Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Query approved!

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Continental GT will hurt your back. Anyways take a long test ride of the same and then decide. Otherwise you can blindly go for CBR250. Pros are a very refined engine, riding position doesn't hurt your back, vibe free ride, good suspension and Honda reliability.
All the best. Keep us updated

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

The only let down of mojo is its brand value.
And i dont know whether mahindra has a showroom in kochi 😇

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Uff.
So a city ride of just 25 kms will hurt my back? 😞

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Depends buddy. My friend had one and he complained about back pain even after a short ride of 15 minutes. You will have to stretch your hands a bit more and it will put more stress on muscles and back. Get a long test ride first. Check whether it is comfortable for you to ride.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Just that I'm a C-GT owner doesn't mean I'm pushing my point in favour of it & persuading you to buy it. But I've never had back pains. Yes my palms do pain when there's B2B traffic & I want to maneuver the bike & that's purely coz of it's weight. And I've had 2 collegues of mine who have sold their CBR 150 n 250 due to discomfort within the 1st month.

So in a way it's relative... and in a way some ppl take longer to get used to things OR they simply are so used to a particular position like on a splendor/ Activa that anything remotely different causes them discomfort & also sometimes they're reluctance to giving time for adjusting & muscle learning.

You can read a daily user-1yr-10k kms review of the CGT to get a bit more insight.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Benelli 250?

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Last month i booked a benelli 250, but some reviews and the spare parts cost made me to cancel the booking.2 days back i got the amount refunded.
Benelli is best when it comes to ride quality. But the service in kochi (kerala) is by marikar motors and they don't have a very good reputation.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

That was a good honest review. 😊

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

If you can, get a long ride on the CBR and the GT, and find out which one suits you.

I'm a CBR 250 owner, and I suffer from back pain. My back hurts if I spend too long time in a seated position. However, the CBR does not hurt me for small rides, only on long ones, 300+ kms. From what I've heard, even normal people get pain on long rides, so I guess, for me, the CBR ergonomics are spot on.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

There are a lot of questions to be answered before you can decide this kind of a thing.
Motorcycle is a very subjective buy and whatever you see on paper or see in reviews of auto magazines still may seem contradictory to your own verdict when you ride exactly same bike.

Are you a generally a fast rider? Or you are more laidback rider who enjoys comfortable rides and generally won't exceed 80-90 kmph?

I will tell you about your choices as I do have experience on most of these except Honda CBR 250R.

1) KTM Duke 200/390 - If you are really looking for comfort then these bikes should not be considered. These are not really made for comfort. They are entirely performance oriented naked hooligan street fighter bikes and they do that job very well. They accelerate, brake and corner very fast in their respective class and can actually embarrass bigger bikes at times...But comfort? Nope - they are not comfortable. You have to totally slow down on even slightly bumpy roads and definitely you need to come below 20 kmph on every single speed bump - else you will hurt your bones fairly soon. I owned KTM Duke 200 and absolutely loved it. I actually started doing lot of lower back and other exercises just to cope with its hard suspension. But once that one factor is out of picture, these bikes are the best affordable performance bikes in India. These are very much same bikes that you can buy elsewhere in the world like Germany, Austria, UK etc...They are very much made here in PUNE, India.

I simply loved the 2-stroke like frantic nature of Duke 200. It simply eggs you on to rev it to the max in every gear including 6th! It is ultra light, has good fuel efficiency (you will be surprised - with a very controlled hand, you can get as much as 48-50 kmpl also - that is better than Scooty or Activa, man! At the same time if you rev it high all the time, it can go down to 28 kmpl as well).

2) Royal Enfield 350/500 Classic - Very good choices for comfortable, long distance riding AT RELATIVELY SLOW SPEEDS. These are strongly built, heavy bikes and they are tough, long lasting. They are everywhere and hence spares and service is minimal issue. Most popular for rough and tough expeditions like Leh-Ladakh but also good looking enough to pompously ride around in city with its classic looks and "FAT FAT" sound (that gave birth to the term called "fatfati" meaning a motorcycle in India long ago!!) Don't expect them to be extremely maneuverable though...These are heavy and don't expect high speeds from these bikes...They can be pushed to high speeds but when you actually do it, you will realize what I mean. I pushed one RE 350 classic to about 90-100 kmph and it was quite a struggle for that bike...If you came from smaller bikes with lower performance, you still may like it - but I was already used to Duke 200 which has a rocking acceleration in its class.

3) Continental GT - Please understand that this is based on CAFE RACER concept. Basically it is meant for short distance rapid riding from one cafe to the other (it was a British concept). It is a good looking bike sticking to this concept. But again, it is not really comfortable for any medium or long distance riding. Also it is priced somewhat higher and its performance is good by Royal Enfield standards but if you are looking for performance then you should go for point #1 above!!

4) Honda CBR 250R - It is one of the more comfortable bikes out there which do have a bit of sporty nature. But in my opinion, it is somewhat outdated. Honda should be giving us CBR 300 R really now.

You should consider following options too - they are not really bad at all - though compared to your budget, you may feel they are rather high priced

1) Yamaha R3 - A sporty yet relatively comfortable bike that has good sporty performance (need to change tyres asap - OEM tyres are below par and hence need to switch to Pirelli or Metzeler)
2) Kawasaki Ninja 300 - Similar to above - but somewhat slower and somewhat outdated - but it is also quite comfortable bike with good city and highway performance
3) Benelli 300 - Very comfortable, nice sound - not as sporty but still good...

There is one more possibility but you need to have patience for its actual launch.

Bajaj Pulsar CS400 (based on same engine as KTM Duke 390) - When this comes, you can consider it as poor man's Ducati Diavel...It is very stylish and should have good performance. Also Bajaj always ensures that their own brands is relatively easier and cheaper to maintain than KTM which due to European heritage is always more expensive.

I have always seen that on same platform, Bajaj bikes are much more comfortable than KTM but they lack the raw aggression of KTMs which actually is huge appealing factor in KTM (for people who like it that way - KTMs are either love or hate - nothing in between). E.g. Pulsar 200 NS is much cheaper than Duke 200 but nearly as capable. Still, it somehow doesn't feel special like the KTM - it doesn't have that 2-stroke like rapid fire feeling...Even though it is nearly as fast and more comfortable. It handles equally well too.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

I usually ride at a speed 70-80 kmph often.

The maximum i use to travel in a bike is 200 kms (coimbatore -kochi~), that was long back and i won't be taking that road so often hereafter. I need a bike to take quick spin in the city and to go for movies that will make the bike to run 100 kms in a week maximum.

I feel cbr 250 is a bit outdated.
I have used p180 before and i use to ride a gixxer and classic 350 often.These bikes were comfortable for me.
On the other hand i don't like the riding posture of r15.

Ninja R3 and benelli 300 are priced around 4 lakhs.which is really out of my budget.

Re: Help me to choose a bike for occasional city drives and leisure trips!

Must admire your preference list of bikes.
All the bikes except Classic 500(due to lack of gizmo) are good in their own way under Rs.2 Lakh range.
Any reason why Mojo is excluded?

If none of them is impressive, the you would have to wait for next set of releases(atleast another 6 months) like HX250R,G310R/Akula,Pulsar CS400 or Gixxer 250 etc.