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.