fred z

Greetings folks,

I recently joined this board and am enjoying reading what you all have done and learned about your SuperHawks. Let me give you a bit of background on my SH history.

I was on the original SH list at the beggining of 1997 when the most popular thread was "when do you think they'll get here?". Of course they got to our members in Europe first and we learned some things from them, like to clean off the header pipes before firing it up so they don't have blotches on them. Our first shipment in the USA arrived in April, 1997 and I was the proud owner of one of those. I kept that bike until the end of 1999 when my dealer told me he was getting 1 RC51 and I had the first shot at it. I sold my SH to a fellow HSTA (Honda Sport Touring Association) member from another state and got the RC.

While I had the SH, I enjoyed experimenting and modifying it. I think I was the first to put on 94-97 VFR750 bars and it was out of necessity. I was towing the bike to Michigan for a track day in 1998 and was using a Canyon Dancer on my bars. They were the TBR adjustable bars, which were nice, but not as strong as the OEM bars. One of them broke on the way up and I called another HSTA member that was going to the track to see if he had any spare bars. He had a spare VFR750 set as he had changed to Helibars on the VFR. He brought them to the track along with a Dremel and we made the swap. After awhile I lilked them and kept them on.

I had an incident where the VTR fell over into a utility pole while in a grass parking lot at Mid Ohio. My insurance bought me a new tank and I asked a buddy of mine here in IL who owns a body shop to modify my dented tank. He took out the dent, split it horizontally and put in a new section and made it into a larger tank, about 5 gallons. The hardest part was matching the Honda red. I also was the first on the old list to chrome the wheels and really liked the way that brightened up the looks of the bike. Craig Erion made me a special 14 inch pair of carbon cans, which I liked a lot. I had Lindeman Engineering rebuild the forks and I put on a Fox twin clicker.

I got one of the first Sargent World Sport seats and didn't like it at all. I then carved my stock seat foam and sent it to Sargent along with my stock seat and asked them to build me one like that. They liked it and asked if they could build me a World Sport seat like that and send it to me free for evaluation. Of course, I took them up on that and they later changed their design to the contours I gave them and that is what they are selling today.

I added several other farkles and really loved the bike and it was difficult to sell it for the RC51. I enjoyed the RC as it was faster, smoother, had better brakes and handling, better range with the fuel injection and larger tank and was an all around better bike for brisk riding or track days. On the other hand, it didn't have the pleasant character of the SH and wasn't as pleasant for sport touring.

I'll try to shorten this a bit by telling you that recently I was able to buy my old SH back and I am very, very happy to have it back home. I have about 10 other bikes at the time and they all serve a purpose, but the SuperHawk has to be one of the friendliest, most fun bikes to ride that I have ever had.

Sorry for the long post, but I thought you might enjoy hearing of my background. It is interesting to read what else you guys have come up with in the 5+ years that I have been out of the loop.