Life In The Slow Lane

[Suntan Sid]

Long time no post, how’s it going peeps?

TLDR, just read it, what are you, goldfish?

Last summer I had a hankering for a new bike, specifically a bike I can use on and off road.
I’m lucky I’m no more than 100m away from all the off-roading I could ever want, mainly gravel tracks and hardpacked earth roads. The authorities here aren’t interested in off road antics so you’re free to go and play pretty much anywhere.

Back when I were a lad the sort of bike I wanted was called a trail bike, somehow those bikes have morphed into “Adventure” bikes. As far as I can tell, that means they’ve got bigger, heavier and seem to have all manner of superfluous tat bolted onto them.

Secondhand bikes and cars are ridiculous prices here in Cyprus so to avoid buying someone else's bad decision I started looking at new bikes.

Anyway I narrowed down the field to the following:-

Honda CRF300L - 6,800 euros / 313lbs / 27hp / 26.6NM
Honda CRF300 Rally 7,800 euros / 337lbs / 27hp / 26.6Nm
Royal Enfield Himalayan 5,990 euros / 399lbs / 40hp/40Nm
Triumph Scrambler 400XC 7,700 euros / 410lbs / 40hp / 38Nm
Loncin VOGE 300 Rally - 4,500 euros 347lbs 28hp/25Nm

Initially I was interested in the Triumph, but two things immediately stood out for me, the first being the lead in time, a minimum of three months here, (probably more), the second being the weight, it’s a mere 27lb less than my FZ1N. I've had to push the FZ1 and that thing is not a lightweight by any stretch of the imagination, how you’d pick up something that weight doesn’t bear thinking about. Yes, I know there are techniques for doing it but life’s too short for that sort of rigmarole.

I then looked into the Royal Enfield, Himalayan, it gets good reviews but again it’s coming in at 399lbs, come on, this is supposed to be an off road capable machine, bollox to picking that up. I refer you to my previous point.

So that left me with the Hondas and the VOGE.
Both the Hondas are the lightest bikes on my list, no doubt tried and tested with good old Honda reliability. However after reading plenty of reviews they didn’t appear to be top of the shop, particularly and surprisingly in the suspension department.
Obviously being Hondas, parts should be easy to come by and you’re buying into the brand reliability etc.
The VOGE is a lot cheaper than all the others, although 10 to 15lbs heavier than the Hondas.

My quest then was to read or watch as many reviews as I could, fortunately the bikes I was interested in seemed to appear in a lot of group tests.
All the bikes get good or reasonable reviews, nothing really to hate on.
The Voge got absolutely slated by MCN when they tested it, although the comments from actual owners, on their review, seemed totally at odds with what MCN was saying.

As with the Triumph the lead in time for the Hondas was a minimum 3 months.
The Voge was in stock at the dealers if I’d wanted that particular bike or a six week wait for whichever one I wanted.
In all the tests I’ve seen or read the common theme seemed to be, rather surprisingly, that what let the Honda down was its suspension and even more surprisingly, despite being none adjustable, the Voge’s suspension was, apparently, better offroad.

So how do the Hondas compare to the Voge.
Ground clearance is pretty much the same.
Voge has 41mm USD forks, Honda’s are 43mm
Hondas have slipper clutches, Voge has standard clutch.
Voge has slightly higher seat height.
Horse power and torque are near as dammit the same.
Wheel sizes are the same 21” and 18”.

Now, before I tell you what I bought, I'll go back to my comment about today’s, lardy, “Adventure” bikes.
In the past I’ve had three trail bikes, a Suzuki DR600S, a Suzuki DRZ400E and a Honda XL125RC.
The DR600 weighed in at a few pounds less than the lightest of the bikes I’d been looking at.
The DRZ400 weighed in at 51lbs less than the lightest of the bikes I’d been looking at and had the same HP and torque figures as the Triumph and The Royal Enfield despite being considerably lighter than both of them. That’s progress for you!

Here are the figures again for comparison:-

Honda CRF300L - 313lbs / 27hp / 26.6NM
Honda CRF300 Rally - 337lbs / 27hp / 26.6Nm
Royal Enfield Himalayan - 399lbs / 40hp/40Nm
Triumph Scrambler 400XC - 410lbs / 40hp / 38Nm
VOGE 300 Rally - 347lbs 28hp / 25Nm

Suzuki DRZ400E - 262lbs 39hp / 39Nm
Suzuki DR600S - 310lbs 44hp / 50Nm
Honda XL125RC - 278lbs 12hp / 10Nm

I know you’re all itching to tell me I should have looked at the new Suzuki DR-Z 4S, unfortunately it’s not available here, at the moment.

One more thing, the weather and terrain here is such that there is no mud, there might occasionally be a small puddle, so my choice of bike takes that into account. If I was in the UK doing any green laning, along with the typical UK weather, I’d choose the XL125RC over any of them.

The moment you’ve all been waiting for, yes you guessed it, I went for the Voge.

What it came down to was, are the Hondas between 2.3k and 3.3k better than the Voge, in my mind I can’t see that they are.
So what do I think of my pile of Chinesium cheese, overall I’m very pleased.
It looks great, if a bit intimidating.
The build quality exceeded my expectations, lots of stainless steel fasteners on the bodywork, all the nuts and bolts on the frame seem to be nickel plated.
Everything fits as it should, everything works, nothing has fallen off yet.
It starts, on the button, immediately, the exhaust sounds particularly fruity.
I’m still in the run in period so I’ve not taken it offroad yet. On the road you can’t fault it, it handles very well, very predictable. I’ve read that it can be a bit vibey at higher speeds, it is as you’re accelerating through the gears, but once you’ve hit 60 or 70 and knock it up to sixth gear the vibes disappear. It’s not going to be something I care about, it’s never going to see a motorway.
You can hustle it along but you do need to use the upper end of the rev range

Does it have faults? Of course it does!

The front brake is crap, I was expecting this because every review I’ve seen has mentioned it. I’ve changed the OEM pads and things have improved but it’s still not how I’d like it. Every bike I’ve had I’ve only used two fingers to brake, I'm still having to grab a big handful.
I suspect the master cylinder is under-specced for the bike, I'll address this in the future.
Virtually no front brake and no free play in the throttle cable made the 40 miles back home from the dealers an interesting ride.

The seat is not exactly sumptuous, obviously this isn’t so much of a problem offroad, but on the road it’s numb bum time after an hour.

The only other thing, this is not a fault per se, the seat height is 920mm, if your inside leg measurement is 32” or less you’re going to struggle!

What have I done to the bike since I got it?
Added some free play to the throttle cable so now I can brake without twisting the throttle.
I’ve removed the metal rack that was on the rear mudguard, no use to me.
I’ve removed the engine crash bars, they were proper ugly and quite heavy.
Also gone are the rear foot pegs and the bark buster things from the handle bars.
All that editing has reduced the weight by 19lbs, so the Voge is now 9lbs lighter than the Honda CRF300 Rally.

Here are a couple of photos:-

https://i.postimg.cc/pd4rY0k8/Vogedan01.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/V6t67jHZ/Vogedan02.jpg


Any questions?
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"Everybody needs money, that's why they call it money!"

[A100man]

Interesting stuff - thanks.

Saucer-sized front disc may explain the paucity of brakes
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Now: A100, GT250A, XJ598, FZ750

Then: Fizz, RS200, KL250, XJ550, Laverda Alpina, XJ600, FZS600

[virus]

seen a few voges of various CCs at local bike meets and the actual owner reviews seem to be fairly happy with what they have for the price. I bet a lot of the shit reviews and bad press is from industry reviewers who parrot the 'chinese = shit' line from 20 years ago or are in the pockets of the mainstream manufacturers who are getting scared. Same thing happened to the brit manufacturing industry when the japs turned up.

interesting to see the specs laid out like that though, especially surprising is how the old DR6 is still very competitive, Id have expected it to be a fair bit heavier than the modern stuff.
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own: 81 xs1100g...
owned: 85 rat CG (sold), 91 GS500e (stolen), 84 gsx400f (scrapped), 81 z250 (siezed, siezed, scrapped), 83 cb250rs (sold), 84 gpz750r ratfighter (killed) 84gpz400 (sold), '80 cb650 ratfighter (wrote off) 95gsx6/12f ratfighter (killed) 91 xj900 (sold)
stinkwheel Well I just had my hands up a pigs fanny. Which makes your concerns pale into insignificance.

[Suntan Sid]

Regarding the front brake, it is not the best, however there is a lot of engine braking, especially in the lower gears, so won't be too much of a problem off road.
The other part of the problem is I still haven't dialled in enough free play in the throttle cable, (its a real PITA to get to the adjuster at the throttle body end, I had to cut don two 10mm spanners to do it), so a big handful of brake is still causing a slight twist of the throttle. Some trial and error and I'll have that sorted. I could try a shorty lever.

Regarding the weight comparison with the DR600, the Voge has a quite beefy looking steel frame, somewhat wider than the DR's, if my memory's correct. Also we have water cooling to deal with now, it all adds up I suppose.

There is one thing I will be addressing.
The seat height is 920mm, what I've seen people doing is using the foot peg as a step up. In some cases this has led to the side stand bending.
I'm going to buy a new side stand, (under £20), and reinforce it with some 6mm re-bar. I can just about get on it, freestyle, but I think that's going to get tedious quite quickly.
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"Everybody needs money, that's why they call it money!"

[stinkwheel]

An effective but so-so front brake isn't the worst thing to have if you're riding on loose surfaces. I'd go so far as to say one with a long pull that can lock the wheel if you need to but takes a concious effort would probably be what I was looking for. Lets you modulate the braking on the loose.

How's the bash-plate provision/sump protection? You have way more ground clearance than my trials bike mind but I fitted a 1/4" alloy bash-plate thinking it was overkill and it's now like a bananna so I'm contemplating upgrading to 3/8".
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“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Suntan Sid]

Currently the bash plate is a 3mm plastic sheet held on with four bolts.
I will be rectifying this in the near future.
I was thinking along the lines of a sandwich, two sheets of alloy around a plywood filling, built to be disposable, should be easy enough.
____________________
"Everybody needs money, that's why they call it money!"

[stinkwheel]

[Suntan Sid]

Good idea to use the chopping board, I hadn't thought about that, although I have used them for other things.
____________________
"Everybody needs money, that's why they call it money!"

[A100man]

[Skudd]

A few friends have gone down the Voge route and I'm very impressed with them, the kit that comes with my friends bikes are quite good, like forward and rearward facing cameras, basically a BMW, but a third of the price.
The Voge does seem to be leading the way of the new small/mid capacity adventure bikes. My friends didn't come with heated grips though, which I thought in this country would be a basic these days. Easily sorted out with a set of Oxford grips though.
When I have to downsize from my tank of a bike, BMW 1250 GS Adventure, the Voge will be first on my shopping list.
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Famous last words of Humpty Dumpty. " Stop pushing me "
Petty Anarchists look at "1984".............. The Visionary looks at "Animal Farm".

[virus]

[stinkwheel]

The CFMoto 450 is also worth a look as a light adventure/heavy trail bike. Packed with features and astoundingly good mass centralisation.
____________________
“Rule one: Always stick around for one more drink. That's when things happen. That's when you find out everything you want to know.”
I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[Suntan Sid]

[stinkwheel]