My budget sucks.
If i'm lucky i'm hoping to find a ninja 250 for maybe $1500 or so, and I dont know what sprocket changes and the rest will cost, but I was guessing they werent $50 jobs. Everything I own except the first car has to be under $8000 or so of additional licensed vehicles including trailers but not bicycles (and even that is pushing it, $6000 be better) until i'm through college and masters courses taken at half time loads or I lose a state health insurance subsidy with lethal consequences.
to bschloop, i'm aware the 250's "can" do those speeds, but what i'm wondering is are they so wound out at that speed that you no longer get the mileage? Or do they get 80mpg and 80mph at the same time? :P I'm told a ninja 250 actually will run 70-75mph all day - i'm just curious what the mpg is at those speeds, as opposed to those running slow. Anecdotes from people seem to indicate maybe 60mpg. Whether the more powerful 250cc cruisers could do better i don't know, a V Star should top at 80mph too im told. Usually I see quoted mileage figures for motorcycles, which seem to be an EPA city cycle, I don't know if anyone tests a highway cycle, or looks into how it drops at higher speeds. That's what i'm really looking for here. Same with cruisers - many can hold the speeds but I don't know what happens to mpg at those speeds. For the 125cc's there are enough travel legs that I can run 55mph that the addition of one, if it gets another 20mpg or something, probably will pay for itself in 3 years. Yet 55 is so close to the 60 these usually seem to top at, I wonder whether they'll get the advertised 100mpg at 55, as opposed to around town. I suppose I can track down each and every single motorcycle looking for forum boards for each one finding those who have tested them like that, but there's dozens of possible models and year variations. :-/
I had someone privately smarmily tell me before to just not drive so much or so fast if I want to save gas or move closer - the reason that's just not possible is that I need to be near medical services and travel to others at least 6 days out of 7 every week which seriously limits my flexibility. Main work, college, and essential side jobs without which I couldn't pay my bills and which fuel eats most of my profit on normally are the why of the rest. If I had 28 hours in the day I could commute slower too. I lose more cutting those things out of my life to just 'not drive' so that's silly. Part of why i'm having to spend so much time thinking up a 'stable' of flexible transportation options to the point I practically have a database, with pages and pages of info and notes i've taken now, is because of the unavoidable need to drive 20-50k miles per year under varying circumstances- work, school, med treatment, side jobs worth doing if I can transport physical objects cheaply enough etc. The more things i'm capable of moving (ie my questions on towing with mpg elsewhere, and heavier vehicles, and making one vehicle do the work of two like a caprice pulling 7-10k) and the less the fuel costs, the more side jobs I can do to better afford my biggest problem of uncovered medical expenses. I just felt I should explain this because someone asked why I was seeking such diverse answers on every level of everything.
Combined with rising fuel costs, I expect to spend more on fuel than rent over the next ten years. Electrical remains an unknown with the shutting of coal fired plants and this 'carbon tax' nonsense, and the infrastructure for public CNG refueling doesn't exist here otherwise the cheapness of that fuel would by itself make alot of things more workable. I'm hoping to try a biofuel project soon where the SVO could provide most of my needs if I dieselize everything but that may or may not work at all and i'll be limited in gallons per month to do everything so even if 'free' fuel I cant run a 3/4 ton Cummins everywhere. I hope to add a vehicle for basically any transport niche that will pay for itself within a couple years, not cost too much up front, and hope to have backup plans for if fuel prices rise impossibly high such that it's better to take 3 hours commuting per day instead of 1hr just to avoid the 2nd job needed to pay for the fuel.
Hence at the moment it's entirely possible I could end up with a 250cc, 125cc, 50cc scooter, and electric assist bike if I can get into each cheap enough (the only thing that isn't an option is human power alone, cant arrive most places all sweaty and panting), and each is able to pay for itself in extra gas savings within a few years or at least should be researched to be options for when gas hits a certain price and looks like it will stay that way for awhile, my spreadsheet says it makes sense to add to the stable. But that's assuming that the real world mpg figures as i'm forced to drive them actually work out. If a Honda Dio 50cc scooter really can pull 144mpg in the real world, that justifies having even if I also have a 100mpg motorcycle. If the 125cc's can get 100mpg at 55mph/it's not overwound, I can use that for enough legs of weekly errands requiring the highway that it's worth having even if I already have a 50cc and a 250cc. If a 250cc can get 70mpg running 75mph that pays for itself over a geo metro.
I hope to eventually aeromod everything but I may not be able to right away unless I get cheap scrap or better fabrication skills. It's also possible if aeromod stretches the capability upwards I might be like the guys with 80cc 80mph 200mpg scooters doing absolutely everything or maybe a 3.5hp chinadiesel in an aeromod scooter will give me that. I can later sell a few things, which is fine, as bikes rarely seem to lose any value. :P Until i'm more confident of my ability to make something like that work i'm still trying to have backup plans though.
Gear changes for everything i'm potentially in favor of, my main quirk is still that desire to stick a trailer behind absolutely everything, since "moving stuff" is half of the miles I need to normally do. If it kills 1st gear starting with a heavier load I may not be able to do it yet i'm still researching how feasible trailering anything by two wheels even is let alone what mileage I would get while trailering anything - that again changes all the above, I might aeromod one 50cc scooter but once a 2x3 trailer is behind it moving the things I have to i'm back to 50mpg and 25mph or something, so I may still have reason for a 'stable' as the situation demands. Sorry for length of my post just hoping this explains some to those who have seen me post in every forum, on everything from bikes to semis.
Basically I have some time now to do research that I wont later, which I was already stuck in before being eaten alive by fuel costs. Once I have a "system" figured out where i've calculated every variable of miles I might need to drive under a few variable circumstances I expect in the future, and fuel prices from $3-15/gallon with a plan of when I have to do one strategy or another, I can just follow that system of "buy this, sell that" or similar having already preresearched which motorcycles and scooters to look for as things change, instead of struggling to work out such a system later when work, school, commuting, and medical are expected to account for up to 105 hours per week for at least the first two years leaving zero time to even catch The Simpsons anymore.