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A closer look

Aug. 6, 2014

After deciding the sell the Kawasaki Cafe Racer, I began shopping for a modern fuel injected bike that wouldn’t give me the never-ending hassle of trying to keep a multi-carburetor bike in tune. Fuel injection is like magic – It just works (famous last words ; -) and additionally, maybe a 3 cylinder triple… I’ve been spending years watching racing on TV and following the chat-forums and there’s a lot of talk about the special sound of a triple – MV Agusta is back in business and they make a nice one (for about $14,000 ) and Triumph just won the Daytona 200 this year with their 675 triple, but those are priced  way out of my range, so I began looking at older Triumphs. The Daytona 995i or the earlier poorly named T595 (same bike – different name) was a possible contender. Made from 1997 to 2006 – there were many examples available for between $2,000 and $4,500, even some within driving distance.

I found a really nice one in Portland, about a 90 minute drive up I-5 and at the same time I also found a buyer for the Kawasaki Cafe Racer in the same neighborhood. Unfortunately, but the time I completed the deal with the Kawi and had the cash in my hand, the Daytona I wanted was sold. The next closest example looked kind of rough, and was in Seattle – Not wanting to go home empty handed,  I spent the night in a cheap motel and then drove the additional three hours to get the subject of this blog – let’s see what I got.

Here’s the showroom fresh look followed by 16 years of questionable use…

It looks OK from that distance, but let’s take a closer look…

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