1200 mile Easter ride
Got home today from my shake down ride around the lower South Island.
Not so much of an Iron Butt run but more a thrash around some good winding roads taking in four alpine passes around 900m above sea level and heaps of good bits in between. I rode four days out of five with the longest day being around the 400 mile mark.
That's enough when your sports riding and concentrating I find.
So it was a good chance to bond with the new bike and form a few opinions on how it I feel it performs. The only fly in the ointment being the engine light coming on after 500 miles, but I now know it was only the gear position sensor throwing a wobbly because I changed the final reduction ratio by fitting a smaller rear sprocket.
I was carrying about 10 kg of luggage on the bike but it wasn't really noticeable and didnt upset the apple cart too much even tho my tail bag was sitting quite high on the pillion seat.
Despite some liberal use of throttle and RPM's the oil level remained constant the whole trip, just a bit of chain lubed dispensed at end of play every day. The chain didn't need adjusting once either - great. So the bike was fuss free to live with on tour.
I've decided to rate the seat 'OK' comfort wise. I've had bikes with better but I've had worse too. It seems to be good for 2 or 300 miles before you start to notice it. I dont have a lot of padding on my rear to be fair! I did find I got pushed into the tank a lot tho and the seat feels narrow at the front. There is room for improvement.
The ergos are pretty good out of the box, no complaints there but I think on a long ride taller riders may suffer. My knees are already touching the front fairing at 5'10.5". I was expecting a bit of cramping in the back of the knees from the high pegs but it never eventuated. Despite my abundance of enthusiasm I never ground the hero knobs, so those pegs must be quite highly placed... or I'm just not getting it over enough Ha ha.
One thing that has surprised me with this motor is that it has quite a linear power spread/curve and actually isnt as 'revvy' as I expected it to be. I found I generally changed up before 9K RPM purely because there didn't seem to be much gained power wise by wringing it right out to redline.
I haven't ridden a N300 or 250 but I get the impression they need a bit more revvin to get them on the boil. Not so with the 400. I do wonder how much an aftermarket pipe would transform the power curve? I did really enjoy making the little girl sing at times tho
The handling is pretty impressive overall, particularly on smooth roads. It will make a great track bike! I think the frame rigidity and geometry is excellent. The front end suspension is pretty decent and the rear suspension is probably the weakest link in the chain. I think if I throw any money at the suspension on this bike it will be an aftermarket rear shock. You could probably get it to perform better if there was adjustment for compression & rebound damping but there isnt, so it is what it is - a cheap shock built to a price point.
But overall the sharp and (mostly) well mannered handling provided lots of smiles on my ride. 90% of the time it was stability personified. It was only when I really pushed it through some roughly sealed twisty sections that it misbehaved. Kawasaki has done a good job here striking a nice balance between providing a comfortable ride yet maintaining sporting pretensions at the same time.
The tyres are great, not one slip. I can see a flat spot on the rear now with 3000km on the odo. Will be interesting to see what sort of mileage we end up get out of them eh.
Fuel mileage wise I averaged 28.5 km/liter (67 MPG US) . Due to the high police presence being a holiday period I had to keep my cruising speeds down to around 65MPH and the taller gearing maybe helped but there was also a fair amount of full throttle action though the twisties and over the passes, so on the whole I was pretty happy with this figure.
So in conclusion the N400 gets a tick in the touring box from me. A competent machine that's comfortable enough for a full days riding and unfazed about carrying a bit of luggage. An easy machine to live with out on the road but spritely enough to also have a bit of fun with.
A few random pics from my trip:
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