Well all and all I'm happy with the transition from a KLR650 to my WR250R. OK, here's my 2 cents.
All around nice bike and ride. I'm an amateur in the dirt but my friends say I have no fear, which is somewhat true. I'm riding in the woods with jeans, sneakers and a T-shirt, yea I know don't say it. These trails are tight walking bike trails about 10-20 acres of forest, sand, and Mud with head ducking once and an while "low branches" so its hard to see if your zooming so you need to be careful. Also is has leaves and pine-cones which are also very slick, but I like it because you get familiar with your bike and weight and throwing it back and forth so to speak. There's also some hills with big roots and fallen trees on the ground. Not for the shy crowd.
First thing was to increase my idle speed a half turn, it stalled too many times when I was crawling in areas that I couldn't tell if it was mud or just dirt, trust me if you flew threw this mud you were laying the bike down, its like a foot of mud or black quicksand. My bike is 100% stock right now. I rode 2 days back to back about 2.5 hours dirt, sand, and logs. I would love to spent some time in these trails and clear it out a little move some logs, trim some trees etc. Is it legal to ride there, doubt it, but cops have never bothered us. I used to ride in there when I was a kid on my Moped. If it rains you can't even go on the right side of the trails it gets like a swamp, seriously but its fun. Usually me and one or 2 buddies ride in there.
I did replace my hand grips with nice gel knobby grips from a Motorcycle dealer by me, $15 bucks worked nice and really help with highway riding and vibration. OK, trails were fun and dropped the bike once due to lousy throttle response, so the half turn helped a great deal for me. Also if you don't drop your bike, I'm told your not having fun or trying hard enough. ; ) All in all bike was a blast in the trails and nice and easy to maneuver compared to KLR pig. lol I need to test again once I get my Programmer which I'm waiting for. Seat is a little firm hopefully it will break in some. So my hands were a little sore and my Bum but hey its like a good workout no pain no gain. It was a blast
OK, as for the highway ride, since this was my first 50-100 miles on bike I took it easy, well......what I thought was easy. I rode to NJ 35 miles one way from NYC rode about 55-65 mph bike handed smooth as butter with lite
hand grip vibration, and no death wobble as some have described.
Now the funny part of the story, I actually left my wallet in NYC on my second trip to NJ on Saturday, so when I was starting my way back I had a half tank of gas and it was cloudy. I left NJ and heading to the big apple, I started to feel a few drop so I cranked it up to 75mph and it still rode good mild vibration at hand grips very lite if you buy better ones and wear gloves, much more pleasant, still even though throttle response is chattery so to speak it still sped from 65 to 80 relatively easy. Me personally, I liked cruising at 65-70, bike cruised fine. So after I sped up to 75mph and was riding behind a big semi-truck thank goodness I beat the rain.....oh no but wait...what is this light that came on....shoot "low fuel" Son-of-a- B@#$# ???? So I slow down and roughly have 10-12 miles to get to my apartment, and don't forget I have NO WALLET. So once I hit the tunnel traffic yes, I know I should but I slow drive between the cars and engaged the clutch no and then to save gas. Well I hope I was saving gas.
So I finally made it to the Lincoln tunnel and hit 10 miles and felt pretty good that I was going to make it back to my apartment in one DRY piece. Anyone know how many miles you get once the Low fuel lite comes on?
So now I know to always fill it up just in case, plus stash $10 bucks in my tool case and I need to buy some riding gear. All in all it was a great first 100 miles adventure to say the least. Hope you enjoyed the story...
So in my opinion the bike can be a great off road dirt bike and should not be counted out for some highway cruises, it did handle 65-70 with ease, some people were asking about cruising at 75-80....shoot I didn't even cruise that fast on my KLR not to mention your going to drink gas much faster at that speed. 65-70 was my sweet spot.
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The bike sips gas; one of the few out there can can boast this kind of mileage right out of the crate.
