Can you take a 250cc engine (yamaha vstar 250) long distances? (3 day trip)?

A

Alex B

New member
I can only afford a small bike, but I need to make a trip. I wont be riding it long distance all the time. I just need to know if this yamaha vstar250 can take being on the highway all day during this trip.
 
Why couldn't you? Robert Pirsig made his legendary trip from St. Paul to Missoula on a 305 Honda, 2-up with his son. That bike was just a bored-out version of a 250.

Modern 250s are a lot more road-worthy than Pirsig's, and a lot more reliable. There are quite a few riders who have seen a lot of country on the venerable Honda 250 Rebel. A buddy of mine routinely rides a 250 Puch twingle to BMW rallies and to Sturgis, a 450-mile trek from his home. There is a bit of a 250cc touring movement afoot, mostly on dual sports but on new standards like toe Suzuki TU250.
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=201349
Then there's the ubiquitous 250 Ninja, which will hold its own on day-long rides with bigger sport bikes, and which is being ridden in Iron Butt endurance events.

The Vstar certainly ought to do it. Stick to the back roads so you are not tempted to try to keep up with 80mph freeway traffic. The vstar should be fine.
 
When I got in to motorcycling, back in the 1960s, they used to say that there was no real reason a motorcycle needed to be bigger than 250cc. This was in the day before bikers were doing long trips on the freeway. In those days motorcycle touring was back roads and secondary roads where you went usually 45 or 50, sometimes as fast as 60. People routinely crossed the US on 250s in those days and wrote travelogs about it.

Modern 250s are MUCH better than the Britbikes we had in those days. More reliable, more long-lived, much better engineered. There is no reason you couldn't take one on a long trip. BUT you can't just get on the freeway and zoom the whole way at 70 mph. You can do 70, but the bike is beating its little heart out. You don't want to go that fast for more than a few miles at a time.

The secondary roads take longer, but they're more fun, and usually more scenic than the super-slab.
 
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