Kawasaki Sportsbike Riders Club - Australia - Online Forum

Not happy, Jan! Not happy at all. I've just been told that I won't get an exemption from my 250 limit for the zzr 600 - because it's not on the lams list. We don't even have lams here until later this year, but all exemptions issued since January last year were for bikes on the lams. Did I mention that I'm not happy? "Not under any circumstances..." I was told. So now my choices are;

Drive the car for 12 months ... yeah right. 6 maybe.
Keep the GPX ... Not an option. Too small and I'm so over it.
Buy one on the list ... Not pretty. I like fully faired sportbikes.
Ride the 600 anyway ... There isn't even a set penalty for it. One would be summonsed and a magistrate would decide.

Did I mention that I'm not happy?




In a couple of days I might HTFU, but right now I am so not happy.

hold onto the GPX. You might be over it but at least its a bike full stop.

If you did get done on the zzr you would probably end up having to wait a few months anyway.

That is of course unless you can get a bargain on a lams 600 and sell it in a years time for what you bought it for.

I was hoping to buy another ZZR, or get this one if the head mechanic gets another one. I really don't want to have to buy some shitter from the list, knowing that I'm not keeping it. I had a look through it and there's nothing there that excites me at all. It certainly wouldn't be looked after like the GPX - but I was planning on keeping that for a while. The bit that pisses me is that I could just drive the car and come next March hop on the ZZR all legal - but waaay out of practice. To me that defeats the purpose of a provisional period.

I know of at least one Vic member that rode a 600 when he wasn't suposed to, from what I understand here at least is that you get a fine but don't even lose any points!

Almost makes it worthwhile.

That's a rather attractive option. Trouble as I see it is the more you try to do the right thing, the more you find out you're not allowed. I could have just stayed unlicenced and saved myself $450

Supermotard time,trust me.

hmmm yes...a kx450f road version with motard wheels etc...lol

thats crap, but i can kinda see there point... they dont kno how much exp u have, and if u get away with it, everyone else will want to also...

bummer...

Everyone should have a motard or at least a ride on one,they're the essence of motorcycling being light and powerful singles albeit it with sticky 17 inch tyres and a huge front brake for such a light bike.

You cannot go wrong on a motard,you have 17 lines for any corner,you can brake so hard you can rewind "The Bold and the Beautiful" and watch it later.

With dual purpose tyres you can ride trails as well.

You can roll wheelies on and ride up footpaths,you must have one.

I forgot to mention that a 600+ single will do 0-100 in 4 secs or less.

just ride the 250
we all have to do it.

so u ride unlicenced, never ride near me, or crash into me or have an accident unless you plan on paying for the rest of your working life.

suck it up and just ride the 250 out,
i know all to well what its like to be stuck on a 250 and feel your outriding the bike and its just way to small. i went from 250 to 600 in perth back to 250 now in nsw. it sucked, but id rather know im covered by insurance incase something does go wrong than ride and put everyone on the roads around me at risk aswell.

sorry if it seems harsh. but im sick of reading about people saying im sick of my 250 i wanna bigger bike

Daisy wrote: Keep the GPX ... Not an option. Too small and I'm so over it.

Geez, considering that you're only 1" taller than me, you sure do complain a lot.
I suppose it's an issue if you ride to look good, but getting a big bike and being beaten by a little one can't feel good either The little GPX overtook a lot of bikes at Broadford. I suspect you haven't discovered it's potential yet. Not very fair to the poor little thing.
BTW, I call it little because of the engine, not the frame.

The 250 will be sold regardless. I really am so over it.

zzzak wrote:Everyone should have a motard or at least a ride on one,they're the essence of motorcycling being light and powerful singles albeit it with sticky 17 inch tyres and a huge front brake for such a light bike.

I don't think so. I had one of these when it was nearly new.

kellz wrote:sorry if it seems harsh. but im sick of reading about people saying im sick of my 250 i wanna bigger bike

As I said before, I had bikes years ago - like the one above. How old are you again?

MiG wrote:I suppose it's an issue if you ride to look good, but getting a big bike and being beaten by a little one can't feel good either

So what are you getting at? No, I don't want to look like the postie or a vespa rider. Beaten? At what? I want to ride on the road. It isn't a race. I want to ride the bigger bike for its physical size and weight, not for the power.

neka wrote: i can kinda see there point... they dont kno how much exp u have, and if u get away with it, everyone else will want to also...

I can see their point too, but I'm a bloody long way the uphill side of 17 and even further from my first bike. They already know I can ride and have more than 12 months experience. My record says I got done for drive while disqualified on a bike - more than twenty years ago. I'm still shitty about it too, I wasn't even on a road.
I'm not trying to 'get away with' anything. They had a system where you apply for an exemption and they assess it on a case by case basis. Now we have a defacto lams and the so called exemption is the same thing everyone, including learners, is about to get.

well..i guess ur shit outta luck??

if they wont exempt u based on individual case.... u have few options i guess ..i cant think of ne new ones...

i didnt realise they had done an assesment on u (i thought it was a blanket assesment-..ie. "nope u cant do that" )

only u can make the choice...

im 22.

and sorry but the law is the law.

dont like it move to perth and get your R-L's then u can ride what ever you want. but u have to be shadowed.

it doesnt matter how much experience you have. i know plenty of guys and girls who grew up on farms riding everyday, they still had to go through 250 for 18months.

the reasoning for LAMs is that its a power to weight ratio. so no the ZZR600 does not meet it as it has to much power.

you want a big nice looking bike, get a hyosung 650rr. they are LAMS and have restrictors which can easily be removed so u technically ride a full 650 but everything says its restricted = minimal issues with cops.

I own bikes ranging from 250cc to 1200cc. Which ones are the most fun? Not the 1200! The two most fun bikes I have are the Spada and CB400. Why? Because they have the best cornering and braking characteristics and being light can do some amazing things. I have had both on the racetrack, and the Spada was only 2 secs a lap slower than the 400. The Spada scraped all around the track and I'm sure if I dialled the suspension in it would have been 1 second between them. The CB has 60Hp, the Spada 32. (Gpx is 37) So horsepower has little to do with how much fun you can have. My ZZR has 140 odd Hp at the back wheel, but doesn't corner very well, isn't very manouevrable and doesn't stop very well either. Not much fun. I've had the ZZR around the same racetrack and it was hard work. Pity it wasn't timed because I think the CB would have been faster around there despite the horsepower disadvantage. Another part of big bike ownership that isn't fun is the paying for the privilege part- big bikes cost a bomb to run. Servicing and tyres. Both of which aren't too bad on 250s.
I used to be under the mis-belief that more cubes meant more fun. I owned a GPZ250R which I wrote off (same engine as GPX) and had a two year lay off from bikes while I saved up for a big bike.
I next bought a GPZ900R which I did 73000km on (pranged it a bit too)
then a ZZR1100 which I did 82000km on.
Circumstances led me to live in England for a few months. As a poor Aussie all I could afford was a RG250 Suzuki, which I ride 5000km on all over the UK. I had an absolute ball on that thing. It was mental in the corners, braked on a 5 cent piece, and was the first bike I ever tried doing stoppies on. Spada and CB are good at them too. I'm crap at it, and couldn't do them on the 1200. I found when I got back to Australia that my riding of the 250 inproved my riding of the 1100 markedly. I think in retrospect I should have spent more time on 250s before buying bigger bikes. I didn't learn my lesson, though because I still bought the ZZR1200 when I was able to. I've never been too fussed on it, though and rarely ride it. Given the opportunity I never knock back a ride on my Spada, which is slower than your GPX. It is so much fun, and demands that you ride it well, or it is as slow as. Ridden well in the twisties it is mental, GPX would be the same. 250s allow you time to develop YOUR riding skills, which are far more important than buying a fast bike. I'm not the best rider in the world, but have cleaned up people on fast bikes with my smaller, sometimes shitbox (GT550) bikes. I can't see the point in having a performance bike, without having the necessary skills to ride it. I'm a good example of that in the past.

Daisy wrote:Not happy, Jan! Not happy at all. I've just been told that I won't get an exemption from my 250 limit for the zzr 600 - because it's not on the lams list. We don't even have lams here until later this year, but all exemptions issued since January last year were for bikes on the lams.

Well, is that how the capacity exemptions work down there? It would make some amount if sense if they did, because that would mean they worked as a try-before-you-buy for the LAMS. Offer n00bs the twin options of going for a 250 hassle-free, or onto a bigger-capacity LAMS bike after jumping through some extra hoops, then stand back and see how those who choose the latter fare, and, based on the results, bring in blanket LAMS.

Trying to get an exemption for an 80rwhp 600cc inline four did have a ring of doomed optimism about it... unless that's how they *did* do it in Tasmania, and now, with the approach of LAMS, it's changed.

Could you elaborate on this? What had you thinking it would be worth going for an exemption? Was it always an option in Tas, or did they announce the exemption options recently and you just caught out not having read the fine print?