Watch out: my posts are almost always too long. My best additions to my Nighthawk have been (in no order) a cramp buster, throttle lock, Plexifairing 3, highway pegs, and 17-tooth front sprocket.
You might try the thing where you drain the bowls, fill them with Seafoam, run it a second to get the Seafoam up into the jets, and then let it sit 24 hours or so. Mine runs fine in the 40s, but I don't remember ever riding it at 32, so I don't know about that. If you want to sync your carbs cheaply, all you need is 3 air fittings, some tubing from Home Depot, some ATF, and YouTube. One of my favorite quotes is, "The things people regret most in life are the things they didn't do." Well, I regret plenty I've done, but I think the saying holds. Go for it. Tracing the coasts of Florida was one of mine, and now it's safely crossed off (got home yesterday). You don't have to be a commercial jet pilot to have a second career. And just about anyone would rather hire a retiree than an inexperienced kid into a part-time position, I imagine. Me, I only work about 20 hours a week officially, but I've always got so many projects lined up that I feel like I've got an overtime schedule. Buy some of those $200-500 bikes on craigslist over the winter and ...never a dull moment! I'm sure Javier's right about the dirt roads, but it doesn't mean you can't use them without knobby tires. I just wince every time I hear a good ding! come from my pipes. Still, I might take a KLR650 if I went just for the extra large gas tank, although I'm not sure how the extra weight of all that gas affects balance. I get more worried about the cruising range than the roads (and nobody told me about the 100 miles with no reserve on my PC). Knobbies still get flats, too. I hit a rock off-road in Bolivia that pinched the tube and subtracted hours from my vacation in the hot sun (screw drivers are also good for pinching tubes). The takeaway for me was to stick to paved and light gravel roads. There are still plenty of breathtaking vistas that can be taken in from roads that don't require standing up on the pegs. Lastly, having a ratty and inconspicuous bike is not a bad thing in general. At night, I get the bike behind a gate and breath easy, but I think of times when I have to park it in a bank parking lot while I get some cash or out on the street when I stop for lunch in a restaurant. Any bike weighted down with gear and sporting a US license plate is going to look out of place and draw attention, just as twentysomething backpackers do no matter how ratty they look. At those times, I would prefer to have my stuff safely locked up in aluminum panniers. No use tempting the devil with low-hanging fruit, the way I see it, but to each his own. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
