Which first bike?

[mikesaa309]

I'm currently 18 and am planning on doing my test next year when i'm 19. I have a CBF 125 and although slow it's still a fun little bike to ride, its handles like a dream, even my dads 500 can't keep up through the bends. Anyway i'm not sure on what bike to get after i passed my test. I would like something fast and with torque so i can sit in top and open the throttle and just go.

I have been looking at the GSF bandit 600 which the naked style bikes are the bikes i like the look of best and i like the riding positions too. Although it isn't overly fast for a 600 i would like to be able to leave most cars instead of them leaving me for a change. Due to the laws i can't have anything more than 92 bhp from factory so i'm limited to what bikes i can have. A honda hornet for example is out of the question. Would also like a bike that will beat my mates RS 125 after he keeps leaving me i'd like to leave him behind for a change too and before anyone says anything i'm not one of those immature riders. With in the first month of riding i was stupid, overly confident rider and nearly killed my self a few times i've become a safe rider. Admittedly i do stupid things now and again but i don't do them that often as you kinda do something stupid and think "that was idiotic" and i tend not to do them again.

So i won't be racing people on the road or doing anything stupid it'll just be nice to have a bike which if some racy boy turns up in his VW golf thinking he's fast then i can leave him standing. Doubt a bandit 600 will do that though, correct me if i'm wrong.

[Nobby the Bastard]

I find it amusing that you say that you are a 'safe rider' and then in your next sentence talk about racing cars...
____________________
trevor saxe-coburg-gotha:"Remember this simple rule - scooters are for men who like to feel the breeze on their huge, flapping cunt lips."
Triumph Sprint ST 1050

[mikesaa309]

I said i WON'T be racing cars. It's hard to say what i want from a bike with out sounding idiotic. Basically just want a bike that will easily out do most other cars. So i can easily overtake cars etc.

[-Matt-]

[Nobby the Bastard]

A 600 bandit will beat most cars.

Mind you, most 250s would as well.
____________________
trevor saxe-coburg-gotha:"Remember this simple rule - scooters are for men who like to feel the breeze on their huge, flapping cunt lips."
Triumph Sprint ST 1050

[pdg]

[mikesaa309]

-.- i don't intend to race people. Like i don't intend to pull up to a set of traffic lights and race people from them. I just want a bike that i know i can leave most cars with. Are you people honestly telling me that you've never in your biking career felt the need to over take people or leave people standing? I know know loads of older people in there 50's who still leave cars etc. Like one guy i know says some young guy in a vw golf was irritating him on a dual carriageway, passengers were trying to grab the bike or something so he knocked it down a gear and left them standing. It's that kinda thing i'm on about not actually racing people. You lot just think because i'm a young teenager i'm so immature t*@t on two wheels. I know how to be safe on the road. Also when i say i left my dads 500 through bends again i'm meant his bike can't handle like mine can.

[Blau Zedong]

[barrkel]

[-Matt-]

It was just a little contradicting We've all had dodgy moments, problem is when you start saying and thinking you're safe, you inevitably aren't as you get complacent, you can always be safer however long or slow n steadily you ride

If you're still finding the 125 fun and enjoyable i'd just stick with it personally, i stayed on 125's longer than i had to - it certainly isn't for everyone, but it definately in my case taught me how to handle the bike and most importantly the road a lot better before moving up to my next and current bike which is a 600.

I tend to change bikes when i get bored of it, if the 600 starts feeling slow and boring one day, then i'd think about getting a 1000 or something.

[mikesaa309]

[pdg]

[mikesaa309]

[-Matt-]

[mikesaa309]

[pdg]

Fine then, I shall pretend you're capable.

For 'sitting in top gear and opening the throttle without worrying about downshifting' - from what speed/rpm? Any size bike will have trouble pulling with any sense if you're sat just above tickover, it'll still labour a bit until it gets into the appropriate part of the power/torque curve. You always need to be in the 'right' gear.

I had a 600 bandit which I liked. My experience with it is probably irrelevant to you though as you'd have to restrict it anyway.

You might as well go for something closer to the power limit for that category as that will take the restriction better - i.e. not be as strangled. A restricted 500 twin will be just as fast as a restricted IL4 600, with the advantage of a more usable torque curve so 'off the line' it's likely to be a bit quicker. The 500 will also probably be a bit lighter too (within the ptw ratio of the class) so that'll improve things too.

So:

GPZ500
CB500
etc. etc.
____________________
Any and all advice given should not be followed - if you have to ask it means you don't know so get a man in to do it for you.

[mikesaa309]

i know it doesn't show other days and yes i do do stupid things at times i admit but this was filmed in my first year of riding. I've improved much since then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJHcVso1mf4

[Sako]

[mikesaa309]

[barrkel]

[adam277]

Have you considered the Suzuki GSX650f?
Not only does it look great but at 86bhp it is well within the A2 Licence requirements.



Edit: btw racing bad we don't do that here. We all own a 20 year old Honda CG 125. I recommend you do the same.

[Teflon-Mike]

I think you're letting your key-board and imagination race ahead of reality; but, you want suggestions for first 'big-bike'
Answer any of the commuter twins.
CB500
ER5
GPz500s
SV650
GS500
Etc etc etc
You want 'something that will respond to the throttle in top gear'....
Well with 45bhp, and top gear usually being an over-drive, your're not likely to find much that'll be all that arm wrenchingly impressive in that respect... in fact, you probably wouldn't find much apart from possibly a GSX1400 of its ilk that was, of any power.
BUT... least restriction, best chances.

Lets talk a bit about power; Power is a RATE, specifically the rate of energy transfer. How fast an engine can turn 'chemical potential energy' into 'kinetic energy' or in real terms; petrol into motion.

When we say a bike 'has' 100bhp... we are lying... sort of... If I said I have £30 in my wallet... I can take it outr and show it to you, its something tangible, you tan see it, touch it, kind of REAL. Power ent. Power is a rate. If I said my credit card has a 30% interest rate.... I can take the CREDIT card out of my wallet; might even have 30% written accross it in big white letters, but you cant TOUCH 30% you cant SEE 30%... what you SEE is a bill come through the door, and having spent £100 at ASDA the bill says I owe £102.50... I SEE £2.50... per month.... NOT 30%.. but its that 2.50 I can see or touch.

OK, General Equation for 'Shaft Power'; oft reffered to when talking engines.

Power = Torque x Revs

Do some algebra on that, and you get another equation applicable to making that shaft power in a reciprocating piston engine.

Power is Cylinder displacement, x Cyclinder pressure x Crank revs

Okay... where does this take us? WELL... obviously power is a variable. Cylinder Displacement is usually a constant; you have a 125cc engine or a 500cc engine or a 1000cc engine or whatever, and it don't change.

Cylinder Pressure? Made by the petrol going bang in the pot... you probably don't know about so well, But that's a VERY big variable.... basically, cylinder pressure depends on how big a bang you get in the cylinder, and that depends on how much 'charge' or petrol mixed with air you have managed to cram into it before setting it on fire with the spark-plug... And we control it, almost directly with the 'Throttle', which is basically opening and closing a valve that lets more or less 'charge' into the engine... SO, throttle closed, we get barely enough charge and hence power to keep the motor turning over; at full throttle we ket in as much as it'll suck, and it makes nice noises and makes us go really fast... we hope... BUT we STILL dont get 'max-power'... because we still have to consider

Crank-Revs... Faster the crank turns, more cycles the engine does in a set time, more times it sucks a cylinder full of charge into the engine... faster we turn fuel into motion... more 'power' we will get.

SO... when we say a bike has 100bhp... what we MEAN is that it has the POTENTIAL to turn fuel into motion at that rate.... But under two specific conditions;
1/ the throttle is wide open, and you are letting as much charge into the engine as it can suck.
2/ the crank is turning at exactly 'peak-power' engine revs.

Small anomoly; power goes up with crank-speed as power is directly proportional to it; however, cyclinder pressure, does some strange things. As revs rise, the engine starts sucking hard, so from tick-over, power usually 'ramps' quite steeply, as both cylinder pressure and revs rise and multiply; however at some point, the engine starts to run out of breath, and struggles to keep the cyclinder full of charge; on each cycle. At that point, increasing engine revs, carries on increasing power, BUT, with a short fill in the pot on each cycle, and the cylinder pressure starts falling, so the extra power as revs rise is coming from making more, but smaller bangs. increase in power then slows down, and peaks, at a point where the flow of charge into the cylinder becomes so small, that increasing engine revs cant make up for teh smaller bang, and the power tails away, in a hill shaped 'power curve' shown against crank revs... the power trace or dyno-chart you have probably seen many a time.

SO, when it comes to power, there's power, there's max power and there's USEABLE power.

Max power is almost an irrelevence; you get it only at full throttle and max power revs; how a bike responds on the throttle; how it accelerates and how it behaves to the throttle, depends on the shape of that power curve, and how much power it might make. at the crank revs you are turning, in relation to how open the throttle is!

Slight asside to illustrate the point; but teaching car-driving newbies; they often have a reluctance to rev a little motorbike engine; consequently, they get on a GN125, and find it accelerates quite briskly, to 15mph, and they short shift, from 1st to second, at less than half engine revs, where the thing is probably making less power than a lawn-mower... but, it carries on accelerating quite well, and again, short shift at about 20mph to third, and at 30 to 4th, where they stop accelerating, and change up YET AGAIN.... We then get onto a 60mph road, and they open the throttle... and the thing chuggs with glacial acceleration to a heady 50mph.... and wont go any faster!

It only takes about 5 or 6bhp to over come the drag on a motorbike at 50ish; GN125 according to the book, 'has' 10bhp, and ought to be able to do about 65mph-ish... YET they have topped out at barely 50....

Reason:- having got to 50mph, in top, the engine turning perhaps 5000rpm, 6bhp is ALL the power it can deliver at that crank-speed; there is no 'spare' for acceleration, which means that the crank wont go any faster to get to the speeds where it MIGHT make 10bhp and let the bike go a bit quicker....

You HAVE to change DOWN a gear to go faster!

That lets the engine rev to a higher crank-speed, where there's more 'potential' power available, both to accelerate and over come the greater drag at the higher speed.

So, how the bike behaves, and how 'fast' it might be, in real road terms ISN'T particularly proportional to how much power the books say it has...

Your mate and his RS125... and comment that most 250's would be 'faster' with qualification provided its not been de-restricted.... actually probably doesn't need that qualification.....

Quoted power of un-restricted RS125 is somewhere around the 28bhp mark depending on year. Most 250's are sold as commuters and are hence not that highly tuned, and some can, by book specs look particularly under whelming; lets take one for example, the Honda CB-Two-Fifty. Book quotes a heady 19bhp for this divice! No WAY that can match a full-power RS125 is there?

Well? remember, there's power, max power and useable power, and remamber that equation, power is capacity times pressure times revs.

The 250 has twice the capacity, so potentially can make twice the power at any revs; however, its in a pretty humble state of tune; and as such, it's not been tuned for maximum power at high engine revs; which the Aprillia has. ONLY has 28bhp at peak power revs, remember; and if you look at the power curve for one, it probably has a power 'hump', barely 3000rpm wide, where it makes even close to that, and is making more than the honda might.

If you look at the numbers on the power traces; the Aprillia probably only has half its peak power 'available' over less than 1/4 of its rev range, and significantly the top 1/4. The honda on the other hand, probably has well over half its peak power available over well over half of its rev range.

So to get at the power the Aprillia might make, you have to work the gear-box, and keep it in the sweet-spot, ALL the time, and NOT let the revs drop out of that power-band, or it'll 'bog'... like trying to accelerate the GN125 from 30 to 60 in top gear, and just not do it.

Honda, with less 'peak' power, but more useable power stacked accross the rev range, will be a lot more forgiving to ride, and a lot more flexible, and a lot more tolerant; which all means that you stand a more than fair chance of being able to find and put to use whatever power it might have, more often; which means that point-to point; you can probably go as or faster than the Aprillia, in all but a straight line drag race.

Go back to GP racing of the early 1960's and you have examples of the old Norton and BSA racing Singles, that didn't have huge peak power, but what they did have was all 'accessible' staying on the pace and often beating, bikes like the Gilera or MV fours or the two-stroke twin Yamaha's that all had 'peak' power in a completely different legue, but had to be worked that much harder to get at it and put it to use, and were that much less forgiving when you couldn't or didn't.

Okay... so back to your ponderings... what bike....

Lesson suggests that quoted power doesn't matter very much... BUT you are probably going to buy a bike and have to 'restrict' what power it might make to comply with licence.

So, if you take a bike that has more power to begin with, you have to ask where it gets that power from? And look at the power curves.

Good example is the ER5 compared to the GPz500S, as they uise the same engine; only the one in the ER5, quoted at about 50bhp or a tad under I think, is 'De-Tuned' from the one in the GPz500s, quoted at aprox 60bhp.

This is the difference between 'De-Tuning' and 'Restricting'.

The GPz500 has quite a revvy little motor for a 500 twin, and its 60bhp is stacked up the top of the rev-range. In de-tuning that engine, Kawasaki changed the cams, exhaust and carburettors, and while the power came down aprox 20% or 10bhp, they didn't 'loose' them; they spread those ponies accross the rest of the rev range; less 'peak' power, more 'USEABLE' power.

You take a GPz500s and 'Restrict' it, conventionally by sticking a couple of washers in its carburettor rubbers; effectively stopping the throttle being opened more than 70% or something.... you get all the power the standard bike MIGHT make, right up to the point in the rev range where the restrictors start choking flow of charge... and CUT the top of the power curve.

So, on a restricted licence; you have the choice between an ER5 and a GPz500... knowing that both will have to be restricted.... get an ER5, and you dont have to clip as much off the top, AND with more power accross the rev range, while the peak power figures are the same, the LESS powerful bike as standard, is slightly MORE powerful, in terms of 'useable' power when restricted.

Make sense?

Apply that to other bikes; and the less 'peak' power they have to start with, more chance they have more low and mid-range power you will get to keep when restricted.

Bandit 6, from memory; 75bhp? you would have to chop almost 30% off the top to make it A2 complient; it's four cyclinder motor is not that highly tuned, but it does still make most of its power at higher revs, than an SV650; so restricted, to the same 'peak' power, you are morel likely to get more 'useable' power from the twin.

Its small difference; BUT for what you suggest about more relaxed riding and top gear acceleration, this is the SORT of power that is more important to you, than what the magazines quote.

ULTIMATELY.... your a teen-ager, and best laid plans of mice and men... it'll probably be the bean counters that suggest the final choice, when you go looking for insurance quotes!

Which makes me wonder whether to suggest some slightly more off the wall thinking.

They base insurance premiums on models based on how often those models cost them money, or how much they fear they might.

If the model is common, and oft nicked or crashed; then the premiums tend to be higher; if they have never heard of the damn thing; then they are likely to offer a silly premium to cover thier back-side incase it gets nicked or crashed!

In the middle... there are bikes that are less common; so dont ring the insurers alarm bells so often getting nicked or crashed; BUT that are common enough that they HAVE just about heard of them.

All bikes mentioned so far have been main-stream machines; that offers advantage in they are known quantities, theres plenty about and they ought to be reletively easy to live with vis getting spares and stuff.

BUT; a few suggestions out of the main stream to start you on alternative hunt.

Mentioned the Honda CB Two-Fifty. Its an over bored and semi-cruiser-ified Benly, basically; but well regarded ecconomyu commuter hack. As Said, numbers aren't impressive; 19bhp and 80mph; but its a very useful 19bhp, flexible and CHEAP. You can pick up a very nice example (in reletive terms) for a few hundred quid. 80mpg fuel consumption and service costs, but as like as not cheaper insurance... snowie quoted one a couple of months back and it was about 20% less on like for like policy than her CB125 Super-Dream! Hardly inspiring... but as a teenage bus-fare beater a lot of biking for your money; and on a pae with even the 'quick' sports 125's, depsite its lowly stats.

Rival to the Blandit? What about a Kawasaki GT550? Favourite of the Despatchers twenty years ago; four cylinder engine is silky smooth and tough as old nails. Very comfy and physically large motorcycle; with nice bonus of low maintenence shaft drive. OTMH I think it offered about 50bhp in the book, but like the ER5 was a 'de-tuned' version of the GPz550 engine; would require very little restriction, and give big mid-range useable power; again, not in the main-stream so likely low insurance; running costs will be higher than a 125; but its all old tech and shouldn't be THAT exhorbitant. (thinking tyres here as good indication; there's chap in work-shop moaning about having to pay £150 for a new set of tyres for his Bandit, because they are Z-Rated radials; Old GT, uses old fasioned touring tyresl they are probably around the same price; but likely to last three times as long!) Might also be worth checking out the bigger brother GT750. 77bhp oiut the crate; detuned GPz750 engine; about as much as the 600 Bandit, but 25% more capacity for more low down grunt, you get to keep; while possibly being another insurance beater, and again, not too hard on running costs.

Much loved by owners, and you aren't likely to find a good one THAT cheap, but Honda NTV650 Theres variouse derivatives and names; but shaft drive 650 twin derived of the old VT500, in a derivative of the alloy VFR400 frame. Supposedly very sweet handling, and gutsy, with very flexible engine; again, with potentially low insurance and possibly tolerable running costs.

Slightly more off-the wall and out of the box... and probably more expensive to buy and probably to run, BUT a googlie to run insurance quotes on... what about a Yamaha TDM850? Bludy big chunk of bike; seem to recall the mags commenting shorties need not apply; and 850cc! BUT, was always a 'big softie', renowned for its grunty flexible low and mid-range power. 77bhp in the book, would take about as much restriction as a Bandit, but stand pretty good chance of keeping most of that low down stump pulling 'torque', and as far as your top gear roll on 'wants' likely the MOST of that you can get on an A2 licence! Back to that power equation; its got more than 50% more capacity than one of the 500 commuter twins, its going to have a LOT of low down 'grunt' in comparison. They have a few known foibles, I believe, but widely praised by folk that apreciate them, who have often replaced them with newer ones rather than different bikes; and as said, running costs aren't so likely to be THAT cheap; with the torque and weight, they are never going to be as easy on stuff like tyres and brake pads as a lightweight 250; but ought not be too exhorbitant; and if my suspicion on the gooogliness of insurance is right, could be do-able, as that is likely to be your biggest expense to do with the bike after petrol. Worth checking into.

And I'm now running out of inspiration... BTU few suggestions to steer your own research. WE really cant say what bike is 'best' for you. But; some suggestions for you to ponder and look into.
____________________
My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[nowhere.elysium]

[dydey90]

[nowhere.elysium]