Rant over; let’s get back to the main attraction.<\/p>\n
As was the case in the blog on singles, I am again discovering this:\u00a0 Just when I think I’ve listed all of the twins I’ve owned, I remember another one.\u00a0 That sure has been the case here.\u00a0 I suppose I had better hit the Publish button before I remember another one.<\/p>\n
Alrighty then:\u00a0 With the above as a backdrop, here we go.<\/p>\n
1965 Honda CB 160<\/strong><\/p>\n Okay, I’m cheating a little.\u00a0 This wasn’t my bike at all.\u00a0 It was my Dad’s.\u00a0 But I rode it in the fields behind our house quite a bit and I sort of considered it to be mine, and that’s why it’s on this list.<\/p>\n The little 160 was nice.\u00a0 It was the first motorcycle I ever rode and I had a lot of fun on it.\u00a0 Honda was making big inroads in the United States in the mid-1960s and they changed nearly everything in the motorcycle world.\u00a0 It was a fun time for a 14-year-old kid.<\/p>\n The CB 160 only stayed with us for a couple of months.\u00a0 Dad had been bitten by the bug.\u00a0 He wanted something bigger.<\/p>\n 1965 Honda Super Hawk<\/strong><\/p>\n As was the case with the CB 160, the Super Hawk was Dad’s motorcycle.\u00a0 But the same modifier applied:\u00a0 I used to ride it in the fields behind our house in New Jersey, so I’m including it here.<\/p>\n The Super Hawk, with its 305 cubic centimeters, seemed infinitely more powerful than the CB 160 (especially riding it in the fields behind our house).\u00a0 Dad had the bug, though.\u00a0 The Super Hawk would only last for a couple of months, too.<\/p>\n 1966 Triumph Bonneville<\/strong><\/p>\n Ah, this was a motorcycle.\u00a0 A Triumph Bonneville.\u00a0 I couldn’t believe it.\u00a0 It had been my dream machine for at least a couple of years, and now there was one in the garage.\u00a0 And you know what?\u00a0 Dad let me ride it in those same fields behind our house.\u00a0 I can’t imagine what he was thinking or why he let me do that.\u00a0 I never dropped it, though.\u00a0 God Almighty, it was powerful.\u00a0 And the sound….it was awesome.<\/p>\n The Bonneville was an amazing motorcycle.\u00a0 Dad and I had a lot of good rides on it.\u00a0 I wish we had kept it.\u00a0 On that sound comment above:\u00a0 Nothing, and I mean nothing, has a a more soul-satisfying exhaust note than a Triumph.<\/p>\n 1978 Triumph Bonneville<\/strong><\/p>\n I was living in Fort Worth, Texas, I was single, and I was an engineer at General Dynamics on the F-16 program.\u00a0 When I passed by the Triumph dealer I realized I hadn’t ridden a Triumph Bonneville since I was 16 years old, so I thought I’d stop by.\u00a0 An hour later I signed on the dotted line, and I owned a Bonneville again.<\/p>\n It was a great motorcycle.\u00a0 There was an older guy who owned a Yamaha TT 500 at General Dynamics (his name was Sam), and we road all the farm roads in the areas around Fort Worth.\u00a0 We both had hay fever and Texas had terrible pollen, but the riding was great.\u00a0 My Bonneville would top out at exactly 109mph (the earlier T120 and then T140 designations notwithstanding), and that was enough.\u00a0 The bike was kick start only (which made it an anachronism in 1978), but I was okay with that, too.\u00a0 For awhile, anyway.<\/p>\n I sold the Bonneville.\u00a0 I’m can’t remember why; I did a lot of dumb things when I was young.\u00a0 Shortly after I sold the Bonneville, I realized I needed a motorcycle again.\u00a0 You know, to be a complete person.\u00a0 That led to my next acquisition.\u00a0 But to this day, I wish I had kept the Bonneville.<\/p>\n 1979 Harley Electra-Glide Classic<\/strong><\/p>\n I used to spend a lot of time at the Fort Worth Harley dealer drooling over their new bikes.\u00a0 The late ’70s were, in my opinion, the height of the Willie G styling years at Harley.\u00a0 It was also the absolute bottom for them from a quality perspectives, as I would soon find out when I finally bit the bullet and bought the bike I thought was the most beautiful motorcycle I’d ever seen:\u00a0 The 1979 Electra-Glide Classic.<\/p>\n The Electra-Glide was beautiful, but to call it a piece of crap would be insult to turds the world over.\u00a0 The bike couldn’t go a hundred miles without something breaking on it.\u00a0 It needed three top end jobs in the 12,000 miles I owned it (the first two were on the warranty, the last one was on me).\u00a0 I’d finally had it with that bike and what some folks like to call “The Motor Company.”\u00a0 Hell, the motor was the worst thing on that bike.\u00a0 And the brakes.\u00a0 And the clutch.\u00a0 And the starter.\u00a0 And the handling.\u00a0 And the….well, you get the idea.\u00a0 It was one of the last years Harley was owned by AMF, and when a Harley mechanic told me what that stood for, I finally got it.\u00a0 I smiled inwardly when I sold the bike, thinking to myself, “Adios, MF.”<\/p>\n After that awkward ownership experience, I swore I’d never buy another Harley.\u00a0 I didn’t keep that promise, though.<\/p>\n Even considering all the above, I wish I still had that ’79 Electra-Glide.\u00a0 It would be worth a small fortune today.\u00a0 \u00a0It sure was a pretty motorcycle.<\/p>\n 1976 Triumph TR6<\/strong><\/p>\n Somewhere in the succession of events described above, I moved from Fort Worth to southern California.\u00a0 General Dynamics transferred me to the Pomona facility.\u00a0 I loved southern California and I hated GD\/Pomona.\u00a0 Actually, that’s not entirely accurate.\u00a0 The company was okay, but my boss was a dickhead.\u00a0 So I did what I normally do in that situation:\u00a0 I quit and went to work for another defense contractor.\u00a0 While there, I worked with yet another defense company, and one of the guys there had a 1976 Triumph TR6 he offered to sell to me for $500.\u00a0 It was running, it was registered, and minutes later it was mine.<\/p>\n The TR6 was a wonderful motorcycle. If there was a performance difference between it and a Bonneville, I didn’t have the asspitude to feel it.\u00a0 The single-carb TR6 actually felt stronger at low rpm than the Bonneville did.\u00a0 I loved that bike, too.<\/p>\n The paint on the TR6 had oxidized pretty badly (the former owner kept it outside).\u00a0 I had this idea I would restore it (see above regarding my propensity to do dumb things when I was younger).\u00a0 I did a pretty good job turning the great-running TR6 into a basket case (again, see the preceding comments regarding my youthful decisions).\u00a0 The paint job I paid for on the fuel tank was a disaster, and then I lost interest in resurrecting the bike.\u00a0 I sold the basket of bits and pieces for what I had paid for the bike.\u00a0 I wish I still had that one.<\/p>\n 1972 Triumph Daytona<\/strong><\/p>\n The first motorcycle I ever went gaga over was a 1964 Triumph Tiger that a kid named Walt Skok rode to high school.\u00a0 In those days, the Tiger was a 500cc twin that looked a lot like a Bonneville.\u00a0 God, that thing was beautiful.<\/p>\n Triumph kept that 500cc twin in their line for years, ultimately adding a second carb and rechristening the bike as the Daytona.\u00a0 When the 650 line went to the oil-frame-configuration in the early 1970s, the Daytona (also known as the Baby Bonneville) did not; it kept the classic Triumph separate oil tank and peashooter mufflers.<\/p>\n I can’t remember who I bought the Daytona from (I bought it used), but I sure remember its looks.\u00a0 It was a deep candy metallic green with silver accents.\u00a0 It was bone stock and it was a wonderful ride.\u00a0 The handing was almost thought-directed…I could just think what I wanted the motorcycle to do and it would do it.\u00a0 One day, for no particular reason, I took it to the top of one of our streets that ran up into the mountains, turned it around, turned off the ignition, and started coasting downhill.\u00a0 I wanted to see how fast it would go with zero power (see my previous decision-making comments); the answer was exactly 70mph.<\/p>\n I never registered the Daytona over the three years I owned it; I just rode the snot out of it.\u00a0 \u00a0I never got stopped or and I never had a citation for the expired plates.\u00a0 I can’t remember why I sold it, or who I sold it to.\u00a0 The Daytona was a wonderful motorcycle.\u00a0 I wish I still had it.<\/p>\n 1992 Harley Heritage Softail<\/strong><\/p>\n I didn’t keep my promise to never buy another Harley.\u00a0 A fried let me ride his ’89 Electra-Glide.\u00a0 It was a big, fat porker (the bike, not my friend), but Harley was getting a lot of press about their improved quality.\u00a0 I saw a blue Heritage Softail on the road one day, and I decided I need one.\u00a0 It was that simple.<\/p>\n I put a lot of miles on my ’92 Softail, and while it lasted, it was a great motorcycle.\u00a0 Good buddy Baja John and I rode our bikes to Cabo, we took the ferry across the Sea of Cortez, and we rode down to Guadalajara and then back up through mainland Mexico to Nogales (you can read about that adventure here).<\/p>\n The Harley died on me down in Mexico on another trip, and although I had regained a tiny bit of trust in Milwaukee, the dealers were still (in my opinion) basically incompetent.\u00a0 When my ’92 went belly up, the dealer wouldn’t touch it because it was more than 10 years old (I can’t make this stuff up, folks), so I took it to an unencumbered independent repair shop and had it rebuilt as a real motorcycle (you can read that story here<\/a>).<\/p>\n What kind of killed the Harley dream was me forgetting to pick up milk one day when coming home from a ride on the Harley.\u00a0 My wife asked about the milk.\u00a0 I realized I had forgot it, so I went back out to run to the store.\u00a0 For whatever reason, I took my KLR, and it was as if I had been set free.\u00a0 The KLR was just so much better, I put an ad in the local Cycle Trader the next day and sold the Harley the day after that.<\/p>\n While I am on this subject of Harley twins, I will tell you that I always wanted a Sportster.\u00a0 One day the Harley dealer had to keep my bike overnight and he lent a Sportster to me.\u00a0 \u00a0That changed my mind in a hurry.\u00a0 It was gutless.\u00a0 I know some of my readers ride Sportsters and others ride Big Twins.\u00a0 Mea culpa in advance.\u00a0 If you’d like to tell me how great your bikes are and how I have my head up my fourth point of contact, please leave a comment, or send in a draft blog (info@exhaustnotes.us) with pics and I’ll publish your rebuttal.<\/p>\n 1982 Yamaha XS 650<\/strong><\/p>\n This was a lucky find, or rather, it sort of found me.\u00a0 I was teaching a failure analysis class at McDonnell Douglas about thirty years ago, and the first evening when I connected my laptop to the projector, a photo of the Triumph Daytona (the one described above) briefly appeared in front of the class.<\/p>\n “Hey, I have one of those,” one of the older engineers in the class said.\u00a0 I asked if he was a Triumph fanboy (as I was).\u00a0 He told me that he didn’t have a Triumph; he had the Yamaha that was based on it.\u00a0 \u00a0He offered to sell it to me in front of the entire class.\u00a0 I hadn’t even introduced myself yet.<\/p>\n “Let’s talk after class,” I said.<\/p>\n I turns out this guy had purchased the XS 650 new, rode it very little, and it had sat in his garage for several years. I bought it for $900.\u00a0 I think it was a 1982 model, but I can’t say that for sure.\u00a0 Being a Triumph rider, I always thought it would be cool to own one of the Japanese 650 twins.\u00a0 You know…better reliability, no oil leaks, smoother running engines, better fit and finish, and all that.<\/p>\n I didn’t keep the XS 650 long enough to assess its reliability.\u00a0 I did keep it and ride it long enough to find out that it had absolutely no personality, it didn’t have the bottom end torque that a Triumph did, it sounded more like George Jetson’s car than a real motorcycle (let’s see how many of you know who he was), its Phillips head screws reacted to a screw driver the same way butter reacted to a hot butterknife, and the “cruiser style” handlebars were the most uncomfortable I’d ever experienced.\u00a0 \u00a0As you can guess, the XS 650 didn’t hang around long.\u00a0 I traded it in to lower the cash outlay on my TL1000S Suzuki.<\/p>\n 1997 Suzuki TL1000S<\/strong><\/p>\n Ducati was setting the world on fire with its L-twin performance bikes, and predictably, it was only a matter of time before the Japanese attempted to do the same.\u00a0 Two L-Twin Japanese motorcycles emerged in 1997:\u00a0 Suzuki’s TL1000S and Honda’s Super Hawk (not to be confused with their Super Hawk of the mid-1960s, as shown above in this Twins story).\u00a0 \u00a0I opted for the Suzuki variant in red.\u00a0 I just liked the looks of it; I felt it was a prettier motorcycle than the Honda.<\/p>\n The Suzuki was the fastest and hardest accelerating motorcycle I ever owned.\u00a0 It would lift the front wheel when shifting from second to third at over 100 mph.\u00a0 I dropped it twice getting in over my head, but I never really damaged the bike or myself.\u00a0 I used the TL as a touring bike, and I covered large parts of Baja with it. It was a fabulous machine and I wish I still had it.<\/p>\n 2020 Royal Enfield INT<\/strong><\/p>\n My most recent twin is the Royal Enfield 650 INT.\u00a0 Enfield called it the Interceptor initially (which is a much better name), but they quickly changed it to the INT (my guess is because Honda threatened to sue them, as they already had a model called the Interceptor).<\/p>\n Gresh and I conned Enfield North America into loaning us two bikes (a 500cc Bullet and the new twin INT) for a comparo ride in Baja.\u00a0 We had a great trip, trading bikes off each day and blogging extensively about our impressions<\/a>.\u00a0 I liked the INT so much I bought one shortly after we returned.\u00a0 It’s a great bike at a great price and it has all the performance I’ll ever need, both as a street bike and as a touring bike.<\/p>\n So there you go.\u00a0 I’ve owned a lot of twins.\u00a0 To me, a well-engineered twin makes a great street bike.<\/p>\n You know what?\u00a0 In searching for photos of my old twins, I found another single I’d forgotten all about.\u00a0 It was my Triumph Cub.<\/p>\n I never put the Cub on the street.\u00a0 I just rode it a bit in the fields behind my apartment building and then sold it.\u00a0 It was crude compared to other bikes of the era, but it was nice.\u00a0 It would be worth way more today than what I paid for it or what I got when I sold it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/CB160002-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/CB160003-900.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Dad-66-Bonnie-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/78-Triumph-Bonneville-2-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/78-Triumph-Bonneville.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/HarleyElectraGlide-650BW-1.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/79-EG-Classic-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/72-Triumph-Tiger-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/650-Tiger-1972-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/500Daytona-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/01120042-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/XS650002-3x2-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/74890006-600.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/600-Enfield-2-Page.jpg\")
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Tiger-Cub-600.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n