POLL: Should Brian (aka BDF) buy a new C14?

[maxtog]

Well, after a couple of weeks working on the '16 as time allows, I have changed my mind regarding the gen. 2 fairings; I used to really dislike them and avoid them whenever possible..... how I despise them. Truly awful arrangement with all the soft rubber edging that folds, spindles and mutilates into the bike's engine to seal them. [...]

Yep, they look great, perform great, but are a royal pain in the *ss to assemble and disassemble.  Try having those AND crash bars and it is enough to make you go crazy.

I bought BMW sport grips thinking that the grips on the '16 were covers but they are the actual heating element molded in with the grips and wiring. So to change them, I will have to remove the wiring and get an earlier throttle tube to put the right grip on. So I will hold off on that for a while but I really do dislike the straight, hard

Like many people, I put some "grip puppies" over the stock grips.  The stock ones are pretty hard and having a sleeve over them helps a lot.  Mine are the kind without velcro, they are one-piece.  Were difficult to get on, which I suppose is good so they don't slip, but have lasted all these years without any issue (amazingly).

The '16 also has the evaporative fuel system so I suppose Kawasaki got tired of making two different C-14's for the US market, one for CA and one for the other states. Not a problem though it does steal a little room under the top / right fairing as well as behind and under the fuel tank.

You can remove it if you like.  Mine didn't have it and it is where I mounted the air horn stuff.

The plumbing and wiring on the bike is considerably better than it was on the '08. A minor point but it is nice to see progress there.

There were a lot of changes between gen 1 and gen 2.  Most of which were good.  Far more changes than one would expect after just 2 years, but the C14 was based on the ZX-14 which had been out years before.  So I think they were ready to make changes on the ZX-14 and many of those just flowed over to the C14, where compatible.  I think the other changes went through due to some critical reviews.

And the tires are PR 5's, not even scrubbed in yet. No experience with this tire though I did really like the PR2's and PR3's.

Wicked!  I hated the Bridgestone OEM's, LOVE the PR3's, so that is one headache you can skip (assuming the PR5's are as good or better than the prior models, which is likely).

[B.D.F.]

The fairings are bad enough that I spent some time looking at other bikes a couple of times this week, specifically the Feejer (of course, obvious choice) and OldWings. I really like the C-14 a lot and that is the only reason that '16 is still in my garage 'cause working with those fairings ain't doin' much to endear it to me :-(  And I have a set of canyon cages, fronts and rears, in a box to go on this bike.... and I agree that they will not make the process any slicker. And it is seriously far from 'slick' already. And as already mentioned, I actually prefer the looks of the gen. 1 C-14 anyway so the fairings are a miss for me on two fronts. Of course there is no guarantee that either the FJR or OldWing is significantly easier to work on anyway so that slowed me down a bit.

It is not so much that I hate the stock grips, or any grips as I really do like the BMW grips. I will take the current ones off the bike but will do so un such a manner as to not butcher the heated grips for (perhaps) the next owner. Personally, heated grips are useless to me as I almost never ride without wearing gloves and have and use heated gloves routinely. For me personally, heated grips are an addition to the bike that addresses a problem I do not and never have had.

The tires were actually a modestly important selling point for me- if I bought the 2020 (new) C-14, not only would I not have decent tires, I would have a set of Brickstones that I either had to suffer my way through wearing them out, or much more likely buy a set of PR's and install them, ending up with a set of barely used Brickstones that I would never use. Sure I could sell them but not for a significant amount and almost certainly there would be shipping costs, devaluing selling them even further. So the '16 had those two advantages, it had decent (I think good to excellent) tires already on it and they are effectively new, and the bike did NOT have lousy tires that I would have to pay for and basically dispose of. As I said, I think the C-14 is a fantastic motorcycle but it is crippled by the factory tires and I just could not buy a $15K motorcycle only to have to suffer with those tires. I would end up changing them out right away. Of course the Brickstones being lousy tires is my personal opinion of course. 

Yep, they look great, perform great, but are a royal pain in the *ss to assemble and disassemble.  Try having those AND crash bars and it is enough to make you go crazy.

Like many people, I put some "grip puppies" over the stock grips.  The stock ones are pretty hard and having a sleeve over them helps a lot.  Mine are the kind without velcro, they are one-piece.  Were difficult to get on, which I suppose is good so they don't slip, but have lasted all these years without any issue (amazingly).

<snip>

Wicked!  I hated the Bridgestone OEM's, LOVE the PR3's, so that is one headache you can skip (assuming the PR5's are as good or better than the prior models, which is likely).