Don’t buy an overpowered first bike–you’ll regret it. You’ll never become a good rider since you never have a chance to develop smooth throttle control.
Get a full face helmet. 45% of head injuries involve the chin.
That forum I mentioned is VERY conservative. The first bikes they typically recommend are the Buell Blast, the Suzuki gs500, and the Ninja 250 in the sportbike category. Many consider the Suzuki SV650 to be a second bike, but all agree that it’s
a superlative bike.
If he wants to save money on buying a bike and save on fuel, why is everyone recommending 500+cc? :smack: The higher cc you go, the more petrol you consume… and unless the way to work is a speedway track, you don’t need anything that fast. And most of the time they cost more to start off with.
250cc is the way to go. They’re cheap to buy, cheap to run.
250cc is okay around town, but you really need something bigger for the freeway. Nymysis’s husband just bought a '78 Honda 400cc Hondamatic. He likes it (and I think it’s way retro-cool), but he says it’s a bit small. The posted speed limit here is 70 mph.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a 250, and then it was a two-stroke. But this might be a good analogy. I worked with a guy who bought a Jeep YJ Wrangler witht he 4-cylinder engine. He reasoned that the smaller 4-cyl. would be more fuel efficient than the 4.0 litre six. In reality, the six gets better mileage because it’s just “loafing” on the freeway and his four was working very hard to maintain freeway speeds. So I think that 500cc is about as small as you want to go on many U.S. roads.
I road my ex-g/f’s Honda CB360T on the freeway. It could make the speed, but it was really buzzing.
70 mph? That’s 112kph. My 250 would do that fine. But there’s no reason to buy a 500 for what the OP is asking.
Saying you need at least a 500 for this and this, sounds just like an SUV owner justifying why they need an SUV in the city :rolleyes:
Sure, my Enduro would make that speed; but only at high revs. I’d assumed that Australia is pretty spread out, like the U.S. Riding a small bike over long distances at high revs can be tiring. So if that’s the kind of riding you do, you do “need” a larger bike. That’s why there are Standards and Cruisers and Sportbikes and Dirt Bikes and Dual Sports and Tourers. Right tool for the job, and all that.
If you’re going to do a lot of freeway riding here, you’ll want a bike that can mane the speed at reasonable revs. I’ve ridden my Seca II from L.A. to San Francisco, Lake Havasu, Las Vegas and San Diego. But that’s not what it was designed to do. Yes, I made sustained speeds of up to 120 mph; but not efficiently. The Seca II normally gets 50 mpg, but at 120 mph it sucks fuel at an alarming rate.
If 250cc suits your mission, then by all means ride a 250. But I’ve been riding for over 30 years, and in my experience I’ve found that 500cc is a good starting point for freeway riding.
Except that most people will “grow out of” a smaller bike quickly. So you end up buying two bikes, and you’ll probably have the hassle of having to sell the smaller one. Not to mention registration and insurance while the one is still unsold. It may be cheaper to buy a larger bike and “grow into it”.
My first motorcycle of my very own was a Yamaha 100 Enduro. It was too big for me when I got it. In a couple of years it was too small. So I got the 250. Again, it was a lot of bike at the time; but within a couple more years I was wanting something larger because it didn’t have the power to comfortably go long distances on the freeway once I got my license. It could, and did, do it; but it was the wrong bike for that mission.
I really like the muy-retro Royal Enfield Bullet. It’s a 500cc “thumper” (single cylinder). It looks great, can be had new for about $4,000, and gets 70 mpg. But its top speed is only 70 mph. It would be a great ride for exploring county roads, but it’s not suited to the kind of riding I normally do. When considering a bike, you first need to figure out how it will be used.
I don’t think I’d want to take anything less than a 500cc on the highway either, at least for any length of time. How long is your commute, and what kind of highway riding do you plan on doing?
You’ve got about 80% of dry traction on wet pavement once the initial oils get washed away. It’s important to wait a half hour or so after it starts raining.
I’ve never ridden a motorcycle, so my thoughts here are kinda of, well, groundless, but disirregardless, here it is. For a beginner, someone who’s never ridden much, wouldn’t a scooter be a decent choice? There was an article in the local paper a while ago about scooter owners, and they seemed pretty cool. One of the folks owned several big motrocycles (Harleys!) and a couple scooters. And the guy said he preferred the scooters in many (some?) situations. He had larger displacement scooters, 75 or 125cc, which would be capable of freeway speeds, for short distances at least. There are 50cc models as well, but those would be suitable only for short trips around town. New models are cheaper than motorcycles, but you can still spend several thousand dollars. Used models would of course be cheaper. And I have no idea about maintenance costs, licensing or insurance.
OK, motorcyclists, let me have it! (I think a scooter would be cool, if only cause it’s not common, around here, anyways.)
State laws vary but a typical minimum displacement for the interstate system is 150cc, 200 being the minimum recommended. At this point, if a scooter was his ONLY means of transportation, he’d be seriously limiting himself.
Try calling 800 CC RIDER in California to get info on motorcycle safety courses in your area. I took one of these about ten years ago, and it was a great way to learn the basics of being on a bike. (Plus, at that time, everyone under 21 in California had to take one of these courses to get a learner’s permit. I have no idea what current state law is.)
So do you want to restore a vintage bike? Repair a newer one that has been wrecked? Rescue an old bike that’s been sitting around for a few years?
One of my bikes was a '79 Honda CX500. It hadn’t been ridden in years, and I got it for a dollar. Dad and I loaded it up into his pick-up, and we took it to a guy who repaired bikes in his garage. If I had had a garage and some time, I could have done the work myself. The carburettor was torn down and rebuilt, a new battery was installed, and the rotting tires were replaced. I put 35,000 on that bike before I sold it.
You might find a wrecked sportbike. You can get parts from motorcycle junkyards and make a working bike. Aftermarket plastic isn’t as good as factory plastic. Or at least the paint isn’t. After some time in the sun, you can tell which are the aftermarket parts. But the aftermarket fairings will certainly do the job, and their cheaper than OEM.
There it is in the paper: A 1969 Honda CB750 Four. The Bike That Changed The World, first year of production. You might want to restore this one to original specs. That will take a lot more work than just getting it running. You’ll want to get as much printed material as you can, so that you can be certain of which particular part goes on this model and year. Original parts will be hard to find, but they’ll eventually show up on eBay. You can also seek out vintage bike restoration sites and clubs.
How do you get started? First decide what you want to do.
I agree 100%, Jonny L.A. Where I live (NSW, Australia) learners (and provisional riders under 30) are restricted in the bikes they can ride. While there are several exceptions, (the restrictions are based on power-to-weight ratios) as a general rule, a 250cc is the biggest capacity bike you can ride. This is for the first six months as a learner, and for the following year as a provisional rider (if under 30).
While I can scare myself plenty on my 250cc, I’m already looking forward to upgrading to a 600cc in a few months. My commute involves about 50 kms of freeway travel, and my little 250cc is sitting on around 9000 revs. A 600cc will sit much more comfortably at freeway speeds.
IMO, as someone who spends roughly an hour per weekday on a 250cc bike on a freeway, you’d be crazy to purchase a 250cc if you intended on doing much freeway riding. That said, it is a nice size to get the hang of riding on, so if freeway riding isn’t an issue, perhaps a cheap 2500cc, with an eye to upgrading after a while could be a good option?
I rode a Triumph 750 Bonneville for a few years until I realised that it would be no consolation having people at my funeral saying, “It was a million to one chance that he died like that.”
