[Destructo]

Had my first ride out on the VFR on Sunday - I joined a ride-out organised on a VFR forum, which started out 2 junctions along the motorway from me!

We did about 150 miles or so, a lot of which was across some really bumpy roads with strong crosswinds, so the conditions were challenging!

But nevertheless I had a good ride out on the bike. The riding position felt a little odd at first, a bit like but after a short while I realised I was very relaxed on the bike and reasonably comfortable as well. So a good start.

In performance terms, the bike does go well enough and pulls well through the rev range - a few times I looked at the speedo and realised I was going quite a bit faster than I had intended! Obviously it's not as powerful as the Blade, and there's no 7000rpm punch-in-the-face shot of adrenaline to be had - it just pulls progressively to the redline. The engine also develops a nice growl as you give it the beans, which does get a little addictive....

The handling is different to the Blade. It steers really quickly on the skinny comedy tyres. I'm not fully familiar with it yet so I did not push it in the corners, probably about 70% of Blade pace with more to come, but it handled OK. The suspension really struggled on the bumpy roads, but it made it really good fun with trying to fight the cross-winds as well.

Overall I had a good fun ride on the VFR. The pace of the ride was not that quick so despite being the oldest bike on the ride by over 10 years, I had absolutely no problem keeping up (in fact I think it was the lowest capacity bike on the ride).

So so far so good with the VFR - seems like a good buy at the moment, but it's still early days.....

[VFrPiLoT]

What year and size VFR did you get? I ride a 95 750.

[Destructo]

It's an old one - 1988 VFR750FJ. Some pics are here:

My winter bike.....