294: Highway Cruising Made Easy on my Brain

I've been reading more silly stuff on motorcycle message boards the last few days. The hot topic seems to be other WR-250X (and WR-250R) riders being concerned with riding their bikes on the freeway and wondering if the bike will be turning too many engine RPM for comfort. Basically, the people are asking things like, "How many RPM will my bike be doing while running at 75mph" , or, "What sprockets should i be using if i ride a lot on the freeway?" This is all to do with their concerns that they will somehow hurt the bike by revving it at what they feel is too high of an RPM for miles at a time. Either that, or the sound coming from the muffler just annoys them. Or both. I think they're worring about nothing, and basically are trying to make the bike into something it's not. I really think most of these riders should spend the time learning how their bikes are put together and how to maintain the bike because servicing the air filter once every year, for example, isn't enough, Bucky. You don't hear these guys talking about something as important as that, but instead, they work themselves up over this highway nonsense. A WR-250X (or WR-250R) is a 250cc bike. You know that. Well, a 250cc bike simply is not going to be able to putter down the freeway at idle speed RPM and yet still have any kind of acceleration if you were to suddenly twist the throttle. The bike makes decent power off idle, but since a 250 is considered a small engine, it's off-idle low-end power still isn't enough to pull the tall gearing that these guys seem to want for the highway. So, these guys riding these 250cc bikes seem to want their bikes to putter along at low RPM at 75mph, but the engine's power characteristics make that a silly thought because you'd basically need a 9-speed transmission to make the jumps from gear to gear realistic to get a top gear that tall. In other words, if the gear ratios allowed the bike to putter along at 75 at a really low RPM that would satisfy these guys, 1st gear would end up being rediculously tall, making taking off from a stop a more difficult thing, not to mention the jump from gear to gear would be silly. On top of that, and most importantly, the reason you don't see the manufacturers building the bikes like that is because it would be plain ol' stupid to do so. Why do you really expect a small bike like a single-cylindered 250 to idle along at 75mph? Do you really think that's how it's supposed to be ridden? Do you think you are somehow damaging the engine by revving it into it's powerband as you cruise down the highway? Yes, folks, the WR-250X and WR-250R have enough low-end power to make riding them easy, but the real power, built by the Yamaha factory in Japan, is in the upper half of the usable range of RPM. This includes while riding down the freeway. This seems even more silly because the way the bike comes stock is already geared much taller than it needs to be, so you'd think that these highway riders would be satisfied with that. Nope. They want the RPM to be even lower. That's the funny part. I have a buddy and old riding chum who is basically like this - he's worried that riding a small bike on the freeway for miles on end will result in having to do an engine overhaul by the end of the day. Comical to me, but that's basically his feelings on the subject. He's owned and ridden street bikes for years that were just as notorious as my WR-250X for needing to have the engine revved to reach it's real power, but he would never rev them. Ever. This was because his natural instinct told him that doing so would hurt the engine in short order. He got that way from having basically junk bikes that were not running correctly quit running on him way back when he first got into motorcycling, and having the bike quit and having to push it home some miles stuck in his mind. Basically, he came to believe that if he revved the bike too much for too long, he'd break it. He feels that way to this day. Motorcycle riders come in all varieties, that's for sure. :) Off to jerk, -John