It is interesting how many 250 owners go all weak at the knees at the sound of a 4 cylinder engine doing the sort of revs that only tiny model aeroplane engines could manage when I was a teenager. Personally I prefer to sound of a single. I know multi cylinder engines tend to produce more horsepower, but I have a mental image of their horses have little spindly legs while the horses of a single cylinder have big thick hairy legs like a Clysdale. I think singles sound as if they mean business.
to me a beat up 250cc single cylinder enduro feels twice as beefy as a parallel twin road bike with 10 more horsepower all about those horse legs. can't climb hills in the sand with little spindly ones
It sure is. And I can get another 1.5kg off it soon too. If you are careful about what you change when the bike is light to start with it is surprising how low it can go. The only things I have changed that have added weight are the wider rear wheel and the adjustable shock with canister. Easiest things to remove weight were the exhausts, plastics and battery. The carbon fibre front mudguard with bracket only weighs 250gm. LiFe battery was a bit over 200gm. The light race fibreglass fairing has less pieces and needs less brackets. No pillion pegs. FZR250 3LN swingarm was lighter and stiffer. The ignition rotor saved over 1.1kg and also lets the crank spin up faster.
Now @mboddy got me thinking about 2-strokes... never a good idea. But the ideas started when I looked at this site and started thinking about bikes again. I'm trying to get out of secondhand bikes, worked my way down from 20 to 6 and 2 bits I have now. On the topic of "Why 250s" I registered my Spada on Tuesday, rode it for a while until I had to switch over to reserve, and fueled up. 230km on less than 10L of fuel, mostly highway ks and was giving it a bit of a run, too. That's about half the consumption of the 600!
In context, I guess it depends what 600. Comparing the FZR to my old Z750 was more like 20%. Given that's an old carby bike vs a relatively new fuel injected bike though, apples for apples I think it could even be closer than that.
Why 250's....the thrill of going around a 600/750/1000cc on the outside on a tight corner. Puts a smile on your face everytime.... Sucks getting hammered on the straights though.
yeah, i'm a big fan of the terminator & robocop the hip-replacement was caused by a highspeed motorway accident, the femur was an almost stationary hit by a "i didn't see you" cager, it took me 6 years to walk again and 8 years without biking. But thanks to those a##holes i got to meet you "nice" people
I ride a 250 because they put out 180hp per litre(restricted)25 years later modern fuel injected litre bikes still only do about that. Late 80s early 90s was the golden era of bike production for me, fuel emission laws ruined everything. Long live the inline 4s
Jeez Jo, I'm glad you're still with us. Sounds like it could have ended far worse and then we wouldn't have the pleasure of your company on this site. "I didn't see you" should go hand in hand with "That's okay...woops, my gun went off".
started off riding on larger bikes before the restrictions ,but always enjoyed the 250s ,light nimble and a lot of fun, at the moment due to perminent injurys got a paggio mp3 250 (you know the ones with the 2 front wheels) in a area where if you don't have a Harley your not a real bike rider (a lot of wanabes ,1st bike in yrs so they got a Harley for image ) ,1 of the best thing about it is overtaking Harleys ,they hate it , coped a lot of crap from mates until they tried to follow me down the mt range ,have the mp3 for normal to bad with the legs and a bombed up xs650 for the good days ,another good thing about 250s in qld due to the lams laws they are a largely unlove /unwanted sized bike that you can pick up incredibly cheap (for some very classy bikes) if you look around