The 1988 XJ900 is a 4 cylinder, 2-valve per cylinder, air cooled, shaft driven semi-sports/touring machine (actually only 853cc). With electric start, about 95hp, new rear shocks and long wear tires this bike was the perfect touring machine. The shaft drive was maintenance free. By the time the trip had started, it had already done 47,508km in it's life.

She weighed in at 250kg (wet) - it was a heavy, very well constructed strong motorcycle. I changed oil when and where I could and fed it gas - anything from 98 octane all the way down to 84 in Egypt and it didn't care less. We ran it below freezing in the Swiss Alps all the way up 120F in the deserts of Egypt. The Economy was great, averaging around 20km/liter - roughly 300km+ from a tank. A small fairing provide perfect protection without being cumbersome or weighty.

What went wrong?

In Italy, the front wheel bearings were so worn out (approximately 2500km into the trip) that we had to lay over in Lucca for 2 days waiting on new bearings to be fitted. I figured they had dried out during the 5 week shipping process.

In Rome the over-weighted and incorrectly mounted pannier set fractured the rear sub frame. The hours of bouncing around the cobbled streets of Rome finally broke the frame forcing us to use a Taxi to ferry our gear and Karen to the camp site. A local in a small Italian village outside of Rome welded it all back together.

In Egypt the bike was transported by train from Cairo to Luxor since riding through Asyut was highly discouraged by the authorities. This was due to the fact that Asyut was the center for fundamentalist activities and dangerous for tourists. So it was better we just avoided this. Somewhere along the line, the locals had attempted to lift the bike using the front mudguard which snapped off the leading 4 inches  - I was pretty angry when I saw it to say the least.

The small sub frame supporting the front fairing also broke under constant hammering from the roads - this happened in Hungary and once again, a local garage welded it back together for us.

The battery was getting a little tied in Holland and we needed a jump start one cold morning.

Finally, through normal wear, I replaced the front tire and had to put a new set of rear brakes on while in Bulgaria.

Luggage

A triple height tank bag gave me something to rest my chin on and allowed us to distribute the weight more evenly - prior to this being obtained in Rome, the bike was very light in the front and in fact this is the main reason the rear sub frame fractured from the weight and the bouncing around the cobbled streets of Rome. It turned out the pannier frame had not been mounted correctly placing all the weight on the rear grab bar and hence the rear sub frame. It was after the frame was repaired that I bought the huge tank bag.