[chicken]

Well, it's taken me a week, but I've finally got me a bike!

I gave up on monsters after the second day. Although they are plentiful, the well looked after ones were too expensive and the cheap ones were too iffy - I guess the problem lies in the monster being a reasonably credible commuter.

On the other hand, any 600SS still in one piece is likely to have been fairly well looked after and kept as a weekend toy. This was certainly true of the first one that I saw - less than 5,000 miles and exceptionally tidy. 20 minutes of cleaning and it would have looked brand new. It came with a spare carbon can and the right fork leg even had the bracket for an extra caliper. Unfortunately, the guy would not move on his asking price of £2,250. As impulsive as I usually am, I couldn't force myself to pay this much over the market price - there is an army of 900SS out there for 2.5k, and even phil_h's 98FE is only up for £2,750.

Two days later and I was looking at another 600SS. It is the same one that Iconic944ss spotted on Gumtree.com (cheers Frank - please come to London and claim your free beer!). The seller said that a car had knocked over the bike and cracked the right pairing panel. Since my plan is to ride the bike nekkid (all teed up for you Flanker!), this meant £200 off the asking price without even trying - hooray for me!

Thoughts now move to what reasonably priced mods to do. I want to do this on a shoe-string budget for 2 reasons; I can blame the bike if I come last, and (more importantly) I'm tight. So this means no big-bore kits, no dual front brake, and no ohlins suspension (although I will do something here - I'm not totally stupid!). Most everything I do will be to get the bike as close to the minimum weight limit as possible - 150kg doesn't sound like there's much scope to do anything. I'll have to check the Haynes manual tonight to see how much I can get rid of.

I should also add that with the addition of this and Madmav's Yamaha, I'll probably be getting rid of the bandit soon. So if anyone's in the market for an ultra-reliable commuter with low mileage....