The Honda CBR250R and Aftermarket Exhaust System

The Honda CBR250R has been around for some months now and we have done all sorts of tests on it – within cities, on highways and at the race-track. While comparing the Honda CBR250R with its own segment competitors, it became apparent that the CBR250R's single-cylinder engine suffers a little in outright performance as compared to its twin-cylinder competitor. Furthermore, the Honda CBR250R has not been very strong in the lower rev range. With these factors in mind from the time the Honda CBR250R came in, we had been on the lookout for some sort of a performance upgrade to extract more out of it.

The Honda CBR250R has started getting customized special parts and accessories from well-known performance titles now and it was time we equipped our Honda CBR250R with one of those to check if its performance could be pumped up. We laid our hands on the Two Brother Racing exhaust system and did a complete performance test of the Honda CBR250R to gauge all possible gains.

To start with, the Two Brother Racing exhaust system for the Honda CBR250R comes only in the slip-on configuration and does not include the bend pipe from the header. It is a straight-through canister without the catalytic converter and weights just about 2.5kg as against the 7.5kg of the Honda CBR250R stock exhaust. Two Brother Racing claims a 1.45 PS hike in peakpower and a 1.11 Nm increase in maximum torque. However these are the figures claimed by the company based on the run done on a dynometer.

Therefore, we decided to hook on a Racelogic testing equipment and do our own set of tests to see whether the Honda CBR250R really gains from this new exhaust system in real world conditions.

The first test that we undertook was outright acceleration, in which the Honda CBR250R went from 0 to 100km/h in 8.22 seconds as against 8.47 seconds with the stock exhaust. Though this change doesn't look very impressive, we should not forget time comes very close to that of the Kawasaki Ninja 250R (7.95 seconds).

Our second test, and a more important one, was that of roll-on acceleration timings, in which we checked the time for the Honda CBR250R to go from 30km/h to 70km/h in the fourth, fifth and sixth gear. This is where the new Two Brother Racing exhaust system impressed us the most by delivering timing that are much quicker than those of the stock exhaust system. The CBR250R improved by almost a second-and-a-half in the forth gear, by two seconds in the fifth gear and by over three seconds in the sixth gear during roll-on acceleration. It proves that the low and middle range of the Honda CBR250R benefits the most from the Two Brother Racing and likely from other aftermarket exhaust systems. Interested in the Two Brothers Racing Exhaust System, click here Two Brothers Racing V.A.L.E.™ Black Series M-2 Slip-On Exhaust