Another year gone by and time for another service. I've now had the Honda for over 4 years, it's been my primary form of transport, so lots of commuting time.
The shifting seems to get a bit notchy around this time of the year but the fresh oil takes that away.
Got the service items from Honda Sandton:
Oil filter (69.25) and gasket (27.00), drain bolt washer (7.49) and new air filter (411.36).
Total of R 587,21 with VAT added.
and 2L Motul oil from closest bike store. (Needs 1.5L with a new filter so there's a bit left over)
Started with a good wash to make sure no dirt was anywhere around the drain bolt, oil filter housing or oil refill cap. Went for a quick ride to remove any standing water and warm up the oil. Drained the oil, replaced the oil filter and topped up with some fresh oil. Then took off the seat and right side plastics, cleaned out the airbox and replaced the air filter. Lubed the chain, cleaned out the crankcase breather and checked the coolant level and brake pads front and rear. Should be good to go for a bit longer.
Air filter new and old:
The shifting is much smoother and the little Honda is back in duty and running well again. the savings compared to taking it Honda Sandton for the service last year was well worth the effort and at least I know that basics like brake pads were actually checked this time.
It's that time of the year again so I booked in the little Honda CRF250L at Honda Sandton for it's 3rd annual service. They gave it a "major service", which was all filters, oil and new brake fluid. Nothing out the ordinary and the bill came to a rather high, just over R3000!
The air filter wasn't in stock so I have to go back to have it fitted. Good thing as Honda Sandton didn't put the seat on properly or the right side plastic so they get to sort those out when I'm there. More disturbingly, despite the brakes being a checked item on the invoice (something I'd expect to be checked every service), they were extremely worn and not seen or mentioned. I replaced them myself, these are the ones I took out:
There is no way they'd last until another service so good thing I actually check them rather than relying on the dealership.
Other than that it's been 17482km of trouble free riding (mostly commuting) so far, with only wear and tear items so the little Honda has been a reliable little bike so far.
The tyres on the little crf250l were getting rather worn so I got some new ones a few months ago. The old ones (bearing in mind these have around 15000km's on them):
and the new Metzeler Enduro 3 Sahara's:
The ride home was interesting, I wasn't thinking about the slippery new rubber and gave it some throttle too soon around a corner and the resultant rear stepping out gave me a quick reminder! A few months later I'm really happy with them, they've performed well in the wet - much better than the stock tyres - and the dry has been great as well. We'll see how they hold out in terms of wear but the extra grip especially in the rain has been well worth it.
It's rain season here so I've had to do a few rain rides on my daily commute which means very gentle throttle use. The little Honda keeps on ticking over without any issues. I've sold my car so it is at the moment my only transport and it's coping just fine as always.
It's also the season of load shedding. Our government provider, Eskom, seems unable to plan for the future and the economy/country as a whole is plunged into darkness on a regular basis, despite serious increases in electricity tariffs and bosses being paid massive bonuses. This means traffic is often a nightmare, luckily being on a bike I've managed to avoid any serious delays and my +- 20 minute has remained constant whereas there's been a good few days where I would have been stuck in my car for over an hour.
Hopefully I'll have a wash day shortly with some pics.
A detailed installation guide for installing the DRC edge2 tail light and DRC 602 indicators.
We'll start with tail light.
Remove the seat and side plastics.
I got the wiring plug so I'll be using that in this example.
Unplug the connector and undo all the bolts holding the tail light so it can be removed.
I added the indicators to the new tail light, next we connect the supplied oem connector. I used some crocodile clips to make sure the wiring was correct before proceeding.
This came with the connector but just in case:
Black: Ground
Yellow: Running light
Red: Brake signal
Blue: Right turn signal
White: Left turn signal
You'll notice the indicators flash at high speed, this will be sorted out when we install the fixed rate flasher but for now we're good. I elected to solder the wires in place but you do get a lot of connectors in the kit should you wish to use them.
And all installed
Next we move to the fixed rate flasher. Remove the right hand shroud.
The part behind the water bottle unplugs at the bottom
You can remove the stock one form its position. It's held on by some sort of elastic rubber band, so it's a little tough, but it does come off. Fixed rate flasher plugged in:
Sadly this doesn't fit in a nice secure manner like the original but it'll be held in place by the shroud.
Now's a good time to test those lights again, they should be flicking at normal rate now. Next we loosen the headlight, there are 4 bolts two on each side to do that
I unclipped the two indicators and removed them
Next up I cut the wires so I could attach the new connectors, of course I used some crocodile clips to make sure I had the right wiring
Next up I removed the upper fork clamps and put the brackets in place to hold the new inidicators and re-tightened them.
Then it was a case of trimming wires to the correct length and hooking everything up. You can put on the plastics again and move on to the last task, the number/licence plate holder.
Mine was rather large and I couldn't get it to fit nicely without filing down the top frame of the holder. One done it fits beautifully and looks so much better than the stock setup.
After my recent broken left rear indicator housing and the nice big quote from Honda Sandton an alternative needed to be sourced. I did some research and settled on the DRC Edge 2 tail light and DRC 602 indicators. I decided to go LED 602 on the front as well so there's the same consistent look front to back. I'm very happy with the results. From:
To:
Which looks a million times better. I took quite a few pics so when I get some more time, I'll throw together a detailed guide.
I walked out to the little Honda CRF250L ready for the commute to work only to find my rear left indicator hanging from my bike.
On closer inspection it looks like the housing broke somehow, I may have knocked it getting on the bike but it's clearly not a strong point on the bike.
I'm not sure how this happened but I've temporarily fastened it with a cable tie.
I took a drive to Honda Sandton this morning, to see what a new one would cost. I need to purchase the entire unit, just the housing isn't available, but it's over R900 which seems like a lot of cash for something with clearly isn't designed to last.
I'm going to be investigating some LED indicators with the hopes of being able to ship them here cheaply will report back with my decision.
The little Honda CRF250L has been ticking along nicely. I've had a little jerking at low fuel levels before but I seem to have got the fuel level rather low on my commute the other day. On a perfectly straight road pulling away from a stop was enough to swish the fuel backwards in the tank and cause a massive hole in the power delivery as no fuel was available. It was far more pronounced than the last time I experienced this. I was very nervous stopping on a slope and rode with very smooth movements to the nearest station where I filled up. It took 7.4L of fuel so there should have been another 300ml remaining, so it was low but the fuel starvation and resultant power loss is very concerning. I generally do try to fill up as soon as possible when the fuel guage starts flashing, I obviously left that very late in this instance and it's definitely something I'll try to avoid in the future.
On my way home from work on Friday the bike was feeling a little weird, turns out it was a puncture as I discovered a very flat tyre today.
I removed the wheel and got the tube out. Patched it and put it back in only to hear a lovely stream of air at the valve. The valve was looking nasty, all corroded and obviously I did something when I was struggling to put it back. I haven't even take the tube out again. I'll just take the whole tyre in tomorrow and get them to replace the tube. This is the offending bit which caused the puncture:
Hopefully that'll get sorted out tomorrow and I'll be good to go for another while.
Bike was booked for a service at Honda Sandton today (14th March 2014) exactly a year into ownership. Picked it up a little earlier, the bill came to R1035.96. Doesn't seem like much was done, mostly oil and oil filter and the gasket for that, then some general lubing. Hopefully we're good to go for another year then! I'd like to strip her down sometime and perform a proper lubing, something I always do regularly to my off-road bikes. There will of course be lots of pictures when that happens.
It's been a while since I updated this so here goes. It's been raining here a lot lately so I have been caught in a good few rainy rides. The little Honda has held up fine. The roads are not doing so well though, there are serious potholes forming everywhere. I have hit a few and the Honda seems to cope with them just fine, they're almost irrelevant which is awesome. Fuel consumption is still around the 3.5L /100 km mark.
On Friday is the second service and exactly one year of ownership so I will be reporting back on that once it's done.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
