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Honda Grom: Beginner Bike Profile + Owner Reviews
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swedeParticipant
I went to check out two bikes today. A GSX550 and a GSX750. I was positively surprised by their performance, brought a friend with a driver’s license to take ’em both for a test drive and his verdict was very positive, even though he normally drives a Fireblade…
I’m having such a hard time deciding which one to get. They both have pros and cons.
The 750 has recently been overhauled with new piston-rings, renewed valves and all sealings relplaced. Tires, chains and such are in mint cond. Price $2,875The 550 hasn’t as much power, hasn’t been newly maintained except oil and air filter change, but is in general good condition any way. Tires are 6 yrs old, but well preserved. Some occasional noise from (i think) the cam-chain (timing-chain?) this noise disappeared when the engine was warm. Price $2,340
whatcha-think? I’m gonna give my decision to the sellers by tomorrow evening.
smörgåsbord
JonathanswedeParticipantI just remembered I got a great tip a couple of weeks back, namely that you should store a post in your mobile phone’s contact book under the name ICE, stands for ‘In Case of Emergency’ and it is the number you want the authorities to contact, should you get into an accident.
Most emergency service- and hospital- personnel worldwide knows to look for this abbreviation.
Just thought to let you know if anyone had missed this.
NB! don’t forget to add the country-code to the phone number, in case you’re abroad.
Hope you won’t be needing it though.
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smörgåsbord
JonathanswedeParticipantI would definitely read it, sharing is caring!
swedeParticipantWelcome to the forum, good to see another european dropping in
How are things tagging along with the license?
I myself are on the verge of getting my own bike, first lesson booked in mars 31st and hoping to be done in april.It would be interesting if you could tell how much lessons and tests costs in the UK? To see how much prices differ from your neighbor to the north.
*waving from sweden*
/ jonathanswedeParticipantI personally think all people should take a CPR / first aid class, knowing what to do, and how to handle injured people in the event of an accident could literary mean the difference between life or death. However, taking one class isn’t enough, as one tend to forget and mix up with time, so taking a follow-up class every now and then is a good idea.
I had about three weeks of medical training and then drills every week for two years to keep the knowledge fresh. Most of that is forgotten now, only two years later.
To tell an encounter were I wish I would’ve had that knowledge, should I’ve arrived there first:
It was about five-six years ago. I got there just after the crash had taken place, a car and a motorbike with a married couple on it. They were both on their back’s, with the man calling out to his wife, and I remember the despair in his voice, and his desperate attempts to crawl using only his arms over to his wife who wasn’t moving or making any sound. It felt so surrealistic and unreal in some way.There were already people in place to assist and since I really didn’t know what to do I asked if anyone had called the emergency service’s, someone said they’d made the call and rescue was on it’s way. I decided to stay and keep a lookout for the ambulance. Time seemed to run like glue, and eventually I decided to give a call myself to check why the ambulance didn’t show up, turns out they’d gotten the location wrong, but after another 10-15 minutes, both firetrucks, ambulances and police showed up. Can’t tell you how relieved I was, and how effective they were at their jobs, sealing of the road, routing traffic around, and lighting the whole scene up in less than a minute.
Turned out that the couple on the motorbike were parents to a friends classmate, and they got away with just broken bones and some bruising. Nevertheless it was one of the most horrifying scenes I’ve ever witnessed.
So drive safely and do what Kick tells you.
swedeParticipant@DecoRider, why would the maintenance be harder on a used one than on a new one? I would say the contrary rather, besides, you could always let a mechanic do the job on a used bike as well.
I don’t know so much about motorcycle enigine’s but I do know some things in general (Was a ship mechanic in the Navy) and that is that a new hi-rev, high-powered engine requires some attending even when it’s new, my guess would be that the first check-up would be after a couple of hundred miles, where one would check valve-play, change fluids, look for leakages and abnormal wear (in general, might be more or less on a specific engine type). This would be hard for a non-specialized mechanic to do since tolerances are so small that they’re hard to find unless you know what to look for (which is the whole meaning of early maintenance, prevention and small adjustments rather than repair)
I would totally go for a used one, as already been said, you loose 1k $ the moment you take the bike outside the dealership.
Dunno how it works on the used-market in US, but in europe, buying from a person rather than a dealership is always preferable. Other than a lower price, you get a better picture how well the bike have been taken care of. A private deal might feel more insecure, but a professional seller on used cars/bikes is often just as much a professional of improvised exaggeration and story telling.Thats my view anyway.
swedeParticipantIt’s really stupid, see the MC drivers license is divided in three classes;
A1, light (max 125cc 11kW) ;
A*, limited (max 25kW and max 0,16kW/kg) ;
A, unlimitedSince the 550cc bike I’m going for is well above 25kW I’m gonna have to go for the ‘unlimited’-class, that bike does however not represent the ‘average’ heavy bike which apparently is ‘700cc’ >_< …bureaucrats… Oh and the avatar is a self-portrait I did for a photo contest, I sort of went for the ‘evil-Anakin-in-his-jedi-hood-starwars-look’. Although people have told me (much to my disappointment ) that I look more like Alex Delarge in ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Figures…
swedeParticipantWell as to whether I get to use my own bike depends on what engine volume I go for.
Swedish law requires a bike with no less than 700cc and/or 35kW to be used during driving lessons and final driving test (I guess to prove that you can actually handle a ‘heavy’ bike)And since it looks like I’m going for a 550cc, I won’t be able to use that one.
Can’t really decide if I should buy the bike before I get that license or not. I mean, I would like to take the bike for a test drive before buying it, but getting caught means loosing my ordinary drivers license for 6months and 2 years postponement on the MC license. And I really don’t know anyone else with a license to do the driving for me.
So unless I come by some killer-deal (and perhaps locate someone on a swedish bike forum who lives nearby the seller and can go look at it for a bottle of scotch), I think I’m gonna wait.
On the other hand, prices tend to go up as the riding season gets closer. Decisions decisions decisions. Sigh.
swedeParticipantYou’re absolutely right there Ben, but I’ve been checking the net daily for ads on used VFR’s and since my first post, I’ve only found one! (that one was a total robbery!)
The reason for this is (I think) that the bikes are that good that the owners don’t wanna loose them, and get a raised insurance in the same time.
A fun fact on the VFR is it’s famousness of eternal life and robustness. It was made to replace the old Honda VF which had an really troubled and ill constructed engine. To counter the bad rumour of the VF-engine, Honda decided to go overkill on roughness, robustness and stress tolerance, resulting in the VFR engine. (later many of the technical solutions on the VFR has been changed back to less robust ones, because of cost)Any way, im looking for a specific year on the bike as well (has to be 20yrs) and the owners of VFR’s of these make years seem to hold on to their bikes, so it looks like I’m gonna go with the Suzuki GSX 550/750 ES/EF/F
The GSX isn’t as beautiful, but the market is flooded by them, giving them a lower price and a bigger bang for the buck in general.
BTW, I passed my MC knowledge test last week (dunno what it’s called in english, the test with traffic laws and signs and such) with a good 64p out of 65p possible, which wasn’t so hard since i’ve been driving a car for a couple of years
Having that done, i booked my first mc driving lesson, which I was sad to hear doesn’t start until mars 31stJonathan
swedeParticipantI’d go for pants that are either easily taken off, or more discreet ones to keep on all day.
I dont know this for sure, but my guess would be that the material used in the discreet type of pants wouldn’t hold nearly as long on asphalt as ‘real’ gear would.
I’m sure I’ve seen MC pants with zippers all the way down the legs for easy on/off’s
If you still wanna go for the all-day-pants and like jeans, check out draggin’ jeans http://www.dragginjeans.com/
They seem to be of good quality (according to dealers) and are throughly testedswedeParticipantWell, thank you private kicker. I’m glad to be here.
I’ve been looking further into what type of bike I’m going to get, and every time I sort of decide what bike to get I read all these cons with the bike in question (extreme timingbelt wear and such) always ending in me upping the ante…
The frame I have to stay within is that the bike HAS to be at least 20 years old (-1988) cause of the insurance policy’s (a >20year old bike is ~140euro’s/year and a <20year old bike is like 650-1000euro),
The the money I have to spend on the bike alone is about 1000-1500euros (up to 2000 but that’s gonna hurt)My wish was to get a sort of all-day road bike which would normally carry only me, but also carry a passenger and some luggage occasionally. Preferably liquid-cooled, mono-shock absorber, and a real stand (those usually seen on touring bikes)
I’ve been trough the usual Japanese manufacturers catalog’s and read about all the different setbacks these bikes seemed to have. I’ve basically come up with two bikes that seem robust enough; Suzuki GSX 1984- and Honda VFR, now the Suzuki is air-cooled, so I kind of had to give up the vision of liquid-cooling there, but it seems like a good enough bike anyway, and ahead of its time with suspension and frame construction. The Honda VFR is really the preferable one of these two but quite lot more expensive. And since this will be my first ‘heavy’ motorbike and I’m planning to do the maintenance and service’s myself, I would like if the bike wasn’t unnecessarily complicated or expensive.
The cubics I’m looking at have been upped from 250 to 400 to 500ish (the GSX im looking at is 550cc)
Well, if anyone here has any suggestions that’ll make me more confused and ripped apart, please don’t hesitate
Bye for now
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