Low fuel

The little Honda has been running smoothly for a while now. We've had quite a bit of rain so I've been way more cautious lately. The other day my fuel gauge starting flashing on the way home. I can usually do a trip to work and back quite easily when it starts flashing so I continued on home. The next day I didn't fill up on the way to work and on the way home during a right hand turn the low fuel meant the bike started to lose power and splutter, it carried on just fine after I was more upright. I did go to the next fuel station and all has been well since then but I'll definitely try to get fuel as soon as possible now. The loss of power on low fuel can be quite dangerous.

The rainy weather, and subsequent light throttle inputs, has meant great fuel consumption - my last fill-up was 3.423l/100km. Sadly the little Honda has been getting quite dirty so I'll need to give it a good wash again soon.

A quick look at the digital speedo in sunlight

Here I show you the digital speedo in sunlight. It always remains readable, the turn signals are more difficult to notice as I'm sure you'll agree but the speed and fuel gauge are always easy to read. Along with the time which is actually quite a useful feature.

Long overdue wash

Some pictures from after a wash. It was quite a mission to clean the plastics as usual, they actually still look dirty in some of the pics! Last fuel consumption was 3.425l/100km and everything has been running smoothly.

3 weeks without a ride

I recently went on holiday for 3 weeks so the little honda was garaged and not in use during that time. It started up first time when I got back. That first ride after a long time off is always great, so I'm loving the few rides I've had so far. One was in the rain so gentle inputs but she worked fine just needs a good wash again. Hopefully I'll get some pics up when that wash happens.

Top speed

I recently took the little Honda CRF250L for an more open road ride. I opened it up wide for a while and got to a top speed of 134km/h. I was on a slight decline and I do live roughly 1500m above sea level, which robs us of power but it did pretty well I thought. That's an indicated speed, I don't know how accurate the speedo is.

That long trip along with some commuting achieved my best ever fuel consumption of 3.275L/100km. That's gone back up to a more steady 3.582L/100km since then but considering the stop start riding and rather heavy hand on the throttle I'm really impressed.

I should point out that whilst it's only been 6 months of ownership and I really do love the bike, if I had to get a bike now I'd probably get the KTM Duke 390. It looks like a reasonably priced hooligan tool and it's only a bit more. I do have a soft spot for KTM though and it's service intervals aren't as long as the Honda's. I'd probably miss the Honda's ability to hit speed bumps at 100km/h but the extra power and I'd hope grip would be great.

On the grip topic I recently went through a bit of water in my road on the way to work and accelerated a little bit to much a little too early whilst turning and the rear end stepped out quite suddenly. I have some small movement from the rear before but it gave away so suddenly this time I got quite a fright. The front end so far has been rock stable. I'm going to have to be really careful when it rains, especially when it rains.

Wash day

It's been two weeks since it's last wash, so today was wash day for the little Honda CRF250L. Some before pics:

And then some after pics:

I polished those grubby marks off the radiator shrouds so it's back to white again. I still can't get this seat clean, I'll try some other cleans sometime and report back.

This is the seat currently (after the wash):

There's also some marks from my boots on the engine covers:

and this:

That's quite disappointing, but this has happened on most of my bikes. I actually used to cover them with duct tape on some of my ktm's to keep them scratch free. I might try that on these sometime.

Fuel consumption went to an all time high of 3.7l/100km with my license test and all the stop/starting that went that, so that should drop slightly over the next tank.

The Test

Today was my chance to finally go for my riders test, in the hopes of not needing to redo my learners every two years. I passed thanks my little red Honda. I had to redo one of the exercises because I was too fast! The little Honda did everything perfectly with ample power to get me through easily. I'm sure fuel consumption will go up a little with all the stop start  shutdown and startup again riding but at least that's behind me now. Also worth noting is the fan didn't even need to come on so it's been another great day with my CRF250L.

The little fan

I recently went for a riding lesson as part of my preparations to take my license test and with all the slow riding with stopping and starting the little Honda's fan came on twice. I haven't actually had a bike with a fan before so it was a little strange for me but she performed perfectly well and continued like she's supposed to. Fuel consumption doesn't seem to have been affected by the slow riding, it was 3.6L/100km on the last tank. It's winter over here currently and the fuel injection has been great, the bike starts first time and not having to deal with a choke has been great, I'm really enjoying this bike.

Those easily scratched plastics

A look at those plastics I was complaining about

The left front seems to be the worst. This is after a wash.

You can't really see clearly here but the seat has some dark marks which I'm struggling to remove as well.

A view of the right hand side, some dirty marks visible after a wash.

Right hand side isn't as bad as left hand side but still visible.

The whole left with some more marks on the plastics behind the frame.

I left the bike to dry and went to revisit the marks with some car polish. All the marks came off pretty easily, except the seat which seem to be hard to show clearly in the pics, I'll use a proper camera when I get a chance. I've never needed to polish the plastics to get them clean before, but at least I can get them clean, they were looking really bad.

Some after polish pics

The seats not entirely spotless, but I'm going to need some better pics to show my problem.

The much improved front left. That polish seems to do the trick!

The polished plastics behind the frame.

The seat - this one still isn't perfect and needs some work.

The right side. Looking much better.

Some polish seems to do the trick on these cheap plastics, I've followed the polish up with some wax so hopefully that'll help keep the polishing requirements down to a minimum for a few washes.

The dash

A quick look at the Honda CRF250L dash. Apologies for the poor video quality, it has two trip meters, a clock, the fuel gauge and of course the speedo. I do like the white backlight, it's very easy to see at night and in the day.

The bad things

It's been 2 and 1/2 months with the little honda and I'm really happy with my choice, I actually look forward to the commute now. There are however some negatives:

1. The grips are pretty hard, softer ones would be awesome but I suspect these will outlast the bike!
2. The plastics are terrible quality. Maybe I've been spoiled by KTM's with acerbis plastics, but these ones are terrible. They have brown hard to remove scuff marks on the white plastics. Never had this issue on any of my other bikes, but I suppose plastics are replaceable.
3. The shifter isn't foldable and was terrible in it's stock position if you're using riding boots. It sits a bit higher than I'd like now but at least it works with my boots. For a bike marketed as a dual sport not using a foldable shifter is really dodgy!

That's pretty much my list of negatives at the moment. Other thoughts I have:

I'm still completely stock, the exhaust is pretty quiet which I like, I wouldn't want it any louder than it currently is. It accelerates up to 90km/h very easily at which point the acceleration drops off significantly, not really an issue in the city. I have opened it up to over 130km/h but I'd say 90-100km/h are happy cruising speeds. I love the speedo, it's easy to see in the day and at night. The fuel guage starts flashing pretty early so you have plenty of time to fuel up. The suspension is on the soft side for faster offroad road but it works well on the road, speedbumps aren't something I slow down for anymore. The fuel injection is great, not having to deal with chokes and changing jetting with the season change has been really nice. Oh, and the front brake is considerably better than it was initially. I was considering replacing the brake fluid with some 5.1 but I haven't felt the need yet, it's really adequate at the moment. It's actually a pretty heavy bike on paper but you don't feel it at all on the road, it feels pretty light and maneuvering through traffic is simple. The power is great, you can drop traffic quite easily but I've gotten used to it now. The low down power lets you idle along in a high gear with the general flow of traffic quite easily.

I'll try and get some pics up here, these streams of text are getting a bit much!

First service

The little honda had been taking me to work and back for around two months, when it was time for the first service, so I booked a service at Honda Sandton and took her in. They changed the oil, adjusted the chain tension and "went over the bike". Bill came to a super expensive R985.74 which seemed a little excessive for what probably took less than an hour, but I'll live with inflated dealership prices until the warranty is over.

My fuel consumption has moved up to an average of 3.620l/100km which I'm very happy with. My 125 had a slightly higher average, and that was less than half the power!

The commuter

I recently purchased a Honda CRF250L to serve as my commuter. This blog will serve as my review of the little 250. To give you some background, I've ridden offroad bikes most of my life and I had a little Yamaha YBR125 for commuting before this.

Decisions, decisions.

I started looking for a 250 some time ago, I really felt the extra power over my, then retired, 125 would be great. It's strictly for city riding so 250's would be more than enough. I then narrowed down the list by looking for something with a rear disc brake, I find it rather hard to modulate a drum it's more of an on off switch which I didn't like. I also wanted fuel injection, I live at altitude and the messing around with jets in my spare time trying to get a half decent mixture just wasn't working out. I don't do freeway riding so a 250 was deemed to be great. Something with low running costs and good fuel consumption. This sort of left me with the crf250l, we don't have many of the choices the rest of the world does here in South Africa. I liked the more upright riding position and after some careful planning I ordered one.

First ride.

The ride home from the dealership was relatively short so first impressions were great. The low down power was awesome and the short gearing made the forward progression seem decently quick. The brand new, essentially unused front disc was terrible at low speeds, I knew it would get better with some break in though. I took it easy on my first few rides to the office preferring to be gentle during the break in period whilst I came to grips with the bike.

My first tank of fuel lasted over 180km and my avg fuel consumption was a super low 3.489l/100km!