automatic adventure bike

**mojohowillgo** · #1 23 Mar 2009

Hi there,

ok my first post. being a relative newbie to biking and only real experience is touring around asia 2 up on a honda dream, Im looking to take advantage of a wedding in Mozambique later this year and do a bit of touring.

Im looking at a pretty rough and ready honda ctx200 (ok a bit uncomfy, but a step up from an honda dream!!). My girl is new to bikes and whilst she is learning and going good, I am not 100% sure if she will be ok on a geared bike.

anyone got any suggestions for an automatic adventurish bike? do they exist? if not an adventure bike, any suggestions on a reliable auto/clutchless bike. speed is not a prob, we like to go slow.

many thanks.

Jus

Keep the dream alive!

**normw** · #2 23 Mar 2009

I did some travelling in Vietnam a couple of months ago and this is, of course, the land of innumerable sub 250 cc. bikes and scooters. I came across some pretty rough dirt roads and tracks while in the countryside and I was struck by how easily the locals negotiated them on a variety of honda cub like things. Quite ordinary folks were scooting along at a fair clip with no apparent problem.

From my admittedly limited knowledge of how bike geometry relates to dirt worthiness I would guess that the large diameter wheels (in relation to the size of the bike) and the rather narrow tires make these sort of vehicles pretty decent on rougher and unstable surfaces. The light weight probably helps as well. Most of these bikes had automatic transmissions.

Something to think about perhaps.

Normw

**mojohowillgo** · #3 26 Mar 2009

thanks Norm for the post. Yeah the little honda scooter (honda dream) we had took us to some amazing places in the middle of Vietnam. Literally we had that thing near the laos border and rode through some really rough terrain. It was a little slow on the road in some ways, but then the roads are not really that great to be going too quick. it managed to get up to 100 which was plenty over there and it was semi auto.

still though Im not too sure if there are any other bikes out there that would be roughly the same but with a slightly larger engine and you can get in africa.

I have also heard that some bikes can have auto clutches fitter as an after market thing. I wil try to look into that too

Ok cheers