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!