Honda VT250

What kind of madness causes a person to buy a rat VT250 with over 41000 miles on the clock? My only excuse was that it was very cheap (£275). The 1986 machine was then a mere five years old and in one hell of a cosmetic mess. Judging by the way the original engine screws had corroded into the cases, I could well believe the owner when he insisted that the motor had never been touched!

Despite its appearance, my brief test ride on the pillion revealed plenty of go and not too many vibes through the pegs. He would not let me have a test ride but agreed to ride the bike to my house - I waited until we got there to hand the money over, there was always the chance that the engine might explode en route. I decided that a thorough clean up was necessary before risking life and limb on the open road.

The oil drain plug was Araldited in and only came out after some vicious and violent attention from the hammer and chisel. What little oil was in the engine was so sludge-like that it took half an hour to drain out. The only way that the plug could be fixed back in was with - you guessed it - Araldite.

After removing half a decade's worth of crud, I managed to get at the top end of the watercooled vee-twin. Despite only having two pistons, all the plumbing makes the engine appear fearsomely complex. Probably why the valve clearances were way out, no-one had had the guts to check them before. Pitted cams made setting the clearances difficult. Ignition and camchains were maintenance free, so that just left the twin carbs to balance, no easy matter as they appeared worn out.

The chassis turned out to need even more attention. The Pro-Link bushes were oval, the fork seals shot and all the consumables in need of immediate replacement. The local breaker was kind enough to sell me most of the bits for next to nothing, although he refused to put the tyres on - what a f..king job! Honda wanted a minor fortune for a set of Pro-Link bushes so the old man was persuaded to give over his engineering works to their production - the recession was such that he didn't have much else to do.

This all took nearly a month to do, along with cleaning up the cycle parts and applying the odd bit of paint. I could have just swung a leg over the bike and ridden it into the ground for a few months, but I have been around long enough not to actively enjoy being thrown off motorcycles due to engine or chassis failure. I had time on my hands and the total cost of regeneration was nicely minimal.

First ride was a bit disappointing. Power was minimal and the chassis was very twitchy. The brakes were wooden and the gearbox full of false neutrals. The second ride was better. More air in the tyres helped and 7000 revs finally found some energetic acceleration. Back home, oil was seeping out of the cylinder gaskets and the exhaust was backfiring, one of the silencers had suddenly developed large holes. Tin sheet and Jubilee clips time.

Serious riding followed, a long weekend of back road hustling. I'm a bit old to need to keep the throttle to the stop and play with the gear lever all the time, but once I'd got the hang of the handling - the bars needed a bit of excessive muscle when entering corners - I could make good time down my favourite roads. Top speed wasn't much more than 90mph; on a bumpy road with slightly soggy suspension, the bike felt like it was about to throw me off, so I probably would not have gone any faster.

The first fuel stop indicated that it was doing little more than 40mpg - such poor fuel economy revealing the true state of the motor. Despite that, I was in a pretty good mood. It didn't last long, the muted growl of the vee-twin on cam suddenly turned into a dirge that threatened to shatter windows. A silencer had fallen off and disintegrated as soon as it hit the road. The engine refused to run below 8000rpm and by the time I hit a city with a motorcycle shop the clutch plates were turning molten. A pair of cheap megaphones solved the problem, albeit causing a flat spot between 3500 and 5250rpm. No great loss as there was sod all power there.

As I became used to the bike I started taking liberties with its handling. The main worry was the way the undercarriage would suddenly dig into the tarmac threatening to flip the bike right off the road. Handling was made even stranger by the odd bit of oil hitting the rear tyre. Like riding on ice, only the low mass of around 350lbs allowed me to wrench the bike away from disaster.

I was quite pleased to get back home after 700 miles of weekend hustling.....the seat quickly flattened out, mixing road bumps with a slight buzz from the vee twin engine; a combination that left me all shook up.

The next few thousand miles went by without too many incidents. I was not too amused to find that the newish rear Metz was worn out after a mere 4000 miles nor the way the calipers liked to seize up, but on a cheapo hack hassles are usually the order of the day.

With 46000 miles done, some fierce knocking noises came up from the top end. I had been doing 1000 mile oil changes and valve adjustments - the cams were looking pretty knackered so I guessed they were on the way out. Rode another 500 miles until camchain rattle added to the frenzy and the speedo resolutely refused to budge beyond 70mph. Nothing for it but to tear the motor apart.

Just about everything inside the engine cases was way beyond reclamation.....only the crankshaft bearings were in good nick. Two hundred quid to a breaker bought a 52000 mile motor but I'd heard it running and there were minimal rattles. This went into the frame after a great struggle but refused to start. Half the street were coerced into giving the bugger a push and after about a quarter of a mile it thundered into life.

Immediately spoilt its copy-book by tearing up the street on full throttle - I'd snagged the cable leaving the damn engine at 12000 revs until I'd hit the ignition switch. This engine ran fine, would put 95mph on the clock, but burned the engine oil at a terrifying rate. Not realising this at first, I almost ran the crankcases dry after a 300 mile run involving a race with a Z750 twin (yes, quite!).

The engine didn't seem to mind until nearly 3000 miles later when the box kept slipping out of gear. I'd be screaming along at 10,000 revs in third or fourth, suddenly finding the engine plunged into a false neutral with the tacho needle bouncing on its stop. The box would then take a dozen or so frantic stamps before it engaged. On several occasions I was stranded during an overtaking manoeuvre, surviving only by sheer luck!

About a week of this madness was all I could take. Ripped the engine out and used the bits from the other motor to replace worn selectors and cogs with teeth missing. The replacements made the box very tight indeed, especially changing up from fourth, but it was a lot better than having to suffer sudden plunges into false neutrals. The rear chain, for some reason, hardly ever needed any adjustment.

Another 1000 miles went by until the smog out of the exhaust became too heavy to ignore. Most of it was down to the rear cylinder, so I tore that off to find that the oil ring was naff. Took half a day to tear it out of the piston. There were interesting score marks in the piston and bore but I ignored them and whacked in a new ring. I used the old gaskets in the reassembly.

The motor was reluctant to fire up but eventually gave into my persistence. Massive oil leaks compensated for the lack of oil being burnt out of the engine - it was dead easy to empty the sump after 150 miles of hard riding. Not that the heap was willing to rev much past 8500rpm.

When the bearings in the Pro-Link started rattling again I decided that it was time to get rid of the VT whilst there was something still saleable. But not before the bike had been flung into a desperate 400 mile round trip. I had little time, so the bike was thrashed all the way, rarely with less than 70mph on the clock.... fuel hovered around 35mpg and the buzz sent both my feet dead by the time I got back home.

I was quite impressed by the fact that it didn't break down. A newish VT would probably be a neat bike, but once they get over 30,000 miles there are so many things that can go wrong with their complex engines that they are not viable as anything other than cheapo hacks.

After that trip, the coolant kept boiling after as little as 20 miles of riding and the spark plugs kept fouling up as the oil rings seemed to have gone again. The gearbox also started slipping out of gear again. I phoned around a couple of dealers, found one who was interested in buying the VT. Gave the bike a good polish, rode gently to the shop and left the engine running (it often needed two minutes on the starter even when hot).

The dealer went for a ride, came back complaining about the way the bike pulled to the left (I'd never noticed it) and that the engine felt like it was about to seize up. I thought he was going to offer me fifty quid, so when he suggested £250 I grabbed it with both hands before he had a chance to change his mind. Came by the shop a week later to find that the VT had been clocked back to 8000 miles and was sporting an £850 price tag. A few days later the bike was no longer in the showroom......I made a mental note not to buy any bikes from that dealer in the future.

Gary Browning

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Whilst all the attention has recently been on Honda and Suzuki's new 1000cc vee-fours, the former has long had a sporting vee-twin in their range. Okay, it's only 250cc and the UK's VT250 was never quite inspiring, but one look at a grey import 1989 Honda VT250 Spada convinced me that it was the business. It had all the edge of their bigger bikes without any of their silliness.

The engine's a similar 90 degree vee twin to the earlier VT250. The biggest difference is that the Spada makes lots more power. 40 horses at 12000 revs! That's obviously good. The bike also weighs a mere 320lbs, feels very compact and easy to throw around. It needs a good work out on the throttle to really shift, but there is a modicum of torque below eight grand, revs at which there's the first surge of real power.

Incidentally, my particular bike ran very lean, was nervous as a cat amongst a pack of dogs for the first ten minutes. The watercooled motor needed time to warm up, and given Honda's sometimes dicey cylinder head designs I had no intention of cowing it into submission by taking the throttle to fifteen grand.

One of the advantages of a lack of cubes was smoothness, even with the throttle to the stop there wasn't any hint of vibration or torque reaction. Quite right, too, at this kind of capacity with a ninety degree vee twin it should be ultra smooth. I came across another Spada owner who was most disenchanted with his machine. We swapped over, he not believing the smoothness and speed of my bike.

His felt like an old dog. Even the handling was naff. Crashed and clocked was my prognosis. Sure enough, he'd bought the bike from a notorious south London dealer, who had a bit of a reputation for hitting customers who complained! He was almost in tears as until then he'd been blaming Honda for a bad design rather than the dealer for malpractice! It's worth getting to know the good grey importers and having an idea how a machine should perform.

The handling of the Spada was close to brilliant. It was both easy to chuck around and nicely stable. The only weak point was that the suspension was marginal. Okay for my nine stones (yes, I know, wimp, but I'm only nineteen) but as soon as the lightest of girls was placed lovingly on the rather minimal pillion perch (brought a bit of colour to their cheeks every time!), the suspension turned to mush. This was Japanese spec stuff, set up for a cushy ride through town. Even with the suspension creaking away on its stops the bike was far from suicidal and could be pushed to the edge of the rather brittle Japlops.

Have you priced mono-shocks of late? Whilst it's possible to buy two old style shocks for around fifty quid, the cheapest mono-shock retails for more than 200 notes. Absurd. Even breakers quoted me a hundred quid for something that might or might not work better than the one I currently had installed. I made do with some heavy-duty springs for the front forks, which added an element of unknown precision to that end.

The bike had 19000km on the clock when I bought it for £1600. General condition was excellent, just the odd patch of alloy corrosion, though the tyres were down to 3mm and the chain had seen better days. The latter did whip around a bit at low revs and contributed to the typical Honda gearchange - they should definitely do some head-hunting over at Suzuki, if they want to get a precise, smooth change. On occasion I managed to bang the box into a false neutral, the rev counter going off the scale (the rev limiter had been disabled), the poor old mill wailing away like it was dive bombing into an early grave.

A new chain and sprocket set went down very well, a dramatic improvement in the slickness of the gearchange. In London I was able to do battle with any number of bigger bikes, the narrowness of the Honda allowing me to scream through the dense traffic at unholy velocities. The front disc brake could be relentlessly hammered when some dumb animal in a cage forgot himself. The brakes being immensely powerful and the bike almost as light as a 125. So much so that it was dead easy to do a stoppie, and I almost had a complete endo wipe-out several times. The way the rubber squeals causes ped's to go into heart attack mode and gets the cops running around in circles in sheer anger.

On the motorway, I could put 115mph on the clock, as long as I got my head down. The nakedness of the bike meant an upright posture resulted in a refusal to go above the ton, although it would hold that speed for cruising. The bike wasn't a sitting target for bored cagers, could keep up with the general flow of motorway traffic. It would even speed ahead if I got down to it, though I was often blasted off the road by some rich bastard in a Merc or Jag. Tossers!

The weak rear shock let the bike go into a gentle wallow in 90mph curves but the little nutcase was basically stable even if it sported a short, 54 inch wheelbase. Good weight distribution, I'd guess. Over on the edge of the tyres it felt a bit frail, but as the rubber was almost bald this was to be expected. A nice new set of Metz's finest would doubtless transform the beast but I have to make my tyres last.

Fuel was cheap at 60mpg, as was road tax. Insurance was a ridiculous £400, some companies wouldn't even give me a quote, despite two years accident-free riding. Many near scrapes but still a major achievement the way I ride. I know a lot of kids who ride without insurance because they just can't afford it. They end up having death races with the plod. Sometimes they win, sometimes they end up in hospital or worse!

Having just emerged from one of our wonderful winters, the Spada's finish isn't exactly intact. Lots of surface corrosion, a rather loud exhaust and a pair of wheels that show every inclination towards dissolving. So much for Honda's famed build quality but I don't suppose they design bikes to last for much more than half a decade.

Overall, the Spada's a brilliant bit of kit, ideally suited to UK traffic conditions. For sure I'd like the massive grunt of a litre vee-twin but it'd be a quick way of getting myself killed or arrested and I could never afford the insurance. The little Honda's a touch more sensible without ever being close to boring.

Alan Sears