A quick update. While riding the WR instead of the CRF250L today I realized how folks can figure out which one they will like more. If one usually stands when riding trails then they will prefer the WR. If one usually sits while riding trails they will prefer the CRF250L. IF you stand 50/50.... well good luck deciding as either bike will please!
What a great thread! I have a question for you guys that have fitted the Yamaha "R" wheels to the "X" so to speak. Is it a straight fit or what's involved? There are a couple of nice second hand WR250X's where I live but no WRR's! So I was thinking of buying a WRX and buying the wheels extra so to speak. Is it a straight fit? Do you need to do any brake mods? Do you need to do any changes to the suspension? How does a WRX with R wheel compare to a WRR so to speak? Thanks!
Blue, The R wheel is not a direct fit because the rotors are different. You can get a 21" front with the correct rotor for the X from either Wheeling Cycle or Warp 9. I use the 21" front with the 17" stock rear and it works great.
Great thread... Good information... I went through this decision process back in November. I bought the CRF. I'm happy with my choice. My off road adventures do not involve a great deal of technical single track. I'm in my mid fifties & I'm a little more cautious than in past decades. I'm now more into exploring & scenery than adrenaline. I think the CRF is a better fit for my goals. One of my main reasons for buying a 250 dual sport was to improve my skills for riding my V-Strom & Versys on my cross country adventures. A side benefit is that the CRF is fun & useful in it's own right, expanding my riding adventures.
Thanks! Is there anything else that is different between the WR250X and R? Is the suspension/geometry/gearbox really all the same? Also - what would be your choice for wheels? Wheeling cycle or warp9? Never dabbled in aftermarket wheels so no clue really. On the wheeling cycle webpage it also says something about not being able to use the OEM odometer when fitting the bigger wheels. Is this true? Sorry for all the questions!
I think the main differences are wheels, brake rotors, caliper bracket, and sprockets. If you want to convert from X to R, maybe you can find someone who wants to go in the other direction, and swap. More info in the WR250R/X thread on ADV, and the WR250 forum
The X and R are the same with different factory settings on the suspension as far as I can tell. I got the Warp 9 front wheel and couldn't be happier, it is a direct swap.
Thanks! Is it worth it going to a 18 rear wheel as well in your opinion? Or is there good 17 rear tires with the right profile available? I'm worried about the chassi being tilted too far backward so to speak Or just drop the forks and be done with it?
If it was me, I'd do the 18/21 combo. One reason being as you said the 21 front with the 17 rear will raise the front more than the 18/21 would. You could drop the forks, but that seems to be counter productive if the height of the bike isn't an issue for you. Also, my DR650 has 17/21 and there just isn't as good as tires available in the 17" rear size. I really wish it had an 18" rear. Plus most of the small DS bikes that use a 100 or 110 rear tire also are in the 18" size. XT225, XT255, WR250R, KL250 (Sherpa), KLX250, CRF230L, CRF250L, etc all use an 18" rear. Not sure what you will find in the 17" dirt size tires. Isn't the 17" rear SM wheel wider than the 18" dirt bike wheel too? That might cause issues with clearance going to a larger 17" knobby tire on the rear?
Sorry I have been away for a while as some of the idiocy on the web gets overwhelming. (no one on this post BTW) So I have been riding the bikes quite a bit and I thought I would give an update. I am almost to 8000 miles on the WR and 1500 on the CRFL. The mileage should be an indicator of the better bike. So the WR is still the best bike out there as far as I'm concerned. It is not the best at everything but I love it. It is the only bike I have or had that I have no desire to sell or replace with something "better". I have done very few mods and this thing is just great the way I have it now. There is nothing I would change. I installed A new chain and Renthal gears as the original was way past due at 6800 miles. I did a non o-ring gold chain with a 13-46 combination. WHAT A TRANSFORMATION! Wow! This made the bike ride so much better off road and yet I can still ride at the sweet spot speed of 72mph. I noticed no difference in MPG which still hovers around 55-60. I put a new chain slider on this morning as the original was toast. This is one problem with the bike. The chain tension on the WR is a hard thing to get right. I have found it best to take loose the rear links and cycle the suspension. The point where the wheel is straight with pivot is the tightest. Adjust the chain at this point to be just a little loose. Then with the link installed take your measurement using the pull down method and measure from a reference point. On my bike with the new gearing it in a moderate pull down force with a measurement of 2" at the back of the bottom of the chain slider. I have the Hennry Reed bend EVO bars with Cycra hand guards. Right now I am running the bald stock front tire with my third rear tire. This time it is a T-63. Which by the way is a great tire not as good at the trial tire in wet road conditions but way faster. I have about 2500 miles on it and have about 3/32" tread in the middle. It is almost gone but I take them down to nothing. I have a skid plate on the bike, a Fast_______ something but can't remember. It is beat to hell and was well worth the $100 it cost. On to the CRFL. So far the only mods to this bike are my lowering mod that I posted about earlier, renthal bars, Cycra hand guards and the taillight mod. It has cost me nothing other than an oil change. It is cheap and problem free. With that said, I am sorry but this bike is a joke. The more we ride it the more we dislike it. There isn't much wrong with it but damn, it just doesn't do much of anything for us. My wife doesn't like it and I can't stand to ride it. She wants a Ninja 300 for the street and a CRF150R for the woods. The other day we were riding deep in the Shawnee Forest. There were creek crossings, mud pits, 2' deep washouts that you had to wheelie over, and down logs. Lindsay kept dropping the CRFL. At on point I watched her try to wheelie the front end over a washout and she few over the bars. I could tell she was getting frustrated. So jokingly I asked her to switch. Keep in mind that she can't even tiptoe on the WR. To my surprise she agreed. Five minutes into the ride I was doing everything I could to stay vertical while she was on my ass. We rode the 10 miles of trail home like this. On many times she rode through areas with no problem that she had previously had issue. When we got home she pulled in the driveway and dropped the WR right on the concrete. I said sorry I guess I shouldn't of had you ride that and she was like, "If I could touch your would never see this bike again as it would be mine". "It makes everything so easy. It is so smooth." I know that this is off road but there is the same unsure unsettling feeling about the CRFL. I would buy a used WR over a New or used CRFL any day of the week. For the record. I would not ever buy a CRFL again. With that said it will work. It will get you from point A to point B. It will do it at a low cost. However, it will do it with little joy and excitement. Isn't that the reason we ride. Don't try and trade joy and excitement for 1500 bucks. It just isn't worth it. Buy the WR
We have a CRF250L (my wife's) and a WR250R (mine) also, but I don't think the difference is quite what ggamster is posting and like everything it really comes down to personal opinion. Honestly, I think the engine on the CRF is sweet and Honda did a great job with that motor making it so smooth and quiet. It's got a nice broad power band where the WRR seems to be more focused in the upper rev range. Now the WRR, does pull better on the top end, but the CRF definitely has the edge on the lower grunt and a broader power band. I'm curious ggamster, but do you think the fact you lowered the CRF so much is leading to the poor handling? I'd have to go back and re-read what you did, but I remember you dropping the rear pretty significantly so your wife could touch? My wife is 5'4"/115lbs so she wasn't squatting the bike much on the stock suspension. She tried riding it stock with just the low SC seat, but she was still to high on her toes to feel comfortable. I was very hesitant about doing the lowering link or re-drilling the shock mount as both appeared to drop the rear of the bike much more then you could ever drop the front to compensate so you would end up with a very poor handling bike with a raked out front end. We dropped the rear preload down so it started to squat for her and then dropped the forks so that the bottom triple clamp was even right where the fork starts to get smaller in diameter. This is basically about as far as you can drop the front forks safely. IMOP, this almost seems like the front still isn't low enough and all we did was the lower the preload so I couldn't imagine actually dropping the rear a good 1 3/4 or even more. There's just no way you can drop the front to match that. According to my wife, the bike is handling great and she's very happy with it. She's starting to get comfortable with the extra height and weight over the XT, so that's good too, but she's really loving the extra power of the CRF and how she can roll on and have power there and roll off and have some good engine breaking. Now for me at 6'4"/250lbs, and a more aggressive rider, the WRR is the bike for me. It's obviously much taller, so it fits me better, but besides that the more aggressive motor fits my riding style better. I don't think the CRF is a bad bike, but the seat to foot peg height is very short for a tall rider and I do think the WRR comes away way better suspended. I still think the CRF motor is a little gem though that Honda did a wonderful job with. Its kind of minor, but the gauge cluster design on the CRF is way nicer and the overall more "modern" look of the CRF is better. However, the CRF parts are definitely cheaper made and its proven that it tends to break stuff when my wife falls over on it. Good thing, replacement parts have turned out to be pretty cheap too. BTW, my wife has actually rode my WRR too. She can dab a toe on one side with the way its setup, but even riding my bike, she still prefers the CRF overall for herself. She loves the motor on her CRF and in the short time she's been riding it, I've seen her skills increase quite a bit from her XT225. IMOP, the CRF just doesn't lead its self to be a well handling bike when its lowered, especially with the lowering link or the re-drilling of the shock mount. There just is no way to compensate for the front end to get it low enough. I think we have ours okay with the lower preload on the rear and the front dopped a bit, but it looks like if you really want a properly lowered CRF, you need to modify the internals of the suspension and end up with a bike setup for your weight with an even ride height front to rear. If my wife continues to grow on this bike and enjoy it, that's probably what we'll do to her's so she has a CRF that fits her and handles as well as it can.
You are right, lowering the back end of the bike makes the handling more stable but slows the steering. I have ridden it back a full height and as I agree it is improved somewhat it still feels like I am steering the bike with a rudder. From the sound of it we are in agreement about the rest of it. As far as the engine goes. I do feel that the CRFL that it has a bit more bottom end than that of the WR. With that said my gearing change changed that. Lindsay was more comfortable when she was first starting out on a bike that you didn't have to gas to let the clutch out as she was just learning. The WR does take a bit more skill to ride but not so much that one could not pickup on the different techniques within a day or two. Now she rides like any experienced rider, making adjustments as each bike requires to gt it to perform properly. It is nice to hear that you enjoy your purchase of the CRFL and I hope that you stay happy with it for years to come. I am simply one voice in a sea of millions and my opinion doesn't mean much as people all over the world are still buying the CRFL and Honda is still making them.
We actually went back and forth on buying a used WRR for my wife also before the CRF and I told her that with one setup for more her ergonomics, she might like it more that she liked riding mine with as tall as it is and setup for me. With the vast height differences between us, there's no way I'd be comfortable on her bike or her comfortable on mine. We also knew that at 5'4", we were going to have to do a heck a lot of lowering on the WRR to get it down to her height and we thought we'd be closer off with the CRF not too far off. I haven't ever tried to lower a WRR, so it might lead to better lowering and certainly its been a popular bike to be lowered since its so tall. Who knows, maybe in the end a lowered WRR might have fit her pretty well too, but at this point, I know I'm not talking her out of the CRF.
Not to beat a dead horse or anything. I just found it interesting as if you look back through the first few post of this long term review you would see that my opinion was much like yours. Then progress to the middle few post we start to form a different opinion. Which brings us to this current posting and the differences. My point is, with new riding experiences and changes in demand, different traits become more desirable perhaps. Which that said Cheap is CHEAP! No way around that one.
True, and that may end up being our biggest dislike also as time goes on. There's no way around the fact the Honda is definitely cheaper built and its not hard to see side by side with the WRR. Honda's playing a gamble with that low price point hoping to pull people away from the more expensive bikes, but there might be a point where that backfires on them. I guess it just depends on how well we can protect it with guards and go from there. A dual sport that doesn't crash well gets expensive quickly over time. BTW, we bought our CRF used and already slightly beat up, so my wife dropping it isn't hurting my feelings too bad.
Say what you want about the little Honda, but don't you think that Suzuki, Kawasaki, and Yamaha now wish they had a world selling bike like the CRF250L for $4499.00. Honda has probably sold more of the new CRF250L's then the other three manufactures combined have sold in the 250's enduro market over the last five years. This is not a knock on the WR250R, it's a nice bike and it's $2300.00 more then the CRF250L and from what I see it's probably worth it. Do you think that Honda was looking at the bike to beat the WR, or the bottom line on the company P&L sheet. John
Now if only Yamaha would make the WR450R with the same tranny as the 250, updated suspension, E and Kick-start and under 250lbs. Street Legal.
We all want that bike, but like I said, it's world sales and I don't think Yamaha or any of the other Japanese manufactures can build a bike like that and it would be profitable for them. All we can hope for is an updated, KLR, DR, DRZ, KLX and that doesn't look too promising. John
You've got to look where Honda is selling these bikes, the USA is likely not their biggest market. In SE Asia this is a big bike, and the characteristics suit the market there. It seems to be popular in Thailand, and has now been released on the Philippines market, where their previous range topper dual-sport was the decades old XR200 5-speed. Price, low seat height and all round ability with good road manners is what sells bikes there. It's being sold around the world as an efficient, affordable, practical bike good for most road and offroad conditions, and as such hits the mark pretty well. In this market they are up against the Chinese, who are starting to make some very good machines in the 200cc range that cost less than half of the old POS XR200 and less than a third of the CRF. When the Chinese can finally solve their marketing and image issues, and get some consistency in their quality (some of the newer models are very good, some of the older ones are horrible), this segment will become even more interesting.
That is a great point. With that said, I don't particularly love the "world market" manufacturing ideals. What works for one economy isn't necessarily what is best for the entire economy. I am a large equipment manufacture and and while a Global product has huge benefits from a profitability stand point. It has great draw backs when compared to a specialty manufacture that can tailor their product to the customers specific needs. I guess my suggestion is to have a base chassis, engine bottom end, wheel sizes, bars, ext. Then tailor the bike to specific needs for selling. In some countries the bike will be the purchasers main mode of transportation and the income of the buyer will be substantially lower than that of an American who will ride this bike as a secondary mode of transportation and makes four times their yearly income. Two very different needs and two very different incomes. Americans as a whole want a quality product at a reasonable price and Honda has succeeded there. With that said Americans also have a style and mindset that is all their own. There is a "cool" factor that grabs a hold of us and it is hard to resist. The company that steps up with all three will be the market leader. You can't fake it. You read terminology like "CRF250F styled", "steel frame that resembles the aluminum one from it bigger brothers" and so on. We as a whole are not dumb (the adventure touring motorcycle buyer) and we can tell a phony. The problem is that the uneducated buy may not notice the differences until it is too late and the purchase has been made. If you run your business with the "get them while you can" method you are bound to loose. That is why Honda isn't the name that it once was. This this has opened the door for companies like KTM to take a HUGE portion of the market. Maybe not world market but defiantly the USA market. Honda will make much more money off this bike alone than what KTM may make this year but that can only last for so long. There is a reason why KTM, Ossa, Betta, GasGas, and Burg are making it. If the Asian manufactures in general would release what Americans want (at-least lump us in the the Europe only market) instead of what the world wants. They could shut the door on the specialty companies.
