Greetings. I just got my hands on a grey market import MC19. Not exactly common bikes here in the United States. I’ve been looking for one for quite a while and was very happy when one became available. I don’t have the bike in hand yet but it’s been a long search so a few more days won’t hurt. Does anyone know where I can get an English language copy of the owner’s manual?
Congrats on getting a Cbr250 , workshop manuals can be found here , but you need to be a premium member to access them which is $10 aud https://2fiftycc.com/index.php?resources/categories/cbr250.22/ there a 2 mc19 versions , Cbr250rj and cbr250k , both are covered in the manual. the good news is that mc19’s are awesome bikes and have an amazing engine that revs like you wouldn’t believe , 19,000rpm. to be fair , not a lot goes wrong with them if they are serviced regularly, keep an eye on your carb insulators that hold your carbs to your cylinder head , they get hard from heat and can leak , you can get a set of 4 here , https://www.xcitebikes.com.au/insulators-mc19/ enjoy the bike
Welcome. The MC19 and MC22 Hondas are great little bikes. Pretty reliable. Just require the usual maintenance. As @kiffsta mentioned, watch out for leaky inlet boots. The carbs may also need a good clean and treat it to some brand new spark plugs. These little bikes foul the plugs easily if other things are not quite right. On a road bike, run with the standard airbox setup (compete with filter and internal flame arrestor/baffle). This will minimise any strange carb issues and flat spots. The MC14E is a great little engine. Really fun to ride. Just remember that it is a 250 and needs some work to keep them on song. Sweet spot is between about 12000 and 18000 rpm. Have fun. Peter.
Thanks for all of the response! I'm sure lots of you are quite sick of hearing about these bikes but for me it's always been a bit of a dream to have one, the grass is always greener and all that. It's going to be a little while before I actually have the bike as it's currently 3000 miles (4800km ish) away from me. I'm going in assuming that the importer did absolutely nothing to it so right now I'm trying to source oil and air filters. After I have the bike there will still be a bit of time before I can get it all sorted and legal so I'll have time to go over it. I know my way around bikes but are there any particular things I should look for?
Welcome. Yes, the Australians are spoilt rotten and use them for landfill and track day bikes. Elsewhere they are considered rare gems to be cherished. Actually they don't really use them for track day bikes. They rip everything off the bike that they can and go to the track once. Where they discover that: 1/ it costs the planet to do a 'track day'; 2/ they have to transport the now unroadworthy bike to and from the track; 3/ the track is hot and very uncomfortable; 3/ their lap times are so slow that it all seems a bit pointless. This leads to decision time. Is it better to go lie on some hot sand in the desert and rip up $50 notes or go for another track day? or If they are like me, they decide to turn it into a project bike. Unfortunately the road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it turns into a never ending saga that is more likely to become an old age home for spiders than a motorcycle. There is a third option, rarely seen. In this case the owner keeps the bike in original trim and uses the weekend as an excuse to sneak off into the mountains in the early hours and flog the pants off much larger capacity sports bikes. Followed by a refreshing swim in a clear mountain stream and an enjoyable counter lunch at a country pub. Ahh those were the days. Choose wisely young Padawan.
Howdy neighbor! Look forward to seeing pics of your mc19 when you have it/hearing your experience(s) with it. I dreamt of the weebr many of night before I was able to track one down, that's when the nightmare began!
Can anyone confirm that the MC19 and MC22 use the same forks? It looks like the rear suspensions are different but the forks are the same.
No sir , the mc19 has a single caliper , where as the mc22 runs twin calipers so the mc19 fork leg doesn’t have mount , also the mc19 fork tube is a few mm shorter than the mc22
Bike arrived today! Can't get a big truck to my shop so it had to come to a friend's around the corner. Of course the truck was late so I only had time to bring it back to my shop before I had to leave to go do dad things. The bike looks really great, like "I can't believe it's 33 years old" good. I'll pull the plastic off it tomorrow and give it the once over but couldn't be happier at the moment.
I got all of the fairings off and had a good look around today. Definitely looks like a 30 year old bike under the plastic. Someone took good care of it but there's a fair amount of JDM crud on everything. Nothing a quick clean up can't take care of. The importer said that they'd changed the oil and coolant and it certainly looks like that is the case. Bike starts and runs beautifully. There's a little bit of off idle hesitation but I'm attributing that to bad gas. I'll throw some ethanol free unleaded in there and ride it a bit before I make any decisions about addressing the carbs. I'm definitely going to need an air filter. The one that's in there is a field expedient modification and I'd rather replace it with something that actually fits. The mirrors are aftermarket. They look fine but I'll eventually try to track down some Honda ones. Hopefully something that was sold in the States uses the same mirrors. There are some signs that I need some new fork seals. I'll pull the forks at some point to put in some new springs and cartridge emulators and it's easy to replace the seals and dust boots at the same time. No plates yet so I can't (legally) ride it on the street but so far so good.