Cycle World Long-Term Update

CYCLE WORLD Long-Term Update

HONDA

CRF450R

$227.41

But I'm perfect already

THE ANTICIPATED IMPROVEMENTS TO the 2003 CRF45OR were so huge that we decided not to include last year's model in our long-term test fleet. So welcome aboard, Mr. CRF, and get ready for the ride of your life, because now that Off-Road Editor Jimmy Lewis is done beating you up in our 17-bike MX shootout, we're turning you loose to the rest of the editorial staff. And they might not be so caring...

So far, we’ve just been doing one practice day after another with a couple of races in between. Lewis even got to race with the likes of top Pros Tim Ferry, Grant Langston and Chad Reed at the fourth annual Surfercross this past summer. And there couldn’t have been a better bike to get smoked on! Maintenance so far has consisted of one set of Pirelli MT32 knobbies ($156), oil changes every two or three rides and a tranny flush every other oil change. (Maxima has been the favorite flavor so far.) The air filter is the black eye in the maintenance routine-it takes some serious gymnastics to get the foam filter out from between the subframe rails without knocking dirt into the intake. And speaking of the air filter, we’re using No-Toil oil, cleaner and filter ($41). One cleaning and you’ll know why.

YAMAHA

FJR1300

$367.81

Warp tour

AMAZINGLY, THE FJR1300 HAS cost us nothing in terms of "use tax," otherwise known as speeding tickets.

This is really quite a remarkable accomplishment, considering the high-intensity use this silver bullet has undergone in our “care.” Long flogs are frequent, as are peg-scraping weekenders and even stoplight drags on the way to the office. Maybe it’s the saddlebags that function as some kind of cloaking device that says to the eyes of the law, “The rider of that silver touring bike is conservative and law-abiding.”

Whatever the case, it’s lucky we’ve got full-face helmets with tinted shields so the cops can’t see the wicked and wild gleam in our eyes, or our cheeks deforming from the intense g-force acceleration.

So what have we done to the FJR since our last report? As suggested, just a whole lot of riding. Maintenance has been limited to an oil change, greatly facilitated by the excellent oil-filter location-in plain sight on the side of the engine. Not bad for a fully faired sport-tourer.

Next up? We have in our possession an aftermarket windscreen of dimensions nearly identical to Yamaha’s offering on the ’04 FJR, which is to say 4 inches taller than ’03 stock. It should make for quieter and more comfortable high-speed touring. Clearly, we aren’t out of the speeding-ticket woods yet.

HONDA

Interceptor

$1017.75

Have bags, will travel

IF SHOES MAKE THE MAN, SADDLEBAGS make the sport-tourer. That's certainly been the case with our long-term Interceptor, which is now equipped-finally!-with factory hard luggage.

A $1000 option, the color-matched bags make for a 36-inch-wide rear end. That’s 3 inches more than the ST 1300, which, oddly enough, is wider than the Gold Wing touring rig.

On a recent trip down to San Diego for a concert, Executive Editor Brian Catterson noted, “The saddlebags were kind of hard to mount until I stopped playing ‘Primitive Pete’ and figured out the right way to do it; then it was easy. It’s just different from the usual Givi procedure. Being able to leave my helmet, jacket and gloves in the bags when I went inside was very convenient.” Two weeks later, Catterson rode the Interceptor up to Laguna Seca for a Club Desmo track day and scouting for this summer’s readers’ ride to the World Superbike races, an 800-mile round trip. “On the way up, I noticed that with the saddlebags packed, the bike was squatting in the rear and the front end felt very unplanted,” he wrote in the logbook. “I ended up cranking up the hydraulic shock-spring preload to the max and taking one line of preload out of the forks, which helped immensely.”