Yamaha v-Star 650 Silverado edition

[burkbuilds]

I stopped by the local Suzuki/Yamaha dealer Friday and walked around the show room a bit, a particular V-Star really caught my eye. It was a V-star 650 cruiser, I think the Silverado edition but not certain. Anyway, this bike was really tricked out with chrome, floorboards, a nice windshield and custom Mustang Seats with an adjustable drivers backrest! The seat height was about 28" and I thought I'd be disappointed in that for my 6'1" frame but I sat down on it anyway and wow, what a surprise, this bike fit me really well. I was more comfortable than I am on my modified Vulcan 500 with a seat height of about 30"! This bike has chrome all over the engine, it looks great and the Mustang seat was amazingly comfortable, you could even adjust the drivers seat backrest with a thumbscrew that moved it up or back to fit your needs. The bike had some nice saddle bags already on it and all of this for less than $6500 brand new, I was impressed. By the time I added all the extras to my Vulcan, floorboards, windshield, custom seat, saddle bags and supports I was up to that price easily and no where near the chrome or the stretched out frame of this bike! I don't really like the "big" bikes (read 900 cc's and up to me) but this was comfortable for my frame without weighing and feeling bulky. If my wife wouldn't kill me I'd probably think about trading in my Vulcan on this baby. The one drawback I found was when I read some reviews, they were great reviews, shaft drive easy maintenance comfortable, all that stuff but I did notice that the bike topped out at 90 mph, now I don't really plan to ride 90 mph, but my Vulcan 500 will do 104 mph and I guess I was surprised to find that the slightly larger displacement bike wouldn't even come close to matching that. I also noticed that this bike isn't water cooled, which a lot of bikes aren't but when I've been stuck in traffic a few times, I was really glad my Vulcan was water cooled. The only other downside was that the V-Star was rated at 49 mpg, I loved the GZ's 70 mpg, and I'm okay with getting high 50's to about 60 on the Vulcan, but dropping another 9-10 mpgs just doesn't thrill me with as many miles as I put on my bike.

I guess, bottom line, I'll stick with the Vulcan until I graduate from Engineering school, but maybe my next bike might just be this 650 or whatever they've got available like it in a couple of years! :2tup: