mr hamburger & his '83 maxim

[hamburger]

Hello everyone,

I'm from Toronto and I'm a professional paramedic. My other interests include beer, whiskey, tattoos, fish/aquariums, travel, food, comics, hockey & fitness/athletics.

I've just entered the world of motorcycles and this is my first bike. It may have been on here before me, I'm not sure. I picked it up a couple weeks ago and it seems to run well. starts easily, shifts easily, lights all work. I'm gonna wait another month or so to plate and insure it so I can get to the next step in my license and get a significant drop in my insurance rate.

I have an interest in modifying this bike but as I mentioned this is my entry point to motorcycles and my knowledge base on the subject is minimal. Also, I live in an apartment building and park in an underground garage. I certainly don't mind taking things apart or working down there but I'm not going to be welding or fabricating anything down there (not that I have any experience with that anyways (but I'd like to learn )). I plan on making that jump when I have a garage of my own.

I think I would like to get a cafe look and feel out of this bike but i'm not entirely sure where to start. I plan on doing plenty more reading and researching but I would certainly welcome any input and suggestions.

see you around

 

[bcware]

That is a nice, clean ride. I honestly think it looks great as is. I'd ride it for a while and feel it out before making any modifications. Start with the basic maintenance and checks. Download a service manual from the sticky.

Working on these bikes does not require a lot of tools. A metric socket set, torque wrench (I use a cheap beam type), some allen wrenches, and some box wrenches will get most jobs done.

There are no bolt-on cafe seats; keep that in mind. Any aftermarket/custom seat will likely be a lot less comfortable than the stock one.

Intake/exhaust mods tend to produce a lot more noise, but marginal performance increases and probably only at high rpms because the engine is fairly small. You'll also have to deal with tuning/jetting the bike should it come to this.

I customized mine a lot because it was in rough shape when I got it and the aftermarket stuff is much cheaper than oem.

Whatever you decide to do good luck and welcome aboard!

 

[drewpy]

welcome to the forum.

ride it first like Bc says and get a feel for it what you want to do and be realistic in time and money.

 

[hamburger]

Sounds like reasonable advice. I do appreciate it. Thank you

 

[Lou Ranger]

Hi Mr. H., and welcome to the Forum.
That sure is a nice looking bike - hard to imagine what could make it look better. Maybe a red tank and fenders .....
You will certainly enjoy yourself if you take the advice above and ride it for a while to get a feel for it. You may really like it and decide that it is more fun to have a perfect stock bike which you can ride every day. If we have a repeat of last year, the bike will only be in "winter" storage for 3 months.
Crunch the numbers first to see if the cost of modifying it couldn't buy you a bike that needs a total re-hab. Then you'd have 2 bikes and one would always be running.