I've been interested in this bike since it first came out as a 2018 model. It's a Kawasaki Ninja 400. I've been keeping an eye on Craigslist for at least the past year, looking for a used one, but since it is a new model it took awhile for them to start showing up on the used market. What I find most intriguing about it is its light weight.......ready to ride it is 60 pounds lighter than my Honda, but it has almost the same horsepower. In race track contests the Ninja spanks the Honda by a large margin. I'm not interested in racing, but it means to me that it does not lack power. There is even a bigger difference in weight between this bike and my Honda because I have added a center stand and some other bits, plus probably 10 pounds of tools.
From the beginning I thought this would be the perfect bike for Jenny. She has had some problems with tipovers on her CBR due to the weight of it combined with a seat height that prevents her from flat footing when stopped. The specified seat heights of both bikes are the same at 30.9 inches, but the Kawasaki's seat feels lower to me.......perhaps the seat is narrower. Nevertheless, after looking at how the rear suspension linkage works, I think I can lower the Ninja by an inch by fabricating some new "dog bones" and sliding the forks up in the triple clamps. The bike also has ABS, which was a $400 option when new. I don't consider it essential for a bike of my own, but it will be an extra margin of safety for Jenny.
I've had the bike for a week now and today I rode about 200 miles with my riding buddies, so I have had a chance to adjust the controls to my liking and get used to how the bike handles. The light weight is noticeable somewhat when riding, but most noticeable when pushing the bike around the shop or putting it up on my hoist. The engine characteristics are quite different. The Ninja is a real rever, with a redline almost 12,000 rpm versus 8,500 for the Honda, and the bike seems to accelerate like a demon if you rev it.
Although I think it's the perfect bike for Jenny, for me, the Honda is better because it is more comfortable, and because I have put a center stand on it. It is more comfortable mainly because the foot pegs on the Honda are lower so my old bum knees are not bent so much. I don't think this will bother Jenny since she is young and flexible, and has shorter legs than me. The lack of a center stand means that simple maintenance like lubing the chain requires that you have a way to lift the rear wheel off the ground. All bikes used to come with a center stand, but now only a few do. So one of the first aftermarket purchases I made was some swing arm bobbins and a stand:
So the plan is to get this bike down to Jenny and bring her Honda up here for me to refurbish and sell. We have been through this drill before when I traded her current bike for the proceeds from the sale of her first bike, the Ninja 250. Since emission requirements are different in California than anywhere else in the world, you can not import and register an out of state compliant bike in California unless it has over 7500 miles on it. Since the new bike only had 4,400 miles on it when I bought it, I figured I would be "forced" to ride it during the summer to get the required miles on it. However, when I noticed a sticker that mentioned an evap canister, I started looking more closely and discovered the bike is a California compliant bike. I don't know how it ended up in Portland where I bought it, but it means I could make the swap any time. The problem is that nobody wants to go anywhere right now due to the Corona virus pandemic. We will just have to see how it all plays out.
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