Honda VFR1200F. A Possibility?

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Well then folks. Well then. In my last post about my future bike choice, I talked about 3 options to consider when buying a bike. The options were you get a house with a hose and a dry garage, you go wash it at a nearby garage before you get home or you buy a bike fit for purpose.

I ended my post with

“This also means repairing the GSR yet again, and who knows, that may be anything from a clean service and new caliper seals, to a new ignition block if they can’t unseize it. And who knows how much that’ll cost? By my experience, £100 won’t cover it.”

Well I still don’t have my bike back yet (it’s due to be completed tomorrow) and on top of the caliper seals needing changed, I did indeed need a new ignition block. I also needed a new sprocket and chain because it was “a good one” said Stuart. All the teeth were pretty much half the size and the chain was rigid.

£100 won’t cover it, and it’s another January of financial drain.

So anyway, I said in my last post that the answer to all my problems was getting a BMW R1200GS. But then one day at lunchtime I was browsing the Honda website and remembered the VFR1200F was about to be released and sure enough, it had been. As I poured over the various infos and pictures, I suddenly started to realise that hey, this might actually be the bike for me. I will now go through the reasons why.

(All images below are from http://www.feelvfr.com)

At first I noticed how nice it looked. I remember when I first saw it, I didn’t really like that huge fairing. I must have grown to it, because now I quite like it. I like how aerodynamic it looks and the unbroken lines make it very sleek.

Reading through the specifications I noticed a lot of things that fitted my requirements. Shaft drive, build quality and quality materials. Good winter accessories. It has a V4 engine, single sided swingarm, radial brakes, chunky rear, nice seat, good riding position.

This thing looks like it could do a lot of miles and not complain.

I’ve read a lot of reviews about this new Honda shaft drive and how it works. It certainly removes the need for any maintenance, which when riding in winter is a massive draw.

It has a centre stand which would be superb for cleaning the back wheel. Would remove the need for me to get my buckled paddock stand out of the garage every time.

Honda seem to have really thought about what a rider wants out of a bike, and especially a rider that will ride his bike a lot. The 12v cigarette lighter would be superb for SatNav or other accessories that you would use on a bigger trip.

So after having a quick whip around the details, I gave Blair a call and asked him about it.

He agreed it would be nice and said there was a review in MCN that week about it. One of the things he said was that the shaft drive seemed to skip when going fast over bumps. Not really an issue unless you are a knee down kind of rider. He also said that it was 170BHP and would hit around 160mph…

And this is where my interest ended.

One Hundred and Seventy Brake Horsepower.

Imagine if you will a nice winters morning. You are riding to work and aye, it’s a bit cold and overcast, but you knew this yesterday and yet you still got on the bike because you love it. It’s in your blood and you would never take the bus unless your bike was physically immovable. You made your bed when you signed up to the 365 biker club and you never think about quitting.

Then it starts to snow. There’s nothing you can do about it, you are halfway to work. You can’t turn around. You just have to keep going. But the snow is lying.

So you get to work and as you travel down the cobbled, wet and snowy surface you get to the hill before your garage. And therein lies the problem.

You now have 170bhp to try and baby along this street. There doesn’t seem to be any GSXR style ABC power control. There’s no traction control. Your only way of dealing with it is down to what your right hand does.

This neatly leads on to the next problem. The fairing. Although it’s beautiful to look at and really shiny, there isn’t upon inspection any holes or places to fit crash mushrooms.

We all know how expensive wee fairing panels are and that’s some of the reason why they are all split up, so you don’t have to replace a massive plastic panel if you are unfortunate enough to drop it.

The VFR1200F has this problem. And believe me, when you are going down this cobbled road with 170bhp under your right hand, you will be thinking about it.

Why make a bike so powerful, when it’s intended for touring and bikers who ride their bike? This isn’t a track bike Honda. So why are you giving it so much bloody power?

The speed limit is 70mph in the UK and yes, at some point we are inevitably going to break that. But not by over double. So why can this bike go 160mph?
It’s baffling really. And this is why the VFR1200F is immediately obsolete for me. There’s no way I will get insurance on this bike, not without a severe heart attack and some ball crunching from Emma. And inevitibly if you ride a bike in the shit weather I ride in, it will be dropped, and that beautiful fairing will be reduced to a blabbering mess within 2 feet of asphalt contact. Not only that, but it’s over £10,000!!

It has the credentials for a marvellous bike, it really does. But it’s been ruined by whacking in an absurdly powerful engine, stupid design and amazingly stupendous price.

I haven’t ridden it and I never will. It’s pointless.

Blair had a good point. He said,

“Why get a brand new bike, especially one so damn expensive, and watch that rot away to nothing in the Scottish winter? It’ll be even more painful watching a £10,000 bike rust than it will your current bike. And it will rust and it will get manky, because you will ride it. What you need to do is get a bike for summer and keep the GSR for a winter hack-about.”

He has a good point and one that I am now seriously considering. I could have a bike that I ride from say April to November, and my GSR for November to April. This way I keep a bike in great condition and I reduce the mileage on both bikes. This means less servicing, less miles and more value. It also means I wont be using the same bike every day all year round which should bring back some of the enjoyment of riding a motorcycle for me.

I really need to have a think about it, but for now the VFR is so far beyond reality it’s actually quite funny.
Thanks for checking YY over the past month, the view have really been good!

All the best,
Gordon