The puncture

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.

Wash and Grease

Today was wash and grease day for the little Honda CRF250L!

After a wash down the wheels were removed.

Grease was inserted into the gap between the spacers and bearings.

After that I removed all the dirty marks on the plastics and gave it a quick waxing. This is the end result.

I still battle with getting the seat clean and haven't found a good solution to get the black marks completely off.

Fuel consumption on the last tank was 3.55L/100km.

Service Time

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 never rains, it pours

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.

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.