Passes & Canyons Blog

OK, this particular post is not for all of you who already ride, but it might be for some buddy of yours who you’ve been working on to get a bike. Try this logic on them. Tell them it’s really easy to have a motorcycle free of charge.

No, I don’t mean come hop on and ride away with no money changing hands. I’ve done the math so you don’t have to and what I’m going to show you is how $4 gasoline presents an opportunity.

Let’s say you have never owned a bike and you want to start out easy. First, pick a day at random. How about today? OK, I went over to craigslist.org and clicked on the motorcycle link just to see what people have for sale. There are several good-looking bikes that would do well for new riders. Here’s one many newbies might find very interesting:

The owner of this 1981 Honda CM250 with 7,000 miles on it is asking $1,400. From what the guy says, and from the photos, it looks like a very clean, very well-maintained bike. One possible issue you would definitely want to check is that, with that few miles in that amount of time, the carbs may need cleaning. But he says it runs great, so maybe he took care of that already. And he says it get more than 60 miles per gallon.

OK, now let’s do the math. What kind of gas mileage does your car get? I’m going to use some fairly conservative figures here. Let’s say your car gets 25 MPG. We’re hoping to err on the high side. Then let’s err on the low side with the bike and just say 60 MPG. That’s a 35 MPG difference.

Then figure an even $4 for gas. In 1,000 miles it would take you 40 gallons of gas in your car, at a cost of $160. For the little Honda it would be 16.7 gallons, costing $66.80. That’s almost $100 less. Again, for convenience, let’s just round that off to $100. So, in round figures, for every 1,000 miles you drive you could ride this bike and save $100.

How many miles do you drive in a year? Is 14,000 a fair number? If you did that full 14,000 on the bike, in the space of one year you would save enough money on gas to purchase the bike. Your own motorcycle, for free!

OK, we know you’re not going to replace all your driving with the bike. In the winter most of us prefer the warmth of a car. Plus, when you go places with other people along a bike just won’t do, usually. And hauling eight bags of groceries on this bike would not work.

Well then, let’s say it takes you two years to pay off the bike. Or heck, even three years. Is that so horrible? You still get the bike essentially for free, plus, in the meantime, your daily commute has become a lot more enjoyable.

Then, if gas prices continue to go up, you’ll pay off the bike with your savings in even less time. I read yesterday that some “experts” are expecting oil at $200 per barrel in the not too distant future.

Of course, we can’t all buy this one bike. But there are a lot of used bikes for sale out there. And let me say this about buying a used bike: Don’t be afraid of used bikes. You can get some great deals, but of course you have to be careful, just as you would buying a used car. I bought my 1980 CB750 Custom for $900 with 19,500 miles on it. It gets an easy 45 MPG. I’ve ridden it for 19 years now and if I wanted to sell it I’d probably ask $700, so at some point in a bike’s life the depreciation becomes a non-issue.

What else is on craigslist today? You may notice if you look over on the left that I now have an RSS feed from that site, so you can see the very latest listings right here while you’re reading this.

For instance, there’s a 2006 Suzuki M50 with 6,400 miles on it. This is an 800cc bike that is fuel-injected and has shaft drive. I found comments from owners of these bikes and it is considered an excellent starter bike. The owner is asking $5,900 for this one.

Then there’s a 2004 Yamaha FZ6 with 12,000 miles at $4,000. He says it gets in the high 30s. Another good starter bike.

If you’re the Harley type there is a 1999 FXD Super Glide with 11,500 miles for $6,000. He doesn’t say what the gas mileage is but you can do some research and find that out.

And then there’s a 1983 Yamaha Virago 750 with 12,000 miles for $2,000. He says it gets 43 MPG.

You get the picture. Take the numbers and play with them. Maybe your car gets much worse gas mileage. Maybe you drive a lot more than 14,000 miles a year. Or maybe you don’t. I’ll tell you one thing, though. I felt pretty happy today when I filled the tank on my Concours and the bill came to just $16.52.

Biker Quote for Today

Never mistake horsepower for staying power.

Man oh man! Gas for $4 a gallon! Sure would be nice to get, oh, about 80 miles per gallon. Well, some people do. But you can bet they don’t do it in a Hummer.

On the other hand, take that little scooter next to that green Kawasaki in the photo below. That person is getting around 80 MPG. And probably having more fun getting to and from work than they ever have before.

Even better than that, Yamaha claims that their Vino 125 gets 96 MPG, and the Yamaha C3 is rated at 115 MPG. Now you’re talking saving real money!

Of course, there are some trade-offs. Those two little Yamahas don’t have much speed and you can’t take them on the highway. However, some bigger scooters don’t cost a lot more than those and can hit top speeds of 75 or more. It’s always a matter of trade-offs.

So, what kind of gas mileage does that Kawi guy get? On a sportbike like his (or hers, you never know) he’s surely in the 40-50 MPG range. The fact is, most motorcycles will get mileage in that approximate range, even the bigger ones. For example, I get around 45 MPG on both my Honda CB750 Custom and my Kawasaki Concours. A Honda Goldwing, one of the biggest bikes on the road, can get up to 40 MPG, although it does have six cylinders and therefore is not as efficient as the more common one-, two-, three- or four-cylinder bikes.

Another big road bike, the Harley-Davidson Road King, is rated at 54 MPG on the highway and 35 in the city. The Yamaha FJR1300A delivers around 40. Honda’s Shadow Spirit 1100 is rated at about 48 MPG on the highway and 38 in the city. (Sorry I don’t have city/highway splits for all these bikes.)

The mileage you get on a bike generally depends on the same three things that determines a car’s fuel efficiency: weight, your driving habits, and engine size. The big six-cylinder bikes eat more gas than a V-twin, but any bike with six cylinders is also a heavy bike. For a smaller bike, around 1,000 cc’s, you’ll get pretty much the same mileage with a V-twin or an inline four.

And then, as the city/highway splits show, speed matters. While I normally expect 45 MPG from my 1,000-cc Concours, riding easily on curvy mountain roads has at times given me as much as 55 MPG from the beast.

Do the math. A lot of other people already have. There are a lot more people joining us on the roads on two wheels. Welcome to the club.

Biker Quote for Today

Four wheels move the body. Two wheels move the soul.