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 It started sometime in 1998 or so. When I was finally sick of bumming rides on friends bikes, I started looking around for one of my own. I actually didn't really want a sportbike, I loved riding my friends, but knew it would just get me in too much trouble. A buddy has his neighbors Vulcan in his garage, going pretty cheap, so I pondered it for awhile. Until he calls me up one day, says "Hey, I got this zx6 in the garage, I did some work for the guy but he's trying to sell it. Low miles but second gear is going, it's cheap and might be a great deal". I had no idea what a zx6 was, It wasn't an R, I knew what that was... Hmm, whatever, I'll check it out. So I stopped by later. Nice looking bike, all black, real clean, hmm pretty comfy too. Ok let's take it for a spin. Hey, well that's not too bad, pretty quick, as I shift into second, Wham! whir WHAM!, oops, yeah that trannys a little screwed, roll more into the throttle and it stays in. Alrighty then. To make the already long story short, I picked it up, with a bit of extra cash via loan to fix the tranny.
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 As you can imagine, I was having too much fun just out riding with all my friends. Jeff from Tarco Racing, Fred who of course not much later started the unstoppable Sportbikes.net, and many other. Almost every night we'd be out terrorizing public roads, and each other, hanging at the local spots, drag racing. Just good time squidly stuff. I spent the days doing little mods here and there. Cutting off the fender, pulling off reflectors. With the help of a work friend, who I actually met riding and later got the job with... we gutted the stock cans and jetted it. I often drag raced against other 600's on the street and even had a runs at the local strip (rt. 66 which has just opened) all the while still having a broken second gear, which of course was getting much worse after a season and a half of abuse. So finally with some cash back in hand, I finally pulled the motor and had it fixed. The best thing I ever did, while it was being done, was had first through third gears undercut. You really should look into this if you enjoy hard riding.
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 While the motor was out, I let my buddy go at it with some paint. I decided a purple frame might look pretty cool, and well, it kinda did, but it wasn't a great paintjob and was a suzuki color, I know... I'll take my slap for that now. I also had tinted the turn signals, painted the inside of the windshield, and painted the fake frame strip around the front. Never did like that thing (and it shows even in my newest paintjob).
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 Somewhere along the way, we finally painted the swingarm and fork legs when putting on new D207's. I also had lowered it about 3 inches all around, had in a 4 degree ignition advancer, muzzys exhaust, dynojet kit, and eventually a full custom Accel ignition setup. This bike was a monster on the street. I was beating almost every 600 I came up against, it's a shame I never did it for money because I could have made a bundle. Between it being nice and low, making decent power, and my growing skill of getting the holeshot on most everyone, it was a great time and hard to beat. This was until at least around 2000 or so when the 600's started getting over 100hp stock, it was near impossible to compete against a good rider then. But it was fun while it lasted. Other mods at the time included a proper smoked windscreen, purple wiring harness covers, and some other visual changes. I could go into great detail how all the suspension mods were done, but I won't here. Maybe another section later.
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I did have a few run ins with gravity as well. Starting with a little bobble in the first season where i decided to try and take a nice twisty road a bit too fast and ran off into the grass eventually falling over and braking off the peg mount and spraining my ankle. It also cracked the plastic piece that goes over the frame rail in between the side and gas tank in half.
Then we move along to the latest one near the end of the second season. As it was originally written on my original zx6 page: "It was a warm sunday morning when i received a phone call from a riding buddy who wanted to go for a leasurely ride with a neighbor and a friend of his and invited me along. Eventually we met at my house, and took off. It was a very cold night before, so the streets were a bit cold. What happened next can only be described as pure stupidity. No forethought was involved, maybe only a bit of typical male testosterone running rampant, as i round the curve in one road leaving the neighboorhood and aproach a the typical right handed 90 degree turn you'd find in almost any american neighborhood, i decide i can maintain my present speed of 40 mph, after all, i know my bike, i've done is before! As i mentioned above the roads were particularly chilly this day, so of course so were my tires, also to boot thise corner dips in hard on the inside and has a HUGE crown at the point of that turn. Simple equation, COLD STREETS + COLD FRESH TIRES + HIGH RATE OF SPEED, multiply it will LOADS of throttle at high rpm in second gear = a big fucking mess! woops! there goes the rear tire, sounds of scraping plastic fill the air, a lone man sliding on the butt of his levi's across the pavement, flips widly into the air off the curb like an RC car gone rampant. Then realization, pride is ground and smashed like the aluminum of a Muzzys muffler on pavement at 40mph upon the gander of the other two wheeled peers following close behind. The neverending taunts and laughter from others after the fact is enough to drive one insane. Ok, enough drama, all in all it was a stupid hot headed mistake, i was fine, the bike was merely scratched and the brake lever broken off, and the clip-on (handle bar) was tweaked a bit crooked, but nothing major, the other side was in last years fall, so oh well. The most damaged was my Pride and Ego :) I simple rode back two blocks, borrowed the lever off of my brothers zx6r and continued the ride for the day. After many hours of wet sanding and buffing i have the plastic smoothed out although its a bit dull in spots but looks fine. Anyways check out the pictures located on the sides here for good looks at the damage. Moral of this story? dont be an idiot, think before you turn, are your tires warm? is the road clean? sure those things seem like common sense but are easily forgotten once we twist that throttle. " |
Here it would sit for almost 3 years. Just fed up with constantly working on it, friend after friend selling their bikes or never riding, I just sort of walked away from it all. I did a little work on it here and there, fired it up from time to time, in which it ran horribly, if at all. I redid all the ignition wires Started sanding the frame, thinking I would just polish it, as I was sick of the purple. But without any real enthusiasm or motivation, none of it ever got finished.
After years of hearing crap from friends about letting a bike rot away, and consistant nagging from new riding coworkers to get it running, I finally dove back in. With some more fixes to my hacked custom ignition it was up and running, but pretty poorly still, and I was hating the frame, the broken plastics, and hacked up lowered suspension. So when the offer of a used but blown motored 95 came up, with cash in pocket, I met up on the other side of Indiana and trailered home this silly green and white 95. The chassis was in great shape, albeit a bit tired with the mileage it had on it, but no matter, even the plastics were in good shape. So out comes the motor, swap in the 94 motor, leave the stock 95 ignition and wiring, bolt the muzzys back up, and vroom, up it starts... still running poorly, but a little better. I figure by now, it just has to be the carbs, especially after sitting for so long. So with the guidance and help of a chicagolandsportbikes.com member, we tore into the carbs. And what do you know? I was handed back a great running E! I was back baby! Now that was a happy day.
 In the ensuing years while the site grew and grew, with many core members still active and invaluable to it's current success... the E continued to evolve into what it currently is today. And as we know, things are never complete. But I went through several versions and looks. Green and white plastics, then threw in some black plastics, still had green wheels, finally changed out green wheels but still had a green screen and now black and blue tails. It was in this state that I finished off the 2004 season with a trip to Las Vegas with the former zx6e.com host OTE on his CBR F4I. Round trip in 8 days. Anyways.
The following season I just milled around town riding to band practice a couple times a week, until in September, I once again strapped on the saddlebags and rolled on out to Salt Lake City with my friend and new E owner Pengaru, aka Swivel, to the third annual Pilgrimage Demo Party. This was quite the adventure, as was summarized in my ride report. A few weeks after returning back, it had already started to get chilly out, and I wasn't riding quite as much and was transporting gear to several different practices and gigs so I was driving the truck. However one day I head out in just jeans to run a quick errand, and upon leaving the house, quickly tossed my bike down the street, tearing up the right side once again, and scraping off most of my right butt cheek. Details can be found in THIS THREAD. And now we're pretty much up to date, as of this writing, it is in the garage with the enture rear end torn off. Pulled the tire off by hand, and did some cleaning up of the rear wheel and will be putting on the brand new Pirelli Strada and the new cush drive damper the zx6e.net users were kind enough to profide me as xmas presents!! THANKS!@ Also the swingarm is off and getting cleaned up and refinished since the previous owner stripped most of it off... And I may modify an E pivot to fit the zzr1200 shock, don't know for sure yet, but it's likely, so then I can properly set my ride height with the adjustable links without interference from the swingarm. Until something else changes... That's all folks. |
