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I have come to the conclusion that being a mid-grade club racer, that building your own bike is not the way to go. There are people who every year need to have the latest equipment and after the season is over, those bikes need to go.

Going back two months ago, decided that I wanted a ‘07 or ‘08 GSXR1000. The ‘08 GSXR1000 is the better choice as I will be able to win some Suzuki money. But the reality is, that is a far stretch, so I did not make that a top priority with me. I just wanted the current generation hardware, knowing full well that Suzuki will be brining out a new GSXR1000 for 2009.

So I started calling and talking to several of the top AMA race teams who campaign the AMA SuperStock class. I talked to Jordan Suzuki, KWS Motorsports and EMGO M4 and a few others about their bikes. Each team had some good points and bad points, mostly about the cost or availability

Chip over at KWS Motorsports talked to me on the phone once and answered my questions via e-mail several times. I appreciated that he was not ticked off answering my questions and being a general nervous buyer. KWS bike had a lot to offer to me. The good points was the bike had a complete engine refresh before putting it up for sale. The bike was a backup bike for this years AMA Daytona races. It did a few laps at Daytona and then spent the rest of the year being a trailer queen. The big downside was, it was an ‘07 and I did want an ‘08.

The scary up side is, the bike is only $12,500.  Did I realy just use “only” as if dropping $12,500 into something that I can turn into a yard sale with a single split second mistake???  Come on now, am I completely nuts about racing and think I need this much bike?

Yes, I need this bike, because I want to ride something different.  Plus I don’t have the time to build a new to me race bike.  My 8~5 job and side business that my wife runs (Kurveygirl.com… Motorcycle Stuff, NOT PORN!!!!) takes all my free time.   I can use thoese 4 weekends for something else, plus the 8 week nights working on the bike can be put to better use.  So to me, Yes I NEED THIS BIKE.

So in the end I went with the KWS Motorsports bike. I felt that KWS has a good reputation on building bikes and the parts on the bike are first rate. KWS will re-spring the bike to hold me off the ground, which saves me about $500 right from the get go. The motor has been re-freshed and all the bike needs is gas and new tires. And that is what I am going to do, just ride what comes with it, and resist putting all the stuff on the bike.

I know the AMA Superbikes are more sexy, but in reality getting one of those bikes is not that easy. A top flight AMA superbike has parts that are on “Loan” from different companies, so it makes it hard to get one of those bikes. Couple that with the fact that most of the important parts are one off masterpieces, and it just does not make scene Plus I and 95% of the local club racing crowd can’t exploit an AMA superbike anyway, so it’s a waist of money.

So that is it, I bought a used AMA race bike…. Now to sell my old GSXR750