XL250R, 1 cylinder, 2 carbs, 3 chances

XL250R, Honda by name but not by soul. Granted everything other than the soul is pure Honda, like how miraculous the engineers are at hiding an extra 40-50 pounds on a bike, how much it understeers like a front wheel drive GM product, a surplus of 25 extra wires in the harness and an exhaust note at idle that is more reminiscent of a loud aquarium with a bunch of flatulent fish than anything running on petrol. Somehow with all this you go to grab a handful of throttle and instead of Honda it feels more Yamaha(that’s a good thing). There is an urgency to getting at the power, a fun of getting at the power but none of the ultra composed and manageable “are the cam lobes flat” rush of power that is too be expected. In true Honda engineering tradition you have to marry a proper motor to a shit chassis with tiny drum brakes front and rear and forks that have the same rigid dynamics of the javelin at the end of revenge of the nerds.

This is the third chance for this sweet little whip. Gone are the stock forks with the cute blue booties and in their place is a stout front end from a CRF250R, 2007 vintage. With the forks come the front disc and caliper from said bike. Steering stem from a Yamaha R1 modified by G&H cycles for the stock crf top clamp handles the back and forth of the bars. Currently trying to incorporate as much of the stock XL parts into the controls/wiring/headlight but the process is moving along. Hope to update later on tonight with a pic of it as a roller with bars and controls awaiting the custom headlight brackets to mount the sealed beam stock lamp. Usually doing a swap like this leads to a wonky unbalanced bike but I think I have the spares to remedy any awkward handling issues. There is a stage two to this suspension and brake upgrade and if the bike proves enjoyable enough with just the front end I’ll proceed to graft the cr500 rear end on to it. No easy feat but the motor is worth the extra labor I think. To be honest I’ll probably lose interest and give this bike to a friend but no need to be a realist at this stage.

Honda dork-sports

I had an illness, maybe even a sickness. It was years ago but it feels like it’s no longer in remission.  It started as a small red rash that resembled an XL200R, a small red rash that had wings on it. From there the rash spread to a full hive with scabs and everything. It looked remarkably like an XL600R, it made the symptoms more than tolerable and low and behold the rash and hives were gone replaced with the most colorful of bruises. That means it’s deep in the blood now. Then it got worse from there now adding Xl250R like symptoms. This one hurt the worst by far,  took a huge chunk out of my backside like a bacterial skin infection to the tune of $1400 plus $100 for some bullshit duct tape. Luckily Big Cass was along for moral support so I didn’t have to go at it alone. Full fledge ride red fever, kind of like a form of Dysentery minus the lower intestine fun. After years of staying vaxxed with a cocktail of Italian, Austrian and Swedish moto vaccines somehow the red fever took hold. Slowly I began to heal, recovery was on the horizon. The XL200R known lovingly as ‘lil red was transformed into a KTM 125SX, 2 stroke Austrian medicine. There is no way this medicine was a research placebo with how it pulls when it is on the pipe. I still had 850cc of this red virus that I had to neutralize. Jason “the tall one” Chimmy donated an organ to help with the recovery, an ankle is an organ right? The XL600R was now gone, and gone as in Jason had to wait for the swelling in his kickstart ankle to subside before he could give it another attempt, it had adopted a new victim. The Italian Husqvarna was and still is the big bore anesthesia for it. The XL250R was used the way motorbikes are supposed to be used and wound up with a twisted front end and me gasping for air. Did this illness spread to my lungs or was this just momentary? Nope, just getting flung over the bars and slammed hard at Riverdale. James Brad stepped up with a healing hand and took the sickness in and cured me.

Or so I thought...