6 ft tall guy with knee pain rides a Honda Unicorn in 2024: Pros & cons

The motorcycle was doing 25 km/h in 5th gear that too with a pillion. This will never be possible with higher-capacity bikes.

BHPian sreerama recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I had owned many bikes in the past and Unicorn was my favourite on which I covered 40k Kms in and around Chennai from 2007 to 2010.

I currently own a Honda CBR250R ABS and I stopped using it after the lockdown, hardly used it for 1k km a year. I have moved to Bangalore and CBR is not of much use here with bad roads, dense traffic etc.

I recently rode a 16k km run Honda Unicorn 160 BS6 from Uber bike (thanks to the driver for letting me ride) and OMG, it felt like home.

For reference, I am 6 feet tall and got left knee pain from one of my past accidents back in 2008 while using the Unicorn.

Positives I felt

• Same old comfortable commuter position & suspension.
• Engine is so much tractable
• Same old or better LET (low-end torque) in no time I was in 5th at 25kmph with a pillion. This will never be possible with higher cc bikes. Very good for a dense city like Bangalore.
• Same old smooth feeling upto 5k rpm and tried upto 7k only (as is not a test drive bike) but this is sufficient for driving fast in traffic with downshifts etc upto 85kmph.
• Additional front ABS. Even a fast scooter like Ather doesn't care to add ABS unless the rules are updated to make it mandatory.

Negatives

• Yellow lights in the headlight and meter console. All AC.
• No rear Abs option
• No update in the outlook

The Honda SP160 might be a better one.

Talking a little about the internals, Hornet 2.0 or CB200X has an additional 22cc. Honda has switched to 63.1 stoke for almost all its bikes from 110cc upto CB300F. Looks like they just alter the bore size/valves/cam etc.

In fact, they use the same 57.3mm bore size as the old Unicorn. The additional cc is due to the change in stroke. Now a square engine has shifted to a longer stroke which should make it easier to use in the city requiring lesser gear shifts but could have affected its top-end spectrum which it had earlier with higher revs. Anyway, now nobody buys a Unicorn to do 3-digit speeds.

I really don't understand why people buy & also suggest higher cc bikes which don't make sense for driving smooth only upto 85kmph which was the original thread for without knee pain.

I bought the RTR180 ABS, the refreshed DRL version, and sold it after just 3k kms as it gave me left knee pain with cramped seating which suits most people. I also did not like the short stroke nature which did not perform like my previous bike Karizma even though it got the same bhp & better power-to-weight ratio, there is no replacement for cc for the torque. I never tried any new RTRs after that. CBR is better compared to the RTR's experience for me without bothering my knee much.

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