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

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I had a Slingshot GSXR750 that did that over winter (the bearings rusted up in a garage) I didn't know until I got the first roundabout, it wasn't that bad to ride once you got to a reasonable speed, I had to ride it to the dealers to get the bearings changed.

[weeksy]

That said, that BMW R1200 wasn't much better last week, I am still not convinced there isn't something wrong with it.

Wasn't the concensus that the tyre pressures were probably too low and causing the handling problems?


Any, back OT, two: a Honda 125 trials bike with a bent frame and my sister's Twiggymobile Honda 50.

The 50 was not only horrible but scary too - going along the A30 at 28mph with artics thundering by.

I'm not convinced still that the pressures were low enough to make it that terrible. I've ridden bikes with 15psi and whilst they felt bad, they were nowhere near as bad as that thing.

[Rockburner]

That said, that BMW R1200 wasn't much better last week, I am still not convinced there isn't something wrong with it.

Wasn't the concensus that the tyre pressures were probably too low and causing the handling problems?


Any, back OT, two: a Honda 125 trials bike with a bent frame and my sister's Twiggymobile Honda 50.

The 50 was not only horrible but scary too - going along the A30 at 28mph with artics thundering by.

I'm not convinced still that the pressures were low enough to make it that terrible. I've ridden bikes with 15psi and whilst they felt bad, they were nowhere near as bad as that thing.

Heavier the bike, the more the pressures will make a difference. I think BMs seem to be a touch more sensitive to low pressures too, couldn't say why exactly.

[Demannu]

Kx420 mxer
It was evil personified.
Peaky a/c motor that would either wheel spin or wheelie, then as it's piece de resistance, seized mid air so spitting me off when I landed.
At least my PE400 handled so badly you couldn't use the power.

[v8-powered]

NT700 Deauville - vibey, slow, ponderous handling. As much as I bought it for a purpose and wanted to like it for that job, I just couldn't.

[Yorick]

3 spring to mind.

CB250T
748 red thing
GSXR400

All nasty things.

[Dickyboy]

Suzuki vx800, under powered, under braked, handled like shit and to top it off would routinely dump the contents of the petrol tank into the sump resulting in a spray of two stroke being expelled from the breather onto the back tyre.

[Bigjawa]

That said, that BMW R1200 wasn't much better last week, I am still not convinced there isn't something wrong with it.

Wasn't the concensus that the tyre pressures were probably too low and causing the handling problems?


Any, back OT, two: a Honda 125 trials bike with a bent frame and my sister's Twiggymobile Honda 50.

The 50 was not only horrible but scary too - going along the A30 at 28mph with artics thundering by.

I'm not convinced still that the pressures were low enough to make it that terrible. I've ridden bikes with 15psi and whilst they felt bad, they were nowhere near as bad as that thing.

Funny front end BMW's are really funny about tyre pressures, and if it has the electronic suspension, comfort mode exacerbates the problem.

Back to the original question, worst bike would be the XJ600N. Slow, ponderous, dull, boring, bad handling, uninvolving pile of shite that had me longing for the foibles of a kanckered Superdream.

[Druid]

CZ250

That's spoiled my Xmas, remembering that

[Ditchfinder]

Srx600, slow, vibey and you needed to be a contortionist to ride it. Brakes were as bad as a 70's Honda.

[Newey]

Suzuki TM250 crosser, open throttle, fuck all fuck all, turn around to look to see if chain was off then bam the powerband kicks in for abound 1000 revs hoisting a wheelie.

[DefTrap]

Cx500 with sidecar. A friend bought it before he had his licence (or even ridden anything to be honest) and persuaded me to ride it home for him. I mean bikes with sidecars are a mad ride and I wasn't going far, so I never really got the chance to fully explore how poor a CX was at pulling a sidecar . But it wasn't enjoyable and the handling was obviously horrible.

To his credit, as soon as his paperwork was in order, the guy immediately took it round Europe for 6 months.

[Potter]

I'm struggling to think of a bike that was truly awful in the sense that I wish I'd never ridden it.
I wish I'd never bought an early R6, that was a dull revvy thing, and I made the same mistake with a VFR800 that was incredibly good as a commuter but had no soul.

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.

[The Spin Doctor]

A very early no-name Chinese 50cc scooter. The local bike shop did us a deal on a pair for the bike school which for some reason the idiot guy I worked with bought them without consultation. Since he'd sold our Piaggio Zips for more than the Chinese bikes cost he thought it was a really smart deal.

The batteries were DOA, and the warranty claim was laughed off as in "we'll order them but don't expect them to arrive this summer". They stalled continually and refused to restart, and even the replacement battery was so tiny you could only spin the engine half a dozen times before it was time to try the kickstart, whereupon you discovered that if the battery was too flat, you couldn't kick it over fast enough to generate a spark. The first few CBTs were a disaster as a result with some v unhappy customers. Replacing the Chinese plug with an NGK helped enormously and at least allowed us to complete CBT road rides without calling the van out, but they were never reliable runners. And the indicators only worked if you were moving - they stopped flashing at traffic lights.

The final straw was a month or so into our ownership when the front brake shoes on both bikes delaminated and jammed the front wheel. Fortunately, it happened to me when I was riding the bike from our lock-up across the grass to the training area - I just had a slide and kept it upright. But Russell wasn't so fortunate - he was mid e-stop demo and crashed quite hard.

The bikes went back to the dealer with a not fit for purpose claim - which of course they disputed and offered us trade-in prices minus damage repair which we rejected. We got another pair of Zips. I think we were still waiting on a settlement when I left.

They were the sort of Chinese bikes which have given the country such a bad rep.

[Skub]

Most bike have some redeeming features,after all how far wrong can you go with two wheels and an engine?

Most of the bikes I didn't enjoy had age related issues,so maybe unfair to compare to a fresh example. There are a couple of exceptions.

Honda CB250 G5. Man what a clunker. Slow as fook,handled like a sofa,even at the pathetic speeds squeezed out of it. That's before you get to the reliability concerns,camchains,soft top end and electrics which lay down at a hint of damp air. This was a brand new bike. A low point for Honda. Every stroker of the day left it for dead.

BMW K1000RS. Another utter dog. Slow,heavy with ponerous handling,inadequate brakes and generally unpleasant to ride,I couldn't wait to get off.

BMW R1200. Probably not a bad bike in itself,though plenty of reliability/poor build quality issues. I just hated everything about it. I'd owned and loved an R90S for a good few years,so I'm not anti Beemer,but I think I'd give up bikes if this was all you could buy. I hate adventure bikes anyway,so maybe the thing was on a loser from the start.

Back when the ZZR1100 was the performance king,I bought a freshly written off one with few miles on the lump. The rider was killed when an artic rolled on him and the bike,so the frame was broken and the bike was only scrap value. The plan was to make something special,but as it turned out a couple of blokes offered me money I couldn't refuse,so I sold it on stripped down. I had two other ZZRs sitting there!

They had work done on the engine,blueprinted and gas flowed,etc. What they didn't do was anything with the stock suspension,plus they welded up the smashed frame and nailed it all back together.
They both arrived down one day and convinced me to take a run on the finished article. I have to admit it looked well. Riding it was a different matter. Over 120 an unsettling weave came to the fore and quickly headed to slapper territory,it properly put the shits up me. A monster engine,but too scary to use. I mentioned this when I came back and they agreed it did get a bit lively,but just blatter on anyway. I often wonder if that bike took out any other folk.

[Bigjawa]

Back when the ZZR1100 was the performance king,I bought a freshly written off one with few miles on the lump. The rider was killed when an artic rolled on him and the bike,so the frame was broken and the bike was only scrap value. The plan was to make something special,but as it turned out a couple of blokes offered me money I couldn't refuse,so I sold it on stripped down. I had two other ZZRs sitting there!

They had work done on the engine,blueprinted and gas flowed,etc. What they didn't do was anything with the stock suspension,plus they welded up the smashed frame and nailed it all back together.
They both arrived down one day and convinced me to take a run on the finished article. I have to admit it looked well. Riding it was a different matter. Over 120 an unsettling weave came to the fore and quickly headed to slapper territory,it properly put the shits up me. A monster engine,but too scary to use. I mentioned this when I came back and they agreed it did get a bit lively,but just blatter on anyway. I often wonder if that bike took out any other folk.

Years ago, I bought a tunes to the ballix VTR firestorm that had a clean fortune spent on it engine wise, loads of Moriwaki bits, close ratio box, even came with floppy disks for the programmable ignition, it would only run on Super and I know VTR tanks are tiny, but this thing used a tenner of fuel to go from Forestside to Newcastle which is about 30 miles. Back when fuel was something like 85p a litre.

It had flat bars and was an absolute animal, but there was always something about it I didn't trust, once you got to silly speeds it always seemed like it was just waiting to fire you off, it's the only bike I never had the balls to "ride through it"

Bloke from down south came up and offered me stupid money for it to do track days, I nearly bit his hand off. I later heard he had a massive accident on it and was in a coma for a while.

[Skub]

Years ago, I bought a tunes to the ballix VTR firestorm that had a clean fortune spent on it engine wise, loads of Moriwaki bits, close ratio box, even came with floppy disks for the programmable ignition, it would only run on Super and I know VTR tanks are tiny, but this thing used a tenner of fuel to go from Forestside to Newcastle which is about 30 miles. Back when fuel was something like 85p a litre.

It had flat bars and was an absolute animal, but there was always something about it I didn't trust, once you got to silly speeds it always seemed like it was just waiting to fire you off, it's the only bike I never had the balls to "ride through it"

Bloke from down south came up and offered me stupid money for it to do track days, I nearly bit his hand off. I later heard he had a massive accident on it and was in a coma for a while.

Yeah,sometimes with certain bikes you just know.

[Bigyin]

Wasn't Merv our resident expert on these? Wonder if he's still kicking about in the world?

Yup he is, still in touch a lot and he is still a courier controller ...... OB still has his TDM on the road despite it being sat up for years it passed an MOT last year

Worst bike i ever rode was a nearly new Yamaha Bulldog as a loan bike when a ZX6 was in for service. Shop lads were giggling when it was brought round so i knew it wouldnt be that good. Within minutes i hated it. Gutless, awful handling and despite 1100cc just boring as fuck. It is the only bike i have had as a loaner that i put in the garage as soon as i got home and it stayed there till i picked up my ZX6

[mangocrazy]

A mid-80's BMW R45.

What on earth possessed BMW to produce this gutless, insipid sack of shit I cannot imagine. It produced fractionally over 30hp (allegedly) and had difficulty even dragging its sorry arse off the line at traffic lights. It needed two-stroke levels of skill to launch, but gave nothing back in return. It weighed around 450lbs (the same as much more powerful bikes in the range) and had zero torque. Zilch, nada, rien. When I say that my bike at the time was a tuned RD350LC, you can understand the disgust, antipathy and loathing I felt for this appalling excuse for a motorbike. The front end of the bike was raised up in the air, chopper stylee and the rear was low. Very low.

As a result it handled like a plate of sick; the front tyre (a ridiculously hard compound Pirelli SuperTouring) gave absolutely zero feedback, and combined with the power and torque-free motor was the motorcycle equivalent of pushing a supermarket trolley. Up the escalator. You never had any clue as to where the front end might be heading at any moment in time. I had to thrash the living daylights out of it to even stay in sight of the other riders, all the while wondering if I might be on my arse at any moment. Oh, and it rained. It rained and it rained and then it rained some more. In France, in August. I felt horribly cheated.

If I was ever invited to do a Room 101 list, that piece of crap would be first on the list. It was truly, definitively awful.

[The Spin Doctor]

A mid-80's BMW R45.

Someone I trained with owned one. He believed he'd bought BMW quality. I remember riding away from the venue one evening and seeing his R45 comprehensively blown away at the lights... by a 250 Superdream.