They stink. And I don't mean they stink as in they suck or they're bad....I mean stink as in smell. New bikes smell bad. Now this is the first brand new motorcycle that I have purchased in my life, in fact it's the first brand new vehicle. I never bought a new car either. Now I knew that new motorcycles smell a bit when the engine is new but it honestly caught me off-guard when I experienced it as the smell is really noticeable. I rode out from the dealership and after just a few kilometers as soon as the engine warms up the smell really hits your nostrils. It's mostly noticeable of course after you come to a stop, especially if your visor is up, you will really notice it. And it's the kind of smell that you would definitely not ignore on a used machine. Smells like burning plastics, or burning wires. Definitely not a pleasant smell. Despite expecting this I had to call the dealership and ask them is it really this bad? And they told me that it's 100% ok and that I should keep driving and that will go away in a few hundred kilometers. Sure enough at about 300-400 kilometers I couldn't smell it anymore. What is the smell? where is it coming from? There's multiple theories but the internet consensus seems to be that it's some sort of rust protection varnish that's applied onto various parts and it's actually being burned off from the engine. Some also say it's paint near the exhaust port being burned off. I honestly can't confirm or deny that but what I can say with certainty is that the smell was quite a bit more noticeable than expected
2. As I'm sure you already noticed this is a Honda CRF300l dual sport motorcycle. Probably one of the best sold bikes currently on the market? Now this is a bike with 27, 28 horsepower and 300cc of displacement, it's actually 286 cc but never mind that. The point is that this is not a very fast bike. I mean to me it's fast but more on that later The problem arises when you combine 28 horsepower with the break-in instructions presented in the owner's manual. Having 28 horsepower means that when you're merging onto fast roads highways you usually need to go full or near full throttle and up to 8000 rpm to ensure that you adapt your speed to the speed of the traffic quickly and safely. But you're not supposed to go full throttle or aggressive acceleration during the first 500km. The result is that the break-in period is a bit of a pain and I was honestly forced to ignore these instructions once or twice, nothing too harsh but I'd rather not risk getting hit than worry about the perfection of the wear pattern inside my engine. You've probably heard about the alternative approaches to break-in, the stuff that requires you to go full throttle to ensure better break-in etc. Well the ideal is that once you actually buy the bike with your own money you sort of forget those theories and feel it's best to go buy the book. So if you go with a small displacement machine a good idea is to find a long winding road with little traffic. This will force you to constantly very the throttle input which should improve break-in and it will also rack up miles fast to help you get through the break-in.
3. The less experience you have on a motorcycle the less useful reviews are. Of course before buying this motorcycle I read and watched a bunch of reviews about it. Unfortunately there's still a big shortage of bikes on the market so test drive models virtually don't exist and reviews seem to be the only option remaining. But here's the catch. People who review bikes are experienced riders and as such 90% of them make the review a motorcycle from this perspective. They perceive the motorcycle within their own reality, as we all do. So if you watch reviews of this motorcycle you will often hear how it's slow, how the suspension is too soft and maybe how the front brakes are kind of mushy. But the reality is that if you're a new rider like me you will definitely not be able to feel these things. The 2000 and change kilometers on this bike and a thousand or two on my previous dominator 250 and a few hundred on my first bike, a Yamaha TZR 125 are all the experience I have. Experienced riders will talk about steering feedback, brake feel and so on. The only feedback I get from a bike is that I'm still on it.. Of course I'm exaggerating a bit, but what I'm trying to say is that someone else's reality is not your reality so purchasing things based on someone else's reality doesn't make sense. If you watch too many reviews you will probably end up believing that you need a Tenere700. But if you have as little as experience as me than I guarantee that bike is too big, too heavy and too fast.
A special thank you to my patrons:
Daniel
Pepe
Brian Alvarez
Peter Della Flora
Dave Westwood
Joe C
Zwoa Meda Beda
Toma Marini
Cole Philips
#d4a #crf300l #honda
00:00 they stink
02:00 break-in is a pain
03:57 reviews can be useless
07:13 dual sports are dual
09:14 input vs output