Honda VFR800X Crossrunner: Real World Road Test

As part of our Real Life Road Test series, our man Scott Redmond spent a couple of day's with Honda's ofter overlooked VFR800X Crossrunner. But after taking the adventure-styled V4 on a date to Dorset, was it love at first sight or a night to forget for Scottie and the Crossrunner? Take it away, big man...

Every so often you get to encounter a motorcycle that is greater than the sum of its parts. On paper, the second generation VFR800X Crossrunner is a real parts bin special. The ‘new’ model is basically a clever rework of what’s basically a ten year old VFR800 and after riding the current VFR800 at the start of the summer it was suggested to me that I sample the Crossrunner to see what I thought of it.

When I arrived to collect the bike it was sat surrounded by several Africa Twins. They looked very shouty compared to the sedate looks of the Crossrunner. The Africa Twin is a healthy seller in the 2016 Honda range, but what about the Crossrunner? How does that fare? I spoke to the guys at Wheels Honda in Peterborough to find out who buys the Crossrunner. They informed me that they sell them to a wide variety of people, from people doing the daily commute to leisure riders.

But what is a Crossrunner? I haven’t ridden its predecessor, and had only heard mediocre reports of its abilities. I approached my time with Honda's 'take two' with an open mind.

From the minute I swung my leg over its 835mm seat height I felt at home. With 22 litres of petrol to convert into greenhouse gases, I wanted to have a proper ride of this intriguing motorcycle. Let's go to Dorset!

The ride

Bike nights, they’re great, a brilliant way to break up your working week if you are a wage slave, or a good excuse for a ride out if you are time rich. Poole Quay is one of the biggest in the UK. It’s held on a Tuesday evening during summer months and sat 180 odd miles from Peterborough. The Crossrunner comes with a few extras to help convince you to purchase one. It’s called the Rider Pack and includes a colour coded top box, a centre stand, Akrapovic silencer and a Tom Tom sat nav kit. With the BH15 postcode punched into the Tom Tom, I set off.

The Crossrunner lures you into wanting a long distance ride. Its riding position is pretty damn perfect, and the comfy saddle and wide bars compliment each other perfectly. It’s only when I got rolling I encountered my first snag. The saddle is adjustable by 20mm, so I’d assumed the screen would offer me the same luxury of adjusting it to make my progress less noisy, sadly not. There are a host of aftermarket screens out there at a guess, but it would have been pleasant if Honda had factored in some basic means to adjust the height of the screen. Over 50mph the wind noise drowns out any ‘music’ advantage that the Akrapovic exhaust silencer provided. I would happily live with a standard silencer and instead have Honda treat the Crossrunner to a better screen system, and maybe some handguards to aid the hot grips. Despite it being the end of summer I still used the standard equipment hot grips as it was a tad chilly when I set off, the wind chill nipping at the tops of my hands while the grips kept my palms toasty warm.

Like a school dinner, I like to get the bad bits out of the way first. Beyond the screen issues my only other real nit picking is left to silly things that blighted my enjoyment. The self cancelling indicators mostly didn’t work which not a biggy. Manually turning off indicators isn’t something I have an issue with doing, but on the Crossrunner this comes with added misery. Honda have switched the position of the indicator and horn buttons around. I lost count of how many times that I tooted people when all I wanted to do was switch my winkers off. In recent years the need to fit a gear indicator is another craze I can happily live without, which was handy because the Crossrunner's digital gear display had a habit of vanishing. The constant flashing on the clocks when this happened was aggravating.

The good stuff left on my plate far outweighed the Honda broccoli. The Crossrunner gives you plenty of meat and veg to enjoy. It isn’t the most powerful bike in its class, with a gnat's cock over 100bhp to use, it’s also not the lightest either, weighing in at 242 kilos. The bike doesn’t feel heavy though. The tall stance helps you move its mass around with ease, both when at stand still and on the move. The engine is identical to the that used in the VFR800, there’s been no retuning or detuning. The VTEC system works well, chiming in at around 7000 revs. Its drone was much more evident on the VFR800, but that screen noise drowns it out a bit on the Crossrunner.