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Wheels : My Motorbikes

Motorbikes i've owned, nothing special, but they were mine :)

Honda XL 500 R

My very first motorbike :o)
A bit heavy for a first bike (hired a yamaha 100 for my tests) and one i refer to as a tractor. It wasn't slow on or off road (top end around 90mph), and could pull itself up very scary hills fairly effortlessly, but it always gave me the impression it would prefer to be pulling a plough ;)

It was too heavy for any serious jumping (bottomed out the suspension many times) but great for tearing around off-road, although getting a wheel stuck in a ditch could involve quite a struggle to pull the bike back out.

Yamaha TDR 250

Lost the plot buying this!
Not what i was after at all, but a hell of a lot of fun on the road. The bike was aimed at being able to mix it up on and offroad, but to be honest the offroad capabilites were a joke, the rear wheel would just spin due to the road style tires on anything other than the driest of days and the suspension just wasn't up to being bashed for very long.

With apparently a 128mph top end (120mph is the fastest i got it to) this thing flew, but trying to ride it at low revs made it feel like a moped. For a 250cc bike the acceleration was superb, (i nearly fell off the back during my test drive), the moped effect is in evidence up until 6,000rpm, then the needle instantly snaps into the red at around 12,000, a few quick gear changes and everything goes blurry :)

Warning, they can't stop; yamaha made this thing fly but like all birds it had no brakes, the brakes work very well but the bike felt way too light to make them effective. The rear wheel prefered to skid rather than brake whilst the front wheel tried to bury itself into the ground, so whilst you could get up to speed very quickly you couldn't always get it to slow down again.

Kawasaki KMX 200

Yes!!!! Just what the doctor ordered! Very nice acceleration, fantastic off road and more than competant at jumping. It could out-jump my fear factor and it proved that on many occasions, just glad you wern't there to hear me scream like a girl ;)

Top end was somewhere around 90mph and would do this over almost anything as long as you gassed it up enough first. Nothing but fond memories of this bike and probably my favourite of the lot.

Suzuki GSF 600 Bandit (unfaired)

After my previous bikes (even the XL) the first thing that struck me was the weight; if this motorbike broke down at the bottom of a hill you are going nowhere fast. The top speed and acceleration on this bike were less than i expected, i'm not complaining as it's not meant to be a racer and certainly goes fast enough, but after my previous bikes i expected it to really move.

Unmodified and sitting upright 120mph is achievable, and around 130mph if you put your chest on the petrol tank (turning your head sideways helps too...). Being unfaired means it has a comfort zone under 80mph, anything more and you realise that fairing's don't just make the bike go faster, they also stop the wind trying to rip your head off your shoulders. Although this is what makes the bike fun, there's nothing like being totally wind blasted to make you feel alive, and something you just won't get on a faired motorbike.