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The Honda CRF250L has been stateside since 2013 and hasn’t been revised since. With speculations of an OEM rally replica version hitting dealer floors in 2017, ADVMoto thought to try and beat Honda to the punch. We know what you’re thinking, “Why go all out on this little red bike? Why not a blue, or an orange one?” Truth be told, the CRF has been our commuter/back-up bike that we use mainly for product reviews. It works just fine for short stints on the highway, and it’s a perfect bike for a buddy to throw a leg over when he or she visits from out of town. Over time the mods keep getting tacked on and before you know it the total cost of farkles is half the price of the bike! Strange, how quickly and easily that happens….
In the quest to put more make-up on the LRP we met a Canadian rally racer named Patrick Trahan, who competes using a Honda CRF250L. It’s been his goal to produce this model specific, HRC-inspired rally kit to the open market. Many hundreds of hours have gone into planning and hand fabricating his project, which has helped Pat earn more than a few followers who are eagerly awaiting the product’s release. After months of collaboration, we got him down to our office in Virginia, where he installed a prototype onto our project bike.
Each kit will include: fiberglass side panels, polycarbonate windshield, rally tower, frame adapter and all necessary hardware and bracketry. Lights and graphics are sold separately. Installing the kit is a Sunday project, with moderate difficulty. The most labor intensive step is in drilling the heads off the bolts holding the ignition on the stock triple clamps, a procedure Honda established as a theft deterrent. Denali lights were sourced from Twisted Throttle, with modified connectors that plugged into our stock wire harness. The front brake line may, or may not have to be re-routed depending on your handlebar set-up.
One of the most unique features of the Rally Kit is that the bike can easily be converted back to stock, thanks to a CNC’d adapter mount that attaches to the frame. The tower is beefy and strong enough to support Pat’s full weight (see pic below). A modular top section can be easily removed for better off-road visibility. Our kit came with the “Adventure” top attachment that utilizes two Ram mounts and two USB power outlets. Pat will also offer a “Rally” attachment that accepts a roadbook.
The tower relocates the stock dash, ignition and turn signals. The bars are now freed of this weight, although in the end, the kit adds 6.9 lbs. to the bike. I didn’t notice the weight difference beside it being a little harder to do wheelies (but that’s probably because I suck at doing them). It did take some getting used to, having all that hardware and electronics taking up the lower field of view—a trade-off for fast data acquisition and the increased wind protection is worth it. The CRF450 Rally Replica windscreen makes standing up at highway speeds possible, as long as I’m crouched a bit. I may have never raced in a rally before, but blasting down fire roads behind a tower paints a pretty gnarly picture.
The finish on our Rally Kit is a bit raw, but that’s because ours is the original prototype. In fact, at the time of writing this article, this is the only custom made CRF 250L Rally Replica in the world, since Pat pulled the kit off his own race bike after fabricating it. Everything fits snug, nothing rattles, and weird sounds don’t resonate from the tower at any RPM. It’s a serious, ready to bolt-on, ready to race rally kit, born from schematics designed by HRC. Will we race it? Possibly. But for the time being our 250L project bike will make its way from event to event, pretending it’s an HRC CRF450 Rally, as we’ll pretend we’re Joan Barreda. MSRP: $650 CRF250Rally.com | TwistedThrottle.com
PROS |
CONS |
| ▲ Solid construction | ▼ More weight on an already heavy bike |
| ▲ Looks "Decepticon" cool | ▼ Model specific (for now) |
| ▲ Dramatically increased wind protection |
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Check out our interview with Patrick Trahan below:
See the ADVMoto CRF 250L Rally Replica review here!
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