Our favourite German Ex-pat is back, this time to show off her first ever motorbike. The nicest Honda VTR250 you’ll see screaming through the streets of Sydney, it’s a nimble machine that ticks all the boxes.

Immediately following a successful motorcycle learners test, Carina shot out to buy her first motorbike. Not knowing anything about bikes, she went with her instincts. “I walked into the shop, pointed at the black Honda 2006 VTR250 I could see in the corner and 5 minutes later it was mine!”

From this spontaneous beginning Carina would be rider for a few years before getting involved with the custom motorcycle scene. After finding Sydney Café Racers, she naturally felt the need to do something custom herself. “I bought a Honda CB550 as a project and planned to leave the VTR stock since I thought the project bike would be finished in a few months. 10 months later the CB was still sitting in my living room and I was feeling a bit out of place riding with SCR on an all stock bike, so I decided to give my VTR a makeover and bought a tail tidy.”

This tail tidy wouldn’t be enough for Carina, so she headed over to RB Racing and spoke with Harley about her options whilst also visualising her ideas via Photoshop with a neighbour. From here the parts would be picked out and ordered. A new hub seat, bars, headlight, indicators, muffler and a nice sharp new paint job would form the basis of this makeover.

In order for the new hub seat to work on this bike, the subrame had to be rebuilt. “That carried a price tag, but the end result and final bike was absolutely worth it. The bike turned out to be a real head turner! Harley did a great job making look smooth like factory finished and the new muffler was the cherry on top, bringing the V-twin engine to life. The sound it makes is probably my favourite bit.”

This VTR Café racer is sleek, nimble, light to chuck around and has no trouble keeping up with bigger capacity bikes. It’s refreshing to see a learner approved 250cc bike be given a top quality café racer conversion. Sadly for Carina, she had to say farewell to her first wheels as it was recently sold. “I’m not ashamed to admit I cried when the new owner rode away!”

   

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