£2000, Honda Motor Corporation
I bought my Honda Dylan at
the beginning of November 2002. I chose it for a number of reasons:
Since I bought the Dylan I’ve
ridden around 3500 miles, much of it in grim British winter weather. It’s never
failed to start in the morning, although on cold days it tends to cut out at
traffic lights and struggles to pick up (it almost sounds like it’s misfiring).
It can take up to ten or twelve miles of riding before the motor gets warm
enough to keep itself ticking over comfortably, and when your ride to work is
only 16 miles or so that can be a bit of a nuisance. On a typical mild, wet day
it doesn’t have any problems.
My journey to work involves
a mixture of roads. It begins on stop-start town centre roads, then changes to
three-lane A-road, then to sweeping national speed limit roads through
countryside. Strangely for a machine that I consider a town runabout, the Dylan
seems most comfortable at 40 or 50 mph, though those little (13”) wheels don’t
like bumps and you have to accept that you’re going to get rattled about. It’ll
do about 70 flat out, but once the far side of 65 mph I don’t like the racket
the engine makes and I tend to back off.
The Dylan’s front end can
feel very light. I realise that this is often the case with scooters, but I do
have to think hard about avoiding touching wet manhole covers with the front
wheel. It doesn’t help that the roads around Watford are terrible – the only
thing they love more than sinking their manhole covers a few inches below the
road surface is positioning one right on the apex of a tight bend. In fact,
some corners seem to have been designed as Krypton Factor courses for
motorcyclists, with potholes and pits positioned in such a way that it’s almost
impossible to miss them all. You learn where they all are in time, but it must
be a bizarre site for following motorists to see people on two wheels weaving
strange paths across the road in front of them. Another Hertfordshire favourite
is the narrow ridge of newer tarmac all the way across the highway that throws
you up in the air when you hit it.
The Dylan is certainly well
built. I even failed to cause any damage when I fell off it (important
motorcycling lesson #47: don’t ride in snow unless you have those tyres with
nails sticking out of them) despite the thing appearing to be covered in
plastic fairing. Well, OK, I bent the brake lever a bit, but I can live with
that. In fact, the worst damage the scooter has sustained has all happened when
parked up.
My scooter lives on the road
outside my house, under a nylon cover. While there, a number of things have
happened to it. On four occasions somebody has lifted the cover and twisted,
bent or even unscrewed one or both of the mirrors. This behaviour has
completely baffled me. I can only assume that it is the same person on each
occasion, apparently mounting a fairly futile but irritating campaign against
my mirrors. I keep hatching plots to smear the shafts of the mirrors with some
kind of horribly toxic grease so that the idiot who does this gets a surprise,
but weeks go by without incident and I tend to forget.
I hope that the person
responsible is a child, or a bunch of adolescents mucking about. My fear is –
and I do have circumstantial evidence to support this – that the criminal is a
neighbouring resident who resents their parking spot being stolen by a scooter.
It probably doesn’t help that all the car drivers who live down here have to
pay for permits, while I get to park for nowt.
The other strange thing that
has happened may well be connected. When I bought the Dylan I spent thirty-odd
quid on a fairly hefty cable lock that enabled me to attach the bike to a
lamppost. I hadn’t had the machine long when, one morning, I couldn’t be
bothered carrying the lock back into my flat and just left it round the post
when I left for work. On my return it had gone, thrown clear of the top of the post
by persons unknown
About three months later, I
was apprehended on the stairs by my neighbour, who suggested that I look up at the
top of a lamppost a few metres down the road. I did so, and was astonished to see
my lock draped over the very top of the lamp. With my neighbour’s assistance (he’s
much taller than me!) I knocked the lock down. It was battle scarred, but not in
a way that suggested that someone had tried to open it. In fact, it looked as though
it had been dragged along the ground for some distance. It still worked, and I still
use it occasionally. Where it went for those months remains a mystery. I suspect
that my friendly neighbour knows more about how it got up that lamppost than he
was prepared to reveal, but I certainly don’t think he had anything to do with its
theft and return.
I have never regretted
buying the Dylan (especially as my petrol expenses more than cover the cost of
the instalments, insurance, and the rest!). It’s economical, comfortable, and
quick enough to get away from the lights before the rest of the traffic and
blow smaller scooters into the weeds.
However, I have encountered
a few things that I didn’t expect and that I haven’t seen discussed elsewhere…
anyone considering spending their cash on a Dylan should be aware of these.
The first problem I had was
getting insurance. As the Dylan becomes more popular I’m sure that it will
become easier, but when I was phoning around none of the insurance companies
had even heard of the machine. This meant that they had to use the details of
another Honda machine with the same engine. Not an insurmountable obstacle, but
irritating. And the price! I was quoted as much as £1500! For TPF&T!
That’s nearly as much as I paid for the bike. I eventually got insurance for
well under half that amount, but I’m still paying as much as my mate does for
his tricked-up FireBlade. Yes, I’m riding on a provisional, I live in a high
risk area, I don’t have a garage, and I live near weird scooter vandals, but it
seems steep to me.
Another problem has been the
fuel gauge. Which is frustrating, because it works perfectly well. However,
shortly after taking the Dylan for its 1st (500-mile) service I
received a letter from Honda UK recalling the machine due to a reported
“software fault” with the fuel gauge. This made my chuckle at first, because
the fuel gauge on the Dylan is of the old-fashioned analogue (needle) type, and
I’m sure they used to work perfectly well without software of any kind when I
were a lad.
Anyway, I called my Honda
dealer and told them I needed to have it sorted out. As there was (presumably)
no reward for them in upgrading my fuel gauge software for free they dragged
their feet and – not for the first time – didn’t bother phoning me back.
So Dylan’s 2500-mile service
came round before they were interested in doing the work. They did the upgrade
– I can tell, because my total mileage on arriving at the dealership was 2650,
and afterwards it was precisely zero. I look forward to explaining to future
mechanics and prospective purchasers where those 2650 miles have gone: “No, no,
it’s all perfectly legitimate, honest guv!”
It turned out that the work
to upgrade the fuel gauge software requires a special tool which, I was told,
has to be “borrowed” from Honda UK. Having told me that they would do the work,
but having not cared enough to get the tool in question, the dealership got a
whole new speedo/fuel gauge unit and swapped it for the old one. This certainly
resolved the software fault but also zeroed my mileage. It also reset the time,
and they didn’t bother putting that right either.
My dealership have a great
reputation (or so they claim) and appear to be very successful, but I’m
becoming a bit fed up with them.
They got me a bad deal on
finance, My fault really – I shouldn’t have rushed into the purchase and should
have got a loan out, but it left me feeling like they’d taken me for a mug
(fair nuff!).
Three times they’ve told me
they’d phone me (to tell me my bike was ready to pick up, to tell me my bike’s
service had been done, and to tell me that the software upgrade part had
arrived) and three times they didn’t bother.
At its most recent service, I
asked how much the service would cost and the bloke chirpily told me, “about
seven quid for the oil”. He was right – but it also cost about eighty quid for
labour. The Dylan was then returned to me with the front L-plate snapped off
and jammed under the back of the seat. I was offered no apology or explanation,
although I’m not going to worry about that too much.
The kid who brought the
Dylan round to the front of the dealership for me didn’t even know how to put
it on its centre stand, and had to just hand it to me.
None of this is major, and
most of it could have been avoided if I’d been less naïve, but I always seem to
leave the place feeling as though I’ve been short-changed.
I won’t name them (I might
still need them!), but I’m talking about a large Honda-specific dealership in
W4.
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