Ouch!
Damn thing bit me! I musta been going too fast. I've been riding for over 20 years so I'm not some kind of squid with more power than brains (I.Q. should always be numerically greater than the H.P. output of the bike =;-)), but I went down the other day. Ended up breaking my clavicle (I'm typing left/one-handed and I'm right-handed =:-O) & tearing some ligaments in my back. I was going around a corner & the rear-end washed out. I don't think the stock tires are sticky enough for me & the bike's combined light weight. Damage to the bike was minimal: bent handlebars. broken driver's foot peg, scraped bodywork, seat, & pipes. Probably total $1600. Not cheap, but I needed to do the exhaust anyway ($600), and I always wanted a different color bike.
Obligatory Buell Link
My 1998 Buell Cyclone M2
1998 was the last year of the skinny Buells. In 1999 they got wider, which I didn't like, and they got more power. Power is pretty easy to add, so I'm glad I got skinny. Plus the design of the pre-1999 exhaust is much more aesthetically pleasing IMHO.
Modifications:
Buell Race Intake: This is a MUST DO modification.
Vance & Hines Carbon-fiber Exhaust: Waste of money. The fit and finish are awful & customer support is bad. Buy the Buell racing exhaust instead.
I had many a conversation with Vance & Hines about this muffler. They are located right in my back-yard in Santa Fe Springs. They were absolutely un-sympathetic. I couldn't return the exhaust even though it had zero miles and was unused, simply because I had opened the box and started putting it together. I spoke to managers, etc. without any luck. Really a "buyer be ware" company and product. After all the great press they receive (Battle2Win raves about them) I was floored at their unresponsiveness. They wouldn't even consider an exchange for another exhaust (like an aluminum one) from their line of Buell exhaust. I ended up putting it on after talking to them (couldn't return or swap it) and it does sound good and provide a noticeable horsepower boost. For anybody interested, specifically problems are: pipe supplied does NOT match the bike's pipe, so it looks totally stupid; uses that spring-attachment that they supposedly did away with (but didn't in my case) that was notorious for breakage; back bracket causes the pipe to hang down from the bike so that a) isn't perpendicular to bike, causing the muffler to look really lame and like it is "tacked" on, b) causes rear of muffler to be so low as to give the bike clearance problems; carbon-fiber canister does not fit well around the end-caps and has noticible gaps between metal end-caps and carbon-fiber body; everything fits on bike skewed at a funny angle. I'll include some pictures soon. The situation was totally ridiculous since I only wanted a swap.
Wish List (More Important than Ever Post-accident):
Buell Racing Exhaust: Seems the way to go.
Mirrors: Something a little less obtrusive and cooler looking that stock generic mirrors. For such a hot bike, stock ones sure are plain.
After-market Foot Controls: There's some nice ones I've seen in Battle2Win that I need to locate. They aint cheap, but now that I need new ones....
Handlebars: Racing clip-on style.
Why Buell Cyclone M2
The bikes I've owned have been:
1971 Honda 90: My first bike. I was 15 and the bike didn't work. Now what's a 15 year-old with a broken bike going to do? Fix it! Through Hell and high-water fix it and ride it! Nice little machine with little to recommend it other than its reliability.
1973 Honda 350: What a holy terror I was. Another non-working bike. Fixed it and proceeded to get so many moving violations I was one ticket shy of losing my license.
1977 Honda CB750F SuperSport: Great bike. Smooth as silk. Reliable. Easy to work on. But HEAVY as a car, almost.
1985 Suzuki GS550: Fast, I could keep up with 750s. The fit and finish wasn't that great, and it seems Suzuki sacrificed everything for speed, so the overall riding experience wasn't that pleasant. Vibrated a lot, horsepower only at the top of the tach. Not cheap to work on and I had bad experiences with Suzuki dealers.
1990 Kawasaki Ninja 900: Lots of horsepower if you're willing to rev the crap out of it all the time. HEAVY as a small car, about 565+ pounds wet. Complex bike with many parts, water-cooling, and difficult to synchronize 4-carb setup. I can't imagine racing this thing. I think the best use of a bike like this is to cruise at about 120Mph for long distances.
1998 Buell Cyclone M2.
When looking for a new bike, I knew I wanted a twin. I'd had 4-cylinder sport-bikes, and having to get way at the top of the tach to get any power is totally silly. By the time the power comes on, you've got to shift anyways. What's the point here? Just to have the fastest crotch rocket or the highest horsepower numbers? In my opinion this 4-cylinder holy-grail-style-quest for horsepower for horsepower's sake is lame, and not for me. After working on the Ninja 900 so much I came to feel that water-cooling sucks in a motorcycle. Why lug around all the weight in the form of moisture? My 750 wasn't water-cooled at it worked just fine. So an air-cooled twin. I started feeling patriotic and remember that Harley-Davidson made a sport bike, the 1000RR. Used to make, for like 1 year I found out. But the guy who was so heavily involved in HD sport-bike efforts was still around. Eric Buell. I remember him from way back. I remembered reading articles and seeing pictures of the first Buells produced for sale. And by-gosh he's still making bikes, and lots of them, and he's got like, a company, that's actually selling and servicing these things and they're not particularly expensive or hard to get. Seems like I found my ticket. But I'm not good at buying impulsively, so I started reading and Internetting and it seemed like maybe these Buells might be okay. So I looked around, and sure enough the riding experience suited me just right. The seat was a little narrow, I had to scoot back a little more than I was used to (no more humping the gas-tank like on normal sport-bikes, plus my "package" must have gotten bigger over the years, cause I just can't figure out where to put the thing when you're right up on the tank). The pipe did get a little warm in summer, but not too terrible; heck it was nothing compared to sitting at stop-light in the summer here in Los Angeles; the darn pipe was downright cold compared to that. Plus not too heavy, not too many parts, looked cool, kinda exotic, and the funny thing is everybody accepts you. Sport bike guys think you're all right. Harley guys think your all right. You can basically ride anywhere and none of the motorcycle "groups" gives you static. We're good at static in L.A., but not with this bike. Plus, Harley dealerships are, for the most part, a pleasure to deal with. Helpful gear-heads that have gone out of their way to help me many times. I sure haven't had that experience at ANY Japanese bike shop.
The ads are right: you do have torque on tap. Twist the throttle and the front-end lifts even on my mostly stock '98. And that's without all the revving and clutch thrashing the sport-bike kids subject their machines to.
The Infamous Recall
I've had all the recall work done on my bike. Other than the new shock and the new swing-arm a waste of time. No-one I knew had any problems pre-recall. Basically just free parts for me. I think Buell did the honorable thing by voluntarily replacing so many parts. Ford, Nissan, and others would do well to behave as nobly as Buell did, maybe then they wouldn't be in court over some of their notorious recall inadmissions.
Miscellaneous Pictures of M2s - Some pictures of my own will follow shortly:
Last Updated 09/01/01