| Author | Message | ||
     86129squids |
Anyone here know about these bikes? I've watched CL continuously for weird old Jap bikes, and AFAIK this is a rare bird... might be able to pick one up for cheep. Of course there will be things to fix... I've become pretty adept at speed-reading all the boring ads, and when I see one that reads early '90s or anything in the '80s, gotta take a look. Good laughs whenever see some meathead that thinks a crappy chop-job from the 70's or 80's is worth $4K or $5K... Anyhoo, post up if you know about the VTR, or just wanna yak about weird Jap bikes. | ||
| Slaughter |
Were they a US import - or only avaliable gray market? | ||
| Midknyte |
US import for 3 years 88-90... As a bike, there were actually a dozen worldwide variations for about 20 years I think. (Message edited by midknyte on August 04, 2013) | ||
| Hughlysses |
Looks kind of cool, but torque is NOT its strong point: 15.9 lbf·ft @ 10,000 rpm  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_VTR250 | ||
| Slaughter |
CUTE! | ||
| Two_seasons |
Heavy bike for the displacement! | ||
| Aesquire |
Cute, I'm a big fan of the V45 Sabre, with decent for the day chassis and turbine smooth power. The 500 Interceptors had early bottom end issues ( 2 in a row blew up when loaned to Cycle World IIRC ) which the factory initially fixed with hand selected lower end bearings. I see in the Wiki article that there were valve & top end issues, as well, but I have 2 friends that had no such problems, and loved them. I always thought the Sabre a near ideal basis for a sport tourer, and would toss a Rifle fairing & decent rack on. The V65 would be very nice with a Hack. How much of this applies to the munchkin 250, I have no idea. One of my customers ( college student ) has one, but I've not talked to him about it. He does rev the living snot out of it to warm it up, and if it's survived that, I'm impressed. | ||
| Chauly |
It's half of a VF500 Interceptor motor, and it's actually quite fun to ride, if you're small of stature. | ||
| 86129squids |
Well, the seller hasn't responded to my email as of yet, so, ????. I'd entertained the idea of buying it to fix and resell, there's lots of demand for good beginner bikes around here. Plus, with some good sticky tires, it'd be a hootnholler to ride around the twisties! Aesquire, I'm witcha- wasn't too long ago that someone had a Sabre set up with the Hondaline sport touring gear for sale, looked a lot like the latter-year CBX's set up that way, which I thought verrrry cool/sexy! Vern has spoken several times about his time with a V65- I too appreciated those early Honda V-4's. Most bikes made later than the early 90's are simply booooring. Of course the Buells were the remedy to that back in the day. FWIW, my best bud might be selling his sano CF edition V-Max with all the proper mods... I'll post a separate thread if that happens. | ||
| Jaimec |
We used them as training bikes in Connecticut back when they were being made. Fun bikes, but I preferred the single-cylinder, air-cooled SRX250 from Yamaha. Torquier off the bottom, with a more comfortable riding position. The VTR was faster once you got it wound out... but we're talking the MSF MRC:RSS here... they never got out of second gear and never went faster than 25 mph. | ||
| Kmbuell |
I had an '89 for my son a few years back. Fun bike, got to wind it up a bit to find the power band. Tires were an odd size if I'm remembering right. He wasn't wild about the white/teal/raspberry/dark blue paint, so we did it in a GM silver. Most comments were "is that a 600?" He always said yes, and ran with a few. Had a nice hit at about 10,500 rpm. First two years had an odd covered disc brake. Parts are tough, Zero support, Honda dealer had never seen one. Good learner bike, he went on to a Monster 620ie then an 848. The old man had Buells he had to be different! Kids |
