‘Mine now makes 210bhp at the rear wheel’
‘I just can’t wait to get back out there again’
“Over the past 15 years I’ve owned lots of performance Kawasakis. Then I had my head turned, first by an Aprilia, which gave me nothing but trouble so I went back to Kawasaki. Then again, I got enticed by the comfylooking riding position of a KTM 1290 Adventure – which was great but it had a few problems so I sold it when the warranty expired. Besides, by that time I’d already read about the new H2 SX in all the magazines and it sounded like the bike for me; lots of performance but a riding position that was a little more relaxed than the ZZR1400, which had always caused me wrist ache when I owned them in the past. “Kawasaki offered a fouryear warranty, so buying on PCP over the same period really made sense. I put £4.5k down, which left me with 48 monthly payments of £150 and a final settlement of £6k. At the end of the contract it’ll be out of warranty, so I’ll be looking at a new bike then anyway. I initially thought it was going to be hard keeping to the mileage though, which is only 5000 a year, however this pandemic has helped things a little!
“I’ve only just clocked over 5000 miles now in a little over 18 months with the bike. After the first service, where weirdly the brake fluid turned a really dark colour and I also noticed the clutch fluid level drop for no reason, it’s been absolutely faultless. I’ve tweaked it a fair bit though, starting with the suspension; I found that I never felt confident in the front end and was always fifty pencing around corners so I took it to KAIS Suspension who said that it had too much preload on the front and not enough on the rear. “Next I turned my attention to the engine. I’d already fitted a Yoshimura slip on, but then I went a bit crazy and fitted ZX-10R header pipes, got the cat chopped out, then took it to P3 in Liverpool for a remap and now it kicks out 210bhp. It’s incredible! I just can’t wait to get back out there, start touring again and make up for that lost time.”