Hi all,
I'm from Townsville and have joined primarily due to events at the MRA Townsville Toy Run on the weekend. I was standing near my black 2000 ST1100 and some shifty looking bugger comes along and looked like he took the keys from my dash. Before I could say anything, he quickly went onto another bike and fiddled with their dash too.
Just as I was thinking we had a serial ST1100 molester amongst the toyrunners, I realised he'd left behind a card for this forum :)
Anyway, here I am. I'm 30, and have a few bikes, but the ST is my main transport. I love a long ride and have gone from Tville - Philip Island and back via a 7000km route a year ago, which was fun. I even did a track day on it while down at the island. Nothing like 180kmh down the straight and being passed by litre sportsbikes. An intermittent connection on the coil packs (which I failed to diagnose) meant riding back from Melbourne was all on 3 cylinders with no acceleration.
The bike initially came to me from the Gold Coast as a purchase off eBay. It had been possibly crashed at some point (heavy scratches on the fork guards), cleaned up, then neglected. After a carb clean and a bit of loving it became socially acceptable in a vague sense. I introduced a friend, now my partner, to riding on it and now we pretty much go two-up whenever we can. I'm also with the Townsville Restored Motorbike Club. Currently has around 110000kms on the clock and I change the oil at 5K intervals and the filter at 10K intervals.
I joke to people that the ST is my station wagon - not sexy, but practical. It can carry a lump of stuff and two people and not really change in handling characteristics lol.
Work to do on it is to overhaul the calipers, fiddle with the clutch because it really CLUNKS into first and sometimes into second and get some new plastics. Most recent purchase was a secondhand Corbin seat for $150.
The dream is to sell the old beast off and get a Ural sidecar outfit sometime next year possibly and let the 1983 GPZ750 take over "lone wolf" duties. We'll see what happens.
Looking forward to head out on some rides with the local contingent - somehow managed to find mysefl almost surrounded by ST's in the Toy Run.
