Yes, a nice review. I agree that the baby DL is more than adequate as a town bike, and would certainly make a great commuter - something which I thankfully no longer have to do. I bought mine last month, new, with OE Suzuki panniers, for less than £4k from Thunderroad. Of course they charged for delivery, but even so I think it was bargain. If you take a look on-line you can still find several up for sale - mainly pre-reg. Certainly Thunderroad, Robinsons and Cupar up in Fife all still have them advertised at just under the £4k mark. Interestingly there don't seem to be many genuine second hand models around, so either people keep them, or very few have been bought.
I bought mine because I was looking for something lighter tham my GSX and which I would be happy riding for longer in the year, past the point where the GSX would be tucked up in the garage. Over the years I have owned a shed load of different low capacity bikes (back in the days when I /was/ commuting) so I have no problem with them. Horses for courses. I don't need a 1250 to potter about on or nip down to the shops. Three of my friends own RE Himalayans - one of them even tours Europe on his with his wife riding pillion. So I considered one of those. They have similar power characteristics, but of course more torque and lower in the rev range. But I think the Himalayan is pig ugly - and if I were going to be buying a new bike, I figured it might as well look good. I think the DL does. It even has a "big bike" presence and certainly doesn't look like a 250.
I first rode a DL a couple of years ago when I was given one as a loan bike by my local dealer (CJBall in Norwich, excellent dealer and well recommended). I had it for a couple of hours or so whilst my bike was in for a service and really liked it. Low, relatively comfortable, good seating position and easily quick enough to stay with normal traffic both in town and out on the A47 southern bypass. The one I borrowed toopped out at an indicated 85, and struggled a bit in a head wind, but realistically, how often do you go over 85 anyway?
I am on the short side (5'7" with an inside leg of 30") so most bikes these days are way too tall for me. As an aside, bikes generally seem to me to be unnecessarily tall these days. My GSX has been lowered with Lust racing links, but my old FJ1200 and ZRX12 did not need such modification, nor did any of the other umpteen bikes I owned prior to about 2005, Now most bikes seem to have seat heights of around 830mm or upwards - too tall for me to feel comfortable.
So when I was looking around for something on ebay during the lockdown (well, I had to do something) I kept coming across the DL250 and decided that it was enough of a bargain for me to buy one. So I did.
Mine has now covered around 700 miles and has had its first service. The running in period limits RPM to 5000 which equates to an indicated 42mph and it was a bit of a pain (literally as it turned out) so I kept the bike to the Norfolk country lanes and avoided the A roads. No big deal, that is where it is happiest anyway. I can now take it up to around 7500 RPM which is a much more usable 60 mph and I will give it full throttle after I reach the thousand mile mark. I am hoping that like Mark123's experience, the vibration will ease after that.
The pain during running in was largely the result of the appalling high frequency vibes through the bars - particularly the clutch side. I could only realistically ride for about 30-45 minutes at a time before having to stop and rest my hands. I have the additional problem of fairly advanced arthritis so vibration white finger is really not welcome. Now I don't recall the loan bike having this problem (and I would probably not have bought mine if it had) so I'm hoping the vibes will die down as the engine gains miles and all the running parts bed down. Meanwhile I would love to know if member 12998 has cured his vibe problem, and if so, how. I am looking around for decent aftermarket bar end weights, but very few ads given any indication of the actual weight of the things and I am assumimg that I will need to add signifcant mass to dampen the vibration. Alternatively (or perhaps as well as) I will fit some foam grips such as grip puppys. If anyone here has experience (on any bike) of the grip puppys I would like to hear from them. The only bike I have fitted foam grips to in the past was my GPz 750 back in the early 80s. That had an annoying vibe problem too, but the foam grips I used got soggy (and thus uncomfortable) in the rain. I hope that foam grips have evolved past that problem now.
The vibration comes in at around 4000-5000 and is still there at the 7500 mark I am currently limiting myself to. Maybe it will disappear higher up the rev range, but even if it does I am still going to need something because I will be rding at around the 60 mph mark for most of the time (well, except in town of course....).
So, apart from the vibes, what is the bike like? Really quite nice. As I have said, it looks the part, it is relatively comfortable in the saddle, I can reach the ground without having to stretch or worry and it has phenomenal fuel consumption. Running in (less than two tanks of gas) I averaged 102 mpg. That average has now dropped to about 95 indicated on the onboard computer. I have yet to fill it up for the third time so I cannot yet guage what the actual consumption over the tankfull will have been but I don't expect it to be much lower than 90. As I said, that would make it a superb commuter.
Weight wise it is obviously lighter than my GSX (by about 80 kilos!) but that doesn't actually make it light. 180 Kilos is lardy for a 250 - for comparison the MT07 only weighs 182 and my old GSX 250s (of which I have owned three back in the 80s) weighed about 150 kilos. So "light" is really relative.
The small screen is effective enough at the speeds I have been doing and as I recall it was fine on the loan bike I had a couple of years ago. I have not yet taken my wife pillion so cannot comment on the effect of addded mass, but in any case the bike will never set the world on fire performance wise - but that is not its point. The panniers are useful, if a bit on the small side. They have internal capacity of 20 litres each side (for comparison my GSX has 35 litres each side and a 45 litre top box - and even that is not enough for my lady wife when we go on our hols). So realistically I cannot see me touring Europe on it with my lady, we'll leave that to the GSX. But, if I can get rid of the vibes then I will certainly consider taking the DL on a longer trip in the UK.
Try one. You might like it. And if you do try one, let me know if it vibrates!
Cheers
