Yeah, it will perform, even stock. Playing with kids on sport bikes is great not because you can win (with any turns or a lot of very low speed accelerations you cannot) but because they cannot win.... by nearly as much as they should be able to!
This one day, my wife and I were on the way to the local dealer when I pulled up behind a pack of four kids on sport bikes at a red light. We were all waiting to take a left, and I eased up to the two front gentleman and said hello. My wife is saying 'Don't..... don't..... DON'T!! in the headset when the light turned green, and the three of us (front line) took off. I was outside the curve and so the two kids were in front of me but both hit it, and so did I. The road was a small, two- lane road through the woods with a speed limit of 25 MPH and a death rate of 35 MPH (two 90+ degree turns that are quite sharp, neither one blind though). When those kids got to the stop sign at the end of the road, I was with them and we all crossed to the dealer together. All four of them were crowded around my C-14 because they could not believe an old man and woman, on a bike with saddlebags could not be shaken and left behind. I told them I might have done a bit better but had baggage with me.... and saddlebags too. :-) One kid too a C-14 for a test- ride that day 'cause he complained that now that he was 26 and no longer a kid (I have warts older than that), he could not take the sport bike position for a long ride and all of them had just returned from NC (about 1,000 miles).
It is not a sport bike and will not run with a sport bike, at least not the fast ones. But again, it is close enough to be utterly amazing, especially considering how much the old cow weighs.
And then it will carry you for an hour or a day in relative comfort too boot. Yep, nice bike!
Brian
Okay so fng here, I've only had my space shuttle for a month or so. I've been busy disregarding and unraveling khi's exhaustive engineering (other thread - Muzzys system, PCV, ZX throttle bodies, nitrous) and commuting to work on the bike, but other than a couple of highway pulls I'd not ridden the bike in anger before this weekend.
Short version... I'm an ex-roadracer and maybe hang it out there a little farther than most when it comes to wheeled things. I decided to join the boys on their sportbike ride up to mountains this weekend and was curious to see how big piggy did in the right stuff. I'm very impressed. It took a little while, a tire pressure adjustment and an increase in rebound damping to learn to trust it, but god o'mighty this big bastard hauls all kinds of ass when you ask it to. And I do mean ask... on rock hard sport touring tires it takes deliberate, appropriately forceful but sometimes very light inputs to get 'er to dance. Won't be setting any cornerspeed records on this thing and it'll wear your legs out thru the transitions, but it's surprisingly good under braking (track-out sbk-style slides in no problem), takes a set well and is hilarious on exit. That motor. That pull. I'm not quite comfy rolling big powerslide corner exits on it yet but I think it's achievable.
At any rate, I left those sportbike guys for dead.. WITH the bags on. And then adjusted my windshield up, stuck it in 6th and digested the hour of boring straight roads home like a dude sitting in a lounger. I love this bike.