What's the worst bike you've ever ridden?

[The Spin Doctor]

A mid-80's BMW R45.

What on earth possessed BMW to produce this gutless, insipid sack of shit I cannot imagine

Was it some learner licence power limit?

It weighed around 450lbs (the same as much more powerful bikes in the range) and had zero torque. Zilch, nada, rien.

I went on a European tour on my K100RT, with another rider on K1100 ... and another on an R45 - with an RT fairing! Top speed was about 65mph.

The 20 kw version was to do with a licence or insurance bracket in Germany, IIRC. The UK model was supposed to be more powerful, at least at first launch, but I do remember that in a multi-bike test with other 400s they were pretty dog-slow. They were launched at much the same time I was upgrading to a 400-F and remember looking at them and wondering about the 'BMW quality' angle myself, but I soon came to my senses and bought the Honda.

[Horse]

My mate Jerry had one when I had a Guzzi V50. The R45 had one saving grace: when we went to a bike event there was more interest in our pair than all of the Japanese sports bikes

[Horse]

wondering about the 'BMW quality' angle myself, but I soon came to my senses and bought the Honda.

My 400F was the most reliable bike I owned.

I almost posted in this thread about my first K100RT, an early one. As the mechanic said: "Most people have a problem - you've had them all." In one spell I had a failure of some sort every month for 10 months. Water pipe, shock, air sensor, water pump, can't remember the rest. Eventually the oil pump failed, that wasn't good. But the thread is 'ridden', not 'owned'.

[The Spin Doctor]

The other bike that sticks out in my mind for being completely awful was the SRZ660 Yamaha.

The bike should in theory have been a corker. It took the great XTZ660 engine incorporating the five-valve cylinder-head, which was light and punchy. And the frame was a modded TRZ250 if I remember right, wrapped up with a sportsbike fairing and riding position. It should have delivered some decent Supermono performance.

The trouble was, the package simply didn't work.

It suffered single cylinder chain chatter, which took away anything much under 3000 rpm, and hit the red line at relatively low revs - not much over 6000 if I remember right - and the rev limiter cut in almost immediately. It left the bike with a very small operating rev range.

Thanks to that, the next issue was the gearing. The bike was capable of around 115 mph but to get there, the final drive ratio had to be raised quite significantly, and IIRC it was also massively over-geared in top. The bike also retained the XTZ gearbox with its very low first gear. That introduced huge leaps between the upper ratios so there was only ever one gear for any particular road speed. You had to rev the nuts off it to shift to the next gear and have it continue to accelerate - half the time, if you changed up, the bike simply slowed down again. Trying to maintain a steady 60 mph meant swapping gears constantly. And whilst it was smooth enough in the middle of the working rev range, it vibrated like a trip hammer as you approached the red line, which you had to do a lot if you wanted to change gear.

When I tried braking hard, the forks twisted thanks to the single disc with no fork brake. The projector style main beam was worse than useless - going from low to high beam, it was like someone turned the lights out.

And being a product of Belgardia Yamaha, the Italian importer, it had Italian chrome, the same sort of stuff that rusted away in seconds in the 70s. Our demo bike has rusty spots all over the exhaust can at 1000 miles where big flakes of chrome were peeling away, despite being cleaned every time it was used. The paint on the tank was awful, cracking and flaking off.

I seem to remember other failures too - rev counter cable and clutch cable IIRC.

This was an official Yamaha demo bike too. We used to take people out for test rides on a couple of different models, so I would ride one then let them swap. It was the bike I really wanted to like... and ended up absolutely loathing when I had to ride it.


.

[mangocrazy]

A mid-80's BMW R45.

What on earth possessed BMW to produce this gutless, insipid sack of shit I cannot imagine

Was it some learner licence power limit?

It weighed around 450lbs (the same as much more powerful bikes in the range) and had zero torque. Zilch, nada, rien.

I went on a European tour on my K100RT, with another rider on K1100 ... and another on an R45 - with an RT fairing! Top speed was about 65mph.

The 20 kw version was to do with a licence or insurance bracket in Germany, IIRC. The UK model was supposed to be more powerful, at least at first launch, but I do remember that in a multi-bike test with other 400s they were pretty dog-slow. They were launched at much the same time I was upgrading to a 400-F and remember looking at them and wondering about the 'BMW quality' angle myself, but I soon came to my senses and bought the Honda.

My exposure to this impostor for a motorcycle came on a 4 day tour of France with Superbike magazine. I was the photographer. The choice of bikes was fairly dull, with the standout bike (for me) being a Honda XBR500. It was everything the R45 wasn't. It was light, handled sweetly, had decent brakes and a responsive, zippy motor. The two other bikes were a Yamaha XJ900 shaftie and a Kawasaki Z650 (also a shaftie, I think). The R45 was very clearly the red-headed stepchild of the bunch, but I suspect it would also have been the same in any group of bikes.

I hated it with a passion.

[weeksy]

Was it some learner licence power limit?



I went on a European tour on my K100RT, with another rider on K1100 ... and another on an R45 - with an RT fairing! Top speed was about 65mph.

The 20 kw version was to do with a licence or insurance bracket in Germany, IIRC. The UK model was supposed to be more powerful, at least at first launch, but I do remember that in a multi-bike test with other 400s they were pretty dog-slow. They were launched at much the same time I was upgrading to a 400-F and remember looking at them and wondering about the 'BMW quality' angle myself, but I soon came to my senses and bought the Honda.

My exposure to this impostor for a motorcycle came on a 4 day tour of France with Superbike magazine. I was the photographer. The choice of bikes was fairly dull, with the standout bike (for me) being a Honda XBR500. It was everything the R45 wasn't. It was light, handled sweetly, had decent brakes and a responsive, zippy motor. The two other bikes were a Yamaha XJ900 shaftie and a Kawasaki Z650 (also a shaftie, I think). The R45 was very clearly the red-headed stepchild of the bunch, but I suspect it would also have been the same in any group of bikes.

I hated it with a passion.

You must have some stories, pictures, something based upon that job!

[mangocrazy]

I have a sneaking suspicion that Superbike mag kept all the photos I took, as they paid all expenses, and that was the deal. I've still got a paper copy of the issue somewhere - I'll try and find it. There were five of us, Tony Middlehurst (Editor), John Cutts (Deputy Editor, later Editor, now deceased) and a guy and his wife whose names I simply cannot remember. He and his wife monopolised the Z650 all the way through, so there were effectively only 3 bikes in the 'pool' for Tony, John and myself to share around. I never got to ride the Z650, but quite liked the XJ900. It had far more grunt than the other bikes, so was probably the easiest to ride. I've already made my feelings known about the BMW, but the XBR suited me the best, sir...

My overriding memory was of rain, rain and more rain. And this was in France in mid-August. I was mortified. Riding the BMW in the wet was horrible; I was expecting to crash at every corner. It was so gutless that the other bikes left it for dead even without trying, so whoever was riding it had to ride at 10/10ths just to keep up. I know that Tony shared my loathing of it. John tried to put a positive spin on it (he was a BMW-phile) but wasn't fooling anybody, especially as he only rode it once and promptly dumped it on me afterwards.

What made it worthwhile were the expense account meals. Quality nosh and plenty of good wine. I remember stopping for lunch in St Emilion and not departing until well past 3 p.m. We used the afternoon Portsmouth - Caen crossing on the way out and then had to scramble to find food and lodging for the night when we arrived in France at 9 p.m. There was pretty little (if any) forward planning and every day's overnight stop was a random choice. We got about as far south as the Dordogne and then basically turned round and went back. The best was a stay in the Vieille Auberge in Souillac. Top quality food and local wine - lovely. I do know that Tony was getting increasingly worried by the way the expenses were mounting up and I suspect the tour was truncated due to the way we were munching and quaffing our way through his allowance.

Happy days.

[rossm]

Honda VFR800, what a piece of s.............

[mangocrazy]

Honda VFR800, what a piece of s.............

I'm intrigued - I never liked the look of them compared to the earlier models and only ever rode one around Oulton Park paddock, but what was so bad about them? The first VFR750 (the RC24) I love to bits and I also owned the second version of the RC36 (with the NACA style ducts) and that was a fine motorcycle, if not as involving as the earlier model. It seemed to me that Honda lost the plot with the 800s, but don't have any experience to back that up with. They did get the styling badly wrong though, especially following on from the later RC36.

[Skub]

Honda VFR800, what a piece of s.............

I'm intrigued - I never liked the look of them compared to the earlier models and only ever rode one around Oulton Park paddock, but what was so bad about them? The first VFR750 (the RC24) I love to bits and I also owned the second version of the RC36 (with the NACA style ducts) and that was a fine motorcycle, if not as involving as the earlier model. It seemed to me that Honda lost the plot with the 800s, but don't have any experience to back that up with. They did get the styling badly wrong though, especially following on from the later RC36.

ISTR Honda went away from gear driven cams back to the good old cam chain,for the 800. Given Honda's history with cam chains/tensioners,that can only have been a money saving ploy. I also recall the 800 was more gutless low down and more revvy up top and that upset lots of VFR fans at the time.

[mangocrazy]

I'm pretty sure that the first 800s still had gear driven cams, but the engine was based on the RC45 with its side mounted gears rather than the VFRs (and RC30's) centrally located gear train. When the 800s got VTEC the gear drive was dumped and went back to chains. At that point they ceased being a 'real' VFR in my eyes. The 1200 even regressed to SOHC, although Honda typically branded it 'Unicam' and even made a selling point of it...

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

VFR800s will wheelie at over 100mph and can lap Snetterton faster than most people in this forum can ride them.

The only thing to dislike on them is the linked brakes.

[KungFooBob]

Viffers sound lovely on a loud pipe at full chat, shame the people who buy them tend to not do loud pipes.

[IanB]

Mine has to be a CCM scrambler thing I tried once from a mate of @G.P and @IanB

It was so so bad it defied words!

I honestly thought it was going to kill me.

Yep, that was a quality piece of British engineering & no mistake.

[weeksy]

Mine has to be a CCM scrambler thing I tried once from a mate of @G.P and @IanB

It was so so bad it defied words!

I honestly thought it was going to kill me.

Yep, that was a quality piece of British engineering & no mistake.

@IanB you recall exactly what model it was matey?

[IanB]

Mine has to be a CCM scrambler thing I tried once from a mate of @G.P and @IanB

It was so so bad it defied words!

I honestly thought it was going to kill me.

Yep, that was a quality piece of British engineering & no mistake.

@IanB you recall exactly what model it was matey?

I'm trying to erase the memory but it was an FT35

[Dickyboy]

Probably the worst was my old RD125 when I was an apprentice, if it rained it would cut out and I never found the fault, so it made me late for work a few times and it was quite common to see me pushing it home too.

My TS100 did that, 50p for a waterproof spark plug cap fixed it., I mean why would suzuki think such a thing was necessary on a trail bike

[GuzziPaul]

Neval Minsk 125. Bought for £25 after I'd crashed my RD400. Put the shocks of my RD on the back for some reason used to ride it round an old quarry. Rode it from Beveley up to Newcastle and back 100+ miles each way overtaken by lorries up hill and overtake them back down hill. The headlight lens was smashed and you could see more by the light of the moon at night. Went camping on it two up. to the Yorkshire Moors. My mate had to get off and run behind when going up steep hills.
Think I sold it for £25 and got a Suzuki TS250ER.

[G.P]

I'm trying to erase the memory but it was an FT35

IIRC didn't you say his mates identical FT35 was completely OK to ride?

i recall it being ok when you had the throttle fully open, but otherwise it had very peculiar handling characteristic!

[Taipan]

A BMW F650 Funduro. Quite HTF it had fun in its name I'll never know. I dropped the almost as hideous KTM LC4 to Brackens and actually paid to hire the thing so I could ride into work. It was a horrible gutless, wheezy fecking thing with ponderous steering too. I think it was a cunning move on Brackens part as it made me half like my LC4 when I got back onto it!