I had to drive a car yesterday and it inspired me to write about bikes.
I got the VTR soon after my little oopsie in March and have used it almost exclusively for my current 80k/day commute. This is how I've managed to stuff something in the region of 5000k on the clock in three months. I've given it a few short blasts but, well, it's just not that much fun. Kinda. I'll explain.
I'll start by saying that this actual bike has tyres fitted that can only be described as shit. They say "Pro Tech" or something on the side and I think weren't balanced properly when they were fitted - at very low speeds you can feel a slight wobble from side to side through the bars. I also believe the previous owner toured it a bit so the tyres were squared off before I even started this brutal commuting regime. The point being that any comments on handling are to be taken in the light of really shitty tyres.
The handling rocks. Particularly at "round town" speeds the bike is unthinkably light and enjoys being countersteered into a roundabout or round a sharp left hander a quite immoral amount. It does seem to like just the slightest amount of butt movement, just a tad of moving body weight around to get it round corners - and just enough for the bike to illustrate that if you tired to get your knee down you'd probably end up with it buried in the tarmac. But, no, you could sit like a stone statue and still blat around the town with no problems whatsoever.
The best part, though, and the best part of the whole bike is what happens when you combine this handling with moderate quantities of front brake: nothing. Nothing whatsoever. No urge to stand up, no thoughts of running wide, no threat of tucking the front or just flipping you up and into the bushes. It just ... slows down. I have this nasty corner coming home on my daily commute: Steep downhill; a sharp right leading into a T junction onto a much busier road that has shitty visibility; Under trees, so it's usually wet, and has a good three or four manhole covers for good measure. On the VTR it's just a question of riding down there with the brakes on. You can change direction, alter lines and generally speaking ride like a n00b and there is no problem whatsoever. I love it.
The brakes themselves I guess ... work. No more, no less. I've certainly not run out of brake although anyone used to 6-pot sprotsbike brakes would be alarmed at the amount of movement needed on the handle to make it slow down very much at all. But, it has to be said, when asked nicely the bike will stop as much as you want. The rear brake appears to work I guess, it's not like I use them very much any more.
The engine. Yeah, a funny beast it purrs like a kitten once warmed up and (again) round town is as happy and smooth as you could possibly want. Not even a hint of fuelling issues. As you start to cane it a bit, a necessity with a 250, it gets gradually noisier and less impressed with life until - completely unexpectedly - at around 10k the noise and vibration are replaced with a small lump of extra power that, frankly, makes a big difference. Getting around "quickly" on a VTR is about getting it spinning and keeping it there. I did notice though an improvement after putting a new chain on and am expecting a slight additional improvement when I finally get round to changing the oil and giving the new chain a little extra wiggle aft.
Once going the bike is lively to say the least and I've been most gratified to see it elicit big 'shit eating' grins from both a Z750 pilot and a nutter with a Tuono. The liveliness comes with a cost, however: the same handling that leads to pleasantly unexpected boot scraping when coming off the basin reserve translates to just plain twitchy when much above 100k. This, combined with the suspension that is sprung and damped much too softly for any description of back road thrashing turns it into a wobbly little deathtrap ready to elicit trouser filling experiences at the drop of a hat. Including a little wiggle hitting some cats eyes on the motorway in the wet. And the dark. Ho ho! Fun times. Again, a certain amount of this can be put down to shitty tyres, a certain amount can be put down to suspension oil that has almost certainly never been changed, but the balance has got to be due to it being a really little bike designed primarily for noobs to trundle to work on.
Ah, yes, little. My VTR250 is a Jap import, with a matt black finish and looks almost exactly like a 3/4 scale model of a Ducati Monster Dark. It might be small, but for a laughably small bike it looks awesome, to be honest. The 3/4 is almost entirely made up by making it narrower, giving rise to lane splitting shenanigans the likes of which I've not participated in since riding a mountain bike round London. That sort of shit has to stop, BTW, before Katman says "told you so". Mine is also fitted with a genuine carbon fibre biking fairing which, inside, appears to have some genuine duct tape performing an as-yet unknown task. The fairing appears to make some difference, but my interest in taking it off to find out how much is approximately zero.
It's also a 2004+ model with translates to "has tachometer". The instrumentation sits in a kinda dual binnacle thing that would probably look cool if it wasn't buried under the fairing. No fuel light, but it does sputter most obviously when you're running out and the reserve is easy to get to once you know where it is. I generally put just shy of 10 litres in and refuel around 230 km so I guess it's somewhere in the region of 4l/100km. The efficiency is a bit of a letdown to be honest, but I guess there's going to be an amount of energy associated with hauling my fat arse down SH1 and there's little either the bike, petroleum or the laws of physics can really do to change that.
So, summarise: I guess most people reading this will want to know if it's the "best" learners bike. Having not ridden the others I can't really comment on that, but I will say that it's an astoundingly good learners bike if you realise you're not (and will never be) Rossi. It's low, it's light, it's comfortable and it's ridiculously easy to ride competently. Build quality seems excellent and it hasn't even contemplated failing to start or breaking down in any other way. I'm happy to rely on it. They seem expensive when you first buy one, but it seems pretty safe to assume it'll hold it's value - particularly if one is planning to sell it in newbie season.
But for a more experienced rider ... for me, in particular it has one glaring flaw. It just doesn't make me smile all that much. And depending who you are that either counts for something or it counts for everything.
Dave
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Chur chur, good bikes them VTRs ... chugging uphill a breeze!
Originally Posted by FlangMaster
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