Suzuki V-Strom 250SX

It's a fantastic bike for the really low cost. Comfortable, capable of doing any speed limit in Australia, and incredibly fuel efficient below 110km/h. I get 40-50km/L around 80km/h and about 35km/L at 100km/h. This drops to 25km/L at 110km/h though. It's cheap to run and insure. It's very light making handling great, and is capable off road,… Read more

stock standard. Would be a fantastic LAMS bike to new riders, but experienced riders could have some fun too.

It's no 1000cc though, don't expect to be doing 110 at the end of an onramp 2up. It's also a tall bike, I'm 176cm and have issues getting on and can't flatfoot at a stop without some lean. The instrument panel is decent, but harder to see in direct sunlight.

Overall, it's a perfect cheap commuter, farm bike, or LAMS bike. It's 100% worth the ~$6500.

How to lower bike for $20 – Good bike but to high for short people to touch the ground easy, as I am 170 cm. To overcome this problem had to buy shock lowering kit for cfmoto 800mt spring seat from AliExpress to make softer also soften spring tension on adjuster also lowering seat from Suzuki Australia then slide forks up 10mm. now can place one foot flat on ground . Show details

Suzuki V Strom 250 SX (2023) – What a little ripper of a Bike I bought ! Suzuki replaced the prior version in 2023, with this single cylinder motor, new LED headlight and some new plastics and decals. The 2022 version and earlier, had the round headlight assembly and a twin cylinder motor. I'm not speaking of that older one here. I'm a well experienced Rider and could have… Read more

bought a much bigger bike than this 250cc V Strom, which is certainly LAMS approved here in Australia. I thought it would be an interesting comparison to the 650 and 1037 cc V Stroms that I have had in the past and my Honda 500X and Kawasaki 540 Versys too. I saw video's on YouTube and it sounded OK, but one Australian YT Channel, Ride with Warro featured his own one often and he 100% said it was a good buy, and the Old Bloke wasn't exaggerating.

Now to the bike. It's an ADV, and Adventure Bike made originally for the Indian Market and also exported to other Countries. So it's ruggedly built to last and last. I think, but not know, but I suspect the motor is based on older Japanese motors, but now made in India. This motor has cam rockers with shims over buckets, and earlier versions had screw and locknut adjusters. The Owner Handbook asks for these to be checked at 1,000 and every 5,000 Km services. The time spent doing this is not large, but could be costly if done in a Workshop if you are running up the miles. The use of shims is not for the Home Mechanic as where do you get the shims from ?

Screw and locknut of the older version is easy to do at home, so a good low mileage pre 2022 might be the better choice. That said, modern shim type last a lot longer than 5,000 km before adjustments and I do wonder if this figure is just a copy over from the old Handbook ? I asked my Workshop about this when they did the first service, and decided not to check it till the next time. But they said change the oil and filter at 5, 000 as the motor is only oil cooled, not water cooled. If you are a regular slow traffic Commuter, this could be good advice especially in a hot Summer.

The rest of the bike is fairly conventional. Speedo is black background with silver letters. The font size is quite small, and works best when the Sun is behind your shoulder. If you have a full face helmet with a heavy tint, you won't see much, even the larger speed numerals.

The vibrations from the motor are quite pronounced under 4,000 RPM and smooth out the harder you go. The red line is 10,000 and you spend a lot of time between 4 to 6,000 RPM. The Book says it makes peak torque at 8,000 so it's OK to rev it to get the power you need especially up hills. The bike has the Suzuki increase in rev's when you let the clutch out, so it's had to stall, and the gears are pretty close in their ratio's, so there are no dead spots in acceleration up to speed. This is appreciated when lane splitting through traffic. Speaking of which, it is a star at this as the bike is very well balanced for an ADV design which have taller seat heights. Sometimes the use of a 19 inch front wheel produces slow speed wobbling, but Suzuki have got it right with this one.

A lot of the bike is from the Gixxer 250cc road bike. So it's road focused rather than off road soft. Suspension is firm, very firm, compared to the Honda CL500 that I owned early this year. In fact, the front end was stiffer than the rear end. I found on our rough back roads, the front would kick up rather a lot than ride over and through ridges and dips.

My fix was to remove 2 mm from the spacer tubes length in the forks. Now with 2,000 Km traveled, it's still good that both ends now behave the same sweet way. Indian roads must be bad in some places to need such hard spring rates ! On great roads, it handled like a sports bike through the corner turns.

The tyre brand is called MRF, and unknown brand here, but they handle as well as any other, nd they will wear very slowly. The rear tyre is very chunky with the tread size, and I read on an Indian web site that 40,000 Km of use from of the rear was quite common. Less from the front tyre of course.

The windscreen is a token effort. Too much wind over the top and around the sides. Taking it off is not much better either as the duck beak front just shovels up the air onto my upper torso. I'm 1800 mm tall and proportionally framed and this is common with both the V Stroms I have had. To fix this, I added a Givi Aeroflow screen from the V Strom 650.

This was simple to do with some pieces of flat steel bar cut to size and bolted to where the original screen was bolted to. It's a lot wider than the stock one and adjustable higher, but I'm concerned that it flex's a lot and could work harden and fracture the original mounting plate points over time. But it will be OK for the Winter riding period anyway.

So to conclude, what would I change if I was Suzuki ? Nothing much. The design could be tweaked with a better (brighter) speedo, and rubber mounting the motor to the frame. It's solidly bolted and this passes all the vibrations up through the seat.

Bob.

EDIT 02.08.2024 I found the source of the strong vibrations that I mentioned earlier. It was the seat edge contacting the side panel towards the right hand side black seat support block. There was paint rubbed off the side panel hidden by the seat.

I fixed it by going to Bunnings and getting a small 12 item pack of furniture 'anti skid pads'. The support blocks are about 13 mm across, and the self adhesive pads stick onto the blocks making them 1 mm longer. I was very surprised how much vibration was coming from the engine through the seat bending a bit between the support blocks of which there are 5 in total.

Easy fix for $4.20, heh ? It's a so much smoother ride now that I've done 3000KM to date. It took me 2,500KM to find it, I thought it was a trait of a single cylinder engine - but it's all OK now.

Bob.

Final Edit 02.09.2024 Saying goodbye to my little "Ripper". The bike has now clocked up 3, 600 Kilometre's, and in 4 months. I've bought a new V Strom 800 RE as my last purchase for 2024 and I don't have room for 3 bikes. I've really liked the 250 SX a lot. I bought it as a bike to commute through Winter and it did a superb job. It's just a good bike if you travel at 90 KPH, and doing 110 is a bit of a wind blast with big trucks.

Yesterday, I placed two 35mm x 2 mm washers back into the forks to simulate the original Suzuki fork preload. After a few hours riding, I found that I liked the mod I made earlier in the first post (removing 2 mm from the fork tubes). The turn in was better, and the front seemed a lot firmer than the rear. The washers are now gone.

If Suzuki is reading this, can you make the wind screen 100 mm taller ? PLEASE !

The naked Gixxer 250 would be an ideal road bike and I would consider one in a future buy time to go alongside the coming in a few days V Strom 800. Look out for a review on Product Review au to see how that one pans out compared to my now sold GSX8S.

Bob.