Early 1200 owner from Sydney

G'Day people, nice to find a local forum for the mighty Bandit.
I'm the happy owner of a 1997 1200 which I have owned for about 13 years. It was very clean when I got it but of course when you ride in the rain and use it for courier work in the city, it gets a bit feral. So I am spending the winter cleaning, refurbing and painting the thing.

I love it, the classic simple look of an inline 4 always does it for me. This is the second one I have owned, had to sell the first one to pay some bills which hurt.
A few years later and this lovely ABS specimen came up for sale with about 30000 km on it. It has about 62000 now and of course still feels great.
Needs a a carby balance and its running rich but I'll get that done after I blue slip it and get it regoed again.

First pic is how it looked when I got it.






Yes that is a car muffler on the end of a custom link pipe. Years ago I didn't want to pay 600 for a Yoshi pipe so I looked around. Found a bloke who was in the Katana club and also had a car exhaust place in Padstow. He had done a few of these habib type cans on Bandits and Kats so he did mine for 300.  Sounds amazing and the backfire on starting has scared a few people in the past !

Welcome to the forum TMITS, plenty of good info to be found on here as well as a bit of banter and other fun stuff, enjoy!!

Welcome abroad mate. The 1200s have a dedicated following, it's almost a cult classic. Keep the shiny side up. 

Welcome! That's a nice Mark1, TmITS.

Welcome to the forum ............pretty unusual to find ABS on a MK1.

Welcome to a newbie from a newbie, that's a nice looking scooter 

Thanks for the welcome guys, looks like a great little forum.
This is the only early girl I have seen with the ABS . The cop who sold me the thing said he bought it new like that. Apparently it was a $2500 option so obviously nobody ordered the ABS model and this one sat in showrooms for a couple of years until the dealer discounted it enough to get it sold. I am the second owner of it.

The Man in The Street wrote:Thanks for the welcome guys, looks like a great little forum.
This is the only early girl I have seen with the ABS . The cop who sold me the thing said he bought it new like that. Apparently it was a $2500 option so obviously nobody ordered the ABS model and this one sat in showrooms for a couple of years until the dealer discounted it enough to get it sold. I am the second owner of it.

I wondered about the ABS on the 1200, I'd never heard of it. $2500, wow, not too many years later it was a $500 option and when I was haggling with Peter Stevens they dropped the ABS on the quote to $300