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I love motorcycles, especially big cruisers.

I ride a Honda Shadow ACE 1100 that is an absolutely incredible machine. What I really like most about the bike is the sense of a completely balanced ride. She is also incredibly comfortable.  

My previous bike was a Suzuki Intruder 1400. The Shadow has less grunt than the Trudie 1400, but I find her a lot smoother with better handling and brakes. Another thing - she sounds absolutely awesome. 

Since I have had the bike, I have done one or two minor customizations as follows:

	Screen - I have put a mini screen on the bike. It is absolutely amazing at the difference this has made to the comfort of the ride. I don't get any bugs at all in my face, and there is a lot less pull on my arms. The only downside of the screen is that it causes a lot of turbulence between the screen and my head. This does not normally affect me as I wear a pretty skimpy beanie helmet. However if the weather isn't great, and I decide to wear a more substantial helmet, I find that the turbulence really blows my head around. Maybe the answer is to ban helmets......?
	Light bar - I have installed a Highway Hawk lightbar with two spotlights. This has really rounded off the front end of the bike with the added bonus that I am a lot more visible to other motorists on the road
	Saddle Bags - I purchased a set of studded saddlebags from Leather Forever in Bellville, Cape Town.
	To install the saddle bags, I had to remove the rear indicator lights. A friend of mine made me a very neat bracket and the bike now looks nicely rounded off
	Hondaline Carrier - I installed a Hondaline carrier at the rear of the bike, not because I needed the packing space, but rather that it finishes the bike's rear end off nicely
	Highway Hawk Mapam Forward Controls - I recently installed a set of forward controls to the bike, and I must admit that this is probably the best investment that I have made thus far. It has made an incredible difference to the comfort of the ride, as my legs are now nicely stretched out and not at all cramped up.
	Last but not least, I installed a nice set of slash cut pipes made by Jeff Talbot of Pinelands in Cape Town and she now sounds awesome. I had previously installed a set of Taiwanese turn out pipes which were utter junk. Within a couple of months I had blown the insides of the pipes to bits and there were all sorts of nasty rattles and squeaks emitting from the exhaust. I also found that they used to become too high pitched as the revs on the machine increased.

Here are one or two pictures of her:

Well with my Intruder 1400 no longer around, there is no reason not to keep a couple of pics of her. She was a really great bike that gave me a lot of fun and riding pleasure. I had also done a lot of work on her when she finally met her demise.

Here is a list of what I had changed on the bike:

	When I bought the bike, she was an ugly yellow and pink, I stripped her down and resprayed her black.
	Removed the tail light that was originally mounted on top of the rear fender and put one in below the rear fender. It definitely improved the lines of the bike and gave the tail a much smoother finish
	I replaced the standard exhaust pipes with 19" turnout pipes. It looked a lot better and did a lot for the sound. It had a nice deep throated rumble.
	When I bought the bike, it already had slightly extended forks and polished aluminium risers on the handleba2rs.

Here are a couple of pics of my old Intruder.

Click on the thumbnails if you woud like to see a larger image.

 I go out with a really nice bunch of guys on breakfast runs about once a month. We go cruising around the Cape Peninsula and surrounds. We have done quite a couple of runs to pretty interesting places over the years. I took my camera along on a couple of the runs, and here are a couple of pictures of some of the interesting bikes on the runs.

 

Here are a couple of links to sites that I have found on the web with some really interesting cruisers and biking odds and ends: Virtual Intruder Owner's Club  - The Intruderalert virtual intruder owner's club. Go and take a look at what some of these guys' bikes look like Marauder Intruder Group - An online site for Suzuki Marauder & Suzuki Intruder Cruiser owners LMC - Lang Motorcycles  - Take a look to see what this German outfit manage to turn a standard Intruder 1400 into ..... absolutely awesome Jardine Accessories - Jardine make really good forward controls, exhaust pipes and accessories for cruises Cruiser Customizing - A site where all sorts of interesting accessories for most Japanese Metric Cruisers can be found Honda Shadow Net - An online Honda Shadow Owners site and forum. Some extremely interesting Shadows to be found on this site.