Hi Guys, I am going to do my Bike test in August or September and then obviuosly buy a Bike.

The problem I have is that I have heard different advice of what sort of Size bike to go for. I was thinking of getting a 400cc (was thinking of a ZXR 400), but some say go for something bigger and take it easy to start with as I would get bored with the 400 very quickly.

Any comments /advice would be gratefully appreciated :)

This has been discussed so many times - you should do a search and all your questions should be answered!!

Matt :)

Steve you know my answetr already, Honda 400 cc sports :D

How can you get bored with one of these? I had mine for 5 years and still miss it now :(

If you want to build up confidence with fast cornering you wont find a better bike on the road! :) Only thing that comes close I found was Aprilia's RS250 and they are hairdryer two strokes *yuk* :p

Sorry, but i would say that a sports 400 is the last thing you need. To get the best from one of these you need to be an experienced and confident rider, if they are not being ridden at ten tenths then they feel flat and ordinary. Far better to get a tattyish, (cos you WILL drop it), four stroke, something like a 6oo fazer or a Bandit, maybe a cb500 or GPZ500, these especially can be had for little money, dont cost a fortune to insure, feel like a "proper" bike and yet are good to learn on. You can always find a buyer for these later on when you have gained some skill and confidence. Getting something to manic just after passing your test will either scare you off riding for ever or worse still put you in casualty! By the wayI have been riding bikes of all sizes for 23 years, so I know what I am talking about.

Impret-sir we will have to agree to disagree on this one. A sports 400 is not manic fast like current 600 sport or bigger. They have good performance though and they are extremely forgiving because of their fantastic handling.

They are cheap to pick up, £1000 to £2000 and cheap to insure with no no claims bonus. They don't take much looking after and go on and on and on. I did 10000 miles between services and it still ran like a dream and didn't use a drop of oil in that time. I had mine as my 2nd bike after riding a GPX250 for my first year. I learnt an awful lot more on it because it was such a great all round bike. I commuted on it every day and used it for 'fun' at the weekends. You can go into corners on these where you might have underestimated how sharp the bend is and it will pretty much get you out of it where as something like a Fazer (being bigger and higher centre of gravity) wont. I kept mine for 5 years because of how good it was.

As for having to ring their necks to ride them, yeah thats if you want the top performance out of it, which is not what you should be doing as an inexperienced rider! They pull from top gear at low revs and are absolutely fine for gentle riding to get experience. Then when you have built up confidence you can then still get pretty good performance out of it.

Also I will add many people will say don't even consider them if you are over 5'10. Thats tosh, I'm 6'3 and had no issues with the size of the bike. As far as I'm concerned they have no downside to them whatso ever. The only time you will want to go bigger is when you want faster acceleration and top speed which isn't ever really necessary.