have about this vehicle here in this video, you can let me know in the comments below and make sure you hit subscribe if you’re interested in this vehicle because if you let me know in the comments what you want to know about it or tell me about your experiences with it, I get to come back and do more videos of the same vehicle over and over again to make sure that we build our nice database of information here to get the questions that you wanna know about this bike answered.
So I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. Forgive me access, let’s get going with this review. So I wanna be clear right from the very start, I’m a fan of what this is. It’s not something that I’ve currently bought or even, I’m not sure if I would buy it, but I love that it exists. So I was talking to my kids this morning telling ’em about the motorcycle that I was gonna talk about today and it’s kind of like, and the way I made it makes sense to them is this is kind of like taking a 1960s Mustang and just bringing it to the showroom floor in a brand new vehicle. Except it’s exactly the same except for things like modern breaks and a couple other modern things. So let’s talk about the modern pieces of this before we get into what is truly retro modern breaks.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
The breaks are better. Abs brakes, we’re gonna focus on them a little bit better. The other modern piece is fuel injection. Now there’s this whole debate about oh it should still be cared, this and that. Reality is for emission’s sake, it has to be fuel injected. This one is, and I think that’s a good thing because I remember following bikes like these on like, you know, bike ride, like motorcycle rides and that kind of thing. And you never wanted to behind these things cuz you could barely breathe when they started going, you know, if they weren’t tuned exactly perfectly. So the fuel ejection is gonna help you out in cold starts, in warm weather, in altitude changes and all that kind of stuff. But the best thing is this is all still old school stuff. This is a really unique engine. We’re gonna talk about that a little bit later in the video.
But overall this is unique bike as well. I’ve done a review on one of these in the past. It was the cafe version and it was a 2019 model that I reviewed just a few months ago. So it was an out of date, uh, you know, vehicle instead of a brand new one like this. But that was the cafe model and I wasn’t a huge fan of the CD position. It was a very leaned over, hunched over position. It has a nice little cow out front, it looks super cool, but for me it’s not something that I would ride. And the issue I really had with it is I kind of felt like it was a kind of a mixed bag of things. This is not a modern day sport bike. So crunched over in a modern day sport. Tuck for me didn’t feel like the right mix of this, although it certainly had that retro look.
This is a comfortable bike that can be used for everything. It’s an 800 cc engine, actually 773 cc engine, but it’s a bike that beginners could ride. It’s not overly powerful. And the nice thing about this engine is it feels like it would probably go forever because it’s never pushed to the limits. There’s a style here which like I said we’ll talk about that makes it nice and easy to ride. Um, you know, and just kind of easy on the engines. Never high pressure or anything. There’s nothing too crazy about this, but it’s a lot of fun. And for guys like me who grew up on bikes in the eighties with chrome fenders and other stuff like that and you know, I was driving seventies bikes that uh, my dad had and stuff like that. The chrome fenders kind of brings you to a time when motorcycling was cool, not just because it was really fast and really high performance, it was just fun to be out on two wheels and that’s what this does.
It’s kind of like that Harley kind of feel fun to be out on two wheels without some of that Harley kind of look. So classic looks but still practical. So let’s dig into some of the details that make this bike really unique, especially we’ll get to this engine, it’s really unique as well. But let’s just start with an overall view here. So as we take a close up of the entire bike in one shot here, you’re gonna notice a few things that you probably won’t see on camera but that people do notice when they walk in. This bike looks to some people to be longer and it really is a lot of the modern sport of your bikes. They kind of make ’em a little bit more compact for handling. It’s not that this doesn’t handle, but you should be able to tell this is not gonna handle like a modern sport of your bike.
Uh, something like the um, Z650 RS is more powerful than this has a smaller engine, but it is really a modern sport bike with an older style tank where this is older style the whole way through. So that longer wheel base was more common in previous bikes. You’ll also notice if you see it up close that the wheels are larger. These are larger than 17 inch wheels that you tend to see on a modern sport bike. So the pers perspective of all of this starts to change. What you gain here is the look of the old tires with modern rubber compounds that you still have some good grip on over like that. And like I said, we keep climbing back to this engine, I’m gonna work my way to the engine but we’re gonna start over here at the front brake and work our way back.
So let’s take a look at the front wheel here. We’ll get our way to the brakes here, which are quite large by the way. So overall you’ve got some cool things going on here. First of all, you’ve got the chrome fender, you just don’t see that anymore, but it’s not just the modern style chrome fender. You have that little support bracket that runs across here. Again, gives it that classic look. You’ve got the classic looking tires, but you can tell they’re modern rubber even just by feeling them. They’re not sort of one, they’re not aged out, cracked out everything else, but you’ve still got good grip on the rubber. So the rubber compound is more modern, but this is a Dunlop tire. It is a 190 19. So 19 is the diameter here. Now 19 inch rims is often used on some dirt bikes. The adventure bikes go up to 21, but 17 inch rims are usually the traditional front tire size here. This is a 19, it’s also that 100 usually uh, a lot of sport bikes would have a one 20 width tire. So a little bit narrower, a little bit longer diameter. All again that full retro feel, full retro look. And of course you can see the spoked wheels and spoke rims and that kind of thing. Where there’s a difference here is this break, it is a single break so it’s very uh, similar to the uh, original, you know, bikes from this, from the era that this looks like it belongs to. Um,
But you do have some nice things in here. So the older brakes used to have this as a solid piece of metal and you’ll still see that on the backs of modern brakes. But on the front bike you have a floating caliper here because it’s gonna be doing most of your braking here. So you’ve got these little rings in here with a separate piece of metal inside there. And that basically allows this break to function like a modern break. It’s gonna expand and contract a little bit. It will keep it from warping by being a separate thing. So fully modern braking system ventilated here. Not the highest spec performance that we have on all the other bikes which often have a dual um disc. But certainly more than you’re gonna need for a bike with this power of this size and this types of riding.
This is not designed to go 250 kilometers an hour in the jam on the brakes. The other thing is here, this little ring here is your abs ring. So you do have anti-lock brakes front and rear on this. So a lot of that extra safety while still keeping the extra the uh, old fashioned look here. So I really like what they’ve done here as far as bringing an important piece of better brakes cuz the old classic bikes, if you want a classic bike you’re gonna have to deal with terrible brakes. Now you’ve got up-to-date brakes, which makes it much more safe, much more fun to ride when you know you’re safer. So now I wanna focus on the engine here because the engine is really what makes this, like I said, that classic car that’s just brought into the showroom as is with fuel injection added.
So this is the way engines used to be made. So this is an air cooled engine. You can see the air, the vents here, they actually, or the fins here, they actually do cool the engine fins here around the headers there. So you’ve got an air cooled engine, 773 ccs. This is a 800 ish cc bike that would be appropriate for newer riders, even brand new riders. Um, because it’s not all about power. And the reason it’s not all about power is because this design right here is just sort of that classic design. So this is a bevel gear and shaft, uh, driven cam shafts. Uh, they just don’t do this anymore. And the reason is there’s rotating parts here. They can’t travel at the speeds that a modern sport bike would want, um, you know, to do so they stopped doing this design but it’s in addition to the classic styling here, this shows you that this is a classic style but also a classic design.
So this is not going to be able to put out, you know, 150 horsepower, something like that. The, I think it’s around 50 or so. The torque number is just a hair less than that. But again, good balance of horsepower and torque in this engine that makes it fun to drive. And you’ve got that classic feel classic sound as well. You can see the exhaust there, classic styling but also gives you that classic sound. So really all you’re doing is adding a fuel injector instead of a carburetor to help with emissions, which I think is a good thing. But it’s fully classic engine here. It’s a twin cylinder engine here and everything about even the side here, like I can kind of wrap around here into each individual cylinder is sort of almost separated there. Whereas a current modern day twin is all one casing right together.
So you’ve really got not just a style difference here, but the way this works is just like the old bikes as well. But with that reliability, and again because there’s not high compression ratio, because there’s not high revs, fast moving parts reliability on this kind of thing should be fantastic. The only reason they don’t do these anymore is because you have all these moving parts that you know there. These, this is a shaft that spins and bevel gear and that kind of thing. So what you end up with is something that can’t travel at modern day motorcycle engine speeds. So they just don’t, they just make it travel at the speeds. It’s comfortable doing that and that makes it kind of a classic bike. That’s a lot of fun. So working our way to the back here, we’re gonna do the sort of the general overview before I focus on a few more modern pieces here as well.
So obviously we’ve got the modern brakes here, the disc brakes again, a bike like this would’ve had drum breaks at the rear probably back then. Uh, these are ventilated disks again, fully modern system with the abs ring in there so it has abs in there as well. But the overall style here is not just styled like an old bike, it works like an old bike. You’ve got the shocks on both sides. So none of this horizontal backlink suspension that centers the mass and brings it low in a modern sport bike. You’ve got some pieces that come up here. It’s going to ride like an older bike. Now you do have modern suspension components which is gonna make it ride better than an older bike, but you still have the overall feel of all that as well as the look. And you can see, you know, the bump stops up here like everything is just kind of old style.
You still got the chrome fender in here. We’re gonna talk about some pieces up there that you can’t see as well from the angle we’re filming at. Uh, you know, you’ve got the uh, hydraulic disc brake or hydraulic uh, brake fluid right there. So you’ve got some of the extra modern pieces built in, but very classic feel even in the frame design here. You haven’t got the real high tail there, you haven’t got uh, you’ve got extra things here. The way they build these um, foot pegs on is not done for purely lightweight areas. You’ve got um, you know, the extra overbuilt areas like they used to do with bikes, rubber mounted, round style, um, pegs there as well. So just overall very cool. Again, it’s not just style to look like an old bike, it actually works like an older bike tucking in a little closer here.
I wanna show you a couple cool things. They used to always put these on bikes. There we go. You can see that little hook down there and there’s a little hook over here. That is how we used to mount luggage. We didn’t have hard bags on the side with clean slick mounts. What we used to do is just take our bungee cords or whatever we had and strap them around onto the seat. So you do have those little pegs there. You can also see this handles here. Um, this handle here if one, I guess a passenger could use it, but it’s also to help you put it on the standard center stand that this bike comes with. So you have a side stand and a center stand. We’ll get to all those a little bit later. So those are cool things at the back end here.
There’s another cool thing at the back end that I wanna show you. Let’s just move the camera a little bit further back. So back here you see that chrome fender come out well beyond here. Now of course a modern bike has these kind of weird looking plastic fend. This is chrome, this is real. This is when bikes were designed before the word the words fender eliminated or kit were even known. You’ve got the cool styling to the uh, lights here that has that sort of spread like the old lights used to have. They’re fairly large signal lights and they’ve
Got of that, it’s hard to describe almost like a diamond type pattern inside there. This is the way the lenses used to look on the brake lights. On the signal lights. So the, the whole feeling here again while you get modern lights is very classic the overall feel here. They’re nice and solid mount. There is still some rubber mount, some flex there, but they used to be mounted all chrome, that kind of thing. There’s still mounted very solid like that, so that’s pretty cool. And then no 17 inch wheel on the back either. So you have the 19 on the front, you have an 18 on the back and it’s about a one 30 width here. So not overly wide, uh, wider than the front though. And uh, you know, again that classic look with the spoked wheels and this classic tread but the modern rubber.
So very cool design details here to not just make it look like an old bike to put actually be an old bike produced today. So the one thing that classic bikes did better than most modern bikes is they made a really comfortable place to sit. First of all, this is a soft cushy seat with some nice pattern to it. It’s got those, you know, bumps in there that are really good. But this is a wide seat. And again, it’s it’s level. It’s not just like a single seat here and then another little joke of a seat on the back. You wanna take two people on this, you can do that. That’s how motorcycles used to be. Take yourself, take a friend, not a big deal Sitting across it again, nice thing to swing my leg over there. It’s not a huge high leg swing. It’s very easy to get on.
My feet are flat on the ground on this easily. I’m about six feet tall, but you could be much shorter than me and easily reached to the ground, which is how things used to be sitting up here. The overall seating position is excellent. So if you see me sitting here again, very casual, very relaxed, you know, there’s no wind protection here but older bikes didn’t have that. You don’t really need it. You’re not going, you know, 150 kilometers an hour all day long. That kind of thing. Couple little things I really like. The side of the tank here has these extra rubbery plasticy type, um, tank pads here that protect the tank. When you look down, it looks like a classic motorcycle. These are extra styling pieces with little emblems on there. Again, not the best for aerodynamics, maybe not the best for you know, the way the shape of the tank looks in a modern tank.
But they’re there for the style. So when you’re sitting on this, you really, really feel like you’re on a classic bike but you’ve got that reliability and they do a lot of things in the instrument cluster here to make it look classic as well. So let’s start taking a look at some of those things and you can really kinda get the feeling for what it’s like to ride this bike. So let’s start by taking a look at the gauges here. Now I’m filming at a little bit of an angle just to get some of the studio light glare away from these, these of course are flat pieces of glass and that’s the classic style and of course you’re gonna see um, some glare on that in a studio light, but outside it’s not gonna be an issue. You can see you’ve got the really classic kind of font there, basic gauges here.
And what I love about is you turn this thing on. Usually you see something like ultra-modern other than that sweep there, there’s no modern like display or anything else in here. You have your odometer, you push a button here in the center, you can go to the trip odometer and then you go back to the clock and that’s it. Odometer trip, a like just trip odometer and the clock. So that’s literally all you get in here, which is again that classic bike feel. Now you do have a couple extra warning lights in here. You have the oil light, the engine light and the abs light is currently lit. That is going to be something that you have on a modern bike because you need that information to here you can see the red line is 7,000 rpm. So for a motorcycle quite low. And again this is all about sort of that it’s not designed to over rev, it’s not designed to be, you know, a modern sport bike.
It’s just designed to be something that is cool. It is a true classic bike made in a modern factory. So pretty cool there. Let’s look at the switch gear here as well cause you’ve got a good mix of old and new here. Take a look at the left side handlebar. What I love about the way Kawasaki approaches this bike is they do give some modern things, but let’s just start with what’s not modern. They could easily carry this section over from another Kawasaki bike and you know, call it what it is, a part spin kind of lighting and accessories things. But if you look here, the way this um, signal light is or signal switch is hooked up, it’s just that classic metal with the plastic. It’s very much feels like the classic bike. It’s not, you know, quite to the same fit and finish standards of a modern Kawasaki, but it still feels great to touch but it functions like an older bike and this overall section is much narrower around the bar than the modern bike.
So they don’t just do carryover switch gear, the horn button here is a round button, like they would’ve been the smaller headlight button. That to me is a little less ergonomic than they’re more modern uh, bikes. It’s a little easier to hit this but it works very well. So you’ve got that pretty cool retro piece that really fits that classic look and it’s one of those things that you don’t notice on video, but when you sit on the bike and put your hand next to it, if you’ve driven older bikes, you right away notice this is different than a modern bike and it’s familiar for an older bike. Now over here you go full on modern. So you’ve got the adjustable levers here and this one has, oh is it? Okay, there we go. Yeah, five settings. I thought it was seven. I’ve read the one, I thought it was a seven.
But there are five settings of reach adjustment here. So you can push this out, you can spin this around and this is your clutch lever so you can set it out for various, uh, widths or or various, uh, longer grips there, which is pretty nice to have. Now the clutch itself is a slip and assist clutch. So again, like the abs brakes give you some of that modern safety technology. If you were to whip through a downshift, they bring this into racing. But in on the road where it makes sense is if you don’t really rev match properly and you just dump that clutch on a downshift, in theory the rear wheel could, you know, overspeed the engine, that kind of thing. Or it could really, you know, when that happens, really what happens is your rear wheel can skid uh, by locking up or just slowing too fast in the quick release of your clutch.
Now what the slipper and assist clutch does is it allows the clutch itself or allows the um, wheel itself to continue to roll and the clutch will slip. The benefit is that it also slightly lessens the clutch pull. Now I’ll tell you right now this clutch pull is not as light as many of the other slipper and assist clutches on the other bikes, but it does have that. So as a safety feature, you have it but you still have a heavier feel of an old bike but not as heavy as it could be. So kind of cool the way they mix that, uh, in again with these adjustable levers and the slip and assist clutch. Let’s take a look at the driver’s side or the uh, throttle side for just one second and look at the switch gear there. So throttle side, again, styling of the grip is very similar to the older style bikes.
Not super massive or anything like that, but again, feels familiar. And same thing with the switch here, a little bit smaller switches, not carry switches, carryover switches from other more more modern bikes. And again, that round start button which matches that round horn button. On the other side you also have the front brake lever, which is reach adjustable. There are uh, four settings here, five settings on the clutch. That’s just kind of what they do. Uh, but you can’t see it on the shot there but it is adjustable so you can get comfortable on this bike no matter what. Both in seating position as well as reach to the levers as well. Very good system there. Taking a look at the front of the bike here, I kind of like what they’ve done. Again, you’ve got these oversized signals that would be very large for a motor bike.
I don’t know if you can see the pattern developing on my hand from that angle, but that again is due to the pattern in the lens here that helps it spread. So you have that really classic look and you can tell these aren’t l e d, they’re kind of glowing, brighter and kind of dimming off. Uh, unlike the L e d that’s instant on, instant off. So classic look here, but they didn’t go classic headlight. And I’m a fan of this, I think, um, modern l e d headlights are so much better, especially compared to classic lighting. There’s no point to go with an in-between light here. Let’s just go full l e d, which they do. I don’t know if it’ll show the high beam. Nope, because it’s engine’s not running won’t go to the high beam, but modern L e D light here, high beam will be up the top there.
So really good job here with giving you that retro look with the modern safety of that modern L e d headlight. So before we talk about who this bike is for, a couple little things. One thing that just came up when the headlight was on, because this is a fuel injected bike. When the fuel is low, you’re not switching that uh, to the reserve tank. You actually have a fuel light in here because there’s no fuel gauge. Again, it looks like the classic one, but I did notice in that display, the one that shows the odometer, the triple odometer and the clock, it was also flashing the word fuel. So again, couple little minor tweaks in there that just help you on a more modern bike, really like that as well. So who should buy this? First of all, if you want a classic bike but you don’t wanna be fixing it every weekend, you wanna be riding it.
This is a classic bike and it’s classic in feel the whole way around because this engine is designed and built exactly like these older style engines. You have the full classic feel, the whole classic sound. The way this thing’s tuned for sound, it sounds, looks and feels exactly like a classic bike because it is, it’s not designed with the latest technology, it’s designed with older technology. So that makes it really cool. Obviously if you’re looking for a bike that’s classic. Um, this gives you that in a modern package. And the bigger thing is in a safer package you’ve got those a b s breaks in there. You’ve got the modern l e d headlights, um, you know, and all your components are up to date even though
The, the shocks here are the older style. You’ve got modern components in here, so they’re gonna work. You’re not buying a bike with worn out shocks, worn out brakes, worn out tires as well. With modern rubber here you’ve got a lot of things kind of in that modern size, modern way. And if you run into people, they’re gonna sit there and say, what year is this bike? They’re gonna be shocked to hear that this is a 2023 because it really is classic in every way, not just in the style of the tank but in every piece. They’re not trying to run modern. So that’s a good thing. Where I think this bike may also appeal to a few people outside of the people that are obviously looking for this bike is this is a really nice comfortable bike that’s not crazy fast that has some style, has some appeal.
It’s not as nimble as the modern sport bikes, but it’s in no way a difficult bike to ride or maneuver on. Uh, the weight is positioned a little bit differently. Like they could certainly, you know, move this forward and put the shocks forward to position a little bit lower center of gravity and they do that on their retro sport bikes like the Zed 900 and Zed six 50 rss, the RS models. Uh, but you know, you have some weight higher up so you do feel it, but it’s not a heavy bike, not a hard to maneuver bike. So if you want something that’s comfortable, something that’s comfortable for yourself and a passenger, something that’s great for zipping around town, not all about outright performance, but just about fun riding everywhere. This thing’s fantastic, it’s really, really good for that. So the fact that Kawasaki makes this, and again they also make those retro sport bikes, the RS lineup.
So the Z900 Rs and Z650 Rs, those bikes are gonna be modern sport bike classic looks. This is gonna be classic everything, classic feel. It’s unrefined in the right way to make it feel like a modern or like a classic bike without the hassles of maintenance. So comfortable, good for a passenger, great for a round town, country, roads looking cap, capable of highway driving, but most of the time you’re gonna be zipping around riding it for fun, parking it outside your, you know, favorite coffee shop, going for coffee, that kind of thing. It’s a conversation piece when people see it. And if that’s the kind of thing you’re looking for, you really can’t do better than this. And there’s a history of this bike, which is a whole other video, but why it is like it is, you could talk about the way the engine look, why does that look different?
How does it work? Those are things you can talk about and it makes it fun. You’re out there riding it instead of repairing it. You’ve got some modern emissions so whoever’s following you is not choking. Uh, but other than that fully retro bike, very, very cool bike. I’m a big fan of it. So let me know what you think. Again, I can come back to this bike. If there’s something that you wanna know more about, let me know in the comments. Make sure you subscribe if your interest in this bike, cuz we’ll come back to it again and again. And I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports for giving me access to this, uh, and all of their lineup to make sure that I can give you guys as much information as we can. Just keep building a database. And again, if you’ve ride, if you ride this bike, let me know when the comments, what you think of it, uh, tell other people here, uh, what it rides like, and, uh, why you enjoy it. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey every body, it’s Peter and this review is one I’ve been looking forward to for a very, very long time. It’s going to be a bias review because I’m a huge fan of this bike. In fact, I was this close to buying this exact bike, this VIN number, but I didn’t, I bought a different bike. So we’re gonna talk in detail about the Ninja 1000SX, why it’s incredible, why it’s such a good value, why it’s not what everybody thinks it is. And I’m gonna go in depth to some of the technology in this bike. And if you have questions, make sure you subscribe and make sure that you let me know when the comments below. If there’s something I left outta this video or something that you want to know, let me know because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup and I can come back to this bike again and again to make sure that you get the answers you need.
And I want to come back to this bike again. Again, this one here is sold. I didn’t buy it, but someone else did. So it’s uh, a do not sit on except for me in this video. But uh, there is another one coming in and I’m sure we can probably get more from there. Again, this is Canada’s number one volume Kawasaki dealer. So you know, if somebody can get one, I’m sure we can. So we’re gonna go in depth with this bike. And again, this is gonna be a slight variation from what I do. I am going to give this a little more time than some of the other ones because this is in very much a flagship road sport bike In the Kawasaki lineup, there are race sport bikes as well, but this one has technologies that we can learn about that will filter into other uh, vehicles.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Now really quickly, if you haven’t been following this channel, when I said I almost bought this, I’ll tell you what I did by, I’ll throw a picture of it on screen right now. I bought the Z900 RS Se instead. That se kind of made a difference to me, which to be frank, in 2023 like this, in 2023, like I pointed to that cuz it’s just off camera here. Uh, like that, uh, Z 900 Rs. The similarities are that I wanted something that was upright, something with great suspension, great handling and great breaks and good power. Both these bikes have that, which is why it would be not a competitor for most people, but it is a competitor for me. The flip side is, other than the Brembo brakes on that and the Olin shock, this bike is better in virtually every single way.
Uh, maybe seek comfort is kind of a toss up. Uh, I happen to like that one, but this one is also very comfortable for me. But other than that, this one is a lot and this one is in 2023, $300 less expensive. Now the overall value picture does change a little bit because in Canada where we’re filming here, this is a slight jump in insurance over that one. And I say slight jump, I don’t know the exact number offhand, but uh, it is a different insurance class than that. So why do I buy that one? Because I like it. And we’ll talk about why you buy bikes a little bit later at the end of this video. But, uh, let’s go with an in-depth review of this one right now. So let’s start out by talking about what this bike is as far as a class goes.
This is a classic sport bike. Now the modern day sport touring class has really changed to an adventure style bike. Uh, the more upright style bike. And that’s one of the things I like about this is although this looks like it is a race bike, uh, for the street, this has a very upright riding position. And unlike the adventure bikes, it keeps a center of gravity low. And it is a true, you know, sports performance bike. So if you think about it, in the land of cars over the past, uh, number of years, you can buy a sports car, something like a Porsche nine 11 Turbo, which is a lot like this. It’s been evolved a lot over the thing and perfect over the time and perfected. But you can buy something that’s low and sporty like that. But you can also go to these luxury makes and buy a lot of sporty SUVs.
And in reality, the more adventure style bikes that are sport tours are really a lot closer to those sporty SUV SUVs. They handle very well for the street and in fact more than most people would ever need. But there is a difference in having things a little lower and a little more sporty. There’s a reason that you don’t see race bikes looking like adventure bikes. There is a difference in having things a little bit lower, but I’m just gonna hop on this quickly, we’ll hop on it again a little bit later. Uh, so you can see it from dead on the side, but I am sitting basically very upright on this bike. So even though it looks like a sport, uh, race bike, it is an upright styled bike and that does matter. So a sport touring bike has to do a lot of things and really it almost has to do everything.
What I like about this, and I think it should be, you know, I think everybody who buys this should equip it with the hard bags. It’s already sort of mounted in here. You have to get the pieces and parts, but they can slide in there. They work really well. And now you’ve got your luggage attached in a sport type bike. You also have good wind protection both with your legs and with your front. We’re gonna go over that in detail and then it has to be good power and it has to have great handling of great brakes. Now when we talk about good power, this one’s around 140 horsepower And horsepower is an interesting thing because you know there’s a Suzuki that has a com direct competitor to this and pretty much in every test this beats the Suzuki. And I’m not saying that this you prefer the Suzuki, that’s not a bad choice too, that’s a fine choice.
But you know, peak horsepower number is interesting in this too because the Suzuki only has more horsepower at the very, very, very, very, very top of the rev range, which if you take it to the track matters. But this one actually makes more power throughout the rev range right up to that around 140 horsepower mark. Uh, and it’s only the very top end that some of these other bikes. So the same thing happens with some of these other competitors that are more adventurous style. This one has a real torkey engine down low that 140 horsepower is not something Kawasaki advertises in North America. But that’s sort of the agreed upon number a hundred forty, a hundred forty two in that range is where the power is at. And if you think about a street sport bike, that is all the power you need for a street sport bike. It is not up to the 200 horsepower plus race bike, uh, that are the leader bikes, but it still has all the power you need.
But how it controls it, how it deals with it is really the big thing with this bike. So we’re gonna talk about some of those technologies now that allow you to make, allow this bike to be enjoyable and also really a class leading tech bike. So let’s start with the breaks. So I think one of the things that people forget with a sport touring is when you talk about performance breaks are a massive piece of that and breaks are more than just what you see here. Obviously this is a dual disc system, 300 millimeters, lots of um, ventilation in here. Everything about this is top spec, you know, the radial mount, everything about this is really, really good. But you’ve got a few extra things in here. Breaking depends on traction and the traction on these tires, these are the Bridgestone S 22 tires. The rumor is that these were designed in conjunction with this bike, literally for this bike.
So you’ve got really good traction both upright and in a corner. And that traction matters when you’re braking. Now when we talk about traction upright and in a corner you’ve got the K trc, which is the traction control and the abs. Now this is also the advanced ABS system. You’re gonna hear me talk about an IM U inertial management unit. And what that does is is there’s a computer inside here that can tell when the bike’s leaning, when it’s twisting, when it’s raising, all those kinds of things. And from a pure breaking perspective, that IMU allows you to have an advanced ABS system that is corner cornering abs. And that cornering ABS allows us to sense when it’s in a leann and treat the brakes differently than when it’s upright. So overall technology here, you’ve got everything you need. You’ve got the style of brakes that you need that the radial mount, um, uh, style brakes right there.
You’ve got great traction with tires designed for the bike. You’ve got the upside down fork here, which is again less unsprung weight, which is good, that’s good for handling. That keeps the wheel in touch with the ground at at the limits. And then you’ve got everything kind of combined including the electronics that allow you to have top level braking. So from start to finish, like I said, this is a lot like a Porsche nine 11 that’s been evolved over the years from start to finish. You’ve got a really good piece here. Now this used to be known as Z1000. They moved it to the Ninja 1000 when they did, they changed up the geometry a little bit, gave you a little bit better low speed steering and control and all of those elements play into a really comfortable uh, bike that can handle very, very well in all conditions here.
At least all on-road conditions. Interestingly here, the front fork and the style of all this, I don’t know that it’s a carryover between the Zed 900 or not. Of course the one I bought was the SE with the Brembo brakes, but the front suspension has the exact same suspension travel as the Zed 900 Rs and same uh, upside down forks and same style thing. So it’s possible but this is a shared component with that just tuned a little bit differently. So I’m gonna jump across the bike again here just so you get another view of what it is to sit on this bike. But we’re gonna talk about suspension as I do. So first of all, here’s the view of this bike. You can see both my legs are relatively square. I like that slightly back lean, but it’s not like, you know, you’re not square like this but you’re not way too far back where you’re uncomfortable.
So very comfortable seating position here and comfortable overall. So suspension has a lot to do with comfort but it also has a lot to do with handling and how much do you weigh the type of roads you’re on. All kinds of things can change how the suspension works with you. And the nice thing about this one is you have the fully adjustable front fork, the fully adjustable rear shock as well. You can see the preload adjusters right here. I can spin that if I have a lot of weight on the back, whether it’s a passenger or luggage, I can just right away adjust that uh, to make that uh, set that up bright. And of course that fully adjustable front fork in this class, it’s probably standard for everything to have some of those adjustments we you don’t have though is that preload adjuster on every bike.
So having this ability to have that preload adjuster there really makes a difference because it’s both about comfort but also about handling. And if you’re buying a sport tour, you want it to handle great in all conditions and if you load it up a little bit, you wanna sort of restore that ride height, restore that uh, suspension setting to where it needs to be, whether you have a passenger or not or whether you have gear or not. And that makes it really well. So suspension’s very good seating position is very comfortable as well. We’re gonna kind of take a look at some of the technology in here. But before we do that I want to talk about this. Im u again, so this inertial management unit, basically I’ve done a video on it and I’ll put a link in the description of this video about the IMU to kind of explain what it can do.
But little things like that abs, it can sense you know, if you’re leaning left or right it, so when you’re breaking it also senses lift on the front wheel. Now you have traction control that can help prevent that. But a lot of the wheely control on some of the Kawasaki bikes has to do with just the traction control. If the front wheel is moving a different speed than the rear wheel, it says hey, something’s going on and it knows how to control the wheely. With something like this, with all this power, obviously if you take traction control off you can wheelie, but the nice thing is there’s various levels of traction control and it’s not just the wheel speed that is sensing a wheelie, it also senses you coming up. So you have this extra control with your traction control, extra control with your braking and all of those things probably won’t bother you as long as you keep traction, keep wheels on the ground, keep things in place.
But whether you’re an aggressive rider or athletic driver as I like to say, or whether you are in emergency situations or whether you’re in poor weather, the electronics on this bike are really gonna keep you in control. Now that doesn’t replace, you know, using the most important thing to keep this thing in control. But if you’re an experienced rider, uh, you can push the limits of this bike more so than maybe some other bikes with some confidence that there are electronics there that can work with you. Again, this is not a beginner bike. There’s a reason that it’s in a certain insurance class. Uh, this is a very capable bike and you can, you know, you can have some fun on it but you have to be aware of what it can do as well. Uh, but the nice thing is with all of that technology, it becomes a very easy to ride thousand cc bike and also allows experienced riders to find their limits, whether it’s on a racetrack or on certain road conditions, uh, knowing that there is some extra backup from the electronic side rather than just from your hands, your feet and your head.
So let’s take a look at some of the technology in here and then we’ll kind of back away up to some of the other things that I really think are cool about this bike. So as we take a look at the display here, I am filming in a studio with a lot of glare. One thing I wanna point out though is when you have a camera filming a screen, you’re gonna see more glare than you would with your eyes. I can tell you that just it’s factual right now. I’m looking at the exact same angle from my eyes as the camera and there’s just less glare. So the other thing I wanna point out is that even though there is a little tiny bit of glare here, and again it looks like a lot on camera, as soon as you turn this thing on, that bright, crisp, clear TFT display really makes it easy to see.
So again, it’s much harder to film this display than it is to see in person, but it is very, very clear. Uh, I wish I could find a way to, uh, to make it more clear. So you’ve got a lot going on this display. We’ve seen these TFT displays before, but the technology, the software, everything is stepped up here in this ninja 1000 sx. So we’re gonna spend a little of time here and I may have to make a couple cuts cuz again, while I know everything that this bike does, sometimes I forget off the top of my head how to make it do everything. And that’s the same thing with uh, with uh, when you’re riding this thing just because it can do a hundred different things, you’re probably gonna find the 10 or 15 things that you like to find from it the most.
You’ll know how to do those easily. So it’s not that it’s hard to use, it’s just that sometimes it’s hard to film, uh, as I’m thinking and talking and doing everything else at the same time. So let’s just show you the basics. First of all, you have the four riding modes. It’s in the sport mode right now. You can hold the switch down, we’ll show you the switches in a little bit here and come down to road. You can come down one more time to uh, rain mode here and then you can come down one more time to rider mode. And what that’s gonna do is allow you to tailor, for instance, power modes, low power or high power. Um, there is a rider mode in here somewhere. Did I miss that? Oh boy. Anyways, there is an extra mode there and the rider mode allows you to customize low power, high power, um, as well as things like traction control.
There’s various levels of traction control in here and a lot of those things you can go through here easily. I wanna show you some of the extra things in this, uh, display that sometimes people don’t have. And then I kind of have a love-hate relationship with some of this stuff. So I think it makes a lot of sense because it’s cool. But um, lemme just cycle through. We’re gonna use this for a second. Now you can use the handlebars as well. You can see you might lean angle, you can have lean angle always displayed and that’s a bar graph. If I set the um, motorcycle upright, that green angle would come in back in there. We’re gonna come back through here and you can see on the side stand it’s at a 14 degree angle right now. So that is a live lean angle. So what I, or sort of the max lean angle.
So again, haven’t learned lean this thing over to the right yet. If I wanted to, let’s just pick it up for a little tiny second here. We’ll go right lean angle. Oh it won’t go to zero so we have to go further, right? So I won’t sit across it, uh, to do that. But the idea is, um, you can see the lean angles there. Oh, we’ve got some glare back in the shot, so let’s just work with that. Alright, but lean angle’s kind of cool. And again that’s that I am u showing you those kinds of things. Now one of the cool things is you can cycle through, uh, various things there. So we’ve got the lean angle that you can see, right? Hopefully you look what we’re seeing there, right? So we’ll cycle through that. You’ve got the odometer there, trip a, trip B, and then the lean angle and the max lean angle.
Now we go to the bottom side here. We’ve got the battery at 12 volts. We’ve got kilometers per liter, which you can set as leaders per a hundred kilometers if you wanted it or miles per gallon. The states the average. So that was the instant. The average liters per hundred kilometer, this is standard on just about every, uh, bike with any kind of display at all. Uh, there’s your range. So that’s your uh, distance to empty calculated based on how you have been driving and then your average speed as well in here total time. So that’s everything there. Yep, that’s everything there. You do also have currently your, um, display setting here of uh, the outside temperature or the um, the temperature, the ambient temperature, and then your cooling temperature up there as well. Now one of the things I wanna show you, let’s see if I can do this right off the bat.
Uh, if I can’t, I am gonna make a cut here because again, I was just playing with it and I’m sometimes I get confused when I switch from bike to bikes. So, uh, lemme just, uh, hold my selection button down here and I wanna show you, there we go. Coming into here, you have all kinds of things. Now I should point out anything with a TFT display does have the radiology connection, uh, radiology app connection. So you have the Bluetooth services there. Uh, you can have things like your email and, and text notifications coming to the screen, which again, I have mixed feelings about. So I don’t know if I want that when I’m riding because I wanna be paying attention to the road, especially on a motorcycle. Uh, but you can have that. But the other thing the Ride Ology app does with this is it can really track more pieces of your ride.
Uh, I’ll do a video on the Ride ology app in the future, but um, that is something to keep in mind that on this Ninja 1000, what a, what the radiology app can do compared to something like a Ninja six 50 is just a whole lot different. So that’s something to just keep in mind. Uh, for maybe for a future video. I’m gonna go down to display here and I’m gonna change the mode here to uh, we’re gonna go from type one to type two. We’re gonna select that and then we’re gonna just kind of come back here if I can get out. There we go. So now what you have is something that’s pretty cool. Uh, I like this and I don’t, so again, you’re using that imu, it can sense GForce there. You have your fuel gauge down there, but you can see the throttle, you can actually see the throttle position here as it comes up beside the neutral gear indicator there.
So right up in here, uh, you can see the throttle here, which I think is kind of cool. If you’re on the highway you can sort of see what, what throttle position you’re at and if you switch gears you can see it be in a different position, that kind of thing. So that throttle position is kind of cool. One thing I don’t think they should do that they do is they also show you, oops, uh, lemme just remember. There you go. They also show you the brake position. So it switched from throttle here to brake and again shows you brake pressure. Now this is something that it shows instant but it doesn’t seem to show maximum. So you should never be looking down at your display while you are braking. But it is an interesting thing to be able to see uh, your brake pressure there as well.
I would prefer thought pressure again, just because you can doesn’t mean you should if you’re driving, you should never be looking at your brake pressure while you’re uh, riding. But if you’re doing emergency stop and open parking lot, you can kind of see how much brake pressure you’re actually using. Uh, which is kind of a neat thing to do. So this is one of those things where to me the technology is there but the practicality is not. But I think it’s kind of cool. And just so you know, that only shows the front brake pressure. It does not show your rear brake pressure. At least I haven’t found out any way how to do that, uh, in this display as well. Your lean angle is constantly displayed here. Um, and we can change the trip a trip B up top. You can have your max lean angle and your current lean angle, those kinds of things.
So it’s kind of an interesting display that just shows something different. We will select it or switch it back here just for the person who’s buying the spike to keep it relatively normal, uh, way it is. But again, there are so many things in this bike that you can just customize that just make it pretty cool to use. So very cool system here. Now let’s just sort of show you the um, the rest of how we’re controlling all this stuff because there’s some differences in the way this bike is set up with its controls as well. Oops, I don’t think I switched it there. We’ll change that back for the rider and we’ll show you some of the controls. All right, we’re gonna try to film the controls from this angle here. I think you can see everything. We’ll start here with the little trigger thing.
First of all, everything in here is different than just about every other Kawasaki bike. There’s a lot more clickiness to how everything works and I don’t know if you can hear it cause I’m wearing the mic, it’s not near there, but if I be real quiet again there’s that real clickiness. So again, maybe you can hear it, maybe you can’t. Uh, the other thing is because you’ve got this selection, this is what I was using to control that display. It’s all right there. Again, most of your everyday things are extremely intuitive to control something like switching that display I would recommend is pulling over to do. Um, you know, it’s not hard to do but again it does take a little bit more of attention. But your everyday things very easy to control down here. The only thing you can’t see down here is the horn.
Yeah, you’ve got your signal lights here and then there’s the four-way flashers which uh, take, they do stick in there a little bit and pop back out. Uh, so hazard lights down there. So again this plus the reset button here, you don’t wanna accidentally hit that when you’re driving so it’s well placed out but you can easily reach it while you’re driving. Things like resetting the triple odometer or something like that. All easy to do. We’re gonna talk about the cruise control in a second, but I wanted to point out this as well because you’ve got all these controls here. You don’t have your traditional headlight like high beam to regular beam, which is normally what sits here. So the way this works is it is clicky again, a lot of our calak bikes have that flash to pass feature with your high beam. You can just sort of trigger it on trigger, you know, and it just turned while you’re holding the trigger, your high beams on.
But to turn your actual high beam on you push that away and uh, it will allow your high beam to be on. So it’s just kind of interesting uh, that they use this switch to do multiple things on this bike. You’ll also notice here that this is reach adjustable for your clutch lever here. It’s also reach adjustable for your brake lever. We’ll show you that brake lever in a second cuz it’s also a little bit different than some of the other bikes. The big thing with that is it just makes it reachable for everyone. You do have a slipper and assist clutch. So of course what that does is if you’re really aggressive on a downshift, it’s from the racetrack. But also if you just mess up a downshift, you’re not really rev matching very well. Um, it does allow you to let the wheel um, not slip.
So let’s the clutch slip instead of the wheel and uh, that makes it safer so you’re always in traction. And then the side effect of that is it makes for a lighter clutch pole. Now this isn’t ninja or sorry this isn’t Versys 300 x light but it’s lighter than it could be. So you have the slipper and assist clutch right there. And again moving this, uh, somebody pointed out the good point the other day, moving this uh, reach can also just sort of that bite point at least where it feels like that bite point comes in on the clutch. So that’s something else to remember there. You can kind of have that customization there. So if good, good controls there wanna show you the windshield adjustment really quickly here. I’ll have to find an angle that that works. And then we’re gonna go to the right side handlebar controls and show you those.
So taking a look at the windshield adjustment here, I really, really like this. It is super simple to adjust. There’s a little button down here that’s almost impossible to see and it has four different tens. 1, 2, 3, uh, there is four in there. 1, 2, 3, 4, I’m missing them. But the idea is you can have that windshield really straight up or quite a long ways down. I think the middle two positions are probably the ones you would use for most everyday driving. Uh, some people have criticized this because you have to push the lever there and it’s a sort of a two-handed affair. I don’t have any issue with that. I don’t think you should be adjusting the windshield while you’re driving. So they’re basically saying hey, we don’t want you to hurt yourself while you’re trying to adjust things. So we’re making it a two-handed deal. So, um, now the flip side is I think if there was heavy wind you could go from the highest position to the very lowest position easily by just pressing that with one hand.
But coming back up it’s a two-handed affair and I think it’s uh, probably best to stop while you do that. So keep in mind that adjuster works. Whoops, there we go. Steering wheel turned as I was coming around the bike there, no big or handlebars, no big deal. Just tapped my uh, tapped my uh, tripod there. But that adjuster um, also works with the aftermarket taller windshield as well that you can get from Kawasaki. So if you want a bigger windshield right now, this is gonna take the wind off of your chest but probably not throw it over the helmet of most riders, most tall riders for sure. So that little bit taller windshield only adds about an inch or so, but I think it’s a little wider as well. Takes a little extra wind away. Let’s look at the right side handlebars and then we’ll talk about overall protection as you’re driving this bike.
So we’re filming the throttle at a bit of an awkward angle here because interestingly your kill switch here is also your start switch. So instead of having a separate start switch from your kill switch here, uh, they put it into one which again meets the letter of the law. Interesting that they do that. They don’t do that on many other bikes currently we don’t have anything else in stock. Uh, haven’t seen the versus 1000 in person that might have it but there’s not another bike I could think of in stock that doesn’t have a separate kill switch from start switch. They do it like this, it is what it is, works really, really well. So the reason I’m kind of coming from this angle here is you can see that the um, actual brake comes out differently. It doesn’t just sort of pull out the side.
So this is the type of brake feel basically that presses del directly on that piece right there. And what that does is gives you really good precise feel. Again, this is all sport bike type stuff. Um, you know, every design on these brakes are fine, this one is just better and that’s really what it is about this bike. A lot of things on this bike you could do a different way and they’d be fine. But this bike, if there’s a better way for doing it for a better feel, better control, those kind of things, you get that on this bike. So now let’s talk about some of the body work here and the practicality of it all. So we talked about the windshield here, we’ve got a lot of width here. We’ll try to show you a view from the back where you can really see the width, but right now you won’t see it from your angle.
But I want to really sort of emphasize that the body comes very wide here and tucks in here. When your knees are on this bike, they are fully tucked in outside of the wind so it doesn’t show you that you know from the side but as you’re riding it, that is a thing that makes a difference. So again, even though this isn’t that adventure style tall bike, you’ve got good protection on your legs, you’ve got good protection above, you know on your body as well. And then that wide tank that has a real deep cutout here. So we’ll show you that a little bit later here as we go through A lot of the styling is just that styling but you can tell that there’s aerodynamic design to it. Everything here that’s uh, where the engine is that that venting or that open areas that allows that heat to come out.
It’s going to push the, the heat away from your body. So you’re gonna be able to ride this with good protection. It’s not too hot in the summer. Sometimes spikes with a great amount of wind protection are too hot in the summer but you still have that ability to have that air around you. Um, cuz again the engine’s not coming at you but in the winter or in the colder weather anyways, not in the winter maybe uh, you still can ride this in cool weather and have uh, that on there. Heated grips are not standard on the spike but they’re a Kawasaki option. I recommend throwing them on the switch gear mounts, uh, looks perfectly. I actually put them on my Z 900 Rs so that is something that I would do on this bike to sort of finish the package. I’d like to see that standard but uh, it is what it is.
Now coming back to this area here, we did talk about this little handle type here. This handle has built in areas for uh, something like on the Versys 650. You have those hard bags that come standard. I feel like they should come standard on this bike, but again they’re hitting this price point with this bike. Um, but you can easily mount those accessories whether you buy them with the bike or afterwards. Uh, they are simple to mount, they’re about 28 liters so they can take an entire weekend’s worth of the stuff. You can do either the side bags or you can get an actual uh, top bag. You can’t do both on this bike. So it’s something to keep in mind. The styling here, um, allows for the side bags nicely. That’s what I would go with. You could obviously strap something across the seat here cause you have these big handles here.
But yeah, body work down low is about aerodynamics and styling and uh, up here is about practicality with windy wind staying off your body as well. So what I’m finding is it’s really impossible to kind of show you the amount of in, uh, indent here. This is still curving in here from out here. So you get the sharp turn in here and then you’re still continuing to come in in, in into this very narrow tank area allowing your legs to tuck in. So that of course allows you to have great control. You can sort of brace your knees up against anywhere in this for control as a sport bike, but it also blends that wind protection there. Again, the color of the bike, the angle of the camera. It’s very difficult to show on camera how tight this is to feel like a nice small nimble bike, but how wide it is to give you all the protection you need.
I will say the seat, I’ve tried it a few times here now quite comfortable a little bit on the firm side, which I don’t think is an issue for most people. Um, I think that’s usually what you want on a touring bike, but uh, again, the size of it as well. Uh, a lot of bikes have sort of a narrow seat. This is nice and wide. So really happy with that as well. Take a look at the back here. There’s the cool versus uncool of this bike. This is the one thing that I think is a little less cool than it could be. First of all, the cool side. This is a one 90 series tire. Virtually everything else, even sport bike, uh, lineup of Kawasaki is one 60 to 180 in width. This is one 90. And just from looking at it from behind you see that, you can see this is a serious sport bike with a big, big wide tire.
It just looks cool. One thing that doesn’t look as cool is this to me, I mean maybe you disagree with me. Again, this is Euro five compliant, which I like. I like that this is not a um, you know, heavy uh, emissions type bike. One thing to know is that when they redesign this into this current model, you have a single muffler over here used to have the mufflers on both sides that cuts weight anytime you can cut weight is a graded idea. Uh, also helps with handling all the masses centralized in this bike. Anyways, it’s very, very good that way. I just don’t love the styling of it. I would’ve liked to see them style it a little bit better. The other thing is this one, unlike the Zed 900 Rs, the Zed 900, both of those bikes are sound tuned. This one’s not Kawasaki sound tune now it does sound very good.
Um, but I feel like it could have maybe sounded just a hair better if they’d gone through the sound tuning process, but maybe that’s not what this bike rider’s looking for. Relatively quiet, uh, at idle, which is really nice. Certainly. Uh, the other ones are louder. Z 900 Z 900 Rs are louder at idle. Uh, but it sings nicely when you get going, which I think is what most people want. So now let’s talk about who this bike is for. And here’s what’s interesting about the Kawasaki lineup. I came from a Versys 650 and almost bought this and I think that is a very logical move because if you look at the vers lineup, the smaller verus is more of an adventure off-road bike. The 300 then you have the 650. 650 is kind of that upright sport tour. It’s not an off-road bike at all.
It’s kind of a sporty tour. Uh, that 650 engineer is absolutely great for the road, but this is gonna have an insane amount of more passing power. And if you move to the verses 1000, you actually share an engine with this, but you lose some of the nimbleness of the verses six 50, which to me is exactly where this slots in. You add sportiness from the verses six 50, you are just as comfortable in an upright riding position. You certainly change the look of this bike into a sport style bike, but that’s kind of where it sits practically in the lineup. I think it is a very sporty bike, uh, with a lot of power, but the ability to put those bags on the back means that this becomes a true touring bike. Now can you whip it around town? Yes, it feels very nimble.
It actually for uh, you know, over a 500 pound bike, it feels fairly light. And again, that’s because all that mass is centralized, it’s all low. Um, so it’s a comfortable bike to drive around town and that kind of thing. But this is a bike that you really want to get out on the open highway, uh, long sweeping corners, but it still works well in nibble traffic circles, that kind of thing. It should be, you know, very good for all of your handling needs at any speed. But immense power, the electronic cruise control, we didn’t talk about it too much. Basically you set it and forget it, just like a car. Very simple to do. That’s a really nice feature to have here because it allows you to go on those longer trips. The flip side is it also has some performance features. We didn’t talk about shifting this display, we talked about the clutch, but you have an up down, quick shifter, not just up like the ZX six.
It’s up and down, uh, quick shifter. So it does require a little bit of revs to really work well. So if you’re aggressively shifting, um, you’re gonna want to just uh, you know, give it on some throttle and aggressively shifts up without touching the clutch. So again, quick shifter if you don’t know what it is, um, first gear to get going and then above that you can just shift up or down without touching the clutch. The way it does that electronically is it just cuts the, ooh, is it the timing and the shift, I dunno, it cuts fuel something for that split second electronically. Uh, because it’s electron throttle in here, it can cut that, uh, to allow that instant, instant, instant shifts. So again, moving to a bike with this much power but also giving the quick shifter makes this thing accelerate in any speed, in any gear, very, very well.
It’s got power low in the revs. If you just wanna kind of drive around torkey, uh, you know, third, fourth gear, that kind of thing, no problem. But you also have the ability to whip through those gears really quickly. So that quick shifter keeps it sporty. The cruise control and some of the other features keeps it uh, very good for a long distance tour, which makes it a really versatile bike. And then when you mix in some of those safety features, again, hopefully you never need the Kibs that Kawasaki intelligent braking system. So basically the advanced ABS system, this has that. Hopefully you never need to use that, but if you do, it has that hopefully you never need to have the traction control which uses the imu, which can sense lean angles and lift and twist and all those kind of things. Hopefully you never need to use that.
But if you do, you’ve got that as well. Technology is in this bike. Value is in this bike, like I said, $300 less than the 2023 version of the bike. I bought the Z 900 Rs, which doesn’t have the imu, doesn’t have the advanced abs, doesn’t have the digital display with the radiology connection, doesn’t have cruise control, doesn’t have the quick shifter, doesn’t have a whole bunch of things and $300 less with the ability to add factory luggage. This thing is a screaming good deal. Now I think Kawasaki Canada understands that this is an insurance class separate. This is classed closer to those race bikes simply because of the power. Uh, but for an experienced rider won’t be a problem to get insured on it and no problem. Um, but I think they recognize that. So there’s the value equation there. It’s not just purchase price, it’s ongoing insurance costs.
But this thing is absolutely amazing. If you want a fast bike, a touring bike, and a capable around town bike, you know, anything you could want to do, you can do in this. Even taking a passenger. A lot of these sporty bikes have a joke of a backseat. You can take your passenger around town, but you could tour with this. Um, you know, this isn’t something like the Versys 1000 with a big touring seat, but it does give you that. So everything in one bike for a really good value. And again, this class of bike is sort of leaving that overall motorcycle market. They’ve gone to the adventure sport touring style. There’s a reason to still have this. You get better handling in this type of style and you can still have all the comfort. So let me know what you think. This was a really in-depth review because this is a real flagship model for Kawasaki. So many little details. Uh, I’ve done videos on little bits and pieces of this bike in the past. Something like
The, like I said, I linked that in the description. Uh, but if there’s more you want to know or more something you want me to focus on a little bit better, uh, in a separate video, let me know in the comments. Let me know what you like, think about this bike. Uh, let me know if you think I made a mistake. Should I have bought the Z900Rs or should I have bought this? We did a poll and I think it was basically 60 40 people say, I should have bought this instead. And, uh, I guess that’s, you know, you buy the bike you like rather than the bike with all the specs sometimes. But let me know what you think. And again, I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports for giving me complete access to their lineup because I get to look at bikes like this and talk to you about them and come back to them. So there you go. Let me know and thanks everybody for watching.
Let’s go side by side, which one turns your gears????
Hey everybody, it’s Peter. This video is gonna be a fun one because I’m talking about two bikes that I really like. This is the Kawasaki Z650 Rs. It’s a 2023 model. It’s this beautiful green color and that is also a 2023 Kawasaki Z650, not the Rs, which stands for retro sport. So what we’re gonna do is compare these two bikes. We’re gonna talk about seating position, we’re gonna talk about how the different styling can make them the use case a little bit different. But really what, what we’re gonna focus on is a lot of the differences that the other videos don’t talk about. So for instance, we know it has a TFT display on this one doesn’t, but there are some things in that situation that maybe we’re not thinking about and maybe it uh, affects the way you use it.
And there’s a whole bunch of other little differences in these bikes that I think make a difference to which, uh, one may be better for you than the other. So here’s the thing. I’m filming at , Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. This is the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. So I can come back to these vehicles again and again and again and make sure that we answer the questions that you want to know. So if I don’t answer the questions you want in this video or if you’re interested in these bikes, make sure you hit the subscribe button. After that, if you have uh, comment, let me know in the comments section what you want to know, and I’ll come back to it both in the comments section and in future videos.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So let’s get going with this comparison. So just yesterday I got my first look at this 2023 model. We focused mostly on the green framed version with the darker gray. We’re gonna focus on this one today. And I mentioned that this bike really, really impressed me. It is just a great, great bike and there’s no way you can hide it. I mean, Kawasaki doesn’t try to hide it either. This is the better value than that if you just compare the spec sheet. My thing is though, people don’t buy motorcycles just based on the spec sheet. Sometimes they’ll pay more because they wanna buy the bike that they like. And I just bought a Z900 Rs, which same thing with the Zed 900, the RS costs more and you get a few things less. That being said, I bought it and I think there’s value in that retro sport, but we’re gonna talk about some of those differences so that you can decide, hey, if I’m getting this, what am I giving up?
Or in some cases, what am I gaining? We’ll talk about those differences. So like I said, seating position’s gonna be different. We’re gonna show you that coming up. We’re gonna talk about some of the technology differences, but I really wanna focus on the details before we get into some of the obvious stuff. So let’s start digging into the nitty gritty details and then work our way back out to some of the more broad things and we’ll talk about how those differences affect how you uh, how you like them. But yeah, overall these 2, 6 50 bikes, that six 50 engine is an absolutely great street sport engine. It’s not a racetrack engine, although you could certainly track either of these bikes. Um, but that six 50 engine, I’ve had it in a versus six 50 that I’ve owned. I loved it. It’s really good for what you want.
Both these bikes are lightweight, easy handling, and they have a comfortable seating position. One is gonna be a little bit different than the other and I don’t think anything’s more comfortable than the other, but there will be some slight differences in there as well. So let’s dig in. We’re gonna start right here at the front wheel of both these bikes and look at the differences. So starting over here on the Zed six 50, this is a little bit more modern style faring. We’ll move to that a second. The biggest difference you’re gonna notice is although on the spec sheet, these brakes appear to be basically the same. The dimensions are all the same. The style is the same. Again, this is sort of floating caliper. There’s the dual disks. They both have abs. The difference here is these ones stay with the pedal style disc a little bit more modern look and I’ll show you the difference in the uh, ZED six 50 Rs in one second as we take a look at the exact same thing.
The other thing to notice is this, uh, silver color. Now I call them the red and the green because there’s red frame and green frame, but there’s a silver and a darker gray. The silver color does come with these red wheels. So just remember when you’re looking at that. Um, it had, I believe it was black wheels with a green stripe on the uh, Z six 50. And the same thing on the Rs we’re looking at today. The wheels are a little bit different. So let’s take a look at that one right now. So take a look at these wheels. These are the gold wheels. Now you can get these on the 50th anniversary of the previous year. We actually still have one of those still here in stock, but this is the only way to get the gold wheels with the green paint in the 2023 model.
The other one, uh, we did a separate video of the uh, rs already, which is a black model which looks really sharp. So if you want the gold wheels, you can only get ’em on the green. And again, you’ve got those round cas or round uh disks here instead of having the pedal style one. So that’s really the only difference. The other thing is both of these bikes, and I talked about this a little bit in the previous video I did of the Zed six 50. Both of these bikes have the road sport, two tires I believe. There we go. Sport max, yeah, road sport two. These are a nicer tire than on the Zed 900 Rs that I bought. Which bothers me because this is a less expensive bike and you have the better Dunlop tire than I have now. I haven’t seen the 2023 version of my bike.
I bought the 2022. So it is possible that they upgraded that in 2023 on the Zed 900. But it’s worth noting that you have very good tires here for this class of bike. And like I said, better tires here on this 2023 Z650 Rs than I have on my Z900 Rs, which is actually nine 50 as well. So again, same tires on both same everything. Just a different break and the different faring. Now I know it looks like I set up this camera of wrong with this shot. It’s a very busy shot, but this one here has this red frame and it’s easier to show you the frame on this bike than on the other bike. But we will show you and there are some differences here. The frame I is identical in here and like when you see the differences in the bikes, you can really um, you wouldn’t think they’re on the exact same frame, but there is the exact same frame.
All the welds, all the angles, all the pieces. They’re all in the exact same spot on each bike up till about here, around here on the back here. There has to be some difference. I still think the rear foot pegs are mounted in the same spot, but there is a tiny bit of difference because although the dimensions of these bikes are slightly different in width, which is probably due to the handlebars in length, which is probably due to the tail section here, there is a 0.2 of an inch difference in wheelbase. And I know that the front, uh, the angle of the front steering here is the exact same that everything, the dimensions on there are the front. So there’s a slight, slight, slight difference somewhere in the rear here. Uh, which makes sense because the tail section comes up here and it’s more level on the um, on the Z650 Rs.
And that might mean there’s some difference. The other little difference here is this cover plate right here is styled like this on the modern bike and it’s a little bit more retro in the retro bike. Let’s show you that right now or in one second. And then you have a little bit more of a visual faring which covers your liquid cooling radiator right here, which is a little more visible or completely visible on the Zed six 50 Rs. So I like that sort of the style, the way that covers it up. But again, same frame, same engine. So take a look at the similar angle here. We’ll talk about some differences from here on up. But down here, again, all the same little different styling piece right here. But all of the key pieces, all the frame pieces, all the same, even the way the exhaust is routed is all the same.
So really when we talk about these retro sport bikes, as you have a fully modern sport bike underneath the classic styling, that’s very, very much true because you really have that exact same frame. Even the, like I said, the exhaust routing, all of that’s exact same. So now that we’ve established that essentially from here down, both these bikes are the same. Obviously there’s a styling difference up top. You have different style tanks among the other different styling and there’s a practical difference here as well. This here on the retro sport is a 12 liter fuel tank. And this here on the regular Zed six 50 is a 15 liter tank. So of course that’s gonna have a difference in range cuz fuel efficiency should be basically a wash between the two. The other thing that’s interesting is on the Kawasaki website, both these bikes are identically weighted.
So they are 412 pounds on the website, however that is a semi wet weight. I believe they fill the fuel tank to 90% uh, on their uh, weight measurements. So technically if this is at 90% and this is at 90%, there is a very slight weight difference in the bikes with this one being a hair lighter, not something you’re gonna notice but worth mentioning there as well. So all those specs, uh, weight being the exact same is probably just a hair different if they were both out of fuel or both full of fuel. But we’re not talking anything that you would notice at all. So now let’s talk about the seating position, cuz again, with that frame being basically the same, the seats are quite different. And what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna line up one bike here, sit on it and try to show you the exact seating position as we fade into with the second bike in the same position.
So you can see that slight uh, difference in seating position. Let’s do that right now. So this is always a little tricky to get perfect, but I’m making the assumption that if the frame is the same I can put this the uh, kickstand in the same spot and you should be able to see a nice transition from this bike to the next bike. Now one thing I will mention with this seating difference and we will cover the seat a little bit more in the, in the a little bit here, it does give a slightly lower step oversight. So you can see that if I swing my leg over here, it’s nice and low. So what I’m gonna do is try to look forward and uh, sort of give you the position here. We’ll talk about some of these details, but we’re just trying to give you just the seating position here. So I’m gonna put my left leg up where it goes, where I would want it looking straight ahead and hopefully you’ll be able to see a transition here from one to the other.
So it looks like I messed up lining up that bike. So I will say that the legs stay in the same position but there is a difference in the hand position. So you can see that in that transition. Sorry about messing that up. We’ll try to get right next time.
So there you go. That’s the difference. And I’ll be honest until I edit this video, I don’t really know the difference visually. This handlebar seems to sort of come up a little less towards me, but both of them are very comfortable despite the fact that that has probably a little bit more cushy. I point to that. That’s off camera. The Z6Rs has probably a little bit more cushy seat, a little bit larger seat. I don’t find either one uncomfortable in any way. I find both these bikes to be quite comfortable. So potentially that RS is probably gonna be a little bit more comfortable to me. I feel like there’s a little bit more of a difference in seating position between the Z900 Rs and the Z900 than there is between the six 50 and the Z650 Rs. That could be just me.
But let’s talk about some of the other differences here that you’re gonna see from the cockpit area. Obviously there’s this TFT display, so let’s start with that. All right, so in yesterday’s video I zoomed in closer to this screen and you could sort of see just that. So if you wanna see a little better view of that, I am using some glare here intentionally. I could make it a little bit darker, but I wanna show you that when you turn the vehicle on, that glare disappears with this uh, TFT display. The other thing I wanna show you is on the Zed six 50, your key is mounted to the bike on the Zed six 50 Rs. It’s mounted to the handlebar so it turns with the handlebar. I don’t think that makes any difference but there is a difference there. I also wanna show you this switch here, which is part of the reason I’m doing uh, things the way I am once to turn this on.
You’ve got that Kawasaki TFT display comes up. It is very clear in here. Let’s just talk really quickly about the features odometer. You have the odometer, the trip odometer and the trip B. So trip A, trip B, that’s what’s up top. Then in the bottom section down here you can see I’m hitting the bottom of this button here. I’ll change the bottom section. Kilometers per liter is my instant kilometers per liter. Then you have average kilometers per liter. I think you can set those both up for liters per hundred kilometers as well. And then you have the range. So that is of course the calculation of how much range you have left in the fuel tank based on how you have been driving. Obviously right now fuel is very low and that’s really all you have. Oh sorry, average speed as well and the time and the battery.
Oh I forgot about the battery. So that’s basically the basics there. So all of this uh, information, a lot of that’s gonna be available still on the other one. The difference that you’re gonna have here is this traction control, Kawasaki traction control. It’s level one. You’re gonna have level one, level two and off and you can see the select switch here. This switch here, I use the up and the down. It also has a select button in the middle. You’re not gonna see this on the rs, we’ll show you that in one second. Holding this down, you get the traction control here and it should start blinking in a second. Maybe it won’t anyways, there is no, there we go tap it. So then uh, you can go off, you can go traction level one and traction level two. So two would be used for really the rain.
Uh, one is kind of your standard traction control and of course off on this bike with this kind of power. It’s not something that would scare me to turn it off but obviously if you’re in slippery conditions you probably want to keep it on at least level one. I would drive it with level one all the time. Gear indicator, really nice display. Now of course if you want the TFT display, this is the way to go. One other benefit that we don’t talk about enough is a TFT display. Kawasaki R links up with your cell phone has a RI radiology app and it has some functions there with cell phone connectivity that you cannot get on the retro sport. So on this bike, traction control, TFT display and cell phone connectivity, those are things that you cannot get on the retro sport. Let’s go take a look at that one for a quick second though and show you what you do get.
So filming from a similar angle here, first thing I wanna point out is this switch is different. There’s an up and there’s a down but there’s no selection switch. That’s because there’s no traction control on this model. So now what I’m gonna try to do is keep filming here, we’ll zoom in a little closer. You can see the key is then mounted to that dash and bear with me here. I am zooming in on a cell phone right now so I’m not the smoothest but let’s keep it like that. Turn the key to on here. Again, key moves with the dash. You still have a lot of the same information here because you have this great display in the center. So that retro look uh, works really well. You can see those clear, easy to read gauges. And then again if I hit the up button here you’ve got the odometer on the very bottom, you’ve got trip A, trip B, and then the same display continues to display everything else.
So whereas in the past you could have trip a show as well as fuel efficiency. Here it’s one or the other. So this one’s set to miles per gallon. US obviously we can change that average miles per gallon range in miles. So again we’re gonna change all this out actually the odometers and miles as well. So we have not set this bike up correctly for delivery yet. Uh, obviously just pull it out of the pack. But this is a Canadian bike. It will be set up for kilometers and I think liters per a hundred kilometers is the way I would set it up. But you could do kilometers per lit as well. So a lot of that same information is down here. I don’t think we have a time on this. The other one had a timer. Yes, so no timer on this one. Uh, and there’s that 900 Rs actually has, sorry about that.
The 900 Rs also has the outside temperature, which just doesn’t have, you still have your temperature gauge here, which you would have on the TFC display fuel, the gauge there, which you would have and gear indicator right there. So you have really a lot of the same information but you don’t have that cell phone connectivity. So that’s one thing that people um, you know, have to remember to give up. You’re giving up with that tfd display when you go with this. Information’s still there but no cell phone connectivity. So let’s take a look at the handlebar here. On the RS. You can remember that this switch is different but other than that they are identical. It’s the same grip. Here you have the uh, reach adjustable levers on both uh, clutch lever and the brake lever. And you have the same controls in here. So really the same exact thing.
The one thing you’re having a little trouble seeing is right here by my hand. There is your flash to pass. That’s your um, you know, basically your high beam. You can flash it on and off like that or you can lock it on and off like that. One thing to note here is you do have the hazard lights down here, which a lot of people don’t realize as we’re talking about hazard lights, that’s in other little feature that I really like about the Zed six 50 that I don’t have in the RS model. Now it may not bother you too much, but the RS model, as you saw them flashing there, they’re incandescent signals here again fits with that retro look. So maybe it doesn’t bother you but it’s a retro modern bike. Uh, I don’t have the L E D signal lights on my Zed 900 Rs that I would like because in North America we don’t have that.
However, the Z650, it does have the L E D lights, uh, including the L e D signal lights. So let’s take a look at headlights, compare those two and taillights as well. Cause that’s a pretty big difference. Uh, although they’re both functionally they’re very similar. So the reason I’m showing you these side by side is because both of these bikes are equipped with L E D lights. They’re both turned on right now interestingly on the Zed six 50 there is the L E D headlight that is on and it is an extremely bright headlight. The high beam is just on the lower section here and you can see on this one there is a little like daytime light in there. If your headlight doesn’t work, that kind of gives you some light there a little bit, but it is not actually properly lit and I think your lo beam would be there and your high beam would be up there.
So it’s again, l e d light on both but not l e d signal lights on both l e d signals over here. Not l e d signals over here. And the same goes for the back. So l e d lights a little bit different, uh, in how they work. Let’s just jump around the back here. Well, my camera work, I’m a little outta practice here. Moving the camera the wrong way. Outback is pretty cool because you have this retro style look like this looks like there’s just a little single old-fashioned bulb in there by that is l e d. And then over here you have that sort of zed pattern look. So that very modern, clearly L e d look over here where here, the very retro look and again the tail here is something that is sort of that duck bill kind of tail, that classic look that they did in the 1970s there.
And of course a very modern look right there. You do have a little bit more, uh, tail extension there than you do over here as well. Just comes out with the body work. So if you’re gonna do a tail tidy, maybe a little less necessary on this, uh, maybe you’d like it a little bit more on a bike like that. So that is kind of those exterior details. Let’s just talk about some of the differences in riding these two bikes. So practically speaking, these are different bikes in a couple ways. You can see from the angle that I’m filming at here that the passenger seat here is significantly raised up over the driver’s seat right here. Where on this bike here, there is still a raise, but it’s a much lower raise. It’s my feeling that a com a passenger’s gonna be more comfortable here.
But to be fair, this is still a good size passenger seat and sometimes people like to sit their passengers a little higher so they have better visibility. I like them a little bit lower for center of gravity, but the reality is a couple inches here and there. It’s probably not gonna make a whole lot of difference. What I like this seat for is you have a little bit better ability in my mind to strap on a little bit bigger, uh, luggage, that kind of thing over this seat. It is definitely a wider seat than over here. That being said, there’s a lot of packages and uh, luggage type things that fit into this seat that comes off and can fit underneath here. So you have options either way as far as sporty riding. Both these bikes are gonna feel very light, very easy to drive.
This one. Having the traction control does make a difference, but I’m not sure it makes as much of a difference in dry pavement. These are powerful bikes, but they are not overly powerful bikes. Something like my Z900, you can really give a throttle and really accidentally wheely or accidentally spin that wheel on these bikes. I don’t think you’re gonna be accidentally doing that, although they, those things can happen. So traction control is very important if you’re doing a lot of wet weather riding. But I don’t know if it’s as important if you’re doing the dry weather riding and at the end of the day you need to pick the bike that appeals to you most. As far as practicality, you have round mirrors here. You have uh, wider mirrors there. The round mirrors I like, they give good visibility, but these can give a little bit extra width to them just in the design that they work.
So either one’s gonna make you feel safe, either one’s gonna make you feel comfortable. It just comes down to which style you like better. And if you’re okay paying a little bit more for styling, which I was when I bought mine, or if you wanna make sure you’re getting your value all in the features, which again, this one has a little bit step up in features for less money. So lemme know what you think. Do you own either of these bikes? Tell me which one you think you like best for you. Tell me what you like about them and if you have questions about them, make sure you let me know as well because I will be able to come back to these bikes again and again because I film here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. Again, Canada’s number one volume Kawasaki dealer. They allow me complete access to their entire lineup to make sure that I can help answer your questions. And if you wanna come down and see them, these are going quick. A lot of these are selling right away. So make sure you swing by the dealership here in Frederick New Brunswick and check it out for yourself. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey, everybody, it’s Peter and I’m here with the 2023 Kawasaki Z650. And these are slightly updated models that I’m starting to fall in love with. I’m a big fan of these bikes. I like what they did and the only thing that’s frustrating about them is they did better things here than on the 2022 Kawasaki Z900 RS that I just bought, which costs significantly more than these and you’re getting better components in here. So again, I totally recommend the bike I bought, but to show you Kawasaki moving forward, these are actually better. So I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. This is the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and they give me complete access to their Kawasaki lineup, which is good for you because if you have questions here that I don’t get to in this video, subscribe to the channel and let me know when the comments, what you want to know because I’m gonna continue to build a video database coming back to these bikes again and again and again to make sure we answer everything you could possibly wanna know.
So again, even if you’re not gonna uh, hit the comments, hit the subscribe if for interested in these bikes cuz there will be a lot more content on them because they’re fun to film. You guys like to know about ’em and that’s the way this works. I wanna thank Jim Gilberts for giving me access. Let’s get going with the review.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So first of all, 2023. We’ve got some new colors here. We’ve got this sort of silver and gray. Now they don’t show up perfectly on camera, kind of did a pre-test before. Uh, they’re stunning in person, but you’ve got of course the silver with the red wheels and some different accents. And then you’ve got the green frame with black wheels and a little bit of a green accent on the wheels and a really cool kind of dark, almost a matte dark gray color over there.
We’ll show you them up close as we go through, uh, the video, but just keep in mind that the way you see them in the screen, it just doesn’t film perfectly. They look stunning in real life. So let’s take a look. Uh, let’s take the Kawasaki green one and start with just that bike. I’m really just showing the two here to show the colors, but I’m gonna probably focus on one individual bike for most of this video. Let’s get going with that one. So let’s start off the top with what this bike is. This is Kawasaki’s twin cylinder 650 engine in a standard style bike, which we now call naked bikes because I guess that sells better, you know? Anyways, I think the look of this bike in person is spectacular. It has been a bike that people continue to walk in and go, wow, that looks really sharp.
And again, that may or may not transfer on camera. When I saw this in pictures, I thought, okay, yeah, Z650, saw it in person thought, wow, sharp looking bike. So this six 50 engine here, other than the KLR, that’s a different 650. This twins owner they use in just about everything. And I used to own a Versys 650 for a number of years, has the same engine. I really, really like this engine. It’s kind of that perfect do it all on the street engine. So of course you can move to these race bikes that are really designed for that racetrack type engine and you can drive them on the street. Whereas this is something that is approachable easy but absolutely fun, plenty sporty for what you need on the road. Great passing power even at highway speeds is just a really good engine.
It’s why Kawi uses it in so many things. It’s got good torque, it’s got decent horsepower and it’s a good balance. And this is a compact lightweight bike, especially the size of it you really notice is a very small kind of bike for, um, for this engine, which makes it of course a little bit lighter weight and it feels more nimble. There’s a lot of things in this unit that make it nimble. We’ll talk about those as we work through the bike. But that’s what this is. I’m gonna jump across it so you can kind of see how it is. I’m about six feet tall. There’s also the six 50 Rs, I’ve done videos on that. The Zed six 50 Rs you would think is very similar, but it’s very different in a lot of ways because it’s a retro sport bike. So again, I just bought the Zed 900 Rs.
Those retro sport bikes have the analog dials, so the, you know, the true gauges instead of the TFT display that this one has. And uh, they don’t have traction control, they have different tires than this. This is less expensive so you pay more for that look. And I say that fully willingly knowing that I paid more for my Z900Rs than I would for Z900. But there’s things that are starting to irk me here because this is so good compared to my bike. The TFT display, I knew I wasn’t getting that, but you have l e D signal lights here, which in North America we didn’t always have. You’ve got that here front and rear. Uh, obviously L D headlight will talk about that a little later. You also have the road sport two tires I believe here. And that bothers me more than anything because the tires on the bike that I bought, they’re perfectly fine, but they’re the sport max tires, they’re a step below.
And even when you go on Dunlop’s website, the sport max tires that that bike has, you know, Dunlap pretty much advertises in their video that the best feature about them is the price. So here you’re having more expensive tires, uh, that grip better, you’re having more expensive l e D lights compared to my Z 900 Rs. You’ve got some great features. And then again the TFT display, it’s better, it’s just, it’s arguably better. It doesn’t look the same as the old style gauges, but uh, it certainly gives you more function. So you’re getting really good value in this bike in a package that works. And then this one has traction control for 2023. The traction control matters because it’s uh, gives you that little extra control, especially in slippery condition. So we’re gonna turn on the tee, just display in a second, but I just wanna show you sort of what it looks like with me on this bike.
I’m about six feet tall. I’m easily flat footing here so if you’re shorter than me you can easily fit no problem. Uh, but even if you’re my size or even taller, you fit nicely here. You’re tucked underneath kind of the indent in the tank. It’s a very narrow feeling bike because again, the tank comes out and then comes back in only the twin cylinder for the tank to cover. So that instead of uh, something like mine, which is a four shoulder, which has a wider engine, the nimbleness of this bike is right there. There’s a slight forward lean here, a lot like the Ninja six 50, uh, but you’re not terribly forward. It still has handlebars in here and on a bike with no windscreen, a little bit of a forward lean is actually a good thing. There’s really not a lot of weight on my hands, but a little bit of movement’s gonna push that wind back on you.
It’s gonna be a very comfortable position. And because of the back design here, you’ve got a really kind of nice kind of tuck position as well, which this bike isn’t designed for. Tuck the same way that Ninja is. If you’re looking at the Ninja six 50 and you’re going to be in a tuck position, that ninja is better, has a little bit extra a faring and wind protection and the mirrors which are here mounted to the handlebar on the Zed class of bike are moved out on the faring on the ninja that allows you to get in a tuck position and still see those mirrors there. Whereas you can see if I’m in a tuck position here, the mirrors are pretty much useless on the Zed, they’re better because if you’re in upright riding position, they’re closer to you. When you hold a mirror close to you, think about looking in the mirror close to you versus far away, you get a more of a wide angle view.
So the Z is partly styling differences, um, but really it’s that tuck position versus non tuck position. The mirrors come closer to you. That’s the real big difference um, for going with the Zed. You know, and if you like the styling, I’ve never used to love the Z as much as the ninja, but seeing this in person and seeing these paint colors and paint schemes, yeah I’d buy the Zed, I’d buy the Z650 over the Ninja 650 and I don’t know if that’s true with the Z400. I think I’d buy the Ninja 400. So interesting. Let’s take a look at the dash here and then really start going through the details on this to show you what I think makes it really unique and makes it really desirable. So we’re gonna take a look at the TFT display here. Now I’ve set it up so there is intentionally some glare on this screen because a lot of people wonder about these TFT displays and glare.
So first of all, whenever you’re filming a display screen, they show more glare in part because the camera has one eye and we have two. Our eyes are actually better adjusting to glare than a camera. But you can see here as soon as I turn it on, you really don’t have an issue with glare. You can really see everything on this screen. It is a very, very good screen with good detail. The coloring is very good on your camera. This looks a little bit bluey, at least on my camera here. It is very gray and it’s got some good stuff in there. So we’re gonna sort of go through the basics here. First of all, you have a tack that moves up and down the thing. Um, so again, at a glance you’ll be able to see where you’re at. Usually with these and I haven’t double checked, but usually you can set a rev limit on these and uh, I don’t think I’ll do do the check on camera cuz it’ll just make for poor video.
Uh, but you can usually you can set a rev limit where they can flash. Um, and that’s kind of nice to, you know, be able to tell if you don’t wanna go over 6,000 RP before being notified, it’ll start sort of flashing at you. So again, I’ll double check to make sure that’s still there. But moving us through here, really clear, um, you know, speed of course in kilometers now we’re here in Canada. You’ve got information down here that we can cycle through and we will in a second your gear indicator up top always visible. So even though you have a green neutral light here, when you’re neutral it goes green up there and then of course one through six, it’s a six speed transmission. Uh, that’s always gonna be displayed for you, which is really nice fuel gauge down there as well. We’ve got some trip meter, let’s go through that. So we’ve got trip A, trip B, and then we’ve got odometer right there and that’s all that’s there. So if you hit the bottom button here, we’ll show you the button that we’re hitting a second. We’ve got average speed there right now. That can
Change well to total time to the battery currently at 12.3 volts kilometers per liter. So that’s the instant fuel efficiency I believe that can be set to liters per a hundred kilometers as well. So this is instant and right there is average and we come back to range, which is again a calculation of how many kilometers you’ll have left on the tank based on how you’ve been driving and the types of uh, terrain you’ve been on. So, uh, don’t rely on it perfectly but certainly gives you a pretty good estimate of what’s going on. And then of course we’re back to the average speed there. So a lot of things uh, in here in this display that work very well, odometer, everything like that. So really like that. And then you have the traction control. So K TRC is Kawasaki traction control, that’s a big thing here for 2023.
In addition to getting, getting better tires and having less chance of slip, they also give you this traction control, which I think is really good. So traction control one is basically the um, standard that you’re probably gonna drive around with most of the time. Uh, you know, that’s sort of where you’d wanna be as you go into there. We can go up to, uh, off there. So we went, we skipped the wrong way. Let’s go. There we go. One, two, uh, is there, so two you’re gonna use in the rain or if you want the most intervention possible, uh, if you’re a newer rider or the bike’s newer to you, you can keep it in two and that’ll just help protect you a little bit. Extra level one is gonna be sort of that standard riding position and like I said, the off position is there as well.
This is a bike that’s not super intimidating to drive with it off. Like I said, I used to have the Zeds, or sorry the ninja or sorry I used to own the versus six 50 myself. Uh, and you could get some slip outta the tires. Now again, it didn’t have as nice tires as these, uh, but you can get some slip but of course, um, you know, you’ve got some ability to uh, you know, do what you want here with the uh, traction control, putting it where you want. So lemme just bring it right back to make sure I’ve left it on for whoever needs to leave it on. You have to hold down the select button here and I think I’m not being patient enough. There we go. Oh boy, we’ll switch that back in one second, uh, when we get that switched. But yeah, level one, level two and off are your settings right there.
So how do we control that TFT display? Well, it’s pretty simple. We’ve got the selection switch here. So the odometer, triple odometer trip A I was using this to cycle through. You just cycle through on the upside of the button. The downside where I was showing you things like the average and instant fuel efficiency, the range, that kind of thing. Tapping this down will cycle through those. So this is the upper, um, part of the display. This is the lower part of the display. It makes perfect sense logically when you’re looking at that. And then the selection button here, holding that down will activate that traction control and you can uh, then select up down. So one, two or of course off. So simple, simple controls there. The rest of it’s pretty simple motorcycle stuff. There is a trigger back here that you don’t see, um, that will flash the high beam.
Uh, so really to get people’s attention to just sort of flash it on and off. I really like that on the, uh, several of the motorcycles here. I think that’s a nice little safety feature if you’re actually using your high beams to lock ’em in place, you’re gonna tap that on. Of course signal lights here. All the switch gear feels really, uh, good stuff. So signal, lights, horn, typical stuff. And then you do have the hazard warning lights here and you can see just the little hint there. These are l e D lights. So that Full l e d modern look again makes me a little jealous. It’s on this bike for a really good value coming across to this side here. Both the uh, clutch lever and the brake lever have adjustments. This one’s five levels of adjustments. So this is your reach adjustment. So if I’m standing back here and I wanna reach my clutch here, let’s just actually use it for you. So level one there is probably the furthest out. Let’s turn it to level five, which is the furthest you can see it’s right here on this knuckle with level five and go back to one. It’s, you know, well beyond that knuckle. So what that does is effectively lengthens the reach for all of these, uh, um, these controls here. And uh, you have that both on the clutch lever and the brake lever. The brake lever is also five. Yes, it’s also five levels there. So again, both of these can be adjusted for reach, which makes it really comfortable. There’s that flash to pass button that we were talking about right there. So two hidden features I should point out about what we’ve already mentioned is that that tfd display also allows you some smartphone connectivity through the radiology app. So I’ll probably have to do an other video to get into that, but anytime you have a TFT display, you have at least some level of smartphone connectivity with that, which is awesome. And then the clutch lever, which we just showed you is part of the slipper and assist clutch. So what a slipper and assist Clutch does is it’s started at the racetrack and it’s good for both new riders and it’s also good for experienced riders. What it does is essentially when you’re downshifting, sometimes you can like really aggressively downshift on the track or if you’re riding on the street, maybe mess up a downshift, don’t get that rev matching kind of the way you want to.
And if you aggressively let go of that clutch, what can happen is the amount of engine speed and engine braking that hits when you dump that clutch is you can have a bit of a rear wheel skid as the engine tries to compensate for you just dumping that clutch in the wrong gear. What the slipper and assist clutch does is assist you by allowing the clutch to slip instead of the wheel. So it’s not fully foolproof, but it works pretty well to make sure that you still keep traction on an aggressive downshift or a messed up downshift. Uh, instead of letting the wheel slip, it allows the clutch to slip. Now the way this is designed is sort of an advanced system and a side benefit of the way they’re setting it up is when that clutch engages, it pushes together. So you actually need less clutch springs.
Don’t worry about how it works. The idea is it makes for a lighter clutch pull, which means when you’re driving this thing in traffic and you’re up and down through the gears and you’re maybe at a stop and go traffic kind of thing, the light clutch pull is really easy. That’s something you notice every day. And in an aggressive situation that light clutch pull is part of a system that makes it a safer system to avoid some wheel spin. So you’ve got the traction control, you’ve got the A B S and you’ve got the slipper assist clutch. They’re all working to get you great traction and you’ve got those better tires. Let’s go take a look at that right now. So taking this look at the engine sort of below the tank area, they do a few things really well. You’ve got subtle body work here, which blends in the radiator down here, the radiator on the RS models.
The retro sport is kind of a bit of a visual eyesore. Again, those spikes are styled really well. I really like them and again, I bought one of those rss, but the way they kind of build it into the body work, you don’t see that liquid cooling quite the same way. Liquid. Cool. It’s a fully modern engine twin cylinder, 650 cc, I think 649 cc or something like that. Um, but very good. You’ve got a little ice glass here for the oil right now because it’s on the side stand, you can’t quite see it, but hold the bike level, you’ll see it in there, filler there. Everything you need here is nice. What I like is this under slung exhaust with no exhaust coming out back here. First of all, it gives you a better view of the swing arm, which is pretty stylish, but it also takes all of this heavy weight, puts it very down low on the center and brings nothing back up and out the side here.
So from a sporty handling perspective, some of the heavy components are right down low and very centralized and that’s a very good thing. That’s what you want in a sporty style bike. Same thing with a suspension design. It’s all tucked in up high. So very compact overall weight to the bike. The heavy components are low, they’re in the middle and they’re very good, which is part of what makes this bike a lot of fun. As far as a handling bike, it’s worth taking a look at the lighting here. We’ll show you the rear lights first because that’s sort of where we’re set up. If we turn the uh, lights to on or the bike’s on, you can see the really cool tail amper light that comes up there. Now to me, motorcycles, of course visibility is an issue with motorcycles, but making the light not just bright but also making it interesting draws people’s attention to it.
And that’s what you want. You want them to know what you’re doing if you’re just sitting there riding along like that or if you’re hitting the brake. So again, bright l e d thing I like about LEDs is they’re instant on. And let’s turn on those hazard lights right there. Oh yeah, that still makes me jealous. You’re getting the l e d signal lights here. That, uh, again, great value, something that I would’ve liked to see in the bike that I bought. Now to be fair, I haven’t seen the 2023 Z 900 Rs, the Z 900 Rs around other markets. Has it? Maybe, uh, they’re starting to bring this to North America, but like I said, they make me jealous because they’re really good. Let’s take a look at the front lights as well. So take a look at the front. The Zed six 50 here is different than the ninja and one of the differences is the headlight turns with the, uh, with the handlebars here.
So because of that, you end up with really good visibility from the side, but you can kind of get people’s attention at a stop light from that by turning your wheel turning or turning your handlebars towards them. So again, the ninja’s body work that’s kind of connected to the rest of the bike and it steers in between where this one is uh, connected there. So let’s just sort of see if we can turn it towards you. There really bright lights there, which are pretty cool. And if we flash the pass right there, blindingly bright lights looking at the camera. So pretty cool there when you can see that. And then let’s just turn on those hazards again, those bright L e d um, signal lights there as well that shows. So again, just great lighting, great for safety, but great for visibility. The thing I like about those white l e d lights is they help you help your eyes identify what you’re seeing because the color of that light is more white in nature, that’s closer to daylight in color.
So if you’re looking at a rock or rabbit on the side of the road, your eyes are gonna much more quickly identify not just because they’re brighter, but because the color of the light is more in line with what you’re familiar with seeing in the daylight. They’re just safer all the way around. So let’s talk about who these bikes are for. Well, this six 50 engine lineup, you can really come to a Kawasaki showroom. Again, virtually anything you could want. There’s a retro version of this that looks like a traditional motorcycle. I’ll be honest, the styling language of these is not something I loved in pictures, but every time I walk by them in person, I’m like, that is a cool looking bike. And it seems to be that other people are seeing the same thing. These have been in the showroom for about a day or so and everybody that walks by is like, wow, those are sharp looking bikes.
So it’s one of those things that you kind of have to see in person. I think I like the way they did the color different on the frame than the body work. And again, this paint work on both of these is really sharp and Kawasaki’s known for their paint work. So again, in that six 50 lineup, if you can get everything you want, why buy these? Well, these are versatile bikes to me, that upright seating position, the overall styling gives you that ninja six 50 capability without that full ninja styling, you’ve got really good tires here with the road sport too. You’ve got the nice TFT display here. And if you want a bike that’s pretty versatile, you don’t have to go to something like the verus, which is a bigger, much, much bigger, uh, slightly heavier or you know, significantly heavier bike with the same engine because this, um, little windscreen here pops on with about four screws.
The aftermarket is full of windscreens that can be larger than that. So you could do some touring on this. And what’s cool about it is because it’s such a simple installation with the four screws, you could swap out a bigger windshield based on the types of weather you’re dealing with or the types of trip you want to do. The overall CD position, again, I’m gonna jump on this one again. CD position is just really, really good. It’s just a comfortable thing for a lot of riders. Having those adjustable uh, levers makes it really comfortable for a lot of people with different reach. It’s a non-intimidating bike without a whole lot of body work out front. It’s very light between your legs. So you’ve got something that’s sporty, you’ve got something that’s comfortable, you’ve got options to get luggage here. I think even Kawasaki probably has a tail bag here.
I know on the 2023 Ninja 1000SX, they have a tail bag that mounts here, but all kinds of options for tail bags. You could put a tank bag here. It feels nimble, light and compact. It’s got all the power you need on the street. It’s not too crazy to ensure As far as the, uh, overall power and that kind of thing, this is a bike that is a bike that I would recommend to a whole lot of people. If you’re a new rider, the Z400 is below this, that’s an option. But I, I wouldn’t shy away from telling new riders that this is a bike they can ride. It’s certainly something that most people aren’t gonna wish for more speed from. So that’s kind of what this is. It’s sporty, it’s comfortable, it’s versatile because you could add a few after American accessories and turn it into a different style of bike that you wanted to. It’s got pretty high end components
With those L e D lights, the TFT display, the uh, abs, the traction control, and the really good tires. And it’s probably one of the best value six 50 s you can get in the Kawasaki lineup. And that’s saying something because Kawasaki has a lot of value in that 650 cc engine lineup. Who is it for? It’s for a lot of people. I really like these. I’m a big fan of them and I’m hoping that you guys like it as well. Let me know in the comments what you think of this video and I’m kind of hoping that you guys wanna see more videos on these because this is a bike that, uh, as I saw it in person, it impressed me more and more and more and the value of this thing. That’s absolutely fantastic. So really good bikes here. If you’re looking to see more, let me know.
And of course if you wanna see them in person. We’re down here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country. I’m filming these in early March. There’s about 20,000 square feet of indoor heated showroom here. It’s massive. You can come see these. Like I said, these two just arrived. There’s more coming in. Uh, lots to see here. Lots to go through. Definitely something you can, you should consider seeing. So thanks everybody for watching. Make sure you hit subscribe so we can, uh, post more, more videos of these and you’ll, uh, see ’em as well. And, uh, we’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hey everybody, it’s Peter. I am here with Rob Davis. Rob is the general manager of Power Sports here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. And you asked for a video on what it’s like to buy a motorcycle, like what you need to know, what’s the process from start to finish. And of course, I just bought this from here from Wheels and Deals. So this video is gonna tell you step by step what you need to know to buy a motorcycle, all the steps and processes, but it’s also gonna kind of show off you guys, cuz you guys are the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and it’s also part of Canada’s huggable car dealer. So tell me about what that is, because I have my own views, but what’s, what’s that all that about?
Mostly the biggest thing about the whole, the whole picture is we are different here at Jim Gilbert’s. Uh, we are a family business. We feel like every day is important to you just as much as it is to us. When you commit into our dealership, uh, our vehicles from starts, right? From the 200% above industry standard inspections to the clean and polished vehicles and sh uh, shiny waxy cars, I guess. Um, and then in the power sports things, uh, part of things, we are family again, we like to have fun. We have small children, we have, uh, all kinds of people that travel with us. So the, the motto of it all is to have fun with your family doing the things that you love, um, on, uh, Kawasaki for us. Uh, so we just want you to feel the same.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Yeah, and I mean, like the one thing you notice here, like, I walked in here before I’d ever been here and like when they say they’re family, there’s a lot of people related. They treat everybody like family, but they treat customers like family. So it’s just a very comfortable environment. So you’re gonna see me bring out things in this video that this dealer does that I hope your dealer does if you’re not anywhere near here. But if you’re anywhere near here, this is what you can expect coming here. So first of all, if we’re looking at a bike again, I bought this one. Like everybody, the first thing you’re gonna do is you’re gonna hop online and maybe you don’t know what kind of bike to buy. A lot of bikes kind of look similar, but they can be different classes. So the first thing you should do is hop online research, figure out what you’re gonna do, uh, what you’re interested in, have a sense of the general cost, have a sense of your budget, obviously, uh, what that involves.
And we’re gonna talk about the cost specific to actually buying the bike. But one of the things I do here is you can subscribe to this channel. It has that background. There’s lots of pictures of me doing this by a bike. You could find those. And I, my job is to help you understand the basics and everybody who does a video online is gonna have certain biases and I try to point those out. I’m not a huge cruiser guy, but I will know them inside and out and give you all the information you need. And, uh, you know, there’s other times where I will be biased towards certain bikes and I’ll tell you right in front, I really like this bike. Um, but the idea of my videos is just that you can ask questions in the comment and if you subscribe, I’ll make sure I get back to you both in the comments. And because you guys let me have full access to the vehicles here, I can make more and more and more videos to make sure you get all the answers you could possibly want online so that when you’re ready to come into dealership, you’re equipped to do that. So here we have a massive showroom. This is just the filming area. We’re gonna head over to the showroom. Uh, but when you first walk in the dealership, let’s talk about that. Let’s go over to the big showroom. How big is the showroom here roughly?
We are just under 20,000 feet of fun. Indoor, uh, heated showroom. So you can actually have a coffee or a nice bottle of cold water and we can
Tour. And just so you know, we are not filming in peak motorcycle season right now. It’s February in 2023. And everything you see here is just what’s here in February. It hasn’t, the season hasn’t even begun yet. So this is an incredible place. Let’s go to the showroom and take a look and we’ll talk about what happens when you walk in. So here we are in the main showroom of the dealership, and this is like, we’re only showing you maybe a third or half at most of the main showroom. There’s also a ton of space down the hallway, around the corner where we were. There’s tons and tons of space, but when you walk into motorcycle dealership, first of all, you should know a few things. Don’t go sit on a bike, <laugh>, there will be someone who greets you. And, uh, a lot of times we have them packed pretty close together here. This is again, only February, so we’ll have more and more and more in here. Um, but there’ll still be somebody, somebody to greet you. What happens here at Wheels and Deals when you get, when they walk in <laugh>?
Well, actually there’s a lot of things that happen very quickly because we’re trying to understand. We have so many motorcycles and so many styles, so many sh uh, colors, so many models that the most important thing is to introduce ourselves to you so that you understand, uh, who we are, what we’re doing here, and what our role is here at the at the dealership. Uh, firstly we’re gonna ask you some questions. What type of riding? What type of are, are you a group rider? Do you like to do touring? Do you like, are you kind of get a feel of which category of motorcycle we’re gonna, uh, show you? Of course we’re gonna show you everything in the showroom. However, we’re also going to narrow it down so that we can get an understanding of you, the customer, uh, what it is your history is, are you a new rider? Are you a seasoned rider? Is this your first bike? Is this your 21st bike?
And one of the things that I find here too is when you see people move from the online environment to the actual in bike environment, is you may find that someone like Rob has a lot of experience to offer you that maybe you weren’t thinking about when you’re online. So especially if it’s your first motorcycle, he may be able to, or the salesperson may be able to direct you. So sometimes people feel like, oh, they’re, they’re turning me from the bike I want, but there’s reality to certain things. Like I was looking at the Ninja 1000 and the Zed nine 50. I like them both equally. The ninja one thousands in a different insurance class. So that’s a cost that’s associated with it. Now, that’s not the only reason that I bought one over another, but those kinds of discussions, again, someone with some experience is gonna be able to help guide you towards what you’re interested in.
And the best way to do that is to understand who you are. So I think we’re really good at that. Now, one thing I always know is that once you come in here, I think it’s important to swing a leg over the bikes that you’re interested in because sometimes for me, you know, sitting on a verse six 50, which is a bike that I used to own, isn’t for everybody, it’s a taller bike. And sometimes somebody can get on the six 50 and find that it’s not crouched over like they think the XX six R is. And the six 50 could be more comfortable with a little lower seat height. There’s a lot of options with similar engines, similar styles. So one of the things they’ll do is they’ll help you just hop on a bike, sit on it, see if it’s something that’s comfortable for you.
Absolutely.
So at that point, once you’ve narrowed things down to me, it’s really important that you understand what you’re looking at. Even if you’re not ready to buy to me, a professional salesperson should be able to get you through their office and talk about the price because like every dealer, this bike here says 10,299. Can I buy it for 10,299 and walk out with it today?
I’d love to say yes. However, there’s a few other things that we have to talk
About. So let’s go to the office and we’ll tell you what it involves and the cost involved in buying a motorcycle like this one. All right, so here we are in Rob’s office. Now, for a lot of people like that step from the showroom to the office could be very intimidating. And if you’re feeling intimidated at your dealer, uh, you’re probably in the wrong dealer. This is not a really intimidating process, it’s just a matter of helping you know, what it takes to buy. For instance, that motorcycle we just talked about, so we saw the price tag on the sticker, that usually matches the price tag on the website, but that’s not the whole story. So tell me about the whole story of what the price is, if I’m gonna buy this and leave with it.
Okay, so basically, uh, there are a few extra surcharges that are included in a purchase of a power sport or a car or anything like that. Uh, there have been various things or people that have been involved in this whole process, uh, right from the OEM to the freight truck, to driving down the road to getting it to here, uh, to us receiving it on creating the package, putting it together in a pre-delivery inspection, uh, putting the unit together, uh, getting those things together. So you’re gonna have those surcharges, uh, which would be freight and pdi. Um, and I
Should, I should mention too, like when you see something like a motorcycle or a powersport come, it doesn’t come like a truck driving off or like a car driving off that truck. These things come in boxes. Like I saw a motorcycle the other day, the wheels not on, like, there’s real people involved and stuff like that. There’s real expenses to the dealers. So this isn’t something like, oh, that’s a nothing cost. It’s it’s legit. There’s stuff going on there, right?
So there are just, there’s, there are those, uh, those a couple small charges there that are incorporated with a purchase. Um, so basically yes, you’re going to have some, uh, some small fees, but at the same time we are standard across the board. All dealerships have those fees.
Now, one of the things I always ask, and of course you guys always ask is, you know, what kind of discount can I get? How can I get a deal? And it’s not always about the discount, I think it’s people want to understand that they’re getting a deal. And for me, I’m different. I, I don’t need to know that I’m getting a deal, although I do want to get a deal. I wanna make sure that the guy that came in two days later than me that might be a better talker than me or something that he didn’t get a better deal. So how do I make sure that like I don’t have to have a whole bunch of skills to make sure I’m getting a deal? So let’s, first of all talk, I think we should, it’s fair to say there’s not a lot of margin in a lot of this stuff. So if you’re expecting some dealer, you know, to just give you $5,000 off, that is just not gonna happen. But you guys do a lot of things that really add value and to me, this is really the selling thing for me. I had no idea how much value I could get from you guys, right? So tell me what you guys do that adds value and gives a good deal.
So again, like I said at the very beginning of this, we are different. There are things that we do that do make your, uh, your experience with us different. And when you say, come on in and we want a deal and I want a deal, okay? So we have already taken these things into consideration and we’ve come up with some, uh, good understandings that help you realize that you are getting a good deal when you’re purchasing from Jim Gilbert’s. Uh, some of the things could be, uh, your first service. So your complete first service is free, no charge, whether it’s an ATV motorcycle or side by side, there is a thorough checkover that we do do alongside of your, uh, fluids that are all changed. So that is anywheres from a 250 to $375 value.
And I should point out too, that first service, like again, we’re talking about motorcycle I bought for instance, that first service is a really important one. They, they do the oil change after that a thousand kilometer break in time. So that’s important, but also checking everything out once it’s actually gone down the road, it’s come from the factory, you’ve put a thousand kilometers or so on the bike, it’s a really important service to have done at the dealer and not all dealers are gonna give you that service, right? That’s a big, big value to have it done professionally by people who know what to look for.
So, uh, moving on, I guess you’re going to receive special discounts, uh, special discounts that are applied to you, uh, personally for the length of your ownership and for an extended period of time. So for example, you will receive 10% off of Ms. MSRP p of any accessory or part that you purchased today or anywheres down the road. Yeah, so you do get a good discount on parts and as well, we do give a discount at labor rate for customers who purchased from Jim Gilbert’s. So that’s a big deal cuz especially if you’re buying like a new motorcycle, you don’t always know what accessories and parts to get like the Versys X 300, I just did a video on it and like it has side bags that are optional. Maybe if it’s your first motorcycle, you don’t wanna put those on, but you don’t have to buy them up front. I think it makes sense to leave that bike with it. But you can buy them up front or you can buy ’em later, you’re still gonna get a discount on it and that’s a big deal. Yep.
So, so we’ll touch on that. Uh, your full take of fuel. So every unit, uh, that leaves here used or new, whether it be a car, truck, power sport or any one of the products that leave here, even if it’s an e-bike, the battery will be full <laugh>. So, uh, nonetheless, yes, you do receive a full tank of fuel and any of the products that you’re gonna receive, the clock is gonna be correct. So you’re going to even know what time it is when you leave here.
Yeah, it’s just the, the thoroughness that you guys give and the peace of mind and that matters. So the other thing I wanna talk about is sometimes when you get in this office, now again, even if you’re not ready to buy, they should lay this out for you. And that’s our expectation. Your expectation here is that they’re gonna lay out, here’s what it cost to actually buy that vehicle. So there’s no pressure to buy at that point. But the other thing they’re gonna mention is there are extra costs and this is where some people feel like, oh, they tried to upsell me on stuff like that. So there’s things like extended warranties and stuff like that that you should be aware of, especially if you’re price conscious because they, there’s a cost to having that in there, but they can explain the coverage, they can explain those kinda things. So tell me a little bit about the extended warranties. Why do you guys even bring it up, you know, to somebody who says, I just don’t want, you know, on the bare minimum.
Well, I’d love to say that this product will and always and every one of them will last forever, but
They’re very reliable. I mean they’re very reliable. My experience is it’s built by man, man’s gonna break it and man’s gonna fix it. So realistically, when it comes to extended warranties, uh, this is simply a protection policy for you over time of the ownership of your vehicle. Uh, you’re already making scheduled monthly, bi-weekly payments. The last thing you wanna do is find yourself in a repair shop, uh, paying for something that could have been under warranty and could have been under control the whole time.
Now the other thing that you have to deal with, if you get to the point like, okay, so I understand what I’m doing, I’m gonna buy, for instance the motorcycle, I want this and that level of extended warranty cuz there’s options within there, then I get nervous about like, what happens next? I gotta get this thing like since somehow I gotta figure out insurance and that kind of stuff. So tell me what you guys can do. I’ll tell you what I did as well, but go ahead. What, what do you guys do to make basically make it easy for me? <laugh>. So
Our job is to make it easy for you, Peter. Yeah, Because I don’t know what I’m doing at that point, but you guys do you guys do it all the time? <laugh>, well even Peter was new to New Brunswick, so there was a lot of things that were new to Peter that he was not sure of. And the one thing that we do hear a lot of even local clients is, so what is my next move at Service New Brunswick? Uh, what do I have to do for insurance? So we have already taken control of all of that information for you on your behalf. So we will ask you who your insurance agent is, local, far, whoever they may be. And we will for forward all the proper documents, bills of sale, with serial numbers, with evaluations, and we are here for the insurance agent if they have any possible questions. Uh, so we do receive that sometimes.
So the one thing that I did, if you’re, and this is sort of my advice to you. If you are new to motorcycling or you’re getting a new, a bike where you haven’t continuously had a bike and you don’t have current motorcycle insurance, especially with the motorcycles, make sure you reach out to your insurance agent on your own for your own sake. Because I was looking at the Ninja 1000 and the Z 900, which is a nine 50 cc. There’s, there’s very similar engine size in those, both four cylinders, both powerful bikes, but the insurance class is quite different in those two bikes. So that can also play into your overall cost overall ownership factor. The sales guys here are gonna be able to tell you about some of those types of things, but really it depends on you. So for me, I wanted to reach out to my insurance myself.
I haven’t had a bike for a few years and buying one again and I did some of that research myself, but they’ll provide me with vin numbers, with anything I need to know about that bike. They gave it all. So I was able to say, here’s my insurance paper and then we get a license and all that’s done. Now there’s only other one, one other problem. It’s February when we’re filming this and uh, it’s cold. I don’t riding in the cold and I really don’t like getting my brand new bike exposed to salts. So what am I gonna do? How do I get this thing home?
Well actually, once we have completed the insurance documentation and we have sent all the information over to Service New Brunswick on your behalf to get your new unit registered and licensed in your name, um, we can work towards delivery. So in our delivery process, we actually have a gorgeous, uh, big pickup truck. It’s all wrapped up Kawasaki green, uh, with a gorgeous enclosed. We have multiple enclosed trailers depending on what we’re delivering. So we will load up your motorcycle and professionally strap it down and bring it within a reasonable location around the dealership in this area. We will deliver it for free to your driveway. Yeah,
For free. From here inside here to inside my garage. And again, for someone like me, I’m pretty particular about my stuff, knowing that they’re gonna take care of it, they’re gonna strap it down properly knowing that it’s not gonna see any salt, even though I can get it home and I can sit there and d droo on it every night. So that all matters to me. So this is just kind of like an introductory video, obviously things here at Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports things are different. This is the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country for a reason. And you guys are pretty new into this stuff. Like you went from non-existent to number one very, very quickly. And that really comes down to this whole idea of Canada’s huggable car dealer. These guys are absolutely incredible when it comes to dealing with customers.
So your dealer may or may not be the same, but if you have questions about buying motorcycle, buying Powersports, buying those kind of things, or shopping here, let me know in the comment section the things you want to know, maybe things that we didn’t cover. And we’ll come back to you both in the comment section and in future videos to make sure that you get the information you need. And I guess if you’re sitting home alone and you want to check out a pretty cool showroom, pretty cool dealer, make sure you swing on down to Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports here in f Fredericton, new Brunswick because even in February in 2023, we are loaded with inventory. There’s lots of stuff to see. So thanks everybody for watching. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hey, everyone. Peter here, and I have to say that I’m excited about the new Kawasaki Z650RS. It’s the perfect bike for almost anyone. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced rider, this bike can do it all. So check it out and see for yourself why the Kawasaki Z650RS is so popular.
Today we’re gonna take a look at the 2023 Kawasaki Z650 RS . I say Z cuz I’m filming here in Canada. If you’re from the states, you might call it a Z. This is a bike that I’ve reviewed before in the 50th anniversary edition, which was the 2022 model. But this one has all different styling and frankly there’s other things that I need to say about this bike that I haven’t said in a previous video. So we’re gonna go through this bike in detail and I’m gonna be right up front from the start. I’m a fan of this bike. There’s a lot of things that this bike does well outside of just its styling. So you can like the styling or not like the styling, but there may be reasons to buy this bike even if the styling doesn’t right away.
Jump out as you, as you know, right for you or not right for you. So here’s the thing, I’m gonna continue to do videos on this bike and I can do that because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. So if you have a question, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button and let me know in the comments what you wanna know. If I don’t answer in this video, I can come back to this bike on future videos again and again and again. So that’s what we’re gonna do here. So again, if you’re at all interested in this bike, hit the subscribe button, we’ll create the conversation. If you own this bike, let’s create the conversation in the convers section. Tell me about what you like about it and then hopefully this will be a reliable resource for people who are interested in this bike.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So let’s get going with the review. So let’s talk about the RS lineup. Let’s talk about what it is and what it is not. If you are looking for a fully retro bike that’s really, you know, retro technology as instead of retro, just look. The Kawasaki W800 is a bike that is for you and I’m gonna have a review of that. I have the cafe version up already, but I’m gonna have a review of the one that the 2023 W 800 in the coming weeks. It is coming in and I will get a review up on that. That is a retro technology bike as well as a retro look bike. This bike, this RS series stands for retro sport. It is a retro looking bike that is a full modern sport bike underneath. Now when I say sport bike, I don’t mean race bike. This is a bike that’s for the streets.
It’s not a ZX6RR or anything like that. It is a bike that is really well set up for sport riding on the street with fully modern technology and the classic styling. Now I just bought a Z900 RS, which is of course after the ICO designed after the iconic Z1. This one is also designed to be like a previou650. The difference here is this 650 uses Kawasaki’s current and very popular and we’re gonna talk about that engine, the 650 engine that is a two cylinder engine. The previous version that this might loosely be based on or you know style-wise be based on was a four cylinder. Now one thing people say is, oh, it should have had the four cylinder and it should have dual shocks back here. And there’s all sorts of things at that point you’re turning it into a fully retro bike instead of a retro styled bike. So this two cylinder engine, this 650 is more powerful than the retro 650 that was a four cylinder in the past. So you’ve got the power numbers here, you’ve got a nice lightweight compact chassis and you’ve Got full sporting AVI ability of a modern bike. So what I like about these bikes is of course the styling, but also the fact that It is really a modern bike. You’re not Buying technology that has improved But you know, doesn’t Improve on this bike because they want to have a certain look. The other thing that you get on these Retro Sport bikes that I think is really overlooked is this seat Go Find me a sporty bike with a proper rear seat with a nice big cush Front seat here. You just can’t do it. So something like the Z650 is really a very similar bike to this, you know, by all intents and circle by all measures, But it does have a TFT display on that bike. Whereas on this bike you have the retro style dials but you have a seat that is really usable. And this design goes back to an era when motorcycles were really, really growing in pop popularity and part of that was because they were actually practical vehicles. They weren’t just designed for style, designed to look a certain way, they had to fit, you know, as an extra vehicle. So of course a bike like this you can add luggage to, you can add all kinds of aftermarket things to, but if you just wanna take a passenger, they’re gonna be happy sitting here compared to some of the other 650 bikes in the lineup and other sporty bikes outside the lineup. So you really get a lot of practicality with this as well. So we’re gonna go in depth and take a look at all the details that make this both fully modern and give you that retro feel.
So let’s start by taking a look up front here and you can really start to see that sort of modern sport bike in that retro feel. So one retro thing, the Z 900 Rs does have an upside down fork that gives you a little bit lower, um, you know, unsprung weight, technically it’s a little higher spec, um, higher spec uh, fork than this. But this one with the right side up fork, not only is that traditional styling, that is also something that sort of fits the original intent of this bike. This bike is designed to be relatively budget friendly. It’s not designed to be a crazy high-spec bike. And you do have, again, the nice forks here. There’s a little bit of a shield here in front that keeps sort of the bugs and other things from hitting right where your shocks normally travel. So you don’t have any uh, shock seal issues as time.
So you’ve got some modern pieces here, but then we go down from there and we get into this fully modern look. Now this bike and something like the Versys 650 actually share a lot of components. I used to own a Versys 650 and we’ll talk about that engine when we get to the engine. But let’s just take a look at the brakes here. You have dual calipers, both left and right side, the NI Nissan Cas here and you have ventilated, uh, brakes heavily ventilated here and they’re a floating caliper. So these are high spec brakes for, you know, I mean this Piece could Be a higher speck in the lineup. The Z 900 RSS SE actually has brembo brakes and a little different style here. But for the 650, this is a very high spec brake and that’s what you kind of want really good stopping power. And uh, you also have of course abs in here. So you’ve got the antilock braking system, strong brakes, the floating caliper in there. So that’s the separation. This is allows us to expand and contract, you know, as it’s gonna do as it heats up when you break. And the only real difference is
Something like the versys 650, a pedal style rotor where they kind of come in and out at the edge. Some people say that’ll dissipate heat better. I think the reality is it’s really more about style on that bike than it is about dissipating heat. And the reason I say that is cuz the ninja 1000 sx uh, actually still uses these round rotors, not the pedal style rotors and obviously that’s gonna be a bike that is more capable of higher speeds and therefore more in need of heavily ventilated brakes. So you’ve got a good system here, but the overall round shape really gives you that retro feel. But if you’ve ever seen the bikes from that, these are based on they had pathetic brakes compared to these. So you’ve got modern braking that look good. The other thing I like here is the wheel. Instead of having a spoked wheel, you have the more modern alloy wheel. And I really like the design of this. Some of the other designs, they have sort of a, a bright ring around the outside, but here you’ve got the fully black ring. Now the previous bike that I reviewed, the 2022 model was the Z650 RS 50th anniversary edition. It had gold wheels, but I really like the kind of black look of these wheels. It just gives this bike a really kind of, you know, modern look with that retro styling. Back here you can see liquid cooling. We’re gonna talk about the engine here. This is a fully modern liquid cooled engine. Let’s move our way back to the engine and talk about that now. So I really like this view because it focuses on a number of things that I think are worth pointing out on this bike. So first thing we’re gonna point out here is the engine, like we mentioned, that’s a liquid cooled engine.
This 650 has been used by Kawasaki in all kinds of bikes from the Z650 to the versus650 to the ninj6 to the cruiser. Uh, Vulcan s to this, there’s all kinds of bikes and it’s my opinion having owned this engine in the versus six 50, that this is really the perfect street engine. It’s got good torque for a twin cylinder engine. It’s got plenty of horsepower, it’s got good passing power and it’s geared in all of those bikes really well for that. On-road speeds that you’re gonna have good passing power from 80 to 120 kilometers an hour. Good acceleration, uh, you know, minimal vibrations and they actually do little things to help you with vibrations as well. There’s a little bit of weights down here, which all gonna help minimize vibrations. So they’re really trying to give you that sort of luxury ride on this. Um, and again, that engine is something that very much competes with, um, you know, other, other brands and other and other motorcycles in giving you good power, good efficiency, kind of everything you would want in a motorcycle. But it’s also a very easy to drive engine. This is a bike that you could easily, um, learn on if you’re a beginner. I usually steer people to the 400 series bikes from Kawasaki first, but that doesn’t sort of exclude these, these are, it’s a very, you know, reliable, very um, easy to drive engine. So that’s already there. The other couple cool things you have here is all of this is a, you know, well weighted engine and then because this 650 does not require a tailpipe, it does all its work down here underneath, you end up with having sort of a nice shorter tailpipe. They do the same thing on the Versys650. What that does is it moves a lot of your heavy components down underneath the bike. So you’ve got a lot of the weight down low, nothing that comes back out high keeps the weight low but More importantly it keeps the weight Centered. So that makes for a good handling bike. And The reason you want this retro sport bike to handle well
Is you’re buying a fully modern motorcycle. You want it to handle well and be fun. A couple little interesting things here. You’ve got the rubber foot pegs here on these Z900 RS, the bike that I bought. They’re not rubber padded for your guests. There is a little um, area back here which you can use as hooks to tie things down on the rear seat. We’ll talk about that in a second. But the other thing the exhaust does here by keeping it underneath there, it shows off a pretty cool swing arm here, which again gives a hint of modern feel to this bike here. Disc brakes on the back there as well. But the overall field down here is that of a modern bike and above the shot here is more of a retro bike, which is a kind of cool way. They blend it all together as we talk about a modern retro sporty type bike.
This is probably not the best angle to show the design here of the back end of the bike, but what you do have is a single sort of light that looks like a retro bike but when you hit that brake lever it is a fully modern L E D that’s instant on, instant off and really gives you that bright area there. So again, older bikes had poor lighting. This has a a light that looks like an old retro style but when you hit those brakes they come on fully bright. Now one thing that I have noticed, at least in the 900 does that 900 rs, the signal lights, uh, on those around the world are often l e d on our here in North America, they’re not. These are again our incandescent lights. So potentially some cost savings here, potentially some retro look here. But uh, this is a L E D brake light but not an L E D signal light in there. While we’re talking about lighting, we should point out the headlight here. Now the bike is on and there’s just sort of a little like daytime running lightish if your headlight ever didn’t work, I guess there’s just a bit of a light in there. It’s not actually the headlight that’s on right now, but you have high and low beams here. I think. Uh, high beam is here, no one of those is high beam, one of those is low beam, but again, a classic styled round headlight with fully modern L e D
Lights. Now l e d lights are great for a couple reasons. First of all, they shine out with a nice, uh, clear pattern but they also have a white light. That white light is closer to daylight. So your eyes, when they see things illuminated by the white l e d light, they can very quickly identify what they’re seeing because it’s familiar to your eyes. If you have sort of a halogen light, it gives more of an amber tone or a orangey yellowy ton And it takes Your sec, your brain a second longer To identify, you know, is That a rock or is that a raccoon? Is that this or that on the Side of the road?So this l e d light, not only is it brighter and clear, it also helps you identify things a little clearer. So that makes it uh,Kind of nice to have as
Well. Same thing with the incandescent signal lights there.So I pointed out this seat earlier, but I just wanna kind of point it out again, a lot of the times on this bike like this, you’re gonna have a triangle that kind of starts smaller here and a very small triangle here on the back on anything that is a little bit sporty and they want to give it a sporting look. Here you get the practicality. And again, this is part of why were so growing so much in popularity when the retro style bikes or the actually retro bikes were in style and they were selling like crazy is because they were super practical. You could take your friends, you could do your thing, you sat upright. So here you have a seat that’s fully comfortable, you could tour on this seat. It’s a very, very good seat and you have a good backseat. Now this again is probably a little forward.
You’re probably gonna sit a little bit forward of that because the seat kind of curls up to there. So really this strap to me should be more along here to give you some space. This is a slight bit smaller than the Zed 900 Rs but still a very good seat and very wide, which means that whoever you take with you is gonna be holding onto you but they’re gonna be comfortable up there and that’s just a nice thing to have on a bike for versatility. So really, really good seat. And there’s some nice sort of visual interest here too. There’s some indents here. You have the smooth leather strap here which compliments the smooth leather on the outside. There’s some contrasting white stitching along the edge. It’s interesting to look at. It’s not done cheaply, it’s well done. So now let’s take a look at the gauge cluster here.
If you’re British, you say you’re clocks if you’re, you know, other places you say uh, the dials, there’s lots of ways to call these, but the idea is this is not a TFT display. I really like the clarity of these and I’ll tell you why. A lot of, especially in the t armor a lot modern da, a lot of modern dashes with attack armor on a digital display, it’s a little harder to tell at a glance exactly where you are. So what I like about this is, you know, you can sort of tell where your tack is without looking down on the road, off the road to focus on it. And especially with the speed when you have a digital speedometer telling the difference between 68 and 86 is something you have to take your eyes off the road, look down at it, read it, and then look back up.
Something like this. If you’re going 120 kilometers an hour, the speedometer is straight up or down. So you can tell, am I going roughly a hundred? Am I going roughly 80? You can kind of see where it’s at without focusing on it in your peripheral vision you can see where that dial is and to me that allows you to keep your eyes on the road. Now there’s plenty of good reasons to have a TFT display, but there is something to be said about the clarity of these dials that you have here, which are sort of retro styled. So we’re gonna zoom into that in a second. But before we do, the other thing I really like is you have a handlebar along here. Now on a modern bike, handlebars are becoming less and less, you know, popular on some in some cases, but this is a really good place to mount things like phone mounts, GPS mounts, other types of things.
It’s also something where you could mount a windshield because you have that round headlight, there’s bolt in the side of each of the, of the headlight and these types of handlebars. If you decide you want a tour with this or even have some sort of windshield that you can pop on and pop off, you do have the ability to very easily mount aftermarket windshields on this to make it sort of something that can give you some extra wind protection. So handlebars, the way the headlights mounted and the overall look here gives you the ability to tour on this bike, which makes it very, very versatile. You’ve already got the comfortable seating position. You can add wind protection if you don’t want wind protection again, you want that breeze. That’s how it comes and it looks pretty cool like that. Let’s look in a little closer here and see what you’ve actually got now. So taking a look a little closer here, you can see again everything up close here. You’ve got really clear, easy to read, uh, dials. Now on the Zed six 50 Rs you have these extra circles in there on the Zed 900 Rs in Canada you don’t have those extra circles. You do in the states have a kilometers down here in that kind of color in the Zed 900 Rs. Uh, this one’s they don’t have, they have kilometers only, not miles. So they’re not a dual um, reading type of thing, but you have those little dials in there with the extra little circles. A nice clean font, easy to read. And then what I really, really appreciate is this extra display in the center. Now sometimes this can sort of flicker on screen. It looks like it’s pretty clear right now. Obviously the left side is your fuel gauge.
That’s blinking. This bike is super low on fuel. We haven’t uh, topped it up yet. So just a nice thing to show because it is low on fuel, it is a bar graph and you can see when it gets down you’re not really quite empty when it’s down to the last bar. You definitely need to get gas when that last bar starts flashing. So again, you’re not gonna miss that if you’re driving this. Um, and it’s just a simple display up here. Now one thing I really, really like is the gear indicator is super clear. At a glance you can see both your revs, your speedometer and what gear you’re in. So it’s a six speed transmission unlike the older bikes, which are often five speeds. So you’ve got modern, you know, transmission here and you can see what you’ve got. You’ve got a temperature gauge on the far right side. Again this modern bike with liquid cooling having a temperature gauge kind of matters there. You got a clock dead in the center and then you have a controller on your left side handlebar, which we’ll show you in a second. But that’s gonna control all of your information down here. So currently it’s on your odometer, we’re gonna cycle through them. Now by hitting the down arrow or the up arrow, we’re gonna start with down and we’re gonna go to total range. So once you start driving the bike, it’s gonna tell you the range till empty. Obviously two things, it needs more fuel and it’s gonna calculate the range left on the tank based on how you have been driving. So you have range there and then you’ve got your average fuel efficiency kilometers per liter or liters per hundred kilometers and kilometers per liter. Again instant.
So average and instant, same thing. I believe you can switch that to liters per hundred kilometers. So that’s um, the, you know the measurement that I’m more familiar with. So you can switch both of these to that uh, pretty sure anyways. And then of course you have trip B, trip A and back to your odometer. So that was going down on the button obviously you can go up or down, you can cycle through all these things in different uh, orders there. So kind of nice to have. Now lemme show you the controls that I’m using here to do that. So left side controls, couple things worth pointing out here. There is a little trigger right back here which you can’t see that trigger can flash that high beam again, that bright l e d high beam, uh, can really get people’s attention. If you just wanna flash that uh, you know, they call it flash to pass but really just to get people’s attention you can trigger that on and off and of course to lock your high beams on Ty, typical stuff here. All typical stuff. You have the horn signals, you do have uh, hazard lights. Four-way flashers down here, which we can turn on like that. Uh, and then you have the switch that I was using to adjust your dash. Just a second to go. This is the up and down uh button right there. Now over here you have a slipper and assist clutch. So slipper and assist Clutch does two things. The slipper side allows your wheel if you mess up a down shift instead of the wheel skidding, it’s gonna work to let the clutch slide as well. So it gives you better control. It’s a, it’s a piece that was designed for the racetrack for really aggressive shifting uh, to keep that wheel from skidding. And of course it becomes a safety feature here on this bike.
The side benefit is it does make for a lighter clutch lever pole. Now this is your adjustment for reach. Now somebody’s reached out to me in the Collins they said it doesn’t actually adjust your reach. What it actually does is it adjusts where the clutch engages and we are both right physically. This actually does adjust your reach. So let’s put it on number one. You can see that one is far away away. So my hand is there and that’s where it is. Now let’s push it out again and we’ll bring it to number five and you can see it’s much closer. So it does physically adjust the lever. I’m gonna put it just at number three there. It does physically adjust the lever, how close it is. But that can effectively adjust where the clutch engages, at least the feel of where it engages. So again, that commenter kind of right, I’m kind of right as well. But that’s what that does. And you have the adjustment uh, here on the clutch side as well as on the brake side. So you can really um, customize that up to fit for anybody over here. You can’t see the mirrors come up but they’re up and they’re clear of your uh, shoulders as well. The round mirrors, good controls here. Let’s just look at the other side. Now that’s cool. Throttle side, pretty simple stuff over here. You’ve got obviously the throttle kill switch and then you’ve got the start button and again the lever over here is also adjustable through this little dial here for the same thing for that front brake feel. Again, we talked about the mirrors here. Round mirrors for the retro style. I’ll be fair though, the round mirrors are also very good for visibility and because they’re mounted on the handlebar are not way out front on a fairing, they’ve become closer to your face, which gives you a little bit wider angle and better visibility again.
So even though they don’t appear massive maybe in the video, uh, the feeling when you’re riding it is that these are very good mirrors that give you very good view. While I’ve got this view, I’m gonna keep rolling with it and I’m gonna scroll down. You’ve got the fully modern tank here. Now you will notice a width difference between the Zed 900 Rs and this bike. Again, this bike is covering two cylinders where a Zed 900 Rs goes a little wider cuz it’s covering four cylinders but you still have the fully modern uh, tank, the locking tank right there as well. So modern feel, retro feel both combined. I’m gonna take a quick look at the labeling on the side here. I wanna show you the sort of retro labeling that’s uh, not something Kawasaki does anymore, but it kind of makes this bike stand out and again makes people question is this a brand new bike or used bike?
Which is kind of fun. So taking a look at the tank here, a couple things I wanna point out. These are raised letters here again, like the way Kawasaki used to do it, but they used to actually use an older font. So this is the modern font in the raised type lettering here. And then same thing with the Zed six 50 Rs. That sort of is a uh, you know, sort of a traditional kind of look. The one thing I can’t show you, it was like minus 20 when I woke up this morning. So I’m filming inside. But in on the outside or outdoors you can really see the sparkle in the metallic to this paint it, it looks really, really sharp in the sunlight. What I like about this particular model is the pin striping in here. It’s very simple but it’s just kind of enough to give it sort of a nice kind of retro look but enough detail other than just the black.
So it’s just the kind of thing you’re really gonna notice. This area is what makes people think hey is this an older bike or a modern bike because it really, they really do a good job of making it look uh, you know, like a retro bike. Now let’s take a look at what it looks like with me on the bike. So in some ways I’m saving the best for last here. One of the biggest reasons I like this bike is not just for the styling but it’s so comfortable and practical. Now again, I used to own the verses six 50, the verses six 50 was the comfortable bike in that six 50 lineup. Now obviously you have the cruiser, which is the uh, Kawasaki Vulcan S It’s pretty comfortable as well, but it’s not the the riding position that I’m familiar with. I love the position of the versys
Here’s the thing with the verses over this. This has a noticeably lower seat height and without all the body work here and you know the little bit smaller tank and just the shape of the tank and everything else, this feels like a much more compact, much more sporty bike, which I really like. That’s one thing I didn’t love about the vers is you know, all that wind protection is great in the cold weather but it became hot in the hot weather and it’s a lot of bike. It visually is a very large bike where visually this is a nice compact sporty feeling bike. And when I put my feet up here, you can see I’ve got the nice kind of tuck in. Uh, you know, the legs are at a comfortable angle. We’re well enough, high enough off the ground that you can really get some good lean angle in the corners here. You can scrape pegs on this but you gotta really go work to do it, which is what this is about. Again, not a race bike but a fully road going sport bike overall sitting square like this, there is some adjustment in the bar. You could tilt it a little bit forward or back to make it perfect for you. And again because you could add wind protection, this is a bike where you can fully tour on the tank is nice and narrow in the legs. So even though on a modern ninja it has carve outs for your uh legs, this still feels like it’s properly carved out, you can really kind of hug that tank. And again, that’s what this is all about. Those retro sport bikes were just designed, you could hug the tank, that kind of thing anyways. And it works very well with the two cylinder Instead of the four cylinder, it actually feels a little bit more comfortable and more nimble sitting on this bike in this position than it does on even the Z900 Rs, which is a little bit wider tank.
So you really get the sense of a light overall bike because again all of that weight’s down low and it’s not that heavy of a bike. It’s considerably lighter than something like the versus six 50 which shares the engine. But again, that weight down low, that weight where it’s supposed to be, the comfortable seat really makes it a fun place to be. So let’s talk about who this bike is for and really that’s kind of my favorite part about this bike. This is probably one of the most versatile bikes in the lineup. A lot of people like that cruiser style because it looks like a classic motorcycle. This also looks like a classic motorcycle, but it puts you in more of a sport riding position, yet you’re still very comfortable. So if you’re looking for a versatile bike, something that can take extra people, something you could strap luggage on the back and do some small tours with, you could put a windshield on this and get the wind protection. This is really a do-it-all kind of bike, that 650 engine that they use in everything. The reason they use it in everything is because it is very good, it’s good for efficiency, it’s good for power, and it’s a really good street powered bike. The lightweight of this bike means it handles well. It’s more comfortable than a Ninja 50 or the Z650. And again, if you don’t want the modern styling, this gives you an option. Now could this be used as a beginner bike? Normally I say that 650, like I said, it’s a very easy to drive engine, but we don’t always recommend that six 50 for a beginner. Something like the versus six 50 can be quite tall. Maybe not the best beginner bike, but this bike, again, it is something you could have as a bigger beginner bike and not, you know, need more power, not want a bigger type bike.
So I really like the way this is nimble and lightweight. It’s unintimidating. It’s able to do just about everything you could wanna do in motorcycling. And it’s good for experienced riders cuz it’s plenty of bike for experienced riders. It’s good for newer riders cuz it’s very easy to drive. It’s why motorcycling took off when bikes that looked like these were the norm. This is just such a practical bike. It really is for almost everyone. You have to like the styling, you have to like sitting upright. And again, as is, you have to accept there is no wind protection. That might be a deal breaker for you. You can add that on. But obviously if you add a windshield on this, it’s gonna change the look and make a decision for yourself with the abs brakes, with you know, everything that comes in this bike. It’s a pretty good value.
And like I said, you can’t really modify some of the other bikes to end up with what you have here as an overall package. It really does it all for you as an on-road bike. It’s really good and it’s one of my favorite bikes and it’s again, the reason that I bought a bike. Very similar to this. I bought the Zed 900 Rs because this style really does it all for a lot of people. So if you own this bike, let me know in the comments what you think of it. If you are interested in this bike and maybe there’s something that I didn’t talk about or I wasn’t really clear on, let me know when the comments below and make sure you subscribe because we’re gonna continue to come back to this bike over and over again. If you wanna see it in person, there’s like 20,000 square feet here of motorcycles. It’s February right now, 2023. This is a 2023 model and there are all kinds of bikes in here and more coming every day. So if you wanna come see it in person, put your name on it, swing on by Jim Gilbert’s Powersports here in Fredericton, New Brunswick. This is the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country. They do a great job with their customers. So there you go. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hey there motorcycle dreamers, Peter here and I love nothing more than a hot bike review on a cold winter day. In this video, I’m comparing two of motorcycling’s most affordable cruisers – the 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Custom 900 and the 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Classic 900. Thinking about buying a bike, or are just curious how they compare, stick around because I’ve got answers for you.
And today we’re gonna take an in-depth look at two different Kawasaki Vulcans. Now I say different, but they are very, very similar. But we’re gonna go through the differences between the Vulcan Classic and the Vulcan custom. So these are 900 cc v twin classic styled cruisers and there are actually quite a bit of differences more than just for instance, the front wheel and the hammer bars. So we’re gonna talk about what’s different. We’re gonna talk about what makes them great, and if you have questions, you can let me know in the comments section below, or you can also subscribe because I have the ability here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports to go back to these vehicles again and again on video. And we’ll try to answer your questions on video. So make sure if you’re interested in these bikes, you hit subscribe and you follow along because we’ll come back to these to make sure your questions are answered right now let’s go with the review.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So before we go too far with these bikes, let’s set it up in the lineup. The other day we did the Vulcan Vaquero. We’ve done the Vulcan Voyager as well. Those are both 1700 CCV twins. Those are the torque monsters. Much bigger bikes, much heavier bikes. Then on the other end you have the Vulcan S. The Vulcan S is an interesting bike because it is a smaller cruiser and uses the Ninja 650 engine. So interestingly, the Vulcan S, which is the entry level vehicle, is actually a little quicker than these in that parallel twin uh form. So if you are looking for the sort of the faster inexpensive Vulcan, that Vulcan S is probably going to be the quicker one with more horsepower. The reason you move to these is because this is a true cruiser. The V twin engine gives you the torque and it really feels like the traditional cruiser. And again, these are designed to be exactly that, that traditional cruiser. So you’ve got the full look here and of course you can customize these all up with options to make them look like each other or look different from what they are. But these two are sort of set up from the factory in a real custom setting. So let’s go through in detail some of the similarities and some of the differences between these two bikes. So before we talk about the differences, let’s talk about what’s the similarities are between these two bikes. And really it’s all right here. The engine is shared. Even the coloring of the engine, you’ve got a little 900 cc or it says 900 up here indicating this is a 900 v twin. We’ll get you a little picture of that so you can see that a little clearer. And then these look like they’re air cooled there.
It’s a black, uh, casings here with the brushed uh, sort of silver look to the uh, to the fins there. So it looks like it’s air cooled, but they are a liquid cooled engine. So liquid cooled of course gives you that consistent performance. It uh, keeps that engine at the right operating temperature, which is what you want for longevity as well. In here, like I said, everything’s identical. This uh, plastic panel right up through here and the tank, everything’s identical. The only real difference you’re seeing right here are that the pipes here are black. We’re gonna talk about the controls cuz you’ve got foot boards versus foot pegs here. So we’ll talk about that. But that is the similarity. There’s actually a lot of differences between these two. So now let’s start digging into all of those differences.
So to show you some of the differences, I’m gonna be free handing my camera because again, a lot of people assume that the wheels are really the difference in the handlebars and we’ll get to them as well. But let’s talk about everything that is different between these two. So starting over here on the classic, obviously the white wall tires on this one, you actually have in addition to the uh, the wheel size and uh, shape, this one is uh, different, um, fender there as well.
So it’s a little bit wider fender. You’ve got the spoked wheels there, obviously it’s the traditional look. This one rides like a traditional cruiser Coming over to the classic, you have obviously the much bigger wheel. This is a 21 inch wheel and it is an alloy wheel with the different type spoke design. The other difference here, we think anyways, the suspension is the same, the travel is the same between these two.
We can’t find a way that these are really different but they look completely different. So of course we’ll show you here the sort of top tube on down, very traditional suspension. Look on the custom where you actually have a different sort of casing to the suspension right here. So a different look right there. All the fork tubes are covered up, which is something that we didn’t really notice at first. Same thing with your signal lights in here. You can see they’re connected by a sort of dipped bar there. And this is a larger headlight than you have over here where the signal lights are sort of clamped on there. No connecting bar other than the suspension bar and a slightly smaller headlight. We’ll talk about the handlebars in a second from the other side. But you can see they come straight up and relatively flat bar there. Whereas you come over here, they come out and obviously swing right back. So we’ll get to that a little bit in a better detail there as well. The other differences are paint colors. Now paint colors never show up perfectly on camera or on the screen that you’re watching at, but I can tell you that both of these colors have really sort of stopped traffic in the showroom. People really like this sort of brown with the gold pin striping into that metallic black Kawasaki is really well known for their paint, especially up close. You can really see that metallic sparkle. And then you go completely different here. So this is a greener color and I can already tell it doesn’t quite match um, what I’m seeing with my eyes on the screen that I’m filming with. So it’s gonna look a little different to you in person.
But this is another color that has really sort of impressed people when they see it up close and this one doesn’t have that metallic. This is more of a flat color, uh, which looks pretty cool as well. The other difference is we’re gonna point out here, this seat here appears to be a little different from the front here, but the reality is that the seat cover actually doesn’t quite fully touch the actual seat. So you can see here if you’re looking at it at least in person, there’s much more of an upright rear end to the seat there. Whereas over here it kind of slopes down, but the way it feels on you is identical. You will notice a difference in the rear seat here. There’s a slightly smaller seat here on the custom than you would have on the classic. So again, a lot of differences there. The other thing you’re gonna find here is the fender on the classic is a different fender than the one here on the custom brakes are the same. Rear wheels are the same. Obviously some chrome differences with the pipes there as well. All of this is the same, the same thing you’re gonna have with the gauges, everything’s the same there. So we’re gonna come and show you those a little bit closer as well as the controls. And then we’re gonna do a seating comparison where I’ll try to line up the bikes together so you can see what it looks like with me sitting on the bike and then we’ll fade into the next bike. So you can see the differences in seating. The interesting thing to me is that you know again the obvious differences of the handlebars and the wheels, but none of the specs are the same. So you have a different rake and trail to the front angles here and that’s probably due to the wheel, slightly different ground clearance, slightly different Uh, seed height, the width, height and length are all different between these as bikes as well. So even though they really share the main components, the tweaks that they’ve made have changed them slightly from the other. There is definitely a different feel to each bike. So let’s go through now and I’ll show you what it looks like with me sitting on the bike as well as all the controls. So what I’m gonna do with the seating position here is I’m gonna hop on this bike and I’m gonna try to put the other bike in the exact same spot and fade between the two so you get a sense of the differences. But while I hop on this one, let’s just talk about what you find.
First of all, low step over height and low seat height. You sit down, you are very low, so I’m about six feet tall. Feet are easily on the ground, very low, very comfortable. It’s a heavy bike at around 600 plus pounds but it’s not so hard to handle because again it is so low. Mirrors are out, they clear my shoulder and this handlebar sweeps back a lot further than the other one will. So you can see I’m sitting up here. The other big difference is the foot peg or the instead of foot peg, it’s the floorboards down here. So you’ve got a larger brake pedal here. You’ve got a heel toe shifter here on the other side. So you won’t have the heel toe shifter on the custom, but you do have it on the classic CD position here. Very in command. Very upright, very comfortable, really doesn’t matter what size you are, the seat is very, very large. So I’m gonna sit here and uh, try to line it up here. Let’s see just where the wheels are. We’re a little bit off center but that’s okay. We’ll see if we can do something similar with the last one. So right there is where I see the kickstand. I’m gonna look forward for a second and you should see us blend into the next model right now. So there you can see the difference between the classic and the custom. Hopefully I line them up close enough. Overall the feeling is kind of similar, but this sweeping back handlebar uh, sweeps back a little differently because it’s more of a flat square bar here as opposed to a lower bar that comes right back out. But it either one is very comfortable to me. These handlebars feel like they’re a little bit closer, but you’ll probably be able to tell better by seeing back to back than I haven’t even seen what you’ve seen yet. Uh, there’s a difference between the floorboards and the foot pegs, just depends on what you want. Obviously you can put the floorboards on this one if you wanted to. Um, you know, if you prefer one over the other you have the option to switch that back and forth. But for the difference of all the differences in them, the biggest thing you’re gonna notice is in slow speed maneuvering. There is definitely a difference
In the larger wheel here. So you can decide if you like one better than the other. Uh, it’s not just style. They do have a different feel to ride certainly at slower speeds. Uh, higher speeds to be very honest. Haven’t taken this bike Kevin. I’m not sure how it feels compared to that one yet. This is a 2023 model we’re filming in February in Canada. So uh, don’t have a writing experience on this one, but obviously if you have some experience with the cruisers you may know the difference but you can sort of feel just sort of moving around that it does have a little bit different feel certainly in the slower speed maneuvers. So let’s take a look at the dash here. Not a whole lot to show you. What I like about this bike is either one, kind of as a throwback bike, keeps things simple, gives you what you need, nothing you don’t, it’s all about the style, all about the feel and not uh, you know, not overdone with technology or TFT displays or anything like that.
So let’s take a look at some of the technology and con or some of the uh, controls and display here. So taking a look at the display here, one interesting thing is that the ignition key of course is very cruiser, like it’s down by the seat and the tank. So we’ll turn that on instead of turning it on up near the dash. Now over here you’ve got a good large display here. You can kind of sort of see based on my hands there. Very simple display. Now of course in Canada only shows kilometers per hour. Uh, nice sort of retro style font there. That’s quite nice. Quite easy to read as well. Underneath this uh, digital display where you have the clock right now it’s more simple than almost every other bike we have. Usually there’s a trip computer in here, trip A, trip B, but right how right now you have the clock there, the odometer there and just the plane trip meter. There’s no trip B in here. No fuel efficiency numbers, no anything else like that. Just throwback styling all the way. Now you do have some good information here. Of course a fuel gauge is nice to have. This little red light is exceptionally bright. If that comes on you will see it. It will draw your attention away, uh, from the road because uh, it is much better than for instance, the neutral light down here you can throw on the signal light and of course you just have the single light for either signal here. Again, that’s not very Kawasaki light. Most of their Kawasaki bikes have the two signal lights. Now as you can differentiate between left and right high beam light, I can’t turn on unless the vehicle’s running, but of course that’s what’s down there. And then you have a low fuel light over here. So no uh, the fuel gauge and the low fuel light, no temperature gauge, but there is a temperature light down there as well. So you have the information you need but in a super clear, super clean display, nothing that you don’t need in there at all. Take a look at the left side controls. Again, the controls are identical on these. So you’ve got nice thick grip here and very basic stuff. A lot of the Kawasaki like sport bikes for instance, they’ll have a little trigger here to flash the high beam. You don’t have that. You have on off, you have the signals there and you have the horn there. That’s it. The other thing you have compared to some of the sport bikes, they throw in a slipper and a cis clutch, which is a performance type uh thing. But of course down here on the cruiser you have a nice heavy clutch pull that makes it feel like a classic cruiser. So everything about this uh, bike, both the look, the feel, even the controls, they’re going with that classic feel on both the custom and the classic. And you’ve got that sort of traditional cruiser feel. So if it’s you’ve been dreaming about a bike like this, this has got what you’ve been dreaming about. I do
Wanna show the controls up first here. So again, we’re staying with the custom. This is the one with the tall and narrower front wheel. And you can see of course there’s your uh, foot pegs there. Again, big rubber padding. So you’ve got some vibration resistance in there and uh, the brake pedal there. Now hopefully it’ll show different. Yeah, it’ll show different here. We’ll go over to the other bike and just compare brake pedals and then we’ll also go compare shifters as well. So fading into the classic here you see the floorboards, which a much larger brake pedal. Again, I don’t know if it’ll show on screen, but it’s uh, you know, the sort of this size brake pedal. Now it’s much larger here with those floorboards on the classic. Now let’s look at the shifter side. We’ll start again with the custom on the shifter side here again on the class or sorry on the custom.
Again, sometimes they on video they, these look smaller than they are. So you’ve got a good big meaty shift. You hear much bigger than the typical sport bikes or typical Kawasaki, what they’re known for outside the cruisers. This is a good meteor thing and that’s the really the big thing that you should point out about these bikes is that just because Kawasaki is known probably for their sport bikes and stuff, they continue to understand the motorcycle market where they’re in. And this of course is exactly what you would want on a cruiser here. Let’s just take a look at how it looks with the floorboards. And you have the heel toe shifter, heel toe shifter here again, you’ve got sort of the similar style of the brake pad on the custom. You have that as a uh, heel shifter on the classics. So again, same idea here. Nice big beaten, beefy controls, uh, really fit what this bike is all about. Staying with the classic. For this shot, I do wanna show sort of a little closer view of the seats here. We did mention that, you know, this one has that sort of steep rake here, big wide seat from my eye and my feel, it feels like this section of the seats are identical between these two back here. You do have a much larger seating area on the classic than you would have on something like the custom. So maybe again, hard to show on video. Now remember there is a bagger version of these where you have the bags inside and you can get the backrest. So if you’re taking a passenger, this works well. You can add accessory backrest if this is the model you wanna stay with. Uh, but again, if you’re taking a passenger, this one is going to have a little bit more space for them and we’ll just show you the custom right now using the same basic view here.
Again, I don’t know if I showed this clearly before, but again, the padding of this seat is really kind of the same. So this feels the same, obviously a different texture here, but this is a little bit smaller. Now this is not sport bike small by any means. You can still fit a passenger here, they can be quite comfortable, but the other one is a little larger, is likely gonna be a little bit more comfortable. So you’ve got options, uh, to do what you need to do. Uh, just they are, there are some slight differences there. So let’s talk about who these bikes are for. Well the first thing you have to point out with these is these are incredible values. The overall fit and finish, the quality of these bikes is really, really good. That’s what Kawasaki does well. But the price point is obviously significantly less expensive than other similar looking models from other manufacturers. So value is a big piece.
But of course these aren’t the entry level bikes. You still have that Vulcan s So let’s talk about some of the speed and the power. I mentioned the Vulcan S is likely quicker. The way the Vulcan S works is it is a high revving powered motorcycle. So you get your power up high in the revs and it has more horsepower. It has less torque than these though. So if you want more than just the cruiser style, you want everything to be the cruiser feel and everything. These 900 s are really good for that because they have that low down, low revving torque. You don’t even have a tack on here. You don’t need one because again, you’re not revving up near red line to make power. You can sort of feel where that power comes on low in the res. And that’s what these do. They sound really good, they feel really good. And that v twin motor, that’s why it’s a V twin, it gives you that little bit of a rumble. And the trick with the V twin is to have that rumble but not have the vibrations. And these are smooth, but with that rumble. So that’s kind of the nice sort of balance there. So again, who buys these bikes? Well, there’s a whole bunch of versions of these. You can have these two versions here. The classic and the uh, custom, the classic look is also available in that bagger model. You can accessorize these up with big windshields with all kinds of things. You can travel as far as you want to go, but again, at the size point they are in that 600 or so pound, which sounds like a lot. It’s signi significantly less than the 844 pound Vaquero that we filmed just a couple days ago.
So it’s that nice big meaty styling with the big bike feel without being massive. So again, bigger than that Vulcans. But it allows you to have what you need. And again, because of these bikes, just the overall seating position, the comfort, these are bikes you can do anything with. You can drive around town, you can take ’em to work, but you can also travel long, long distances with them and be comfortable. So really versatile bikes here. Not sports bikes, but they’re not designed to be. You kind of know what you’re getting when you come into this. So are these right for you? Well, let me know when the commons below what you think about ’em, if you have one. Tell me about what you think about it, what it’s like to ride. I’ll be honest, I’m not a cruiser guy. These aren’t bikes that I’m super, super familiar with, but I wanna make sure that I’m giving you the information you need. So if there’s something that you wanna know about these, let me know cause I’ll continue to come back to these over and over again. And make sure you hit that subscribe button. Wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. This is the number one volume Kawasaki dealer in the country. We’ve got these in stock right here in February and they’re selling, there’s a bunch of bikes all around me here that are all sold. So if you’re looking for these bikes, it’s a 20,000 square foot showroom and it is feeling up right now. There are bikes coming in every single day. These are new 2023’s my first chance to look at them. So again, make sure you swing by the dealership here and if there’s something you wanna see on online, now’s a great time to ask for what you wanna see because we can get them online right now. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hey there motorcycle enthusiasts! In this video, I’ll be doing a complete in-depth review of the brand new 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Vaquero. This bike is sure to turn heads with its cutting edge style and performance. So whether you’re looking for your first bike or are just curious about what’s out there, make sure to stick around because you won’t want to miss this.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter, and this is the 2023 Kawasaki Vulcan Vaquero. This is a bike I’ve been waiting to review for a long time because it is super stylish. It’s a great value and the big thing is it’s got a whole bunch of features that other videos don’t show and sometimes people just don’t even know about. So I’m gonna go through this vehicle in detail to make sure that you know what this is all about and see if it’s right for you. So I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and they are the number one Kawasaki dealer in the country and they allow me complete access to their Kawasaki lineup. So if you have questions about this bike that I don’t answer in this video, make sure you subscribe and talk to me about it in the comments because I can come back to this vehicle again and again and make sure that I answer all of your questions, both in the comments section and in future videos. So make sure you subscribe for that. So let’s get going with the review of this bike. So the first thing that stands out to people about this bike is the style. And although it’s based on the Vulcan Voyager or they’re both kind of built on the same basic platform, basically the exact same platform, they look completely different. And a lot of that comes down to this paint color here, which is kind of this sort of matte gray black, I’ll put the name of it on the screen here for you cuz I don’t even remember what Kawasaki calls some of their paint colors. But what’s cool about it is this isn’t just a paint color for other people to see. They carry it through to the dash side, which we’ll show you in a little bit. So you get to enjoy that color yourself, not just on the tank, but right through sort of the interior of the dash.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Here you’ve got the little stubby windshield here. The nice thing with the accessories on this thing is you can accessorize it up any way you want to do anything you want to do with this bike, except for probably a track day, not really made for that. But of course this uh, windscreen here is just a few inches here. You can go up to 18 inches and I think every six or three or four inches, there’s plenty of um, windshield options right from Kawasaki here. Same with the backseats and that kind of thing. You can get different types of seating there as well. We’ll talk about that as we get to it. But yeah, overall style, this is a classic cruiser and for, you know me when I was growing up and I thought about Kawasaki, it wasn’t this. And what’s cool about Kawasaki is they’re not just a great inline four cylinder motorcycle company.
They do a really nice v twin here. So let’s talk briefly about this V twin. They don’t miss power specs uh, in North America for these bikes. So seems to be everybody agrees around. It’s about 80 horsepower, which again, horsepower doesn’t really matter in a cruiser so much. That’s plenty of power for top speed, uh, for what you need in this bike. But the real big number here on this 1700 uh, V twin is about 107 foot pounds of torque. And you get that pretty low on the rev range around 27 50 or so is your max torque. So you’re really not revving this bike out at all to have a tremendous amount of torque and that’s the feeling that you want when you ride this bike. Now a lot of people have talked about, you know, this bike’s been around for a while and I think that’s for good reason. This is the kind of bike where it’s not worth bringing it up to modern day standards cuz what are you gonna do? Are you gonna smooth out the engine even more? This is already a pretty smooth V twin but it has to have a certain amount of rumble. We’ll talk about how that rumble is Translated into proper feel and where you can go wrong with that rumble and turns into vibrations. And this one handles all of that very well. So the fact that it’s been around for a while I think is a good thing. It’s fairly efficient. We’ll talk about the transmission and how that helps it be efficient. We’ll talk about uh, how it sort of deals with vibrations. But the nice thing about being around for a while as well is there’s not just Kawasaki accessories that go with this. There’s a number of aftermarket accessories where it’s worthwhile for those aftermarket companies to build something for a bike like this, which means that in the true cruiser spirit you can customize this up any way you want. So before we get into some of those details, let’s just start right off the bat with safety and we’ll talk about the braking system on this, which is a fully mo modern braking system.
So let’s start by taking a look at the front wheel, front brake area and see everything that you’ve got here. So first of all, this is a 16 inch diameter rim, which is different than a modern sport bike, which is a 17 inch diameter but of course you have a little bit more tire there. So it’s still a good size tire and rim and of course very wide plenty uh, you know, it’s just the typical thing of what you’re looking for on a cruiser like this. Now these disks here, they are 30, uh, 300 millimeter uh, disk across that’s a di disk diameter. What’s interesting is the rear disc is actually the same size, a 300 uh, millimeter diameter there as well. So that takes into account the heavier bike with the sort of, you know, weight sort of throw where a modern sport bike or something like that, something from Kawasaki’s gonna have dual disks up front just like this, but only a single smaller disc in the back. This one’s got the same size disc in the back. Now they are a little bit different brakes front and rear and that makes sense because of weight transfer and everything else. So look, weight transfer is really what this K act is about. K dash a c t. This is an a BS braking system. So first of all you have a modern ABS braking system. It is tied to a computer and the computer does a couple things that of course help ABS sort itself out. Anytime you have ABS you need a computer anyways. But this one is a more advanced system with extra pieces in there that allow you to have a linked braking system depending on speed and everything else. So if you jam on the foot pedal brake, which would normally be just your rear brake, it’s going to put power to the front to keep you, uh, keep the braking balance and it’s gonna make a decision on that based on the number of factors, speed of the bike and that kind of thing. And the same thing happens if you grab uh, a whole bunch of front brake. It’s gonna balance out that braking front and rear. So in an emergency situation with a heavy bike like this, that’s often where you get into some trouble and this braking system is built for Kawasaki’s heavier bikes. They don’t use this type of braking system on anything else other than these bigger, heavier bikes and it allows you to keep better control. So it’s ABS and a linked braking system, which means an emergency situation. If you grab too much foot brake, too much hand brake, whatever you’re grabbing, uh, it will balance that out as best as it can and work with your ABS system to help you keep control. It’s a pretty advanced braking system and braking is a big deal on a big heavy motorcycle like this. So really gotta give Kawasaki credit for this braking system here inside here there’s some alloy style wheels. Hard to see there with those large brake discs, uh, but some extra little styling when you come up close. Let’s take a look back and look at some of the styling on the front as we move through some of the features as well through the motorcycle. So taking a look at the front of the bike, you’ve got some nice sort of classic styling here. Now you do have options here. These are not actually functional vents, they look pretty cool, but you have the option of filling these in just like on the voyager with extra driving light. So you’ve got that option. If you don’t do it, it looks cool, but again, just remember they’re not functional vents coming down here. This is a liquid cooled engine that’s gonna be good for all kinds of reasons. Uh, big thing is it’s keeps that engine temperature consistent.
Um, but you know, it has the air cool look, but the liquid cooled mod modernity, it makes it more modern, uh, which is really good. And the way they do this, you’ve got a radiator guard on here but you also have the long fender on here so you’re not really having your uh, tire kick up stuff in your radiator, which is very good. And of course it’s kind of scooped in there. Even the uh, radia or the panel down here kind of comes out to scoop some air in there. So you’ve got good air cooling in there built into the or liquid cooling in there, built into the styling. So from the side it just looks like a air-cooled bike, which is the look that you’re going for. So let’s take a look at that engine for a second here. First of all, visually it’s impressive. Like I said, it’s got that air cooled look to it, which is pretty cool. You’ve got a really good mix of black inside the engine to make the fin stand out black on here and then chrome as well. So you’ve got sort of that black, that dark gray kind of mix and the chrome all mixing together to really make the pieces stand out, give it some visual presence. It’s just super cool up close. So again, big chrome pipes down here and the chrome does tie into other pieces of the bike front and rear, which is cool. But again, that sort of dark gray paint with the black engine really goes well together. Now one thing I wanna point out is let’s talk about a vwe engine like this. They are supposed to have some rumble. So this is what I talked about when I started off with this uh, video is you can’t make it so refined that it just doesn’t have any feel to it.
That’s not what you’re going for in a motorcycle. So making this more modern and softening out everything is not what you want, but you do wanna make sure that that rumble is something you feel and not vibrations. And what they do is they have these sort of floating foot pads here which are really, really good for just helping take some of that vibration out. So you’ve got that whole feeling of that classic feel but you’re not gonna tire from it because both in your hands and in your feet you find that the vibrations don’t carry through. So again, that proper rumble, that feel of, you know, it’s not a inline force, smooth Kawasaki like other bikes, it has that sort sort of feel of a true motorcycle, but it does dampen out those vibrations. You’ve also got the crash bars along here, something like the Voyager has a little bit of extra body workout here with vents that come through here. The body work is a little bit closer so your feet are out in the wind, which on a hot day I think is a little bit nicer. Uh, you can obviously, you know, do a number of things to keep warm on a cool day or that kind of thing. But having that crash bar come out and protect without the body work I think makes this look a little bit sleeker, a little bit sportier rather than something that uh, Voyager, which is more of a tour, although there’s no difference in this bike, you can tour just as easily with that. Just wanna come around to the other side. I didn’t point out this V twin 1700, that’s of course on the other side as well. It’s an identical badge there. Down here on the other side you had a Kawasaki badge, but here is a six speed and that six speed is something I want to talk about in those six gears. Of course, one down five up is uh, and if you have a heeled toll shifter here as well, but the gearing here is first through fourth or building gears fifth and six are overdrive gears. Now with all the torque you have, you can still pass in fifth gears still pass in six gear, not a problem. But really first through fourth are what you’re gonna use to get going, to get moving anywhere you need to go. And those overdrive gears are gonna give you efficiency as well as sort of, you know, dial it down on the highway to just give you that nice sort of, you know, calm feeling, which is what you get with a 1700 cc v twin bike is that ability to just have that calm highway cruising. But like I said, you’ve got the power where you need it and uh, that six speed really just makes it a nicer vehicle to drive.
So worth mentioning and again, worth putting that badge on there. So we’re working our way to the driver’s compartment or driver’s. So we’re working our way to the driver’s area of this. But let’s continue working down through the rear seat and the bags over here. So first of all, the rear seat, we’ll show you a better angle of it in a minute here, but a lot of people feel like it’s not that big because this seat from the top looks so wide, it does narrow over here, but you can see when you see it from the top and we’ll show you in a second, it’s plenty wide and it comes back a long ways. Now you can get backrest for this and that kind of thing. The one thing that some people might complain about if you’re taking passenger regularly is this just has the foot pegs here. Now you can get the floorboards if you want. That comes standard on the Voyager. They’re an accessory from Kawasaki. So don’t let that deter you. If you are taking a passenger regularly, uh, you can do that. And again, there are multiple seat options. There’s more of a solo seat, there’s more of a um, like a gel seat. There’s options to, to change this up to be whatever you need it to be. If you’re riding solely, you’re probably never gonna worry about this cuz you can take a passenger, we need to. But if you’re doing longer tours and you want to get, you know, a back wrist on here or other things, uh, and you know, set it up for a passenger, don’t worry, you can do that. A little hard to see on camera here, but you’ve got more crash birds here that come out beyond your luggage. And I’m gonna try to do the luggage on camera here. Now let’s just show you one thing with the key here. The keys to me don’t match the motorcycle as far as the size of it. There’s a little thicker key to a lot of Kawasaki keys, but that’s not gonna matter and I’ll show you why in a second. But the shape of it you can sort of see there is very similar to the shape of your bags there, which is kind of cool. So this is the ignition key, it’s a key matched here. I’m gonna turn it in here, we’re gonna unlock it. And then this is a handle you pull up and you have pretty good uh, storage in there. Can you see it there? Yeah, perfect. You can sort of see it. So you have this uh, bungee stored here. You can get as an accessory, an inner liner bag. So if you weren’t concerned about things that you know, you have that fall outta here, you can get an inner bag that fits there. So you can just take that entire bag out if you want. Uh, also to take your stuff inside. That might be
Good if you’re doing a tour, that kind of thing. But you know, overall with this kind of thing, I’ve had no issues with uh, this in a previous Kawasaki I had this type of system in the bags where things don’t fall out and you have really good space in here, like it’s quite long and there is sort of a soft padding on the bottom here. Fairly firm soft padding, but again that’s gonna keep things from rattling along. So you’ve really got all the space you need to take a weekend’s worth of stuff away without any issues without going full onto the voyager with a top box. So good space in there and uh, simple to use. And of course it’s um, color matched as well, uh, to the bike and the key matching as well makes it super convenient as we move to the driver’s area.
Let me just show you what it’s like to sit here. This is a very, very wide seat. It’s the widest one on any Kawasaki that I’ve seen. So it doesn’t show on video great. But of course this is as comfortable as you’re gonna need. This is just a great seating position overall. We’ll show you what it’s like for me to sit on the bike and a little bit, uh, later. But like I said, a lot of people feel like because this narrows like this isn’t a comfortable seat, but this is, and maybe cuz it doesn’t have the styling, but this is a full size rear passenger seat back here. Plenty of space as is. But of course again you can customize some of these things up there. So good seating space, a little strap there, but other um, accessories you can put on to hold on as well if you don’t want just that strap. And of course the rider as well. Let’s take a look at the driver’s environment now because there’s a lot going on in that area that we don’t always talk about. So the very first thing I wanna show you, and this is something that I think people leave out sometimes is the ignition. Of course you can turn it on with the key like that and then you can pull your key out and take your key and put it in your pocket or wherever you want. And the reason that’s nice is because you don’t have all your other keys or other your things, um, dangling around, clicking around, scratching around anything else. So you can take that key out, it’s designed to do that. And you can see here I can easily turn it back, uh, and turn it off by myself without the key. So really cool design there.
That’s why this ignition looks different is you need the key to turn it on, but you don’t need the key to turn off and you don’t have to ride with the key there, which is pretty cool. Now one thing to remember is of course if you do take that key out, don’t set it down anywhere than other than on your body because if you were to turn this off, uh, if you were to drive away from your house and uh, turn it off two hours away from your house, you’re stuck. So make sure you put that key on your body when you take it out. But remember that you don’t have to leave the key in it, you can take it out. It’s designed to work like that. And in fact we’re gonna film some of the dash sections here with the key out. So let’s look at some of the dash.
Alright, so we tried to kind of get everything in here. Obviously the handlebars are turned sharp. I should mention that those handlebars do turn sharp 35 degrees each way. So again, they’re really, uh, for a bigger bike it does maneuver very, very well. Certainly unlike uh, modern Kawasaki sport bikes which don’t turn nearly as sharp. So for the length of this bike, you can still do comfortable u-turns. Obviously it’s a big heavy bike so you gotta be aware of what you’re doing, be used to riding. But again, the steering, it all works with you. Now taking a look at the gauges here, you can see the sort of red backlit gauges, very cool font design here. Uh, know, very easy to read. Uh, I could zoom in a little bit better to show you some more. I’m gonna walk around to the, uh, driver’s side or you know, the right side of the bike here.
And I’m gonna show you there’s a, uh, toggle switch I’ll show you in a second when we show you the handlebars. But I want you to look sort of over here and over here there’s a switch where if I move to the left, I will switch this stuff up here, your odometer right now. So right now it says odometer and hopefully you can read that it’s now switching to, um, oops, I’m going the wrong way. So <laugh>, we’re actually down here. Uh, let’s go to the top side. If I pull it to the right, the switch that I’m gonna talk about, if I pull it to the right, I can go through odometer, trip A, trip B and that’s it. Now if I push it to the left, you probably already saw this, there’s a couple things in there. There’s the average kilometers per liter, I believe you can change that to leaders per hundred kilometers if that’s what you want.
And then the range to empty. So range of course is um, ed to empty calculated based on how you’ve been driving. So keep in mind if you’re in a, you know, heavily mountainous area or that kind of thing, you know, that’s, that’s making a guesstimate based on how you have been driving. Now some lights down here, your AB BS light is on, there’s a red warning light on, again, the engine’s not running neutral light’s up there as well. You’ve got two separate signal lights, a high beam light up top. There’s also a light that’s gonna come on right now that’s your cruise control light. So I can turn the cruise control on, but I can’t set it until it gets up to speed. So the set button would be a green light down here. Cruise control is super simple to have, but again, having these two lights on at a glance, you know if it’s on or off the dash here is simple but super effective, very, very easy to read. So you’ve got a 6,000 RPM red line on this engine here and of course your max torque is about 27 50. So it’s way down here. So you’re just revving this bike in about a thousand RPM range to get most of your idle through, you know, pretty good torque. Uh, and that just is part of the fun of these bikes is they don’t have a quick revving four cylinder engine, but you’ve got that torque that builds that sound that builds. And again, rear real clear gauges there. Temperature gauge over here. So just in case you didn’t see it, fuel gauge, uh, speedometer, tachometer temperature gauge. And again, you may not notice it on your screen because it’s sort of the grayish color, but this grayish color is the same color that’s on the front and the sides of the bike. So you don’t just see the color on the tank, you see it throughout the dash here, which you know you’re paying for that for a reason. Taking a look down here, you’ve got your stereo system. The stereo system is actually very clear. I haven’t got it, uh, turned up very loud right now just cause I don’t want it to jump into my microphone here. But you’ve got FM am you’ve got a weather band radio, uh, and then you can add communication system, you can add other, uh, things like a Bluetooth device as well. And that of course, uh, allows you to uh, connect different things like communication systems, connect, uh, CB radio, you can connect up to this bike. Uh, so all those things that’s sort of pre-wired for and pre-set up for, but of course am FM radio with the speakers there is standard. Let’s zoom out a little bit and get a little view of the overall dash and then uh, we’ll take a look at some of the individual pieces of this dash as well. So taking a top down look at the bike, just uh, zooming out a little further. You can see those speakers right there. They’re well placed. You do have two little storage compartments here. Now they’re identical except this one here has the wiring in there. Can you see the wiring? Yeah, there we go. The very bottom, you can see the wiring in there. Uh, obviously you can leave the bike running. Take your key out to open those up if you need. This wiring is basically for audio type connections, whether it’s a communication system, Bluetooth, uh, enabled devices, that kind of thing. Uh, you’ve got that in the left side pocket. The right side pocket is identical without the wiring in there. So just something to keep in mind. Um, and again, some people have said in uh, other reviews that, you know, they wish those weren’t lockable. But again, you don’t have to turn your bike off to get them because you can pull the key out while it’s running. Get inside and outta there, no problem at all. The other thing I’ll really quickly point out is both sides have the speaker, then they have this door, and then below that is a little potential 12 volt port. So this one here is uh, just a blank right now and it’s the same thing on both sides. Below these little doors on both sides of the vehicle, you can add a little USB or 12 volt port, I assume just 12 volt port by, you know, other cows hockey bikes have USB options as well. So haven’t checked into that, but definitely a 12 volt port down there. Now let’s look at the handlebars and the controls there because you get extra functions on a bike like this. So taking a look at the left side here, this is your clutch lever here. First of all, you’ve got a nice sort of meaty clutch feeling there. So larger, uh, clutch handle, like the clutch lever there and larger grip here. These aren’t carryover pieces from other, you know, Kawasaki sport bikes or something like that. They feel the part, you know, they’re, they do their job. Same thing with the horn button here, different horn button, it’s large, it’s up there. Different lights over here or different buttons for the lights here. So on some of the sport bikes you have a trigger to flash your hive. Don’t have that here. I would’ve liked to see that, but you know, it is what it is. You do have low and high beam right there, signal lights right there. And then you have this set of controls here. This is your volume for your stereo, this is your tuning for your stereo and then you have your squelch for a CB that you could add at a later time.
So you’ve got all of those controls built in there. The ones you’re gonna use the most volume and tuning are easy to reach and I’m on the wrong angle to have my hand on the right angle cause I’m standing beside the bike. But you can see the CB is hardest to reach but still within reach to adjust that as well. So simple controls there. Let’s look at the opposite side hand grip where you also have a number of controls, right side controls, throttle side controls, same thing. You’ve got those big grips here, which are again fitting for the style of bike. This is, you’ve got the front brake liver right there, which feels good. Kill switch is fairly large. And interesting thing is your hazard lights, your four-way flashers, they’re on the right side on this bike on a normal Kawasaki on other Kawasakis, they traditionally put that on the left side. But because you’ve got those volume and those tuning those other controls, you’ve kind of got enough controls there. So they move it over here. There’s a start switch down there right below the kill switch. And then you’ve got the switch right here, moving it left controls the, I think the middle section, moving it right controls the upper section of that dash that we showed you. So that was the odometer, the fuel efficiency type gauges in that center display screen, uh, dash, uh, you can just, uh, quickly get at a glance. So again, left side is I believe the middle. Moving it to the right side here is cycles through the top section of the
Odometer kind of thing. You’ll figure that out pretty quickly. And then down below here, you’ve got a cruise control. Again, I’m on a wrong angle to really, you know, this isn’t the angle that we’ll be riding the bike on, I’m standing beside the bike. So this is much easier to reach than it looks like in the camera here. That turns your cruise control on and off and the switch sticks in. So you can tell both by feel as well as by looking at your dash, whether your cruise controls on, and then of course the set switch and resume switch down there as well. Very automotive like. So now I’m gonna jump across this bike. First of all, you probably have realized this already. I’m not really a cruiser guy myself. I like a lot of the other bikes. That doesn’t mean that I won’t study this bike and give you everything you need to know. But the fun thing for me is every time I sit on a cruiser, there is nothing that feels like these bikes and I, that’s why you guys are buying these things. So the overall comfort on a bike this big is really, really good. Even with this like, you know, very small non-existent windshield, you’ve got great wind protection overall, which makes long cruising, long, you know, highway rides super simple and of course you can put the big windshield up there and have it, you know, completely no wind at all if you wanted to. Overall, I’m about six feet tall, you can see pretty comfortable here. It’s a nice wide uh, tank here. But again, very, very, very comfortable. And again, being six feet tall, my feet are easily on the ground. And of course these are pretty heavy bikes. So if you stop in a spot where there’s a pothole or something like that, you want to have some room to put your feet down.
Even if you’re well shorter than me, you’re gonna be easily able to get your feet flat. And you wanna keep these bike bikes, you know, fairly upright. You don’t wanna have let them start leaning one way or the other. And you can easily do that. So again, not being a cruiser guy, I get it. As soon as you sit on here, yeah, this is comfortable. It’s a position of power here, really wide handle bars, but very, very, you know, easy to ride in all day long no matter what you’re doing. So, style of the bike looks great, comfort is great. Technology’s pretty good as well. Let’s talk about who this bike is for. So the one thing that I haven’t shown in the video is just the absolute value of this bike. It is priced really well in that cruiser marketplace and gives you so many things. It’s the kind of thing where you can buy the new Kawasaki without having to worry about did the previous owner do oil changes, did the previous owner take care of it? Do the things that you should do to a bike. You can buy this new for the price of other bikes used and you have a really, really good bike. Does it have the brand name that you want on a cruiser? Well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. The Vulcan Vaquero though has a pretty good legacy in history, all on its own. So keep in mind there’s, this is not a beginner bike. There are other cruisers in the lineup. The Vulcan S is a great first cruiser. It is very sporty and much lighter weight, much smaller. Then you can move up to the Vulcan, the 900 cc uh, engine, which really kind of is that in between bike. It’s really good for a lot of people. But this is kind of the king, that 1700 cc, it gives you that big engine kind of feel, that big engine sound. And again, it gives you that Kawasaki reliability Kawasaki dealer network and it’s just a better value. So there’s a lot of reasons that you would wanna buy this bike outside of the fact that it’s a great value. Now people talk about, you know, has this been updated in a while, has it not? Well, I would argue that you don’t really want to update this as the Kawasaki updates bikes traditionally in the rest of their lineup. You’re getting things like a smoother engine. You’re getting things like, you know, maybe a tiny bit more power here and there. But even on some of the top end bikes, there’s not a ton of extra power over some of the nineties bikes and earlier. And that’s the thing with this, the 80 horsepower number, if that’s about what it is, doesn’t sound crazy impressive. But it doesn’t matter on this because it’s that 107 foot pounds of torque that actually is what you feel on any of these bikes. And it is an absolute torque monster compared to other bikes in lineup and other bikes that you could buy with similar styles. So really good, smooth revving, but still having that V twin feel, this is a cruiser that will satisfy your cruiser need and it’s the kind of bike that you can just ride all day anywhere you want to go. And again, having the ability to add both the Kawasaki accessories, whether it’s taking a passenger, whether it’s larger windshields, whatever it is that you wanna do with this bike that’s available. But having a bike that hasn’t gone through as many changes allows the aftermarket to know that they can build stuff for this and get their return on their investment. And there are so many accessories that you can get for this thing, both Kawasaki and otherwise. That mean that you can really take your cruiser and make it yours. The reality is, for me, the way this bike looks and it’s, it’s proven itself in this showroom, every time someone walks in and sees us, they’re like, wow, that’s a sharp looking cruiser. The Vaquero, the way it’s laid out looks really good. So whether it’s looks, whether it’s style, whether it’s the type of engine, whatever it is that you want, the Vaquero delivers and it’s a great value. Is it right for you? Let me know when the comments below and if you have questions, make sure you let me know. Cause like I said, I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, and I can come back to this bike again and again. This one is sold, but there is more coming in so you can come see them. And if you wanna see it in person, Swing by Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports here in Fredericton, new Brunswick. And grab ’em for yourself. We’ll talk to you in the next one.
I’ve been waiting to get my hands on one of these for months and now that I have, let’s take a closer look
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we are gonna go in depth on the Z900 RS Cafe. This is the 2023 model. Now of course, if you’ve been following my channel, you know that I bought the Z900RS Se, the non cafe model, and I’ve watched a bunch of videos on this bike mostly because I bought one. And I want to go over a lot of the differences that other people aren’t pointing out. A lot of people are saying it’s just got a fairing and it’s just got the seat and that’s the only difference. But there’s a whole bunch of subtle differences that I’m gonna point out in this video as well as doing a complete in-depth review. So if you have questions about this bike, make sure you let me know in the comments below because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports.
And I can compare this bike not just to the bike that I own, but to everything else in the Kawasaki lineup. I can come back to it on video and I can come back to it again and again. So if you have questions, let me know in the comments and we’ll come back to you that way. And again, I can make more videos. So make sure you hit the subscribe button cuz there’s gonna be a lot of content on this bike. And of course my personal bike just like this. So let’s get going with the review. So let’s cover the basics first, if you’ve never heard of this bike, this bike is a fully modern sporty bike based on the original 1972 Kawasaki Z1, which is sort of what they call the grandfather of all Superbikes. It was the fastest production bike of its time and it was very similar in look to this.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Now this cafe version kind of adds to that overall Superbike type feel. They’ve raced the old original bike like this and you had this sort of classic looking wind protection here. Now from a modern perspective, this does give you a little bit extra wind protection over the regular RS model, the non cafe model. It also has different uh, style handlebars and of course that different seat which allows you to sort of tuck in place a little bit better. A lot of it is styling, but it does make some practical differences in the way you ride. So I’m going to get on this thing in a second where you can see the seating position and maybe we’ll compare that to the regular uh RS that I own, which has just sitting off camera here. So we can throw it in here just so you can see the comparison.
But this review is primarily going to be about this bike. And the thing you need to know about this bike is, although it has this retro look, it very much is a fully modern bike. This is based off the Zed 900, which is the naked bike, that sort of classic or non-class of modern bike, sort of a sport bike type feel. So it really is modern sport bike underneath. But there are some key differences that Zed 900, the regular one makes more horsepower than this. Now a lot of people are kind of confused about what that means and you know, you have to kind of dig into how horsepower is laid out because horsepower’s kind of laid out throughout the rev range. This one actually, according to I think it’s cycle world’s Dino tests makes more power than the Zed 900 in that mid-range of that roughly 4,000 to 8,000 rpm. So this one tops out at a, uh, you know, they say it’s somewhere around 110 horsepower seems to be the agreed upon number, uh, at around 8,500. So the P horsepower for this bike is a thousand RPM less than the Z 900, but throughout that mid-range it actually makes more power according to some of those dino graphs out there. The difference as well is a 12% heavier flywheel. Now if you don’t know what that means, it doesn’t matter too much. Basically what that means is the engine takes a little bit smoother time to build revs and a little bit smoother on holding the revs on a shift or something like that. So it gives you more of that classic bike feel, whereas the Z 900 is a little more frenetic, maybe a little more, you know, immediate, that kind of thing. And again, we’re talking a 12% difference in the flywheel.(03:31) So not significant differences. So again, peak horse powers down, but throughout the range you’ve got the same torque torques available lower in the RPM rev range. And through that mid range you probably make a little bit more power according to Dino graphs by other bike magazines. So the key thing here is good power throughout. Now the other difference between this and the Z 900 is you have a lower first gear. So that’s better for acceleration and a taller sixth gear. So that’s better for lower revs on the highway. Really to me what that does is makes this a better all around, more versatile bike. And then of course there’s the style, the real reason to buy this bike is style, but there is added comfort here as well. So let’s start looking at some of the styling details. And I’m gonna go over a whole lot of differences between this and the bike that I own, which is again is the non cafe model
Uh, it’s more than just the handlebars, windscreen and seat here. So let’s talk about some of those differences as we go through. So I’m zooming in nice and close to the bike, but able to see the entire bike. So you won’t see me very well and that’s okay. So let’s just start from the back and move forward. First of all, these wheels down here on some of the bikes, they have a polished sort of spoke look on a few of the wheels. These ones are not polished, it has the same shape, same kind of feel, but it’s fully black and you have that gold deckle on the outside of the wheel which matches this. So some of the bikes will have a polished edge here. This color scheme is fully black now compared to my Z 900 RS SE, which you’ll see on the screen right here.( That is the SE model. So you’re gonna have some gold wheels there, you’re gonna have some gold suspension tubes, other things like that. But there are differences in the frame as well. The frame on my bike, which you can see here, this one here is kind of a matte color where the frame on mine is all shiny. So it does give a little bit different look to this entire frame when you get up close and see it closer. The other little strange thing is double overhead cam is written here on a small circle on the other side. It’s a larger circle out on the casings here and that D O H C, the double overhead cam was a big part. It was stamped into the original Zed one and it was a real source of pride for the original Zed one because Honda was their biggest competitor back then. They were running a single overhead cam. So as far as a retro look, pointing out that this is a double overhead cam, that was a big piece of that bike and they have that on this bike, whereas my bike, instead of having these labels here, it’s just sort of a silver label. So kind of an interesting thing there. The rest of it is pretty much to do the cafe model here and we’ll talk about some of these exact seating positions and that kind of thing. So let’s start with the how it sit, what it’s like to sit on this and go from there. So I’m gonna get into details about why the seating position is different, but let’s just do this first. So I’m about six feet tall, I’m gonna try to line up my other bike so it’ll fade into that. So you can see the difference here overall from a seat of the pants kind of feeling.
The actual seat itself feels very similar from just sitting on it, but you can see there’s a much larger lip behind. Now they do that both for styling and for tucking in. If you tuck in like this, you can use it, take advantage of that aerodynamics going over you and of course it holds you in place in a tuck. The other difference you’re gonna notice is the handlebar are a little bit more tilted back. Now the other thing I didn’t point out, we talked about the frame being sort of a matte black, the handlebar on my other bike are chrome. These ones here are uh, sort of a darker um, you know, matte black as well, which we’ll show you in a second. And they’re thinner on here. So that’s another thing that the overall bar is a thinner bar than on the Z 900 RSS se. So handlebars a little bit more curled back here and you are definitely a little bit more forward. So we’re gonna put my foot up on the foot peg, we’re gonna try to line the bike up exactly where this one is. Kickstand will be in the same place and you’ll be able to see a nice sort of fade into what it looks like on the other bike. So here I am and we’ll fade into the other one.
So there you have it. Hopefully that is a nice transition to see one versus the other. This one, again, a little more upright. Again, this one happens to have a thicker bar. I don’t know if that’s just the se uh, handlebar are certainly more upright from my legs. I don’t feel a difference, although I’ll have to check the specs and see if there is a difference, but certainly a little bit more upright and it feels like a little wider. That might be wider or might be because my hands aren’t turned in as much. Now they’re not turned in as much as something like, uh, ninja ZX6R that we did yesterday. But the other one is a little bit more turned in. So there’s your riding position difference. We’re gonna talk in detail about the cafe now. So let’s start by talking about one of the other very retro pieces to this bike. Now I zoomed down a little bit further because I want you to see sort of the line that the faring causes over the gauges here. Again, that’s one of the big differences between this and the regular RS model. But the gauges and the functions here are identical between both bikes and I really like this display here. So of course the traditional gauges. Now a lot of the American bikes have the miles per hour in blue in Canada here. We don’t have miles per hour listed, but it is super clean because of that and it really kind of tachometer and speedometer kind of match the font because of course the uh, tachometer has no inside gauge where this one would have a mile per hour or a kilometer an hour inside gauge in the American model. So I really like this kilometer an hour display that we get in Canada here cuz it’s super clean and super crisp.
It looks really sharp over here. You’ve got a lot of things going on here. So there’s a selection switch, which I wanna show you just really quickly in the same shot here you can see the selection switch. So just remember here we’ve got it up, we’ve got a down and we’ve got a select right? So that’s what we’re doing to change everything here and it’s very, very intuitive. So now that we’ve uh, sort of shown you that, let’s zoom in a little bit closer here. There we go. Oops, there we go. All right, so there we can see everything there. So of course this bike’s very low on fuel. That’s what’s gonna happen when you’re very low on fuel. It’s gonna not just go down to the bottom bar. The bottom bar starts to flash. So when you hit that bottom bar, you’ve still got some, but that flashing means it’s time to get gas right away. So speaking of getting gas, let’s look at the very bottom of the display down here. I’m gonna use the bottom of that selection button that I just showed you there. And we’re gonna cycle through here. Uh, right now it’s 21 degrees that is the outside temperature or ambient temperature where we have inside of course in the building right now. Then I can go down to range. So that is kilometers till empty. Now of course that is uh, based on how you’ve been driving. So if you’ve been driving very aggressively, it might read less or if you’ve been driving very efficiently and then head out, uh, to a, you know, less efficient way. That’s just something to keep in mind. So it’s a, it’s an estimate but it gives you an idea. Then you have average kilometers per liter, I think you can set that up for leaders per hundred kilometers as well. And then you have your instant leaders per hundred or kilometers per liter, which again I think can do leaders per hundred kilometers. Then you have trip E, trip B, excuse me, trip A and there’s your overall odometer there. Temperature gauge on the far right side you got a little oil light up top and then through the center KR, or sorry K T R C is the traction control. So to change that one I’m gonna hit the select button in the middle of that button that we talked about earlier. And when you hold it down for a second, oh sorry, yeah, there we go. If I just tapping it, there we go. If I just tap it the K TRC light blinks or the number one blink, so I can go up and change it off or I can come down from off to one and then to two. So again, I’m using that selection switch up, turns it to a lesser setting, so off one or two and uh, going down change it from off to one and to number two as well. So we’re gonna leave it on number one. That’s probably where I would leave it. Number two is really probably for rain, although you can use it as uh, a little bit extra precaution there as well. And that’s the control. So when you use that selection switch outside of choosing your traction control, all it does is change on the very bottom here odometer. You can go up or down on some of the bikes, you have to cycle through everything because of the same controller, the way it works on their screens. This one you can see ’em on trip B I can go back to trip or sorry, trip B I can go back to trip A and back to trip B So I can go up and down on the selection switch. I don’t have to cycle through everything. So good display here. Big thing I like is that really clear, big, uh, gear indicator there. So, um, just of course not something retro bikes have, but I just appreciate that on a modern bike. The other cool thing is the signal lights. Um, just a little visual interest piece. You know, they’re kind of outlined as opposed to filled right in and they’re separate for left and right which are on the retro bikes. They wouldn’t be separate for left and right, but I think that’s just nicer to have there. While we’re looking here, we should point at the uh, adjustable suspension comes on this bike and let’s do that right now. So on the top of each fork tube is an identical tensioner there. So uh, you can change it harder or softer and it is identical on both sides. So you wanna make sure that however many times you’re turning it is identical left and right. There’s already instructions in the owner’s manual. The bike comes set up from the factory in the middle section so you can soften it or firm it up, uh, from there. But you do have that adjustment. We’re sitting right there on both, uh, both forks here or both sides of the fork. So that makes it super simple. Let’s take a look at the headlight here while we’ve got it on. You can see it is an L e D headlight and it has the ability to press the trigger on the left side switch here to flash that high beam. I don’t know, is that working there? Uh, not, not until the vehicle’s on. So I can use the trigger to flash the high beam, which would be the other side of the light there and I can also uh, turn it on and off with the um, switch. So you can just trigger it on and off or you can leave it on and off. But again, that whole cow on that L e D light, you got this classic look with the modern light which makes it kind of look like a retro modern, which is what it is. So in yesterday’s video we took the 2023 Kawasaki ZX6R and we talked about how everything in this general area is all the highest level type stuff. You’ve got the radial mount calipers on that one, you’ve got radial mount calipers or, or uh, cas on here. Large disc heavily vented. Of course the bike I have is the SE model that comes with brbo brakes, but the style is the same. Same thing with the upside down forks here. That gives you a little bit more stiffness in the upper fork tubes. A little bit less unsprung weight.
So all of this is really pulled directly from the race bikes as far as the style of it. Of course there’s different compounds to the brake pads and different styles to the pedals and that kind of thing. But the idea is when we talk about this being a modern sport bike, it really is when you look at the original 1970s, you had a single disc. It wasn’t vented, it wasn’t sort of separated. Here you’ve got the idea with this type of disc brake is it’s set out differently. I’ll show you the rear brake, how it’s different, but this can handle heat. You’ve got, uh, brake discs on both sides, but having this being mounted to a separate plate allows this to expand and contract, uh, without a warping for consistent braking. So they can really handle a lot of heat, a lot of good, um, braking power, that’s what you want.
The other thing that’s different here is on some bikes, this is more of a silver, uh, color here it is a, uh, sort of gray out color, which I just think uh, looks pretty sharp. Uh, kind of blends in with the overall look of the bike here. Just wanna show you the contrast here with the rear brake, of course the rear brake, it doesn’t have to deal with as much heat, as much stopping power and it’s sort of a single piece. Again, it won’t dissipate heat as well, but of course it’ll dissipate all the heat it’s going to create on this aisle. So that’s just sort of the difference here. You do see the a BS ring here. So it’s a BS brakes front and rear on this bike. The A BS ring on the front side is on the opposite disk. So that’s just sort of the sensor that tells wheel slippage and of course it can also read that for your traction control that matters on uh, both these so really high end brakes here for a modern sport bike, even with the retro look. So let’s take a closer look at the seat here. Obviously again, on the regular RS it’s a little bit more of a level seat and this one’s got that curl up. Again, it helps with that tuck position. It’s also just styling, right? I mean you’re not really tucking in here. It gives them more retro look and it gives it kind of like a, a solo rider look but still allows you to take a passenger whereas my bike will have this sort of ribbed effect all the way through. This one just has sort of the smooth section there, but you do have that passenger uh, grab, which again, this is probably as much style as it is anything else? Couple things I wanna point out. Right here is a place to tie down some of your luggage and lemme see, see if you can see it there.
Yeah, you can see it a little bit there. There’s also a little bit of a, um, behind this reflector is another uh, sort of loop there. So you can tie down things with a cargo net with bags with other kinds of things right here on the back, which makes this a little bit more practical than some of the other bikes of this style. You can very easily attach and detach luggage. The other thing worth noting is this seat comes off and underneath it on this bike and am my bike there is a 12 volt port underneath there. So you can sit, uh, charge some stuff underneath there, run your 12 volt accessories. And I did put heated grips on my bike. You could do that on this as well. They are plug and play if you get the Kawasaki Kawasaki factory ones. So they just uh, plug into the wiring harness there.
Super simple to do. Wanna take a closer look at the controls here. First of all, you have rounded mirrors that are just peeking in the uh, top of the shot here. Those are really your kind of retro styling, but they’re also spaced out wide enough that they clear your shoulders and uh, they also have good visibility. So a lot of people wanna change that up for their own personal style. They don’t think this type of bike came with it. Uh, but uh, they do sort of fit that retros styling and they’re very effective. A couple other things worth knowing, we pointed out that high beam, we can do that flash to pass right there. So of course that pushes back out. Only when you haven’t pressed in is your high beam on. If you wanna lock your hi B you can do that. Signal lights, there’s a hazard light down there, there’s a horn down there, there’s that selection switch again. But I wanna point out here with your clutch lever. Now there’s a lot to talk about the clutch but I’ll try to make it quick here. First of all, it’s adjustable. You can adjust this for reach as well as the um, brake on the other side for reach. So whether you have smaller hands or larger hands, no problem. But it also is a slipper and assist clutch and a lot of people are really impressed with the light clutch pull on the bike like this. So slipperiness list assist clutch does two things. It’s racetrack sort of derived, but the slipper side of things allows you to just dump the clutch after a downshift. And sometimes when you do that, if you haven’t rev matched properly, the rear wheel can have a lot of sort of engine braking and it can cause your rear wheel to uh, you know, skit a little bit.
So this works with you to allow the clutch essentially to slip and that makes sure that um, the wheel doesn’t or it just works to make sure your wheel doesn’t slip. So it’s sort of a safety thing that was brought in from racing, but it’s both good for safety and for performance riding. So that’s the slipper side of these slipper and assist clutch, the assist side makes for a lighter clutch pool, which makes this a really nice spike to drive around town, that kind of thing cuz it’s very light, uh, to pull a clutch, uh, in and out, you know, just makes it easier and more pleasant to ride. So I’m gonna do something next that I hadn’t planned on doing, but I’m gonna sort of freehand the camera over these two bikes because this one is mine, it is the SE version so it has different wheels, but there are a number of differences between these bikes that I wanna show you back to back just so you have a better comparison of not just the CD position but all the little things that might make a difference to you. So we’re gonna do that next before we go over why you would wanna buy this bike and what’s if it’s right for you. All right, so let’s start out front with this. Of course you’ve got this nice kind of uh, faring. Everyone knows about that. What I didn’t know about is inside that faring you can see a little sticker here that’s kind of hard to film in the lighting here from the studio light, but it says Z 900 Rs and it has a little uh, checkered flag underneath that. Let’s see if I can get to that angle here without the glare. There we go a little bit down there. So it’s kind of a cool little detail that you don’t always see and of course there’s no detail difference on the um, on the front of mine there you still have the sort of uh, reflective uh, piano black kind of on the gauges there as you look through there. And again, depending on the bike you buy, you may have this in more of a silvery tone on both of these bikes. Today it’s the same sort of matte black. Again, my bike has the gold here, so ignore the gold has a different upgraded front shock, although it’s just two different, I don’t think it’s any real upgrade. And the olin’s shock, which brings me to the point of these things are brought in for performance, the oland shock and the Brembo breaks. It’s interesting that the cafe model doesn’t have those yet, so there’s opportunity for Kawasaki to maybe look in that in the future. Looking at the frame here, again we talked about that sort of matte black look to the frame here and then the double overhead cam on this side. We’ll come around to this side over here as well and we’ll see the larger double overhead cam label over there. The other thing I wanna point out is on some of these models you’re gonna have sort of a silver style, um, side to the radiator on both the bikes I have today. They are black. Mine has a radiator cover on that, which of course you can add on either one. So let’s take a look here. You can see no double overhead cam logo right there. And you’ve got, although you have the sort of matte black up here, the frame underneath is all shiny black on this one as opposed to the matte black. And of course the chromed exhaust versus the matte exhaust. This one does have an accessory center stand added. It would look the exact same on the uh, cafe racer there. But again there’s that there with no real label. And then we’ll come around this side here and same thing here, no real label on this larger side. So you do have a few extra little details that make things interesting. I really like the way, and it doesn’t show up on camera, but the way this striping comes off the front here, it kind of flows into this side here and it aligns better when the vik is sort of sitting straight as well. So it just kind of looks really sharp the way the paint ties in there off the fairing where of course without a fairing there is no tie in so much, although this one because the coloring does have tie in through there as well. The other difference is Z 900 Rs is going to be labeled in black and white on this one here and on uh, the SE version the RS is in red, so it’s only the SE version with the oland shock with the adjuster and the brembo breaks here that has that in red. So just couple of the little differences that you don’t always see in addition to obviously the seat, obviously the handlebar. Actually let’s just show you the handlebar for a second here. I don’t know if it’ll show up great on camera. Excuse my terrible camera work, but this is a much thicker bar. It’s about an inch here going down about seven eighths of an inch or so there. And I didn’t know that the cafe here would have a smaller handlebar. It’s just noticeably smaller there, uh, which is interesting to me. And uh, you know this one of course not chrome here that uh, sort of matches the frame color there to blend in. So just an interesting little uh, differences between the two. So let’s talk about who this bike is for. Well first of all, this nine 50 cc or 9 48 CC engine four cylinder engine is a pretty powerful engine.
It’s not something that would traditionally be a beginner’s bike and I’ll stick with that. There’s a Zed six 50 which has similar style to this, which would probably be a little bit better if you’re just getting it as your first motorcycle. Having said that, this is not a difficult to ride motorcycle with a lot of power. It’s a simple bike and it’s got things like traction control, which is what you want just to keep that power in check for you a b s brakes and the fully modern chassis. Now this feels a little bit more sporty than the bike that I bought from a seating position, just the general seat here, the way the handlebars rubbed. But again, like the ZX6R that I did yesterday on film, this is nowhere near as much of a compromise. It doesn’t lean towards race bike track only bike.
This is a on the road sport bike because of the things like the luggage areas here, the large seat here, you have the ability to take luggage. You could tour on this. Now this seating position is a little bit more forward and you do get a little bit of wind protection. So compared to the regular Rs, you know, neither one’s uncomfortable in any way, but technically a little bit more weight is on your hands with this. But you do gain that wind protection now on a longer trip that might be useful. Why I like this bike is it really does bring back to what motorcycling is and cars and motorcycles have all evolved kind of together. They started bringing big displays in cards, they started bringing TFT displays into bikes. But the joy of a motorcycle is glancing down, seeing your speed, seeing your res and looking back up. These TFT displays now can send your email notification, they can send your text notification right to the screen. Those are things that I don’t want on my screens anyways and if I had a TFT display, I wouldn’t be putting them through to it anyways. So I love the simplicity of this, the clean lines. This is the kind of bike where people are gonna come up to you and they’re gonna ask you what year it is and you’re gonna tell ’em it’s a 2023 because underneath it really is a 2023. Hey, I just looked down and noticed one thing. The Kawasaki logo here is gold to match the stripes here, it’s silver on every other bike. So, uh, every other uh, RS that I’ve seen. So little difference there. So who is it for? Well it’s for people that really enjoy it. If you have a history with this bike, if you remember the original 1972, which I don’t, I was born in 1979 just like when Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, Fredericton was started. I don’t have a tie to that, but if you have a tie to those original bikes, obviously this is gonna bring back memories for me. What it does is it brings back to a time where people really enjoyed just riding, but it brings it up to a standard where you’ve got fully modern brakes, far more performance. I was talking to a guy the other day that had the original version of my bike in the 1970s and he sold it a couple years later cause it had too much power. Well these ones have more power than that again, but they also have a frame that can handle that power. So you really have the stiffness and stability that you need around corners, better breaks, and of course the traction control as well. So you’ve got a lot of things that make it really fun as a modern bike, but that classic feel really does carry through to how you feel when you’re driving it. It’s a fun, fun, fun bike. Really versatile and I think it’s good for a lot of people and that’s pretty much why I bought one. So fairing is a thing that you have to decide if you want or not. It does offer wind protection, it does offer some styling. You can do aftermarket uh, fairings on the other one for just wind protection, but it’s not gonna have the clean look of this. So there you go. There’s the comparison. The quick overview of maybe not so quick overview of the Z900 RS Cafe. If you wanna know more about this bike, make sure you subscribe because I have a full playlist following my ownership experience of my Z900RS SE. But we can continue to come back to this cafe model as well. And we’ll answer your questions both in the common section and in future videos. Thanks everybody for watching.
This bike is power and has a ton of features that I think you’ll love. So sit back, relax, and hold on… hugs Peter
Hi everybody it’s Peter and I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where we are going to talk about an in-depth review of the Kawasaki Ninja, ZX-6R also known as the Ninja 636. This thing is the stuff that dreams are made of and I know because as a little kid I dreamed about owning this bike. So in this review what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go over some of the things that make this bike amazing, but we’re also gonna be real about it. We’re gonna talk about why it may not be right for you. This is not a bike I recommend for beginners and I know that there’ll be people filling the comments, telling me, well I had a bike like that when I was a beginner and I’m fine. And that’s great, it’s still not a bike I would recommend to beginners.
We’ll talk about why, what makes it really great, what makes it kind of a compromised bike because there are some things that you can’t do as well on this bike. So for someone like me, I grew up dreaming of a bike like this and I will probably never own one. That doesn’t mean I haven’t ridden one, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t maybe like to own one. And we’ll talk about some of the options in the lineup and it kind of gives us some hint about the Kawasaki ZX-4R and ZX4-RR, which are similar to this, but sort of downsized engine and also a bike that really intrigues me. So let’s go going on with this review and like I said, we’re gonna try to cover the cool stuff and be real about it and hopefully you guys can respect that. If you wanna know more about this bike at this point, we are at Canada’s largest volume Kawasaki dealer.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
This is the only one that we have in stock. So I don’t know if we can order more of what the story is with that, but right now this is sort of a one of one. I will come back to your comments and questions with future videos to answer more and more of what I can. But if this one sells, I can’t promise how soon I’ll do that. So make sure if you have questions, things you wanna know about it, let me know in the comments and hit subscribe cuz I’ll do my best to come back to it as often as we can. So let’s get going with the review. So I’m gonna start with something that may seem basic to you who are really big fans of this bike, but we still have people that come in and see this as a 6 36 cc motorcycle and compare it to the Ninja 650 which has more displacement and they just sort of wonder what the difference is.
Well the reality is this is a race bike for the street. Everything about this is designed to be a race bike. The riding position, which we’re gonna show you in a second, all of the components. And the bigger difference is, although this is 636 cc, it is a four cylinder motorcycle where the Ninja six 50 is a two cylinder motorcycle. This has significantly more power. It is faster revving, it is higher revving, it is a completely different animal. But if you like the styling of this and you want something that’s a little bit more comfortable, a little bit easier on your insurance dollars and easier to ride overall than Ninja 650 is there for exactly that reason. That’s a bike that I’ve recommended to all kinds of people. This is the pinnacle of what can be done. And if you’ve ever driven a very, very, very high performance car like the top of the line Porsches or an exotic car or you know I drove a 700 horsepower Corvette, you find that there’s a line, some of these cars kind of become less drivable every day, even though what makes ’em great for the track makes them great for the track.
So we’re gonna talk about some of those features in here, but the first thing I’m gonna do is gonna sit across it because as I sit across it, you’re gonna see that this is a different riding position and it may or may not be right for you. So when you approach this bike from the back, it’s got a nice small tail section, big wide tire, but you really notice kind of the width of the tank and that’s something you, you don’t really see from the side, but you do see from the back. And that’s again because it’s covering those four cylinders that are in line four here. So as I jump across here, I’m about six feet tall, I think I have a 32 or so inch in sea, I’m gonna put the kickstand up for now. This is my most upright seating position that I can find.
I’m against the tank and you can see it is way leaned over. Now the benefit of this is you can tuck back on the seat and I won’t, can’t do it without uh, driving. You can really tuck in right against this um, the tank here and the tank actually dips away so the curvature of your helmet can actually tuck into that area. There you’ve got the windscreen here that’s all about aerodynamics. Now what you’re gonna find in everyday driving with a seating position like this is that obviously there’s a lot of weight on your hands and it’s a lot of pressure. So again, as an everyday driver there are compromises here. But as a race bike, again the ability to have your hands in tight kind of angled back a little bit more than they would be on, you know, other road or more road focus bikes allows you to tuck in for both aerodynamics and for control.
Where it gets difficult is slow speed maneuvers. And one of the reasons I don’t recommend this bike for beginners is not necessarily due to its power, which is of course is something to be aware of, but if you’re a relatively new rider, slow speed maneuvers, these handlebars don’t turn that sharp and a different, it’s a different feeling leaning over the handlebars like this in order to do those slow speed maneuvers. So it’s something to consider aside from all of the, you know, power that’s available here, you may have driven a powerful bike, but driving a powerful bike like this in this position can be hard. So again, the other reason I don’t recommend it as a beginner bike is because it is focused, it is harder to do a variety of riding than you know you would like. The other thing you’re gonna notice is your legs are tucked up nice and high.
Now for me, I don’t find this bend in my leg to be at all uncomfortable. I’m quite comfortable like that, but some people are gonna find that that position is tougher on their knees or their hips or something like that. So the reason your legs are up high is cuz what makes it great for the racetrack is you can really, really lean over and if you see moto GP races where those bikes are leaned right over, that’s what these are based on. This is what this comes from, you can lean this right over to touch the feeler and those pegs are really, really high. You need some skill to do that. And if you’re doing that on the roads, you’re probably going way, way beyond the speed limits. So again, this bike is really easy to lean back and forth for a four cylinder motorcycle. It’s very lightweight, very compact, it’s very fun to just easily maneuver. You know, there’s a lot of things about this position that make it
Very fun but it’s not gonna be the most comfortable bike. So that’s something you really have to take into account. Now let’s start looking at the details of this, the real tech things that really make this bike stand out. So to start with this bike, let’s take a look at the dash. I’m gonna turn the key on. The key is actually off-centered here. We’ll show you that a little bit uh, later. And we’ve got the dash in a position where I don’t think there’s too much glare here. Now you may be expecting a TFT display. We know that the XX four R and ZedX four RRR that were released do have a new TFT display. Obviously this one doesn’t have that yet. I don’t mind that too much because the way this is laid out is very clear. Now obviously Kawasaki’s moving to that TFT display and that will be in view in these bikes as they uh, begin to evolve and go through next generations and that kind of thing.
But you’re not really losing anything with this here at all. So there’s a selection switch on the left side handlebar that I’m gonna use to select various things. Actually, before we go there, lemme just point out before I move away from my shot here where I can see things, check out the tack. The first 4,000 RPM on this bike, they don’t matter. So you’ll notice that a lot of bikes put power down lower in the rev range or in the mid-range. I just bought the uh, Zed 900 Rs and a lot of that power’s in that mid-range on a super sport bike, all of the power is up high and literally the first 4,000 rpm, they don’t matter. You’re living in six to 14, 15,000 RPM on this bike. That’s where you’re making your power, that’s where you’re driving this if you’re on a track or that kind of thing.
So it’s just something to keep in mind. Again, little different, little fun. So there’s a selection switch. I’m gonna show you a little bit on the left side of handlebar, but I just want you to look up, up top there on, let’s see, yeah, you can see that pretty clearly. So we’ve got the odometer there and then you have the trip A, trip B and back to odometer. So that’s one selection switch, uh, on your handlebar. We’ll show you the rest on the bottom, uh, handlebar or bottom switch of that switch. We’ll show you that switch a second. You’re now looking at this bottom section here. Right now it’s measuring outside temperature, which is what they would normally say is outside temperature. But on this race bike it’s the intake air. So it tells you where it’s grabbing that temperature, sensing it’s on the intake.
Uh, so you have a sense of the air temperature coming in, which of course helps you understand the power that this bike can make on a really hot day. It’s gonna make a little bit less power than on a cool air coming in there. So intake air 21 degrees, that’s our ambient temperature. Kilometers per liter is your fuel efficiency. If you care about that on this bike, you can get that. I think you can also set it to liters per hundred kilometers and that’s your average. So there’s an instant and oops uh, incident average down there. And then there’s your range, range till empty, which of course is a calculation based on how you have been driving of how much range you have left. And then you have the uh, the temperature of your uh, the cooling temperature and then you have back to that intake air temperature.
So that is the selections there. Now there’s an F in here and a and A one, I don’t know if you can read on your screen, depends on what you’re watching on, but that um, says power and there’s an F or an L. I’ll show you the L in a second. And K trc. So let’s talk about the power modes first. Power mode is right here. I’m gonna make it blink like that and I’m gonna select the power mode to L. So power mode is low or power mode is full. So two power modes there. You can set it to a reduced power mode. So you can, for whatever reason, whether it’s raining or something else, you can set it to reduced mode or if you just want to kind of, you know, get used to riding it without having it in full power. So that is that we’ll select there.
And once you selected the full or low power mode, you go to your K trc, which is Kawasaki traction control. I’ve done videos on how these systems work, but basically this is going to be set to off which you better know how to ride or level one or level two or on this one it has a third level there as well. So uh, some bikes have two levels. Uh, something like the, again the Z 900 Rs that I drive has two levels. This one has more levels than that. And again, in rain level three would probably be what you use. It’s the highest intervention level two. Level one. I don’t think I would go beyond level one if it was me on this bike, but obviously you can turn the traction control off, which you know is great for the racetrack if you really kind of know how to ride this bike better than I would be able to ride.
So we’re gonna leave that on level one as well and select that. So that is your dash of course you’ve got your gear indicator over here, your clock, all the basics, clear speedometer and of course centrally located is that large tachometer, which again really from 6,000 to 15,000 is where you’re living on this bike and getting the information you need. So we’re gonna take a look at the left side handlebar right here. This is of course where your clutch lever is. Now this is a slipper and assist clutch. Now you may have heard me talk about that in bikes even down to the 400 cc Ninja or Z 400. That is a feature that started out on race bikes and it does two things for you. For the road rider, the biggest thing you’re gonna notice is a little bit lighter clutch pull. Now this is no nowhere near as light as something like the ninja 400 Zed 400.
You still have a a firm clutch pull here. But what that slipper and assist clutch does is as you pull in the clutch, it’s a lighter weight, which is the assist function. The slipper side of things works into the drive train and if you mess up a down shift or if you’re really aggressive on the racetrack and you pop that clutch out and you know the engine really has to rev, there’s a lot of engine braking. Sometimes that engine braking can cause that rear wheel to skid. So the assist part or the, yeah the slipper part, excuse me, allows that rear wheel to not slide or at least be less likely to slide. So it’s both lighter at the lever here and prevents you from having a sliding rear wheel when you dump that clutch in a certain race situation or just because you screwed up the down shift on the um, you know, without rev matching on this spike.
Now that slipper and assist clutch is assisted by a quick shifter. So we’re gonna talk about the quick shifter when we go around, take a look at that. But that’s something to keep in mind that we’ll get to you a little bit later in this video. Overall controls, you’ve got a little trigger shifter, right or trigger button right here that is going to flash your high beam. That’s typical Kawasaki stuff. And all of this is typical Kawasaki stuff. High beams, low beams, again flashing the high beams with your trigger signal lights, horn, four-way flashers or hazard lights. And this is the selection switch. So when I selected the things on the top of the display, this is the button I was using to cycle through them at the bottom of the display. This is the button I was using to cycle through them. So that would be, you know, those temperature type things.
This would be your trip a trip B and odometer. So very intuitive. And the select switch changes your full power mode, your low power mode and your traction control. Very intuitive, very easy to use. And because of the way the dash is laid out, you just at a glance you kind of know exactly what you’re doing. Some of the bikes with the TFT displays takes a little second longer to kind of guess at how it goes. You have to hold things down for rider modes and that kind of thing. And I like the simplicity of this. You want to just be driving, paying attention to where you’re going. Obviously you’re gonna be driving this bike quick at times and that allows you to sort of make changes on the fly and know what you’re doing. The other thing I should mention is there is a little knob up here.
These levers are adjustable for reach both the clutch lever and the brake lever. So small hands, large hands, doesn’t matter. You’re gonna fit fine on this bike. This is a little bit of a busy visual shot given uh, everything that says behind it with the graphics and all that. But I wanna show you again little things that make a little difference. So there’s that adjustment on that brake lever. Now part of this super sport is the way the brake lever actuates. So because this actuates, it actually puts down pressure down right there on your brake switch right there that allows for great feel and really precise control. Traditional bikes without this sort of sport performance type feel will pull a cable or pull something straight out here so it kind of has a different feel to it. So when you see performance bikes that push down on this right here, that’s gonna give you that great lever feel and we’ll show you other pieces of the brakes that kind of make it stand out from regular bikes as well down here on the handlebar, just a start button and a kill switch and that’s it.
So we’ll kind of leave that there. I do wanna go back to the top here though and talk about the suspension. So taking a look at the top of your fork tubes here, sort of inside of the clipon, we’ll talk about that. You’ve got your uh, preload adjustment here, higher and lower. It tells you which way to spin that. And then you have the two adjustments here for tension and compression, t e n and compression. That’s how they label them there. Uh, which allows full adjustment of the front suspension. This is an upgraded top of the line show a fork. Uh, again it’s tough to show you in the um, video here exactly what they say. So I’ll pop a video up here or a picture up of the left side trying to show you sort of what the lettering says here on the left side.
And we’ll show another picture now on the right side showing you what the lettering looks like. There again, this allows that full suspension adjustment, which is the kind of thing you’re gonna want if you’re on the racetrack to tweak things here, tweak things there and it’s very easy to get to. Very simple to do right at the top of the fork. While we’re here, I just wanna talk about the clip-ons, which are a lot of people call them the handlebars. Obviously there’s no continuous bar right across, so we don’t call it a handlebar on this, it’s a clip-ons. Most ninjas that you are familiar with, the ones that I have done, the road going ninjas will have clip-ons that clip up and out here. So your handlebar comes towards you and out this one is underneath and comes down and of course it’s angled back that gives you that aerodynamic tuck position, but is also what contributes to making this just a little bit less comfortable than some of those more road going bikes over this. So that’s kind of how that works.
Now let’s take a look at the front brakes and talk about some differences in there. So I love this view right here because it shows so much of the focus of this bike. First of all, overall design of a couple things. The suspension is an upside down fork. This allows for more stiffness up top for racing, little bit less, um, unsprung weight, which really matters in a higher performance, uh, bike as well. So that’s kind of typical stuff for the class. But again, different than some road going bikes. Same thing with the way the brakes are mounted here. We talked about that handle, uh, the the um, brake lever, excuse me, the way it’s designed. These are also designed different too. Your, your attachment bolts here come in from this way rather than sort of on that way gives you a little bit more precision for the road going bike.
It’s not gonna be a whole lot of difference, but it gives you overall stiffness which of course is what you want. So again, this is different, this is different. Then you look at the brakes overall. These are the pedal style brakes. Now they’re moving away from some of these pedal style brakes on some of their bikes. But of course the theory is that these allow you to have a little bit extra cooling. I think it’s mostly these pedal styles are just about um, style. But then of course the drilled rotors, uh, of course allow for a lot of cooling and it’s not a continuous disc, which is pretty standard stuff on most. But we used to do, if you look at the old original like 1970s bikes, a single disc with no ventilation at all and we added ventilation and now this separation in here allows for this disc to expand and contract because this is absorbing heat.
And that’s what these sort of spacers do in here. So you’re gonna see this on high performance braking systems that you have that sort of separate um, disc from inside here. Again, all about performance and then the tires, you’ve got battle acts S 22, these are hyper sport tires. These are, you can already feel just putting your hands on them. These are different type of material. They’re not gonna last as long as some of the more road going tires, but they give you incredible grip especially as they get a little bit warmed up. Incredible grip on both a racetrack and on the road. So everything you’re looking at here is super sport, including this Gibbs Kawasaki intelligence breaking system. So this is the more advanced ABS system you can, I’ve done videos on that in the past as well. But like I said, everything you see here is all about super sport performance and it’s just, it’s super interesting to look at if you’re a nerd like me.
So I’m gonna continue to geek out about the nerd stuff about this bike stuff that makes me kind of just impress with the overall technology here. So we talked about the shifter earlier, we talked about that slipper and assist clutch. Of course the one thing you need to remember is you don’t need to use the clutch for anything other than essentially getting in into first gear on this bike. You can use it anytime you want but this has a quick shifter. So what a quick shifter does is literally once you are driving you can tap down or you can tap up on the gear shifter and you do not have to use the clutch. You do not have to lift off the throttle to do an upshift. So that allows for lightning quick acceleration. And the way it works is this sort of system sends us message to the engine to just cut fuel for just a split second to allow the shift to happen and then reengages automatically it is super slick to use and it makes for lightning quick upshift.
And when you hear this thing zip it along, switching through the gears, there is no clutch pull in then shift, then clutch release. You just hear the instant rev uh, dropping and going and dropping and going again. So again, up down quick shifter is a super cool thing and it’s just something that I think is just makes this bike super, super fun. And of course it’s a practical thing for the racetrack, it makes you faster. The other thing you’re gonna see here is simply the steel um, uh, foot pegs here. Traditionally road going bikes are gonna have some level of rubber padding here to take out vibrations. But again, they add some weight, they’re unnecessary on a race bike and that’s why you have these sort of, you know, sharp grippy things. They will grip your uh, your riding boots. But uh, they are no, you know, no concessions to passengers.
Uh, here to comfort. This is all about uh, being race ready. Kind of another weird angle to film at here. I would be showing you sort of the air entrance here, the ram air dead in the center. So of course when you look at aerodynamics of a motorcycle, the highest pressure is at the very front leading edge down the sides. It’s kind of moving to the side but right in the dead center the air’s gotta go somewhere and that’s where the pressure is. So having the air intake there, that sort of ram air style intake right there in the center makes a difference for adding that power at speed. Now what’s interesting is it actually comes through into the frame through the center here into that frame area. This is an aluminum frame that’s unique to this bike and it just allows all these things of performance.
So again, ram area into here, into a really uh, unique frame for a race bike like this. All of it is built together to work seamlessly as one to both build power. And again, this frame is compact and lightweight, allowing for great handling. So really cool the way it makes power really cool the way it’s sort of designed together to stay compact, safe, stay, um, nice and central to the center of this for center of gravity for better handling, really smart design. This is another view that I really kind of like just to show all sorts of different things all in one. So you do have your passenger foot bags here. Again, this is a uh, this is a bike that can be used on the street. You can take a passenger here, little bit of a tie down ring in there. So if you were tying things down to the uh, tail without going through here, most uh, modern sport bikes, you can have some sort of bag tied to this tail piece up here that can be removed, but you do have a little hook there if you wanted to.
So we’ll put that up. Overall the swing arm here, again, it’s all about lightweight and strength. So it’s cool design and again, you can have a really good access to sea beyond here for those um, those uh, super sport tires or hyper sport, uh, Bridgestone, hyper sport type tires. Even the little uh, the fender in here. It’s got some venting there cuz the wheel’s gonna create some turbulence in there and allows that to come out. Allows the dirt to stay put but the air to come out. So it’s just smart design and again, looking a little forward here, you do have that tucked in um, uh, suspension component, rear suspension as far forward as it can be, nice and low in the chassis. So all of the weight is down low, everything’s tucked forward. Again, this thing is all about the handling at that point there.
The other thing you’re gonna notice is if you look at the chain here, you can just tell by looking at this bike compared to some others, it is a little bit stronger chain than some. And that’s of course cuz it’s moving a lot of power through here. Taking a look at the overall bike here, again, normally I try to film with me in the shot, but again I wanna get a nice close look at the entire piece together because that’s really what this bike is. Every piece works well together to make it a great bike. So your signal lights are built into the body work here. They’re not all in the stalk, that’s both aerodynamics, it’s looks, it’s a whole bunch of things. And uh, that styling of the fairing here. So of course this is aerodynamically designed, we mentioned that sort of ram air intake bringing air into there.
You’ve also got some areas for the heat to come out of there and it does curl in a little bit. So when your legs are tucked, tucked in here, they’re also out of the wind and this is all pushing air a little bit away. So you’ll still feel the wind on your legs but from an aerodynamic perspective allows you to tuck in close and keep your legs out of the wind. You can see that four-cylinder engine in there, you know, pieces of it come through the body. Work here. Again, all about lightweight. You can really see that frame coming up through here, coming up uh, in the backside as well. Single exhaust on this, on the right side. Again, the reason to do single exhaust on a super sport, one exhaust is lighter than two. So you’re gonna have one the one side and that’s it.
It’s all about lightweight. This bike with the abs brakes weighs about 430 pounds and again, thin and compact through the middle here. It’s something that I really can’t emphasize enough. You have to widen around here to have the four cylinders that come out there, uh, that come in under sort of here, four cylinders laid across the width of the bike, but nice and thin through the riding position and stay thin through the tail. So the overall look here, nice and compact and that’s what you want. So before I wrap up with my final, final thoughts, I just wanna point out of course this bike does have l e d headlights. Some of the kawa soggies in the past had sort of one side on and not the other with a low beam. Both sides are on, they’re the bright white L e D lights and both sides are the high beam.
So you’ve got good white lights there, a good uh, instant on instant off L E D brake light there as well. So earlier in this video I talked about how this is a bike that the kind of bike that I just lusted over as a child but now will probably never buy. And I wanna be clear, I absolutely love that this bike exists and what’s cool about it is on the bike that I just bought, the Z 900 Rs, it has the components that are all built for the race bike. That the cool thing about Kawasaki is all of this race technology, it works its way down into other types of bikes. So you can still have so many pieces of these bikes in other bikes in the Kawasaki lineup. This is a flagship bike and there are gonna be people that want this exact bike. But I think if we’re honest with ourselves, there are features of this bike that we want. The great feeling pull from the brake levers and the different race style brake design, the upside down forks, all of those are on the bike I just bought, but I have an upright seating position. Having this bike with so much power is great high in the revs, but for most on road riding, having power a little bit
Lower in the revs makes it a little easier to drive around town. More comfortable for your country road sporting adventures instead of your well beyond legal speed racetrack adventures. So there’s all kinds of things there. Things like traction control have been perfected on a bike like this to be used by us on bikes on the street, the Advanced ABS system, my current bike doesn’t have that, but there are other bikes that are road going bikes that have that K I B S advanced braking system. There are so many things in this bike and it’s just cool to see them all together in one. But all sorts of pieces of this are just sprinkled throughout the Kawasaki lineup and they are perfected because of this. So who is this bike for? This is not a bike for a beginner. If you wanna bike as a beginner, you should not ride this simply because the world of motorcycling opens up with different styles of bikes that maybe are more street friendly, maybe are more comfortable.
You can do different types of tours. You don’t wanna be touring on this bike. And again, I know people are gonna let me know in the comments, oh, I did tour on that bike and good for you, but this isn’t the best touring bike. And it’s, you know, it’s designed to be the best at other things and it’s great at that. So this is a bike that if you get used to other bikes and want some more speed, if you get used to sport riding and want some more lean angle, want to come out of corners faster, want to go into corners later, break later, come into them faster, this is a bike that is worth moving up to. It is an iconic bike that 6 36, it was a cheater bike. It was the first 600 bike to kind of go beyond that 5 99 cc, give you the little bit extra ccs to make it an absolute blast.
Again, this is a fully road legal race bike. It’s got a firm ride. You can touch the suspension up, but it will grip through corners. It will drive quickly anywhere you wanna do. And it’s like I said, all of the package is together in one and it makes it iconic. But if this isn’t the bike for you and there are things you like about it, like I said, pieces of the technology, pieces of the design, frame design, all kinds of other things are things you can find in other bikes in the lineup that maybe are more suited to you. This is the pinnacle. Everything’s together on one, but there may be a better bike for you out there. So let me know in this video or in the comments of this video what you want to know about this bike. It’s so much fun to look at.
Obviously it’d be a blast ride. There’s all kinds of riding reviews out there, which you can see this thing on the racetrack. I’m not gonna do that. My skills are not anywhere near where this bike is capable of riding. So I’m gonna continue to show you the details and talk about the details and make sense of it. If you wanna know more things, let me know when the comments below and I’ll come back to this in future comments and in future videos, unless this sells. If you want buy it, it’s sitting right here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports here in Fredericton, new Brunswick. It is February right now. Bikes are selling again. I don’t know if we’re getting another one of these right now. This is the only one we have. So if this is one you want, come by and buy it. Thanks everybody for watching. We’ll talk to you the next one.
Hi everybody it’s Peter, and in this video we’re gonna talk about touring scooters. And we have two options here which we can go over in detail. And I’ve done individual videos on each of these bikes. So if you wanna know more about, you have a couple of options. First of all, you can check out those other videos that I’ve done to go in depth to some of the things that I won’t touch on on this video. But if you have questions about either of these vehicles, let me know in the comments below because I’m filming here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, where they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup and I can make sure that I come back to your questions in the comments section and in future video. So let’s get going. This is the BV 400, it’s a Piaggio scooter, and that is a Vespa, technically also a Piaggio scooter, that’s the Vespa GTS Super Tech.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
Both of these scooters are filled with tech. Both of them are fully highway capable. These are not just in town around town type scooters. They can go out on the open road. This one has a little extra accessories, we’ll talk about that. You can get accessories on the other one as well. And each of them are well suited to different types of riding. But more importantly, these are scooters where you can go long distance and tour on. So we’re gonna talk about the types of touring that each of these would be best at and we’re gonna give a little bit of love to the Beverly. This is not known as the Beverly in North America, it’s just the BV 400, but throughout the world it is known as that. And throughout the world, this is a fairly popular scooter. But the reason I’m doing this video is to throw a little shade on the Vespa. I love the Vespa and this one outsells this one here in Fredericton New Brunswick at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. But that one is good for a couple specific things and this one can do a few things more. So we’re gonna get a little extra love to this bike because like I said, I think it deserves a little more respect and sometimes we give it. So let’s get going with the full comparison review. So the first thing I’m gonna do is just hop on these scooters so you can see the size comparison because a lot of people see this Vespa and they confuse it for the 50 cc or one 50 cc models. This one is much larger, but it’s not as large as the BV 400. So both of these scooters are equipped with side stands and that’s what they’re on right now.
They also have center stand, standard center stands standard. So you can also, uh, stand up with that. Now scooters can appear to be fairly tall because of a fairly wide seat. If you’re shorter, you can just stand a little forward. Uh, but I’m gonna sit sort of where I’m comfortable here and you can see I’m flatfooted and easy if I sit in the riding position, my right foot up there, you can see very square here. Now, couple benefits to a scooter like this virtual of all the style, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit later in the video. You’ve got lots of leg room here and because of the way the seat is, even though it curls up there is kind of where the seat is curled up and how far back I could sit. But you can easily sit forward and be just as comfortable. You could stretch a little bit further back because it’s relatively level. If you just wanted to stretch out on a longer ride, you do have that option on this seat because again, right behind my rear end here, it’s only a slight lip. It’s not too much. But overall size, very good. If you wanted a windshield on this, you can get that as an accessory. If you wanted a rear rack, you could get that as an accessory. But let’s just jump across to the BV 400 right now. Jumping across here, couple of things that are different, a little bit taller tunnel to to step across. This bike is also a little bit heavier. Now it’s not unreasonably he heavy, it’s got the weight down low. There’s a whole bunch of regions that does that. But you can see when I put my seat back, I am up against a taller lip here behind, um, behind where I am here.
So my ability to move back on this one is a little bit more limited overall, the width seems similar, maybe a tiny bit wider at the front flip pegs because this one curls in where my legs are. So putting my legs straight down, I’ve got some extra ability to go nice and tight to the bike here, but there’s a little bit less room to stretch out. That being said, this is a fairly tall windshield and it’s very close to where I am. This is standard equipment on this bike. So obviously that’s gonna have some advantages for taking the wind off yourself at a higher speed. So a little more precise seating position here where a little bit more flexibility on the Vespa. But yeah, that’s kind of a seating position and it is a difference between these two bikes. So let’s start by looking at the Vespa GTS 300. Now this happens to be a super tech. The super Tech has a different dash here, but you can get this in various things like the super sport or other kinds. Again, if you’re planning on touring with this, you can get a back rack here, which has a backrest. I’ll show you a picture of what that looks like on a super sport that we have in stock here as well right now. So you can see that on your screen. But then you also have, uh, the seat here and again, windshield you could put on there as well. So Vespa is limited in some ways by their classic lines. Now personally I’m a huge fan of the style of this. I think it looks like the classic small Vespa, but obviously it is larger, but it does not stay stuck in time. It’s still a fully modern vehicle
.
So where the BV 400 is gonna have a frame with body work, part of the frame of this is quite visible here on this to for that rigidity, you do have an L e D headlight here, have an L e D headlight on that one. Uh, the round mirrors here are sort of the throwback style, but something should be said about round mirrors. They’re, uh, both the wide angle. So they say objects and mirror are closer than they, than they appear. Both of them will have those wide angle mirrors, but the styling of these round ones say what you want about fancy style mirrors. These round ones are still pretty good for visibility. So overall you’ve got, uh, that I do wanna show you, uh, the passenger seating accommodations here because this is gonna make a difference in your touring ability of a bike like this.
So again, we’re gonna hop on, we’re on the center stand now, so I can do this relatively safely, but you can see here when I put my feet on the foot pegs back here and I sit back here on the rear seat, this is a little bit of a smaller rear seat and the foot pegs are necessary because my heels come a little bit out. I’m against the body work here and you know, it is what it is. So if you are touring on this type of scooter, it’s probably a little better suited to single person touring than the BV 400. Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t take this two people touring. It absolutely is capable of that. Uh, but to me you have a 300 cc engineer, a 400 cc engineer. The BV 400 is class leading power, both in horsepower and in torque.
It’s stepped up from what used to be a three 50 to a 400, whereas this 300, again, it, it’s moved its way up over the generations as well. But this 300 is still a little bit down on power to that bike. Now this is a little bit lighter, so you have that power to weight ratio as well, but you still have better power to weight ratio on that bike. So again, can you tour with two people? Absolutely. To me, if I’m touring with two people, although you’ll still be able to keep up on a interstate or a major freeway type highway, this is a bike that is better suited to those country roads touring. And to me, I would prefer to tour as a just a single rider on something like this because you have a little bit more comfort with the space behind you and with the engine. So again, can you tour? Absolutely. Now, the benefit of touring on a scooter is not just the overall protection here. If it gets rainy or wet or whatever, you’ve got your legs protected here with a taller windscreen up here, you’re gonna have your body protected from both wind and weather and like cool weather especially. But it’s also twist and go. There’s no gear shifting to be done. No clutch lever, no gear shift, it’s twist and go. It’s simple, simple, simple to ride so you can really enjoy what’s going on around you. And that’s a big benefit to touring on a scooter. It’s super simple. It’s got some of that practicality of a touring bike built in. If you look at the big huge touring bikes that are out there, the massive ccs, you know, they’re not very nimble, they’re not great once they get to town, but they do have things like wind protection and all that built in just like this.
So you can tour on a scooter. Now let’s just take the same position we have here and we’ll throw ourselves on the BV 400 and talk about some of those features as well. So moving to the BV 400, this is a much larger bike. The first thing you’re gonna notice is the larger wheels. Now it looks even more exaggerated because you can see the entire front wheel. This is a 16 inch front wheel. So a modern sport bike tire, the diameter across the rim would be 17 inches. This is a 16 inch and it’s got good width, certainly much larger than the Vespa 300 that we just showed you in the back. It is not a 16 inch wheel, it’s a smaller wheel. It’s a 14 inch diameter wheel in the back, but again, much wider than the Vespa. For reference, the Vespa has 12 inch wheels. So bigger wheels are gonna give you probably some more stability. And again, it’s not limited by style, it allows itself to be something fresh, something new. So sitting on here, again, we’re gonna sit just in the driver’s position here. You still have the foot pegs that pop out and they come out like that. So a little bit less fancy design, I can’t quite reach it. These ones are rubber mounted on here as well. We’re on the center stand, so we’re gonna jump
Over here and put our feet on the pedal. Now again, this one has the backrest on because it has a top bunk, you can get that on the vessel as well. My feet position is a little bit better, so my, my heels are not pressed against the body work. I have some ability to move a little bit here I am very upright, but that’s fine. And there’s still plenty of space for the rider. The other nice thing here is I’m sitting taller than the rider, significantly taller up. So if you were similar in height, you could see over. Now most people are passengers, oftentimes shorter than them and uh, then you’re still looking around, but you still have a better overall seating position from the passenger. So rear passenger space is good. We’ll put these back with my feet. There we go. Sitting here again, those wide angle mirrors are here.
These are a smaller mirror. So although they’re perfectly positioned in great visibility, they are a little bit smaller than the vespas. So gonna give the Vespa the wind on mirrors. As far as the windshield here, again, I mentioned very large, very close, kind of equal on both as well because you’ve got the ability. Now this one is built into this without having to pay any extra from the factory. You just get it, it comes like that. The dash we’re gonna talk about in a second. They both have good digital dashes. The Vespas probably a little bit more stylish, but it’s just because I pulled the Super Tech. If you had the super sport, it’s gonna have a little bit more of a basic dash. But again, we’ll talk about that as we get there. You’re gonna notice more buttons here and more modern buttons. We’ll show you those as well. But there’s some connectivity things you can do here, um, with your modes. Uh, both of them have uh, track or both of ’em have abs. This one’s got traction control as well. The overall seating position on this, it feels much more like a touring bike. You still have that wind protection and those kind of things, but the seating position and everything else feels closer to a touring bike. So if you are going with a second person, this one’s gonna give you more space. If you are going on a longer trip, I think this one’s probably gonna be a little bit more comfortable for that on a longer trip, especially with the bigger wheels, a little bit more power as well. And again, highway capable, not an issue on this. We always look at motorcycles on a 400 cc motorcycle would be a smaller motorcycle, but the way things are geared can really depend.This is not gonna accelerate as fast as something like a Ninja 400, but it’s also gonna be fairly comfortable out on the highway. Whereas you know, the Ninja 400 is gonna have six gears manual transmission that you’re gonna roll through this one. Same thing as the Vespa, it’s twist and go super simple. So let’s take a look at the dash. Let’s take a look at some of the storage compartments on these and help you decide which one works for you. So taking a look at the dash on here, to get to this dash, you have to use the keyless entry. Now it has a switch for the ignition, but this is a keyless entry type key, much like your car. So we’ll show you the switch instead of a push button start. It’s kind of a, a dial knob that you turn just like a key, but it’s just a knob. Show you that a little bit later. This dash is very, very motorcycle like to me. So of course you have your fuel gauge, your range, your temp outside temperature, you’ve got a time, uh, uh, kilometers on here. You’ve got temperature gauge and you have a tachometer. Now a tachometer is not something you traditionally need On something that you don’t have to shift gears for yourself, but it does give you a sense of how hard the engine is working. So of course if it’s revving like way up, then you know that maybe you’re, you know, pushing it harder than you want or sometimes you know, into the wind or that kind of thing. So it really gives you kind of the information you need as a touring bike. And again, just a black and white dash, but it is a digital system that works quite well. So lots more features we could show you here. We’ll probably save that for another video, uh, if you’re interested. So let me know in the comments if you’re interested in seeing more of the dash on either of these. You’ve got the asr, we’re gonna show you some of those buttons right there. It’s flashing up here.
We’re gonna show you the left side controls and talk about that right now. So that flashing ASR light is right here. That’s part of your traction control. So I didn’t turn the bike fully on, uh, but this is basically an anti-slip system so you can uh, turn that on and off or toggle it, toggle it on and off from your, um, from your uh, handlebars here. This is the left side handlebar on a motorcycle. There would be a clutch in front of here, but this is actually your break. So just like a bicycle, that would be your rear brake on uh, this one here. And then you’ve got a little button here to pop your fuel door, a button here to pop the seat. You’ve got your high beams, which you can just flash to pass. And again, those are l e D lights and then you can lock in your high beam as well. So whatever you wanna do there, signal lights there, nice, easy to control left, right and turn it on and off. And then you’ve got the horn down there. So simple motorcycle controls, everything’s within reach, but good feeling switch here and fairly large buttons. I don’t know if it’s sort of easy to see, but you’ve got good size buttons here. That’s just easy to get to. We’re gonna switch to the other side now and show you the controls over there. So right side handlebar, this is your throttle, that’s just how you make it go. There’s no gear shifting, no clutch on the other hand, no nothing. Just twist and go. So super simple hazard lights up here. Some cell phone connectivity down here. Uh, kill switch, which is required by every motorcycle. A mode to cycle through some of the modes in the dash, like I said, if you wanna see that, we can make another video of that. And the start button. And of course your brake lever right out here, that’s exactly the same as a regular motorcycle. So simple, easy to use controls, very simple bike to use, but still sort of an advanced bike overall. Take a look at the Vespa gts. Now remember this is the Super Tech. So this has a digital display screen here, which we’re gonna show you in a second, but before we do, we’ll show you the key. This is a traditional key, so you have that. Now the super tech that I’m showing you is, uh, like I said, shows this digital screen, so we’ll just turn it to the on position. You can see that screen come to life there even through the glare. I sort of left the glare in the corner. You can see that even in like intense glare from the studio lights here, you can still see that screen through. (14:25 In fact, you can even see it better than the warning lights. Now in person of course glare isn’t as bad as when you’re filming. There’s a number of features in this, um, display screen as well that we can go through. And we’ll probably say that also for another video. But you’ve got your basic, your outside temperature, uh, clock in there, your speedometer and you can have various settings down here, um, for your, um, uh, times other stuff, fuel efficiency, all kinds of stuff. So you have a number of settings in there that you can go through. The super tech is the one that gives you this display screen. This the regular super sport bike. So same engine, um, it is just the traditional gauge cluster, so it’s much less. I could have showed you that one, but again, to be as fair in the comparison as I can, this would be sort of the competitive screen. Now this one is certainly more pleasing to look at as far as the color screen and uh, those kind of things, but I don’t know that it gives you any advantage one way or the other. The other screen is still very good. And again, without a tachometer in here, you don’t really need one again on anything that you don’t have to shift gears, but the other one does give you a sense of how hard the engine’s working. This one, you’re just gonna be able to have to decide that with your ears. So when we talk about listening to these bikes, they are both fairly quiet, they’re both very, uh, sort of emissions friendly. Euro five compliant for sure on the BV 400, I think this is at least Euro four or Euro five here on the Vespa. But I’m showing you this little, uh, tailpipe there and the exhaust here because you can sort of see comparison wise, this is not a huge tailpipe, it’s a single exhaust here. The BV 400 really goes with a much more motorcycle style look, which we’ll show you right now. So the BV 400, it is a large exhaust and it’s actually a dual exhaust. You can sort of see the two there. Now they are a single cylinder, uh, scooter. So it’s not like it has two cylinders to exhaust, that kind of thing, but you have a dual exhaust there. Again, they’re not necessarily tied down to a certain look or a certain style, so they can give you a little different, uh, feel there and uh, that’s how you get to that sort of emissions compliance and that kind of thing. It’s a styling decision that they make at some point as well. And uh, I don’t hate it, but it is definitely a very large exhaust. It looks just sort of plastic panel from the side. So it’s not like it’s the end of the world, but uh, it’s certainly a big design piece when you look at it from the right hand side of the scooter. We’re gonna talk about storage in a second, but I wanna show you the wheels here. Now the Vespa, of course, is open on this side. This one has the, uh, fork tubes on both sides. You can see the brakes here are much larger to go along with the larger wheels. You’ve just basically have a higher speed capable vehicle here, uh, with those very large brakes and the fairly large tires here as well. So just give you a look there. You still, even though you have the tube down here, you still get a pretty good look at the wheels. Let’s check out the Vespa side of things right now. Over here on the Vespa, you’ve got that traditional Vespa style. So the whole suspension setup is on the other side, a little bit smaller disc breaks through there, but you do get to see the entire wheel here. Uh, both of these have very good, very capable tires, but you can see the difference here. This is a 12 inch diameter, that one was a 16. So there is absolutely a difference there. Now when you’re riding, I want, don’t wanna say this is poor riding in any way. This is a still a very good, very capable, very stable vehicle because of the way it’s designed, the stiffness of the frame. But larger tires are used on most motorcycles for a reason. And uh, you know, adventure bikes go with a 19 inch front, uh, diameter wheel. So the more off-road and bumpier terrain you’re gonna have, usually you want a little bit larger wheel. So it’s just something to keep in mind. Um, again, I love, I think they ride great, but the Beverly, the BV 400 is designed for a little bit more high speed as well as potentially a little bit more advantages in larger bumps. So if we’re gonna talk about these as touring motorcycles, I think the Vespa is best suited as a day tour with its undereat stores. Now again, this is much larger undersea storage than on the, uh, typical Vespa. So you do have quite a bit of space. You could fit sort of three quarter face helmets in here and that’s gonna be your sort of day-to-day storage. Now if you’re actually touring for any length of time, you’re going to want to add the back, uh, top box, which again, we show it in the video on the BV 400, but it’s an option there. It’s the same thing. It’s an option here. One thing to keep in mind is this undersea storage is directly above the engine there and there’s no extra insulation or anything in here. This is just a sort of a easy to clean type uh, box. I don’t believe it comes out on the BB 400. We’ll double check that, but it does come out here. But something to keep in mind is because it’s above your engine, it is not a cool place to store things. So you’re gonna have to keep that in mind. If you have things you need to keep cool, uh, you may want that top box even just for that reason. But again, lockable storage here, great, uh, place. And if you have a full face helmet that you want to carry along with this bike and it’s not gonna fit fully in here, there’s a little uh, tab right there. You can sort the D-ring over there, shut the seat and the, the helmet can hang off the side of the bike. So you still have a way to lock the helmet to the bike, even if it’s a full face helmet and it won’t fit perfectly underneath there. Take a look at the BV 400, we’ve got the lights on right now. That’s okay. Inside is another light here. So you do have a little advantage here with a little lighted storage area. This does appear to me to be wider. There is no way to come in and outta here. You have a toolbox or a tool kit sitting right here at the very front and because of the sort of the way the engine sits and the larger rear wheel, you do have a little bit of an intrusion there with that larger rear wheel. So what you gain in overall, uh, you know, riding capability or riding pleasure I suppose in that larger rear wheel, it does dig into potential storage here. Now both of these are pretty big. Again, I think it’s larger. I haven’t checked the volume of each of these out. Uh, but again, volume’s gonna be good in both. But again, you’re really gonna probably want a top box for those overnight tours and that’s why this one comes equipped with that. Wanna address the lighting on both these bikes really briefly because both these bikes are turned to the on position but not running. Now on these smaller Vespa scooters, there are, there are usually three L e d lights in here as daytime running lights and you have your signals up here. As you can see here, we’ve got signals down there and they are incandescent signals here. I can’t flash the high beam or run the uh, headlight for you unless I start it up and because we’re indoors, I’m not gonna do that right now. But this is a bright white L e D light over on the BV 400. I also have it running and although they don’t show very well on camera, these are very bright daytime running lights down here. And you have l e D signals right over here. This one does allow me to flash that high beam there, which you can probably see a little bit in your camera is also very bright, very, And of course that whiter light on both of these bikes allows your brain to sort of see things the way they would normally see them in daylight. That white l e d light is not only cleaner and whiter and a lot of people prefer that. It also is something that is closer to daylight in color, which means as you see things along this road, whether it’s a rock or a rabbit or something like that, you’re gonna be able to identify it very quickly because your brain is used to seeing things in that type of color of light. So those are very good headlights on both these bikes. Really no advantage on either one. They both had that L E D I do like the L e D signal lights, although I don’t know if that makes a huge difference. You know, it just does look a little bit different.
So we titled this video and we started talking to our both these as touring scooters and I stand by that and the Vespa is the one that people sort of step up to and say, Hey, this is a real motorcycle replacement for me. This one is well known. To be fair, we’re our own worst enemies here. We have buried this bike deeper in our showroom. It’s probably not advertised as much as the Vespa, but this is the better scooter for those types of touring type things. Now I love the Vespa look and to me, I would absolutely do sort of weekend long day trips on this. You could go overnight absolutely, but again, probably as a single person, when you start getting into taking a lot of extra luggage and a little bit of extra weight, perfectly fine to take two people around on a Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning, head to some coffee shops and a whole bunch of small towns stop for some pizza, that kind of thing.
This is fantastic for that. However, it just can’t be ignored that this bike is better at all of those things and it allows you to go further distances. It allows you to take more gear, more people, it has more power, a little bit, probably better information on the dash that tachometer, again, not something you need for a kind of, you’re around town driving, but if you were doing extended driving on the highway, knowing roughly how hard you’re working that engine is something worth knowing. Having the standard windshield, uh, is nice. Again, backrest you can do on both these. It just depends on what you want to do. But every time I come back to this scooter, I’m impressed with it purely from its features. Usually you don’t buy a vehicle just based on spec sheet alone. You have some sort of connection to it that you just, you generally like it and that’s why Vespa sells so well. It’s hard not to like a Vespa 300 GTS vs. Piaggio BV 400 Beverly is probably better equipped as that touring scooter. So if you are considering a motorcycle, two-wheel transportation where you can do some weekend trips, some day-to-day stuff, and of course use these every day, both of these are gonna be very good in the wheels and deals lineup here. Probably the only motorcycle that would compare with these would be the versus X 300. It’s also a 300 cc motorcycle. It is a six speed transmission. It’s gonna rev a lot. It is a manual transmission, but it does come with available side luggage and it is a smaller CC bike that is capable of touring. Again, on that bike, probably best is a single person tourer, which again shows the versatility of something like this very versatile bike. And again, tell me if you’re touring on your Vespa or you’re touring on the BV 400, let me know what your experience is like if you own either of these. And again, if you wanna see more videos, make sure you let me know when the comments because here at Jim Gilberts PowerSports I can come back to these vehicles again and again. So thanks everybody for watching and uh, we’ll talk to you in the next one.
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and we’re here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports looking at two nearly identical motorcycles. But there’s actually a few things I want to point out that are major differences between these two. So first of all, this is the KLX 230 and this is the KLX 230 S. Now I’m also looking at a 2022 model here and a 2023 model there. But the thing you should know the S designation that makes it a shorter ride height. Now I know a lot of you’re saying shorter should be shorter lengthwise, but the S means that it’s a shorter ride height. So we’re gonna talk about that and we’re gonna, you know, I’m gonna straddle both these so you see sort of how it looks and how much difference it is in real life, not just on a spec sheet. But if you have questions about either of these bikes, make sure you ask me in the comment section because the best thing about being here at, Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports, is they give me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup and I can come back to these bikes in detail. Now I have reviewed this bike in the past and I’ve compared it to other things, so feel free to search, sort of search the channel for some of those. But I will be coming back to the 230 s in the future and the two 30 because like I said, there are some differences here in model year features as well. So part of why I wanna get this on camera is because you may want the 2022 before it sells out. We’re filming here in February, so it’s something that you could still come and get today or you may wanna wait or even come in and get the230s. So let’s go through some of the details and some of the differences and we’ll start by just showing you the size comparison. So just quickly before I jump on this bike and this bike, I wanna be clear of some of the things that I’m gonna be talking about. So you stay tuned for the video. This one has a b, s and has this color scheme. It has no l e d light, this one does not have abs, it has this color scheme and it has an LED headlight. So that’s really the difference is I’m probably gonna focus mostly on this one cuz I think it fits me the best. But the features are gonna be the same. And I’m gonna go in depth to some of those features just so you have a general I general idea of what these bikes are about. But let’s just start with me now. I’m about six feet tall, I think I have a 32 in seam. I’m laughing at Jessica’s walking by. I don’t know what my in seam is and I know that you guys all need to know that Jessica’s laughing. Anyways, six feet tall, you can see that I am just barely off the ground if I try to flat foot it so you know I can stretch down and almost flat foot from here.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So you have a sense of what that is. Now this one’s got just over eight inches of suspension travel. That one’s got just over six inches of suspension travel. It’s probably a little bit greater difference than that, probably about two and a half inches of difference in suspension travel that makes up the difference. So again, here I am on the pegs here and down on the ground with two feet on the ground. You can see that one foot’s flat, the other foot’s flat. It’s a little bit different, uh, than you’ll see on the next one. Let’s jump off, throw the kickstand down and jump over here. Now I have to put the kickstand up on this one because again my weight will take it down a little bit. So we’ll throw that kickstand up and you can see that I am very, very easily flat footing this. So why would you want to go shorter? It’s not just if you’re a shorter rider, if you’re riding primarily on the street, if you’re a little bit lighter weight, you probably won’t need all of that suspension travel and this one might give you a little bit more confidence then that one right there. So you have options here to be able to handle the differences between the two bikes, not just because you’re shorter, but you can see here, position here with my feet, you can see where they, where my knees go, the riding position right there. So again, larger, more suspension travel. But other than this CD position with both feet on the ground, these are identical bikes given that if they’re the same year, they’ll be identical. So I’m gonna use the 2022 model to kind of go over the differences because this will likely be our last look at this model.
Now again, ABS is going away on this model. Why is that? Well, let’s just talk about how we use it. First of all, on a off-road bike, if you are riding it primarily off-road, abs isn’t always the best feature to have. Not everybody in this price class wants or needs abs and off-road, you kind of wanna be able to switch it on or off sometimes. Those are all things to keep in mind. So they’ve gone away from ABS for 2023 in this model, but if you’re doing a lot of on-road riding, you’re gonna want to find a 2022 and here at Wheels and Deals, this one is still sitting here available for you. So that is one thing to keep in mind. Overall this is a do everything kind of bike. It’s quite comfortable for a dirt bike. It’s got a smaller seat than something like a Ninja 400 would have. Uh, but it gives you of course a lot more versatility than that. The nice thing about this one versus the KLX 300, and again it depends on what you want in a bike, this one is air cooled. So you’ve got a really, really simple process here. You know, it’s what they’ve done for bikes for forever. So the benefit of air cooling in an off-road bike is if you just get a whole bunch of mud in these fins, you can kind of rinse ’em off and uh, keep going. You don’t have that complicated system, which isn’t too complicated, but a more complicated system with liquid cooling. For me and for my use, I like to look for liquid cooling. I, you know, I’m not gonna go crazy, crazy, crazy off-road and the KLX 300 does give you a little bit more power and certainly for on-road use, liquid cooling to me is a better system. But for off-road use, for simplicity, for you know, general maintenance, everything air cooling is really strong and that’s kind of what you’re getting here is a throwback bike with modern ergonomics, modern suspension, you know, and it’s built to a price for a reason. It’s simple. If you were to drop it, you know, panels are cheap to replace. The mirrors are nice and simple and round the signal lights again, they’re not uh, L E D or anything like that, so they’re a little bit less, uh, less to replace. But again, in that 2023 model, you step up with a better headlight than this one. This one has the halogen headlight, which is totally fine and l e d headlight is going to give you better spread, better light, better color of light as well in a bike that you’re gonna use. So really good bike for beginners.
Really good bike for all round riding. And actually the last guy we had that came through here that bought one of these was a guy that was older than me probably in his fifties and he just wanted to get out and be able to go on the road and on the trails and find all sorts of fun fishing spots and other kinds of things and that’s what he bought it. So it’s a really good bike for a lot of people. Let’s take a look a little bit closer at some of the details. So whether you’re looking at the KX two 30 or the two 30 s, you do not lose that height from smaller wheels. So your approach angle onto all of the obstacles. Obstacles that you’re gonna be running around is the exact same. And you have full size tires here they are a 2.7 5 21 inch tire. So again, identical on the S model as this. That 21 inch diameter is the same as full size adventure bikes. It’s the same as you know, full size bikes. This is what the size tire you want to be able to tackle terrain off road again, you have a little bit more suspension travel here. You’ve got the nice uh, rubber uh, pads here to keep everything, all the debris out of your shock seals and that kind of thing. But you have quite a bit of travel here, basically full on dirt bike type travel here compared to the shorter version or the lower ride height version, that S version. But really that’s the only difference down here is the same thing. The wheel will look a little different on that one. The uh, this area here, the brake looks a tiny bit different and that’s really just due to that A B s taking a closer look at everything here. You’ve got of course that air cooled engine easy to get to in there. You do have the metal, um, foot pegs here, which of course fold up like every other bike, but they are more dirt bike and style because they’re metal. However, your passenger pat, uh, foot pegs and there are passenger foot pegs here, you can take a second person. They are a rubber, so a little bit vibration dampening in there for that passenger. And sometimes just where you mount it, it can have different vibrations. Uh, you know, I’m not really sure why there’s a difference, but you know, in some cases these are a step up. They’re even a step up from my Z 900 Rs, which is a road going bike, which has metal pegs for my passenger. You get the rubber ones here. You do have a little hook here that’s a little, uh, ability to help, um, tie down accessories.
So of course you can tie things around here. There’s a frame rail that runs underneath here and you have an extra place to tie an extra bungee. So if you want to take some things on the back here on the tail bag, you can do that with this little hook right here. And again, regular dirt bike stuff, good support, uh, frame rails underneath here, so if you’re crashing anything, you’ve got that uh, uh, nice support rail there. So again, dirt bike type stuff here, but also fine for the road. Take a look at the dash here, I’ll spin the key, we’ll let it come to life there. And you see pretty much the same dash if not identical to the dash that you have on the K L R adventure bike. Now if you move up to the um, KLX 300, you gain attack, you don’t have attack here. It’s not something that’s super, super crucial. It’s, you know, it’s a, you know, you kind of feel the power on this bike again, it’s not overly powerful and you don’t have to rev it full out to the very top to get max power. So it’s kind of a more intuitive way to know how to shift on this single cylinder, fairly TOKY motor. Um, but again, if you need attack, if that’s something you want, the KLX 300 does everything. This bike does and allows you to have that tack as well. So Down here, pretty simple display, You’ve got your odometer, let’s just plug it in over this side there. Trip A, trip B and that’s it. So Those are really your Options there. Some people wonder if there’s a gear Indicator in Here. There’s not. This is just the dash you get so very compact digital and again for 2022 you’re gonna have that abs, you’re not gonna have abs in 2023. So if that is something you want, this is the bike you gotta come get and you gotta come get it pretty soon. Let’s take a look at some of the controls on the handlebar. So very basic but very functional and quality feeling controls here on the left side. So the brake le or the clutch lever, excuse me here, does not have any adjustment like it would have on something like a Ninja 400 or something like that. You do have your high and low beams and on the street bikes you have a little trigger to do high beam, you don’t have that here. Again, simplicity, less things to catch if you would ever drop it. Nice large control for the signals here and easy to control. And of course the horn down there again, it is a street road going bike. So very Simple Controls, not a lot to break. And you can see the mirror coming up here as well. You’ve got round mirrors. Let’s just kind of zoom into that for one second. Nice round simple mirrors there that uh, you know, again, if you were to ever drop this bike, very simple stuff, nothing too fancy. Take a look at your throttle side controls here, front brake and again, nice sort of grip, uh, grippy texture there to the, uh, hand grip. So something worth pointing out that it’s very easy to grip even if your hands were to get wet or slippery. Some of the road bikes are the more road going, uh, controls here. If your hands get wet, it can be a little tougher to grip this, but this is gonna work in all conditions, whether it’s dirty, wet, whatever it is, start button there, kill switch here. Pretty simple stuff. Uh, you know, basic is kind of the, the name of the game right here. One little feature worth Pointing out because this is a road going bike. You do have a keyed uh, gas tank cap here as opposed to uh, you know, sort of just a twist off, uh, style. So again, even though it’s dirt bike based, you do have all the street bike components. So that’s a basic review of these fairly basic bikes. But let’s have an honest conversation. These are relatively entry level bikes and they’re built to a price point and that’s a hard space to compete and sometimes
You, you know, you may Wanna look for more on certain bikes and of course Kawasaki has that in Its lineup. What I like about these bikes is considering they’re Built for a price point, the suspension It Is very good. The engine is simple, which is What you want.
Simple for maintenance but also very good. I like that the KLX 300 exists. If it was me, that’s the bike I would probably go for that 300 gives you a little bit better highway power. It’s not that much heavier, it’s not that much harder to control for Most people are gonna find it similar.
But this s model really does open up a a motorcycle option for people that these larger dirt bikes are not as good for. And that’s where I think this bike really appeals. We used to have to steer new riders who weren’t super tall or didn’t like a taller bike into a road going bike like the Zed four, like the Ninja 400. Now you’ve got an option to get onto something that you can feel very comfortable on. Like I said, I can, this feels like a street bike to me when I stand across it and that allows you to go off road. Now because of what these bikes are, I’m not sure that you need a ton of extra suspension, especially if you’re a little bit lighter weight. If you’re much heavier than me, uh, then you’re gonna need the suspension travel of this bike. But if you’re my height, my size, my weight and lighter, losing some suspension travel is probably gonna make no difference in your riding style for this type of bike. These aren’t designed to just go off any jump, but they are designed to go down any trail and that’s really where this S model stands out for 2023. You do lose a bs. I like that in a street bike. But again, there’s a cost benefit. You know, these are entry level bikes. They kind of survey their customers and see where they wanna do with things. I like that you get that l e D headlight. I think that really matters both on and off-road so you can really see what you’re getting at. If you head down a trail at night and you don’t have great lighting, you know that’s harder. And again, there’s nothing wrong with the halogen light, but an L E D light is better for two reasons. One, people perceive it as brighter, it usually is brighter, but that whiter color allows you to identify what you see easier.
In other words, your eyes are used to seeing things in the daylight, that white color is closer to daylight and you can identify things quicker on the trail. So when you’re zipping down a trail, is that an animal or just a rock? Is it a little bunny rabbit or is it a rock on the side of the road? That l e d light will help your eyes identify in your brain to make a decision quicker and that leads to good safety. So which one of these bikes is best for you? Well, it really depends. I wouldn’t shy away from this bike. Even if you are taller, it gives you that sort of street bike feel with that off-road capability. Then of course this one here, if you’re taller like me, you could probably be very comfortable on this bike as well. There are lots of options in the Kawasaki lineup for you if you’re looking to get into a street and trail bike, an on or off-road bike, something that’s road legal but can go off the trail. And if you wanna swing by and see them all here at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, even in February, we’ve got a massive inventory of all of this style bike. So make sure you swing by there and if you wanna know more, let me know in the comments section and I’ll make sure I come back to these bikes again and again and again. We will come back to it for sure as this bike becomes a 2023. We’ll compare all those lighting details. Maybe we’ll even do a, you know, an at night kind of display different so we can show you some of that stuff. So let me know when the comments, what you wanna see and we’ll talk to you in the next one.
PETER IS HERE WITH AN IN-DEPTH COMPARISON BETWEEN THE RACING VESPA SPRINT SIXTIES AND ITS STYLISHLY PRACTICAL COUNTERPART, THE PRIMAVERA TOURING. LET’S SEE WHICH ONE COMES OUT ON TOP!
Hi, everybody, it’s Peter and this one’s gonna be a fun one. In this video, I’m gonna compare two Vespas that really show you what having a Vespa is all about. So this is the, both of these are 50 cc. This is the Vespa pr, uh, the Sprint, excuse me, racing sixties and the Vespa Primavera Touring models. So these are very similar in sort of mechanical things, but there’s a number of styling differences just because of Primavera and a sprint. And then there’s a number of differences with these specific models that make them pretty cool and also very practical. So I’m looking forward to showing you all about this. But if you wanna know more about Vespa scooters and I don’t answer it in this video, make sure you let me know when the comments below because I’ll come back to these with future videos. And the reason I can come back to these vehicles over and over again and show you all kinds of vespas, because there’s literally dozens of them right around me, right here at a whole bunch more in the other part of our 20,000 square foot showroom here at Jim Gilbert’s Powersports gives me complete access to their vehicle line so that I can answer your questions both in the comment section and in video. So make sure you hit subscribe if you’re interested in any of these things. And let’s get through, let’s get going with review. So we’re gonna start with this one right here. So one of the things I absolutely love about Vespa is the attention to detail in everything and including in these special editions, these style sort of packages. You just can’t get these from any other scooter packages and it’s kind of what it means to buy a Vespa, to get something that’s unique and something that’s special and again, that attention to detail. So first of all, sprint and Primavera. I’ve done videos in these in the past. The biggest difference with the Primavera is you’re gonna have this sort of hexagonal type, uh, uh, headlight here. More of a squared off headlight versus a round headlight. You’re gonna have the same thing instead of round mirrors over there, you’re gonna have this different sort of shaped mirrors.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
We’re gonna get closer up and look at these in the future. And the powertrain is basically the same. What I love about this one is all of this package, as you see it just sort of comes like this and we’re gonna come a little closer to see some of the details. But you’ve got those gold wheels instead of having chrome everywhere, this one’s all blacked out. So the grab rail back here is blacked out. The side trims here are blacked out, even around the headlight and a little bit of a sort of, you know, spoiler in front of your instrument cluster is all blacked out. The whole thing just works really well together and it’s the kind of thing that doesn’t show up great on camera, but it’s really visually interesting when you get up close to it. It’s just fun to look at. And of course that makes it fun to ride. It’s also very practical. Scooters have tons of storage. You’ve got undersea storage here, you’ve got storage in around here and you’ve got this one here with an extra package that uh, or an extra uh, box in the back that allows you to take all kinds of things. Both of these are lockable. This is lockable, that’s lockable and in here. So mix for a very practical motorcycle type thing. And because it’s 50 cc here in New Brunswick, if you’re 14 years old, you can ride a test and you can ride these if you’re 16 years old or older, you can just run this on a regular car license. You don’t need a special license to drive
These means. It’s an extra way to add a really fun vehicle that’s really practical, really fuel efficient and has a lot of style and history. So lemme show you a couple features on this one and then I’m gonna show you the touring model, which is completely different but still has a lot of the same practicality, just a whole different style of and way of doing basically the same thing. So let’s show you some of the cool details up front on this one first. So let’s start by looking at the shape here. We mentioned that sort of hexagonal, trapezoidal, different shape. It’s not around headlight, that’s all I know. I should have paid more attention to math class for the exact shape of this. But you’ve got the black trim here, which from the driver’s angle you see more of that black from the front, you see less of it. The neck tie down here has some striping that sets it apart. We’ll show you that. I wanna show you the lighting as well. Now some of the lighting’s gonna be harder to see than others. I’m not sure if the, uh, headlight will skew the camera here. Let’s just sort of see, oh, that still works pretty good. So you can see down here in the camera you’ve got three little lights down here. It doesn’t display as well on camera as it does in person here, but these give you some presents. It’s kinda like a daytime running light on a modern car. They have kind of that cool look here, the headlight as well, even on this 50 cc model in l e d headlights. So l e d headlights are good for a number of reasons. One, they’re very bright, the bulbs last a very, very, very, very long time. So you’re not looking to replace it or anything like that. But the color is something that people forget. That white color is something that’s closer to daylights. When you’re driving at night, your eyes are familiar with what you’re seeing. It’s not just that they’re lit up but they’re kind of tinted and your brain has to kind of figure out what it sees being this white color. Your eyes really adjust to understanding what you’re seeing right away at night and it gives you the feeling of being more confident at night because you can see what you’ve got. And again, that bright headlight, you’re not gonna overdrive the headlight on this, uh, because you can, you know, it’s got plenty of light to see where you need to go. Obviously there’s a high beam there as well, which works very well. Let’s take it around to the dash side and show you some of those features as well. Now because this is a 50 cc scooter, you have a speedometer that goes up to 80 kilometers an hour. Now this thing’s gonna sit 50 to 60 kilometers an hour for it’s driving. For most part you’re not gonna see 80 unless you find some way to go crazy downhill. But again, that’s the point. That’s why you don’t need a full license on some of these things. Now one thing the camera is doing is it’s correcting a little bit down here. This is actually a little bit more red, which from the driver’s seat really makes it kind of match the whole look overall down in there you’ve got your odometer, your triple odometer and so trip a, trip B and regular odometer as well as a fuel gauge and the clock all, everything you need, nothing you don’t. And again, you can see the real Vespa logo in there.
There’s some depth to everything here that just makes it look really, really cool. Lemme show you the controls on the left side. On the left side here. Really simple to control. First of all, the brake lever out here is a brake lever on a regular motorcycle. That would be a clutch lever, but the brakes are exactly like a bicycle. So very easy to get used to to adapt to headlight switch there, high beam and low beam signal switch, turn it on, turn it left, cancel it. And the horn is down here in that neck tie that we showed you earlier. That’s where the horn is, has a little grill there for the horn. So that’s kind of a cool spot to have it. But those are all the simple controls. The other side, you basically have a start switch and brings you through the menu.Let me show you down to the seat now though. So again, this is gonna be a little bit difficult to show but this bike has racing stripes throughout it and Vespa seats, they change with the type of style that they’ve gone for. So this one’s got the white uh, sort of uh, piping along the outside but it matches sort of a racing stripe type look in the feel here. A little bit harder to film but very cool and very interesting to see up front. So again, that theme, that attention to detail carried right through the whole vehicle. So following that, following that racing stripe down here again we’ve got that stripe on that neck tie. There’s your horn grill that we talked about earlier. And then you’ve got striping down here which adds the gold line here that off centers it a little bit, uh, different than necktie but just again extra attention to detail makes it stand out. And that gold ties it in with the wheels here. So the wheels are pretty cool on most vespas, they’re very automotive style. So you’ve got your disc brake on the opposite side here, we’ll show you that suspension in a second. But that allows you to really show off the wheel. And on this racing sixties model, you’ve got that gold wheel which again tied in through that gold stripe there again, attention to detail. It’s just visually interesting. It’s super cool and there’s a metallic kind of flake to this. So when the sunshine, you really have a kind of a bit of a sparkle to it that just makes it stand out again as something that’s visually interesting. Sporty, you know the racing stripes kind of match with this sort of racing style. Look, I should mention the tires as well. A lot of tread on these tires.
That’s something that you don’t always see on certain motorcycles. Uh, but these are really good all-weather tires. Let’s show you the suspension and brake side just for a second because it is unique on Vespas. So taking a look at the suspension on this, again, everything’s on this side here. So this general look is uh, here for a purpose. Basically this helps give you a bit of an anti-D dive suspension. So as you jam on the brakes, it’s not gonna really collapse on the uh, suspension like it can on something like a regular motorcycle or on a mountain bike or something like that with the fork tubes on both sides. So there’s purpose to this design here as well as giving it some strength. You’ve got your spring and shock in there, your disc break down there as well. And again, all the business and on this side, all the style on the other side. But I still think this is pretty good with style and they can change these uh, springs here as well. And you’ll see on the touring we won’t have a red one looks, I’m pretty sure I haven’t checked but I’m sure we won’t have a red one. It’ll probably be a black one there. So again, all that style kind of fits in and matches everything. I wanna show you a little bit closer view of this rail here. Again, traditionally on just about every Vespa, this is more of a chrome style rail. Seeing it in black here kind of gives it a whole different look than all the rest of the vespas. But again it fits in with the overall style, the scooter. So super cool the way they went black with that. And then of course this is super practical. Now I’m not gonna show you underneath the seat or in the glove box area in this scooter, we’re gonna start looking at the touring model and make some comparisons and we’ll open up everything in that one.
So this is the touring model and it’s based off the Primavera. Now if you don’t know the difference between Primavera and Sprint done other videos to compare it, but basically they’re the same basic architecture. There are some styling differences but this model forgetting the Vespa Primavera and the Vespa sprint differences obviously is a totally different look. And that’s what it’s cool about Vespa is you can have the same basic vehicle look completely different. It’s what happens when you evolve a vehicle over decades and decades. So over on this one, again those round mirrors are part of the primavera say with a round headlight, which we’ll show you in a second. This one’s got a windshield, we’ll get you a closer look on that. Gives you a little extra wind protection. Now on this 50 cc model, I don’t know that you need the windshield, but when you get up to the 150 cc model, which you can get in this same sort of style here, that will give you some wind protection and those 150 cc models can go up to around a hundred kilometers an hour. So that’s gonna give you that little bit extra wind protection as you get up to speed. That might be partly style here. And you can see we’ve still got storage on this one. Now this one isn’t lockable storage but it’s real leather, it smells like real leather, it feels nice and soft. And you have a storage area here with buckles in the back. We’ll show you that as well. Different style seat, a lot more of that chrome that we talked about a little bit more everywhere. That’s kind of what they do. So let’s just take you look, take you through a couple things that make this one unique as well. And then we’re gonna show you the storage which will be identical in both but we’ll show you on this vehicle. So starting up top here you can see those round mirrors. Again, they’re chrome here. The other ones were a different shape because of the sprint versus primavera, but they were also black. Then here’s the windshield again, this sticker again just for warning, you could peel it off when you own it, you still have an L e D headlight that functions the exact same way, but this one happens to be round. Instead of sort of making the neck tie the prominent piece like it was on the last model, you have this extra practical little rack here where you can strap things down, you can kind of pin it in place with various things. So you’ve got an extra way to carry stuff that’s within your view instead of something that’s behind you. And you can kind of put anything you want on here. A lot of chrome detailing in of course the vehicle. But of course the chrome detailing in the rack here. And the primavera has this little extra nub on the top along with the horn grill here, all of which is chrome. So lighting is gonna be the same even though it’s a little different shape in the headlight. But the overall look of the front of this is completely different. It adds some practicality, it adds some style and sometimes people don’t even use these for carrying anything, they just use it for style. But they are super practical to carry your basics and again, keep them in sight while you’re driving. So super cool, look on the front. Let’s take a look on the back as well. All right, I’m gonna zoom in and zoom out for a second cuz I wanna show you here the Vespa logo sort of pressed into the back there. So you can see that Vespa logo. Again, attention to detail. The closer you get to these things, the more visually interesting they get. And that’s really what I love about these Vespas is they’re hard to show on camera but when you see them in person they’re really interesting. So again, you’ve got the traditional leather type clasps here that open it up just like this, just like you obviously would open like anything with this type of strap. Again, not the security from theft that the other one would have, but again, a true sort of leather, high quality feeling, uh, area here that can carry everything you need. So I’m gonna leave that open for a second, I’ll do that up later. I also wanna move around to the seat here. Let’s see if I can do it still in one take. You can sort of see that the seat here, it’s not showing perfectly on camera. It might look like it’s a little bit black on camera but it’s actually a brown leather and we’re gonna zoom into that as well right now as we just sort of go carefully here. There we go. A little bit of brown leather, but you can see the texture in there. Again, it’s very much looking black on camera, that’s the camera correcting for it. Uh, but it also is very visually interesting because unlike the sort of smooth that one with the racing stripe and the pin striping, this one has stitching and the stitching kind of compliments the rear uh carrier there as well. Uh, the rear bag there. So again, visually interesting everywhere you go that real textured leather feel on this, that just makes it look like a more luxury seat as opposed to a more sporty seat, which we had in the last one. Now let’s talk about storage inside. So both these vehicles are gonna be the same inside. All the 50 ccs have a little key hole right here. If you don’t see that keyhole on the left side of the vehicle, then you’ve probably got a one 50 cc version of these. And uh, they happen to have a little push button to open it just a little bit fancier as you move up the lineup. But this works perfectly well as you pop that open you can see you’ll have your owner’s manual in here, which we’re just gonna take out for a second. And this is where you can put sort of a three quarter face helmet. There are Vespa helmets that you can buy along with this vehicle if you wanted or you can get it a different style aftermarket. But again, a lot of storage in here compared to other scooters. It’s also where your fuel fill is when the seat’s down, this is locked. No one can touch your fuel fill, no one can touch your stuff in here. And what people use this area for a lot of time is you can put all your stuff while you’re traveling in here and then when you arrive at your destination you can take it out and lock your helmet in there.
Now there are other ways to lock helmets on here. There’s a little tab here and here if you have a helmet with a little D-ring, you can hang the helmet off the outside of the vehicle, lock the little D-ring, uh, in there and still use this for your storage. That’s lockable storage as well. And the lockable storage on this touring model matters because your leather bag is not lockable. So you’ve got options there, uh, again with a lot of space in here and what’s kind of cool, if you wanna have some fun, you can take a look at the little dinky engine underneath there by pulling this uh out, by being able to pull that out. It also makes it easier to clean for you. You can just uh, do that wherever you need to. So lots of storage there, but there’s one other storage compartment that both these bikes have that is super helpful as well. (14:11) So the next storage compartment is one you’re gonna use quite a bit. It just holds sort of your basics. You have to turn the button, the key here, press it in and that opens up. Now you’ve got a space down here, there’s a little cap in here and that is a U USB port. Hopefully you can see that there a little bit. Let’s see if you can take it. Look, yeah, you should be able to see that. Uh, we’ll try to show you a better picture if you can’t see it. But there is your USB port in there. So this is where you’re gonna put things like your phone, your sunglasses, the basics while you travel that you can kind of keep in there all the time. So that USB port is kind of nice because it really allows you to keep your phone charged, have it ready to go wherever you need it. And it’s something that people don’t really think about, uh, in scooters. And it’s the same size on both uh, these areas depending on type
Of scooter, sometimes they have more space on one side than the other, but these one 50 ccs that we’re showing you, same size right there. So really convenient space that you can use every day. So the point of this video is to show you some of the cool vespas that are out there because I think a lot of times people forget how customized you can get it right off the factory floor. Each of these is essentially the same thing but they’re completely different and appeal to different people. Of course both these are 50 cc, you can get the same body style in one 50 cc, which is gonna allow you to go on those country highways. Those kinds of speed. Both of these take two people, the bigger ones do as well if you wanted at a scooter that can really do anything go on full on regular highways as well. They have that here as well at Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports in both Vespa and other brands as well. And the nice thing is if you get into these and you start liking them, there’s a whole bunch of things to like in the pi GIO lineup as well. So Vespa is kind of the premium, it’s kind of the luxury version of these scooters. But if you want sort of a little bit more economical version, uh, there’s also Pi Gio scooters. And if you’re anywhere near Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports, you gotta come and see them. It’s February right now, there’s a showroom full of’em. It’s about 20,000 square feet of showroom here and you can see all of these along with the Kawasaki line, pedago, e-bikes and a whole lot more all indoors. And these things are selling right now. I’m in the sold row right here. There’s 1, 2, 3, 4, there’s several sold vehicles just right within view right here that have been bought just this month. So people are buying these right now and they’ll be ready for you for spring. I just bought a motorcycle that’ll be ready for spring so you don’t have to wait for the season to start to come see them. And again, if you have questions, let me know in the comments and I’ll make more videos here as well. So thanks everybody for watching and I hope you enjoyed checking out these scooters with me.
Hi everybody , it’s Peter, and in this video I’m gonna review two electric scooters. This is the Vespa Electrica and the Piaggio one scooter. Now both of these are electric powered and I’ve done individual reviews of them in the past. You can check my channel to see them in depth, but in this video I’m gonna do more of a comparison. So if I don’t go over every single detail again, there are those other videos there and if you have questions about them, I’m here at Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports , and they gimme complete access to the entire Piaggio, Vespa, and Powersports and vehicle lineup. So if you have questions, I can come back to these on videos. So make sure you subscribe. I’ll answer your comments in the comment section and we’ll make more videos if you have questions. So before I start my review, let’s talk about the class that these scooters are in, because usually in scooters it’s sort of a CC class, which is cubic centimeters, which is the size of the engine, which is how much the piston travels and the size of the piston and all of that are things that these vehicles don’t have.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
So this one is called the 70 kilometer an hour version. That’s literally what it’s called. So 70 kilometers an hour is approximately its top speed. That top speed is around 60 kilometers an hour. So that one is just a little bit slower, but there are tweaks in that. And again, there’s some variation in that as well. So both of these, that one especially is uh, comparable to a 50 cc scooter. This one would be comparable to just above a 50 cc scooter, but not quite the one 50 kind of that in-betweener kind of feel as far as the speed goes. There’s also some size differences between these two. So let’s make sure we show you what it looks like to sit on these and how big they are and how big they are for passengers before we get into some of the technical details where there are some differences as well.
So let’s take a look at the size of both of these. Now again, they’re on the center stands, so they are a little taller and that doesn’t matter because once I lowered off the center stand, it will lower. If you are average height, you can usually flat foot on both sides of these. But because they’re on the center stand, they’re up raised completely off the suspension. What I really wanna show you is the seating position here. So this one has a little bit of a tilted seat here. So there’s a natural space to put your rear end and you’ve got good protection here with your legs. It’s a little bit wider to my view here than on the PIJ one seating position. Quite comfortable. If you are very tall, you will still fit here very well. There’s a lot of room here for your knees and it’s a comfortable seating position.
Jumping over to the Piaggio one, again, it’s on the center stand. This does feel like a smaller vehicle now. It has a little bit smaller wheels. We’ll get to that in a second. So just for perspective wise, it is a little smaller. Again, no real, this is a level seat here. So you do have the ability to kind of sit back further if you’re a taller person into the passenger compartment, but of course that would take away some of that passenger space. But overall, little bit more compact feel to this. That one does feel a little bit more substantial. But again, pretty good decent width here. To protect your legs here, it feels a little bit lower here. There’s no headlight on this section. I don’t know if that plays a role in it, but again, handlebars feel a little bit closer as well. Both are gonna fit people of various sizes, but this one definitely does feel just a little bit more compact. Kind of a seven eighths kind of size, uh, difference. Just a little bit, uh, smaller than the other one. Taking a look at the Vespa electrica to start the seat, the rear seat is very well delineated here. You have this kind of that, uh, color match stitching through here that really shows you where that seat is. And again, there is a bit of a up sweep here to a level spot here. Definitely a larger passenger seat here. There’s no foot pegs that swing out like most vespas in this class. You do have a little foot spot right there, which works pretty well. If I sit across here, you’ll see, oops, turn it sideways there. Let’s just jump right to the very back. You’ll see the one difference with all vespas, if they don’t have the foot pegs that come out, your ankles are kind of angled a little bit out.
It does work. You’re not gonna take a passenger for a long, long time on either of these vehicles, but you will have a little bit more rear seat space on the Vespa than on the Piaggio. Let’s just show you that one now. So on the Piaggio, we did mention the little bit smaller seat here. Again, there’s no delineation here. So you’re kind of the, you know, driver has to move a little bit forward to give you a little bit of space because it would be a smaller section here. However, your foot pegs here do come out. So your rear passenger here, if I just jump on the backside here, you will see that my feet on the foot pegs my feet are a little bit more comfortable on the PI G one, but of course I will have less seat space. So each one wins in its own way for passengers.
At the end of the day, you’re probably not gonna take passengers very far or very long on these vehicles, but you could. So I’m gonna take a look at some of the styling differences that actually give you some practical differences with each of these bikes in a second. But before we go too far, I want to talk about charging each of these vehicles because there are pros and cons to each and it’ll depend on how you want to use it. So first of all, the vest, but we’re gonna show you in a second. It has a built-in battery. It doesn’t come out, which means you have to be near a plug to charge this. There are some pros and cons, which we’ll show you in a second. This one here, you can take the battery out, which means you can park this anywhere and charge the battery inside in your house, in your office, wherever you want. But there are some difficulties with that as well. So let’s take a look at how they charge and we’ll talk through some of the pros and some of the cons of each. So popping the seat on the Vespa Electrica, if you’re familiar with a Vespa, you will find this to be a very familiar looking space. There’s that full face type helmet here. Now you may not be able to fit a full face helmet, but certainly a three quarter face helmet there. Most vespas, you can lift this out and see the motor here. You’re looking at batteries. Let me see. Yep, you can see them there. All right, so put this back in. So that is your space to use. And again, you can see it’s kind of unimpeded. You’ve got a lot of cool things here. Looks like there’s a little uh, key chain holder or something like that with the Vespa electrica. We’re gonna leave that in there. Let’s see if you can see it. There we go. Kind of a cool little piece there comes with that, a little collector’s piece. So again, normal piece there. Now normally on a gasoline, uh, Vespa, this right here is going to be your fuel fill on here. It is not a fuel fill, it is simply where you put the plug so the plug comes out. And again, because it’s built in here, now this
Should be much easier to do. Oh, there we go. I just had the little edge caught there cause I let it fall in. We’re gonna edit this out. Wanna make it look easy? There we go. So what I should have done is drop this with that little spot in there, but there’s that little edge there that was causing me trouble. But you can see very long, very thick cord. You plug this in, it starts to charge, makes a little bit of a fan type noise. Very simple to do. Now you have to be within a certain range of a plug to be able to use this or you can use an extension cord, obviously use a heavy duty extension cord if you’re gonna do that. They probably don’t advise you to use extension cords, but you can see that works pretty well. So the pro of having that with you is just that. It’s always with you. If you stop somewhere, go to a friend’s house wherever you are, as long as you have a plug in reach, you can charge this unit, which is good. You also don’t have to give up any of your luggage space here for a charger or anything else. So the con being that if you’re not parked near a plug, there’s no way to charge this. So there’s your pro and con of here, but let’s take a look at the Piag one. So the Piag one gives you a similar opening to the Vespa. Now like a lot of PIs, this doesn’t lift out but the battery does because this has the battery in here. You do end up in a situation where you probably can’t fit the same type of helmet that you would fit in a Vespa. Now you probably could fit a helmet in here. They do talk about certain types of helmets that fit. There is a nice carve out in the top of the seat to give you some space. But again, you have that battery taking up some space. Now the pro is, you can sort of spin this and turn it a little bit and this lifts off. That disconnects the uh, vehicle from the battery but without having a charger built in. Let me just grab my charger over here. This is what you get from PI for your charger. This is rather large, it’s also rather heavy. So again, you have the ability to take your charger with you, but it would take up most of your luggage area. So you can take this out, plug it in anywhere. This is a little bit heavier. So again, where the Vespa has to be parked near a plug, this doesn’t have to be cuz you can take the battery out. The other thing is when you plug the charger in, you actually disconnect the vehicle itself. So there’s no real indicator to show you exactly the state of charge. Whereas you turn the key in the Vespa while it’s plugged in and you can see the state of charge. So just a little different way of doing things here by disconnecting the bike, the bike has no battery power without uh, when the charger’s plugged in. So again, each one has its pro, each one has its con. The ability to just take this out and take it with you is a pretty good idea, but it may be something that’s less convenient for some people. There are a couple technical differences between the Vespa Electrica and the PIJ one. And this is one of the keys. Literally that is the key difference. It has a physical key for the electrica. So if you put it in where all the vespas have their little key hole and turn it to the
Start position, you’ll see the screen come to life here. A different screen here than on the uh, Piaggio one. This one has a little bit more color, a lot of the same function. So you’ve got some power modes here. We’ll cycle through that. There’s power mode. There is uh, where are we here? Power mode reverse on both these vehicles and eco. Now eco limits your top speed. So while it will give you more range, it just simply won’t allow you to have more speed. I haven’t tried yet, but I’m not sure if just driving it in power at a slower speed will give you the same range as eco. But that is one thing to keep in mind. The eco mode here limits your top speed on both these vehicles and that is something to keep in mind for uh, extending your range will decrease your top speed. But there’s the Vespa electro, let’s show you the pi GIO one. So the Piaggio one does not have a key, it just has a switch here but it is activated. I mean it does have a key, I should be clear. It has a key and you can use those to act to access underneath the seat. But to activate the actual vehicle, you’re gonna hit a button here. Uh, I think you have to hit it twice here. Once that starts blinking down here, you can turn it to the on position. There we go. Turn it to the on position and the dash comes to light. Now again, digital display here. A little different digital display. The other one is more of a, I dunno if it’s a tft, I think it might be. But it’s more of a multicolor typical like a cell phone screen. Whereas this one is still multicolor but a different style screen. But all the same type of stuff in here as well. You’ve got your sport mode, which is the full speed mode. You’ve got the eco mode, which is again gives you more range by limiting your top speed. And there is a reverse gear on this. Now again, this one’s fairly light. The Vespa Electra Electrica is a heavier version of a Vespa. So it is um, not as light as some of the other vespas and I can use, I can see the use for the reverse gear on that. Probably wouldn’t need a reverse gear on this, but certainly nice to have as well. Moving on to the wheels, the front wheel on the Electrica is very similar to a regular Vespa. You’ve got that sort of one-sided swing arm. You’ve got the disc brake and the suspension on this side. And this side is open on the front. This is very typical of a Vespa. Now let’s check out the rear wheel cause it is different on the electric model than it is on any of the gasoline models. So if you’re familiar with Vespas, there’s the drive side, which is the other side and then there’s the exhaust side. Because this has no tailpipe, therefore no tailpipe emissions. You have a clean area here where you can display both the front and the rear rim here. So you’ve got rear rim visible, uh, which is again abnormal for a Vespa. The Piaggio also does some different things. Let’s take a look at its wheels. So most piag Gios have a second fork down here. Something like the Piaggio Liberty. It will have a fork down here, just like your mountain bike, just like most motorcycles. This one is sort of set up like the Vespa. It’s got the brake on the far side. It’s a disc brake on both these vehicles. It’s got the same style suspension and that allows you to show off the wheel. The biggest difference is this is a 10 inch wheel, so 10 inches across here versus a 12 inch on the Vespa. But you do have this clear. Now let’s at the back, because that’s also different on the PI one, there’s actually quite a bit going on here. Instead of having the drive side and nothing on this side, you still have a swing arm on both sides. So the wheels are attached with two swing arms, that’s what this piece is and a spring on each side. So that’s a little different. And then you have a brake on this side, whereas traditionally it would be on the drive side on some of these other scooters, including the other Piaggio scooters. But you have a disc brake on the rear, which is kind of nice to have. And then the double swing arm here as well. So little different look, little different uh, way. But it does the same thing. They’re both powered by electric rear wheel drive of course and that’s how they work. Zooming back out to take a look at the front of these vehicles, you have a couple features here as well. The Vespa does things very traditionally. You have three little L e D lights here and here. So three there, three there. These are kind of like your daytime running lights. They’re hard to see on camera but they’re quite easy to see in person. But those are just kind of extra lights to give you visibility. Your headlight is up here. Now when a headlight is up there, you can kind of turn it side to side. You can flash your high beam side to side. You can get people’s attention by having it up here. Very traditional. Look on the PI zero one, a little bit different style. You have your headlights and marker lights down here. So there’s an L e D strip out here and l e D strip out there that are your marker lights and your headlights are in between, which means turning the handlebar. Your headlights don’t turn with the vehicle. They just stay just like a car looking straight ahead. So a little different styling, a little different way of going about things. If you’re used to one over the other, sometimes if you’re used to having your handlebar uh headlight, you may find that this one doesn’t do the same thing. Both are gonna work very well as far as visibility. Visibility on the road in front of you. Just a different way of going about doing the same thing. So let’s talk about who these scooters are for. Well first of all, there is a price difference. The Vespa does cost significantly more than this one here. So there’s that. And if you wanna know UpToDate pricing, you can go to Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. It’ll be right on their website. I never list pricing on the videos just because sometimes that can change and I wanna make sure that you have accurate information. But this one does cost more. If you need a little bit more speed, the Vespa is your solution. If you have charging nearby, same thing. Now this one here, I should also mention the Vespa has storage, more storage here and a little glove box just like the regular gasoline Vespas. This one here is a little bit more unique. There’s not an exact vehicle that looks like this in the Piaggio lineup. It is absolutely unique. It does have a little bit less top speed, but we’ll be perfectly fine around town. The ability to take out that battery to charge it anywhere might be very useful for some. But like a lot of early electric vehicles, these won’t be for everybody. They don’t. Once you run outta range, they do take a little while to charge. I didn’t look up the exact specs on the PIJ one, but this one’s listed as about four hours to charge. So you’re gonna be in a situation where you can’t instantly refill the same way you can with a gasoline scooter. And again, gasoline scooters are very efficient as well. There is not the cost benefit yet for electric savings over gas savings because scooters are so efficient. So sometimes, same thing with electric cars. Sometimes they’ll try to justify, well if I buy an electric car and I have you know this much driving, it’ll save me in gasoline alone. That may not happen yet. You’re buying these because you want to be tailpipe emissions free and you have that. Maybe you like the way electric vehicles drive, which I have an electric vehicle. I love the way it drives. And you do have that instant torque kind of feeling. This is a very peppy feeling. 70 kilometer an hour scooter. And same thing with this, it’s kind of a fun silent, quick, easy to get around vehicle. So they’re both a lot of fun, but they do have their differences over gasoline models and that’s really the benefit of Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports. You can see this one, take it around here, you can see this one and take it around here and you can compare them both to the gasoline counterparts from both Pi, Gio and Vespa right here in stock. Now in January, you won’t be driving these. It’s a ton of snow outside right now, but the showroom here is still massive and you can come look at these in person for yourself. And that’s probably the best way to decide if either of these are best for you. So I wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports for giving me access to these vehicles and for allowing me to film them. And if you have questions, let me know when the comments below. And like I said, I did do individual videos of these outdoors earlier, uh, actually later last year. So you can take a look at them as well. And again, if you have questions, let me know. I’d be happy to answer. Thanks everybody for watching.
Hi everybody , it’s Peter, and in this video I’m gonna do a complete in-depth review of the 2023 Kawasaki Z400, and I’m gonna compare that to the 2023 Kawasaki Ninja 400. So we’ve done these VE vehicles before in a previous video where I was outside, but not the 2023 model. But that’s what we’re gonna do on this channel. If you’re interested in these bikes, we’re gonna come back to them again and again and again. And if you have questions, let me know when the comments below and just subscribe. We’ll continue to answer your questions there and we’ll come back and answer your questions in future videos. So I’m gonna try to hit on some of the things that I didn’t hit on in the past in these bikes because they’re carryover models. , Jim Gilbert’s Power Sports. This is the largest volume Kawasaki dealer in the country and they gimme complete access to their vehicles to allow me to make more videos for you. So let’s get going with our view. We’re gonna start with the Z400. So I wanna start off being clear that I am a huge fan of both of these bikes. I really, really like them and there’s a whole bunch of misconceptions about smaller bikes out there and let’s just clear a few of them outta the way right off the bat. First of all, this 400 cc bike goes about 200 kilometers an hour. You don’t have to believe me, you can search on YouTube when you’re done watching this video and you will see them going about 200 kilometers an hour, 120 ish miles an hour. They have all the speed you need and there’s a turn that people use about smaller bikes that you outgrow them.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
It’s not a term I use here because I think small bikes can be perfectly suitable for experienced riders. And to be very blunt, there are guys that take, can take these 400 cc bikes around a track and just smoke bigger bikes. So I don’t think you outgrow with bikes like this. Uh, and especially with this 400 uh, CC class of bike, I do think that some people sometimes want more speed, a little bit more acceleration, that kind of thing. And hey, if that’s what you want in the future, absolutely no problem. But let’s not use the term outgrow because this is a bike that is a blast for experienced riders. And what’s cool about it for experienced riders is you can’t move up in size up in engine size from these bikes and replicate the feeling of these bikes. These bikes are both really lightweight that makes them so much fun to drive.
It’s just something that you can really flick back and forth. There’s not a fun feeling in any other bigger bike that can match what these do, and that’s what makes them kind of amazing for what they do. So they’ve got all the power you need, uh, and there’s still enough power to be fun, but the overall riding experience, the entire experience is fun. It’s not just when you give the throttle and go well beyond legal speeds, the entire bike is a blast to ride. So when they had these smaller CC bikes, which again used to be two 50 s 300 s, now they’ve moved up to 400 as the smaller CC Ninja and Z model. The big problem with the previous bikes is they looked like small bikes. They had scrawny little wheels, they had like simplistic looks, they were super narrow and they just looked like toys. These ones have always done a good job of looking like a real motorcycle. Now it’s still very compact and when I sit on this bike compared to the ninja, you’re gonna see the seating positions different. So we’ll get to that a little bit later in this video as well.
But for 2023, they’ve touched up the frame here in this green color. Now it will zoom in closer enough in a little bit, uh, here just so you can see it up close. But this green color makes this look exactly like the Z 900. So again, that big bike feel from a distance especially, you’d have trouble telling these two apart if you’re just an average motorcycle person or even just an average person. But it really has that big bike feel to it, which I really appreciate. It’s also fairly comfortable, it’s very approachable, it’s very rideable. So let’s take a look at some of the details here as we move through this bike and then we’ll pull an engine, show you some of the differences with that bike, some of the things you get on that one that aren’t on here, and the pros and cons of each.
And then we’ll talk about who these bikes are probably for and who would enjoy them the most. So I wanna start off with saying, oh, it’s gonna steer itself away. I wanna start off with saying the styling of this bike, this is a naked class of bike. They used to call this a standard class of bike and the standard bikes used to have all the round headlight and kind of the basic kind of look naked bikes. The idea was no faring. Well, this one’s got a little bit of faring in here just for styling. And the idea with this faring is to give you an aggressive sport bike type look. But you still have a fairly upright CD position and your hands are at a different angle. Now, to be fair, the Ninja 400 is also a fairly upright sport bike. Uh, but there’s a very different hand position. So we’re gonna show you some of that in here. What I like here is this housing here is very modern full L E D lighting out front, well full L e d head lighting out front here, which is really nice. Not only is it very bright, but it also that white color helps you easily identify what you’re seeing because that white color is closer to daylight. So your brain doesn’t have to do an extra process of thinking, you know, what is it that I’m seeing? It just, you’ll right away recognize things at night with these bright headlights here you’ve got signals on the stalk here that’s gonna be different on the ninja, you’ve got a different dash in here. We’re gonna cover some of that. And then the whole handlebar and uh, mirror replacement are also different and there’s pros and cons to that as well. So we’re gonna talk about that here right now. So taking a look at the dash here, I kind of like this. It’s very, uh, simplistic and uh, very modern in a lot of ways. So we’ll just turn the key here. My second key is actually stuck in the handlebars there. There we go. Turn the key here like that. And you can see you’ve got a full digital dash beneath a marker here. So the entire thing is digital. You’re gonna see on the ninja there’s a different tachometer here, but you sort of saw how that built when we turned it on. Uh, you can very much see what you’ve got for tachometer. This bike is completely outta gas, that’s why there’s some flashing down here. Uh, but you’ve got some sort of nice basic features in here. So as we cycle through, you’ve got kilometers per liter I believe you can do liters per a hundred kilometers. Uh, you’ve got the average kilometers per liter, same thing with liters per a hundred kilometers. Then you’ve got your range, which is your distance to empty. All this is again on the bottom here and uh, then the clock down there as well. You’ve got your temperature gauge over on this side here, which is a little harder to see on the angle. We’re filming at big red warning light, all the warning lights that you need. And then what I like is you have your gear indicator front and center. Whether you’re a beginner rider or an experienced writer, a lot of experienced writers will say, oh, I don’t need a gear indicator. Let me tell you, guaranteed indicators are super helpful for having fun on the road.
You can down know exactly what gear you’re in, you’ll know what to do when you release that clutch and off you go. So that just is just a really compact, clear, easy to read dash that gives you everything you need and really nothing you don’t. It’s nice to have that fuel efficiency numbers in there so you have a sense of how you’re riding. Even when you’re riding aggressively, you can sort of see, oh, it doesn’t really affect fuel efficiency that much on this fairly efficient bike. So that’s one of the things I like down there. Now we’re gonna talk about seating position when we sit on the bike, but the handlebars here, which we’ll get to in a second, uh, there are benefits more than just seating position. So we’ll, we’ll just get to that in one second as before as we show you the controls first, then we’ll get there. I’m going to keep coming back to this handlebar position. Obviously I kind of muffled my words there because there’s a lot of little benefits to these handlebar things. First of all, the controls are the same on each bike. So you have a little trigger over here which can flash your high beam. You have your high beam and low beam right there, signals of course right there. Uh, simple, simple stuff. And then a horn down here. Same thing on both bikes. You also have what’s called a slipper and a CST clutch. And if you’ve ever hopped on any motorcycle, you’re gonna find that the clutch is much heavier on basically every other motorcycle than this. So the slipper and assist clutch does two things for you. One, it makes for a very light clutch pull. I can pull this in with just my pinky quite easily, uh, like that. So really nice if you’re driving in traffic with this, if you’re on and off the clutch, a lot really easy to pull in, which makes it just easier to drive. The other thing that the same system does, one of the things the system does is make it a light clutch pull. The second thing it does is if you are aggressively downshifting, you can create a lot of engine braking and on an aggressive maneuver, high rev maneuver, whether you screw up or whether you’re on the track or something like that, sometimes a a quick release of that clutch when you’re in the high revs can cause the rear wheel to slip a little bit. If you don’t have this system Now it still could slip, but the idea is this will work to prevent a rear wheel slip when you mess up a downshift and it’s something they use on the track so you can do it aggressively. But I think on this bike it’s also useful just in the street. If you just kind of release that clutch a little too quick on your shift and you have the revs not where they need to be, instead of having that really, you know, you know, having the back wheel just kind of step out a tiny, tiny bit, this is gonna work against that. So it’s a race type feature that is both beginner friendly and useful for everybody. And that’s again example of this bike. These are the bikes I recommend most often to beginners, but they’re also something that is, have features that are good for every kind of rider. The only thing I wanna point about the handlebar here is you’re gonna notice on the ninja there’s no handlebar. There’s what they call clip-ons. Handlebars can be nice to add accessories, phone mounts, different GPS type things. Uh, there’s lots of benefits to having a round handlebar. We’re just gonna slide the camera over here as well. If you wanted to put something in the center here, you’ve got that option. So sometimes this is a little easier way to mount some of those accessories than something like the ninja will have with its clip-ons. But again, there are options on both bikes. So that’s just a couple pieces of the different hand position. The other thing you’re gonna notice here is on the ninja, you’re gonna have it pulled in like
Where on the uh, z, it’s a little bit out like that. Again, we’ll show you the seating positions moving forward, but that’s a couple things to look for as I sit on both and some of the key differences between these two bikes. I wanna show you the front wheel here of the Z 400. It’s gonna be the same idea on the Ninja 400. So you’ve got a single disk on this side, so not dual disk, which for the speed you’re doing here, you’ve got all the stopping power you’re gonna need. And then you also have this little ring here that’s part of your ABS sensor. So you can see a little abs sticker here. So you have really good quality front brakes, they’re ventilated. This pedal style can also help dissipate heat, although I think they uh, are more style than heat dissipation with this pedal style rotors, uh, because some of the bigger bikes have moved away from these pedal styles back to round rotors again. But you do have high quality brakes here that work very well and abs is something that I think you should look for on a street bike regardless. Now, uh, it’s becoming more and more common whether you’re a beginner or not. It’s just the ability to, you know, if you’re jamming on your brakes when you’re stopping to have something, that’ll help prevent that wheel from locking up. Especially if you’re in an emergency situation. Sometimes you forget your skills for that split second. Well this is gonna work with you just to keep those wheels from locking up and of course it’s front and rear abs. Wanna take a look at this new colorway here as well as take a look at the engine here. A little, uh, hard to see on that angle, but you can see a lot of that frame in here in that green color which carries out through here. Like I said, this is a really close matched to the Kawasaki Z900, so a much, much bigger bike and this really does give it that same look. Everything down here painted black. This is a 3 99 4 cylinder liquid cooled engine. Fully modern in every way and it has been proven reliable. It is an absolute blast drive, nice high revs, uh, and again, very manageable powertrain. So you can have fun but you can get it on it, get on it from day one and uh, kind of just feel like you’re not super intimidated. It’s still plenty quick. You have to get used to uh, the speed of the spike, but it is something that is very manageable powertrain, very nice to have. So overall look pretty clean. Look here, like I said, these frame rails in through here, the closer you get to the bike, the more you can see it with this new colorway. I really like the way they did that. The other thing you can see on the rear here is the back wheel there again that we talked about the disc brakes and uh, everything else for the disc brake on the rear there as well. I should mention that you have 17 inch tires here. So those are race size tires. They are a little narrower, so usually a bigger bike will have about a one 20. Uh, in the front. This is a one 10, I believe it’s a one 30 in the back. Part of the slightly smaller tire size here contributes to that whole idea of giving you that really nimble bike. So again, they’re not so tiny that they’re just like budget bike tires and they look like a kid’s bike, but that little bit more narrowness gives you that real flick ability so you can really kind of get this bike back from one side to the other side in a hurry. And again, it’s part of what contributes to giving these bikes a really unique feel that you can’t get in a bigger bike. Take a look at the sort of the rear end of this bike. This tail uh, style look, these are actually basically carryover between both bikes. I can’t really see a whole lot of difference, but there’s a couple things I wanna point out. You do have a rear seat, it looks small from that angle. It is big enough to take a passenger, but again, like any sporty type bike, it’s not a massive rear seat. Uh, to take a passenger for a long time. And for this size of bike, you’re probably not gonna take a passenger everywhere, but you absolutely can. You’ve got your foot pegs right there in the below the foot pegs here is a little hook type area that is a functional hook along with this one right here. Hopefully you can see that right there. This is the kind of bike that is gonna have to serve more than just one purpose. It’s not like it’s only take it to the track or only do commuting. A lot of people are gonna do, you know, go to the store, go to work, go to school, do all kinds of things and this and having these little hooks here, you’ve got luggage that you can strap to here. Now I just bought a Zed 900 Rs for myself. I have luggage that’s gonna hook onto my bike in the same way that would hook on this bike. So stay tuned to this channel. Feel free to subscribe if you wanna see the types of luggage that you can put on here just to get some ideas cuz I’ll talk about that in a future video as well. But these are little things that I think a lot of people overlook that make this something that you know, you don’t have to take the car, you can take the bike because you can get some of those things you need if you set a zip up to the store to get something small, you don’t have to wear a backpack, you can get a nice little tail bag here to carry what you need.
So this is the Z400. Now let’s move to the ninja and talk about some advantages and differences in that. So taking a look at the 2023 Ninja, you’ve got this new color scheme here. I really like this brighter green. It stands out more in person than it will to you on the camera, but it kind of gives it that different look a little bit more modern again. So you can really tell that this is just, you know, a new model. If you know the bike now from here back, it’s basically the same type of thing. I think the tank is probably the same, we can find that out. Uh, but over here you have the differences. One of the differences is just purely styling and we’re gonna take a little closer look at it from this angle. You’ll see some of that. You do have a little taller windscreen than just the instrument cluster here.
It’s gonna give you a little bit of extra wind protection but not a whole lot. It does give you an advantage in a tuck position, which we’ll show you that in a second as well. And the whole bike is designed for that tuck position where the Z 900 is not. And we’ll show you some of those differences and advantages. One thing that people forget when you have a look at the side here is this pH fairings here. They come out and they do give you extra wind protection on your legs, in your knees. They give you a little bit extra things. So in a little bit cooler weather you have a little bit more protection. Uh, it’s a very mild difference but it is a difference to this style. So little bit extra wind protection for both speed, for both comfort and for style. But we’re gonna show you some of the differences here with the dash and with the handlebars because that’s gonna be a real difference that you’re gonna notice between the two. So taking a look at the dash on the ninja 400, you’re gonna see some differences here. Remember we had that sort of digital tachometer here. Well now we have a full uh, analog tack and I’m just the handle merge are spinning here just cuz they want to curl over. So we’re gonna try to keep them away there. But you can see you still have all the same information. So your digital screen is over here but your tack is over here. The engines are the same. So it’s a carryover type thing but the look is different. You still got your gear position indicator over here, your overall speedometer. But what I like about this tack is to me it is slightly easier to read. Now I don’t know that that matters to a lot of people. Both are still very legible. Uh, but again this gives that little bit more sporting.
If you’re at the racetrack, uh, you tend to look forward on a racetrack and in your peripheral vision you can see where your revs are just cuz the needle is there. To me this is a little easier to see in your peripheral vision. So it is something to keep in mind if it matters to you functionality the exact same. So I won’t go through that again. The other difference is when I do turn the handlebars here you can see that key is moving, the handlebars are moving, but the dash on this one is built into the faring so it stays straight in front of you. I don’t think that makes a difference to a whole lot of people, but it is a difference. One other difference you’re gonna see is the faring does give you a few options. So we talked about, you know, the mounting on a handlebar of your phone can be a little easier, but here you have a benefit of what this can be po punched out and you can put a 12 volt or USB socket in there right from Kawasaki’s accessories. So that’s an option here where it just kind of cleanly mounts outta the wind outta the way, which is nice. Now again, clip-ons. Let’s talk about what clip-ons are. You can kind of see how this works. Let me just see if I can zoom in a little bit here. Yeah, I think you can see it well, we’ll zoom in a little bit here. So zooming in, you can see that there’s not really so much of a single handle baring across, but these are sort of the traditional sport bike type feel. So you don’t have that handle bar sitting there. The difference with these again, is they’re gonna be turned back more like that compared to something like the Z900. It gives you a little bit narrower feel to your hands, which helps you in that tuck position. Controls are the same, clutch is the same.
So now, now let’s show you back to back riding positions to show you those differences. So I’m about six feet tall, about a 32 inch inch sea. I think this is a compact bike and you’re gonna see that my size 11 feet here are another thing that you have to keep in mind. If you had like size 13 feet on both of these bikes, you can see I am just clearing the uh, the uh, muffler here. So when my, I’m in the right proper riding position, I can put my foot on the brake, I can come back to a proper riding position and I’m totally fine. But if you had really big feet, like size 15 or something like that, you are probably gonna sit on the heat shield there. Um, like I’m at the edge of my toes so you’d have to have much bigger feet than me, but it is a bit more of a compact feel. So sitting on this, let’s talk about the advantages of the ninja and we’ll talk about the advantages of the Z 400. Again, handlebars are a little bit more in that’s gonna be kind of equal for comfort. You can see I have a little bit of a forward lean. We’ll show you how much of a forward lean is there. I’m sitting far forward on this seat just to give you the example sort of to minimize that forward lean. Now this windshield, when I go in a full tuck position, you’re gonna move back a little bit and it does give you the ability to kind of send the wind right over your helmet. So if you really wanted to be aerodynamic, that’s a benefit. The other difference is on the Z 400. The mirrors are back here. We’ll talk about the advantages of having the mirrors here. But on the ninja, the advantage of of having the mirrors out here on the faring means if you do go into that tuck position, the mirrors are still in front of you. So you can sit there in a tuck position and constantly have a good view behind you. Those are really the key differences. So again, sitting on this height on the ground, very flat footed, you can be a shorter person than me without any trouble. You can be taller person than me without any trouble. You’ve got room here. Again, that faring gives me a little bit of wind protection as it comes out here in front of my knees. But this is what I look like on a Ninja 400. I’m gonna move the Z 400 in here with editing. I’m gonna try to keep it as clean as I can. I’ll sit on that bike and you can hopefully see is sort of blend into a similar difference.
So let’s do that right now. All right, so I don’t know if I got it in the exact same position but the same thing. I’m sitting up close to the tank. I feel like I’m not quite as far leaned over, but it’s at the point where neither one is uncomfortably forward. Keep in mind when you have a slight lean, uh, you’re gonna have some wind resistance anyways, which is gonna help kind of help hold you up. So there’s no real weight on your handles either way. There is a feeling of a little bit more width to the handlebar here because they’re not tucked in here, they’re out over here. So that is something you notice now mirrors over here, these are actually very good. They can be moved around in different ways. If I go into a tuck position here, the aerodynamics are not working necessarily with me. There will be some wind coming in below me cuz I can’t get my helmet low enough to keep all the wind outta here. That’s the advantage, advantage of sport bike styling. Um, it is what it is, but, and again, if I go over here, the mirrors are behind me. But when I sit upright on this bike, which is how you’re gonna ride it, probably most of the time these mirrors because they’re closer to you now give you a little bit more of a wide angle. And to be fair, this bike was just built yesterday. And I can tell you right now the mirrors are not, uh, perfectly set up the way I’d like ’em. They, they got them to me as quick as they could. So this will be, uh, touched up before it leaves the showroom. But the idea with these mirrors being this way is because they’re closer to you. If you ever hold a mirror closer to you, you have a wider angle view behind you. And that will be one benefit of having these mirrors the way they are on the Z400. So styling differences are there, but practical differences are also there just based on how they’re set up. So let’s talk about who these bikes are for. Well, as I mentioned off the top, both of these bikes are bikes that I recommend to new riders. They are really versatile and the difference with recommending these to new riders versus recommending bikes to new riders in the past is some bikes for new riders used to be beginner bikes and they very much were that these bikes are a little different. They have manageable power, comfortable CD positions, good safety features, and they’re lightweight, which makes them good bikes for new riders. The difference is some of those same features really make these good for experienced riders because like I said off the top, you really can’t replicate the feel of this lightweight, lightweight, nimble bike in a larger bike with a bigger engine. So there are reasons to go for more speed or more accurately better acceleration. Now these things are still very, very quick. They’re gonna be, you know, as fast as most sports cars zero to 60. So they are not slow at all. But you know, you know, mid-level to high level bikes in the Kawasaki lineup are going to have, you know, super car type zero to 60 type performance. So that’s something
To keep in mind is you do have that option by moving up. But from a pure fun perspective, these are fantastic in either way. Now I lean a little bit more to the ninja because to me some ninjas can get to an uncomfortable stage and we’ll talk about those in future videos. But this one is still very comfortable and I like that little bit of wind protection there. I like the feeling of that. But you may prefer this and that this one here for it’s a little bit more upright position, a little wider position. The mirrors being a little closer. There’s really no difference. Either one is gonna be an absolute blast and the best thing is you can come check them out for yourself. If you’re here in the Jim Gilbert’s Wheels and Deals area, not only do we have these two 20 threes that just showed up, we have a whole bunch of 2022’s which can save you a little bit of money, save, give a little extra money for a helmet or other gear or that kind of thing that you want. We have a full line of them and there’s about 20,000 square feet of showroom space here with all kinds of bikes to see so you can come check them out for yourself. I do recommend if you can, if you’re shopping for either of these bikes that you sit on, both because you may find that you sit on one and you prefer one over the other. Like I said, for me, I kind of prefer this. Now having said that, I bought a Z series bike, A Z 900 Rs, and again, it has all the benefits of this. So again, one may appeal to you over the other, but they’re essentially the same bike underneath and that means that they’re just gonna be a lot of fun regardless of which bike you choose. So if you have questions and you wanna know more about these, let me know. When the comments below, do me a favor, subscribe. We’ll talk about luggage that can fit on these bikes. As I talk about other stuff, we’ll talk about riding, we’ll talk about all kinds of things with these bikes in the future. And let me know if you have one. Lemme know what you think of it, right? It’s in the comments below. And we’ll just create a little community here of, uh, you know, fans of this bike. Thanks everybody for watching.
What to really look for in a first motorcycle! Or first bike in a while!
Hi everybody, it’s Peter and in this video we’re gonna talk about beginner bikes. And beginner bikes are kind of an interesting class of bikes because I don’t subscribe to the theory that every bike is a beginner bike and then you have to move on and you outgrow and we’ll talk about that. But what this video’s really gonna talk about is things I wish I knew and other riders kind of wish they knew when they were starting out. So whether you are starting out in motorcycling or whether you are returning to it, we’re gonna talk about some of the things to look for that I think some of the other videos don’t point out when they talk about beginner bikes. So I’m gonna move through three examples of bikes that you could consider as a beginner, but really these are just examples to have talking points.
So even if I’ve moved on to a bike that you’re not interested, you may wanna stay on this video as we talk about some various things that you may want to be aware of as you look for your beginner bike or your return to riding bike. Now I just wanna thank Jim Gilbert’s PowerSports who gives me complete access to their entire vehicle lineup. And that helps us make videos for you because if you have a question that I don’t get to in this video, feel free to let me know when the comments below because I want to continue to answer those questions, create a little bit of a conversation and subscribe to the channel because I’ll continue to make more videos based on your comments and we’ll try to build a little community here of answers that we can help out everybody as a community.
From here you can watch Peters Video by clicking YouTube or read his transcript… enjoy…
let’s get going with the review. So the first thing I want to get outta the way is there’s going to be a term thrown around with new riders that say you don’t want to outgrow a bike or buy a bike that you’re just gonna outgrow. And it’s a term I don’t use, it’s a term that was created by people wanting to sell more bikes. The idea is start on a small bike and in two years we’ll sell you the next bike. It’s not accurate in 2023 and the bikes I’m gonna show you today are bikes that experience riders would be perfectly happy keeping. There are several reasons to move on from your beginner bike, but we’re not gonna talk about outgrowing a bike because it’s just a term that doesn’t exist. This bike is plenty, plenty capable as are there other ones in here and they are bikes that you could absolutely enjoy for a long, long period of time.
What you will find though, is a beginner bike is a great bike to discover the type of motorcycling that you want to do and you wanna get something that’s versatile enough to kind of fit what you want and then you can decide if you want to keep that bike or if you wanna move on to another bike. Or in a lot of cases what people like to do is keep their first bike and get a second bike. Now that’s not feasible for anyone, uh, for everyone, but it is something worth considering. So the ones I’m gonna sh
650 cc parallel twin. This is a 900 cc v twin. So a lot of time when you’re thinking about a first bike or you know, sort of an entry level into anything you think smaller ccs are gonna be, you know, a little bit less powerful. And in some ways that’s not actually true at all with this one, this bike here actually makes more horsepower than this bike over here. Now there are some differences in feel and we’ll talk about that as well. But even though this one makes more horsepower out of less ccs, it’s actually very easy to ride as well and in part because it’s lighter weight.
Now let’s take a look at the front brakes and talk about some differences in there. So I love this view right here because it shows so much of the focus of this bike. First of all, overall design of a couple things. The suspension is an upside down fork. This allows for more stiffness up top for racing, little bit less, um, unsprung weight, which really matters in a higher performance, uh, bike as well. So that’s kind of typical stuff for the class. But again, different than some road going bikes. Same thing with the way the brakes are mounted here. We talked about that handle, uh, the the um, brake lever, excuse me, the way it’s designed. These are also designed different too. Your, your attachment bolts here come in from this way rather than sort of on that way gives you a little bit more precision for the road going bike.
