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!