by John H » Tue Feb 07, 2006 11:03 am
30,000km is not unusual for a bike that old, remember that lots of people only ride on weekends. And given that it's a grey import, it may have sat idle for a long time around the time that it moved to Australia.
I'd be interested to know when it got its Australian compliance plate (eg 1 year ago, 5 years ago), and does it have a service history from that date onwards.
30,000km is probably getting towards middle age for a bike that AFAIK sits at over 9,000rpm at 100km/h. The real issue is whether it was properly looked after - if the oil was always changed regularly and the bike hasn't been thrashed, I'm sure it'll be fine. But with grey imports, you often know nothing of the bike's early life.
You'd probably still be a lot safer spending your $5K on a factory delivered (ie non grey import) GPX250 or ZZR250. It would get you a much newer bike, and quite likely one with lower kms. I guess it's just a question of whether you are dead keen on the ZXR/ZX2R (hey, it's a nice looking bike and it's very fast for a 4 stroke 250), or whether you are happy with any 250 so long as it's good and solid and reliable.
When I posted about the ZX2R vs ZZR250, one of the guys who owned the exact same model you're looking at here said that if he had his time over again, he'd have bought a ZZR250 for a first bike.
'01 Kawasaki ZZR250 (my motorbike)
'96 Daihatsu Charade TE (my other motorbike)
'91 Alfa 164 3.0 V6 (a.k.a. the money pit)