Good looker, bet it runs good too. Very fast you say, hummmm...

I clearly remember looking at the first one to hit the dealers floor in State College PA. We marveled at the width of the rear tire and the horsepower stats. The dealer referred to it as "an exercise in wretched excess". The V Max then would do a quarter in 10.4 seconds, burn rubber all the way down a city block, and pull a 140 top end. My old kawi Z1 was the fastest thing on pavement at the time of it's introduction and would pull a 135 top end, and do a quarter in 12.3. My brother Jeff's Kaxi Z1R had a RayJay turbo charger and a giant Weber carb. It would do a 10.3 quarter on street tires and had a 175 top end, of course it would suck gas like no tomorrow and was a little sketchy in town. Even today the 10.4 quarter mile time of a V Max is quite good and unable to be matched by many sport bikes. Quite a few can do a better flat out top end run, but who does that anymore now that we are older and realize we are not immortal as we once thought. The V Max is also vastly more comfortable to ride than some organ donor torture device bike. The gas tank is a bit of a trick but not too bad once you have filled it a few times.

I have no idea if you have ever heard one of those things with good aftermarket pipes or not but they sound awesome. Like a V8. Pipes, ditch the V Boost dingus and rejet those carbs for fun in the sun. Or, leave it and enjoy the ride as is. Very nice bike either way. Congrats.

I almost had one last spring. Timing just odnt work out and I missed out on it. It already hade Bauer and some suspension upgrades on it. I did a lot of research on them and was very excited about it. I ended up in a totally different direction and got an '02 V-Star 650 put about 5000 miles on it last summer, which is pretty good here in Indiana. I'm sure we have about the same riding season you do in St Louis. I'm hoping to take a short trip on mi e a little later today, matter of fact!

They were the ultimate cat's whiskers back in the early 90s, when I last kept up. I don't know if all the later generations of rice-rockets have eclipsed them or not. I knew one kid who came through the local hot-rod hangout where us old-timers congregated. He was a street racer who ran a V-Max with a nitrous setup on it. We heard he was running flat out when he scattered the engine, fragments of which punctured the nitrous bottle. Nothing left of him but a lingering pink mist. Sounds far fetched to me, but it's a good story.

JLF