Finding the Right Bike

Once I made the decision on what style of bike I wanted to build, I had to find the right platform to build it on. I had a good idea of what I wanted, it was just finding it was no easy task. So I made a list of what features the bike had to have in no particular order.

1. It had to be a Japanese liquid cooled inline four.
2. It had to have a six speed transmission.
3. The engine had to be fuel injected.
4. It should have an old school double loop frame.
5. The forks should be on the right way, the way god intended motorcycle forks to be on a bike so that gaiters could be installed.
6. A nice looking double sided swing arm, not an unsightly barstock looking one that is usually installed on most Japanese bikes.
7. Two rear shocks, for that old school look.
8. A round headlight with no fairing.
9. A standard dual gauge cluster.
10. Dual disc brakes in the front, and a single disc on the rear.
11. Chain drive, no rubber band or shaft drive.
12. Be actually built in the 21st century and have been made for several years to ensure parts availability.
13. A standard style gas tank.

I was willing to work with that list some as I knew I wouldn't be able to find the exact bike that would fit everything on my list. However I was very firm on #12. I also own a 1984 Honda VT500FT Ascot.
Which I fixed up, rode for about two years and converted it into a rat bike.

I learned a valuable lesson with that that bike. It's next to impossible to find parts for a twenty-five year old bike made for only two years. What parts you can find on eBay aren't going to be much better than the parts your trying to replace.
So I began to do research. I started buying all the motorcycle magazine buyer's guides and surfing the web looking at reviews. When I learned another interesting fact, motorcycle manufacturers believe that Americans only like three kinds of bikes. Dirt bikes, V-twin cruisers, and plastic clad track missiles. I really couldn't find much in the way of a UJM standard here.
I did narrow it down to three bikes. The discontinued Honda 919 (also called the Hornet), The Kawasaki Z1000, or the Suzuki Bandit. I wasn't crazy about the 919's underseat exhaust, the Z1000 had a weird funky tail end and fairing, and I just didn't like the Suzuki at all. Also, all three of them were next to impossible to find. No dealers with a 75 mile radius of my house had one. So I spent the next nine months searching the cycle traders and online adds looking for a suitable motorcycle.