Honda Bikes We Have Owned (4)...
We owned three and still own one - all four-strokes....
Honda MSX125
My current and last ride.
This bike is pure fun and is only used to ride around local roads where the speed limit is 80 km/h or less.
Honda CB125S
I bought this secondhand after riding my mate's Honda 125 Trail bike. I thought that a 125cc 4-stroke road bike would be fun to ride.
It was a real pig to start, but ran well when you could get it to start.
From the picture you can see that it has a disc brake on the front. You would think it would pull up on a dime with a disc front brake and such a light bike. Then you would be wrong. It was a mechanical front brake and you would be hard-pressed to feel any decelerating forces even under a fierce grab on the brake lever. It felt like it would be better to drag your feet along the ground. It may have been a fault of this particular bike, but I soon got rid of it. The person I sold it to was given a demonstration of the non-existent braking by showing how it wouldn't even lock up the front wheel on a gravel drive...
Honda XR100
This bike (along with the Kawazaki KXs) provided a lot of fun for our children. We took the children out to a local bike park (Pacific Park) to learn to ride them.
Sometime earlier we had hired a couple of those little bikes with dough-nut wheels for a day and took them to Pacific Park for the children to ride.
The owner, on being informed that this was the first outing for the children, allowed us to use a very grassy paddock away from where the more experienced riders were.
The bikes had automatic transmissions and were probably 50cc.
Each child in turn got their instructions before setting off - go slow - be careful, etc. The two eldest set off at a sensible rate with no dramas.
When it came time for the youngest to have his turn (also after receiving strict instructions to take it slow), he set off with maximum throttle. He careened across the paddock in a straight line and we were wondering what he was going to do when he ran out of paddock.
No matter - just before running out of paddock he hit a rise and came off on a heap. Fortunately nothing was broken - there endeth his first lesson...
After that we bought the XR100 (and later the Kawazaki KXs) and they continued to learn how to ride on them.
The first two pictures show the two elder children (daughter and eldest son) riding in a controlled manner.
The last picture shows youngest son receiving yet another lesson on how to ride within his limits...
But, to be fair, he was pretty young and his feet were about 15cm off the ground when he was sitting on the bike.
Honda XR80
This bike was mainly ridden by me. Even though it was a small bike, because of my 163cm frame, the size of the bike was not a problem.
We went to Hungry Creek bike park a few times with friends.
With my wife's Kawazaki KX100 and this bike, many hours of fun were had at the bike park.