So as you may already know I have got a new Yamaha Breeze DX 125 scooter. I have found that when I drive on bumpy roads my rear suspension feels a little loose. What I mean is that is seems to wobble a bit from side to side not much but enough to make you think. It’s a brand new bike less than 300 km’s. The breeze model only has one spring in the back. Unlike the Cygnus or the GTR which has two. I’m wondering if getting an after market part might tighten up this problem. Any help insight would be appreciated.
So as you may already know I have got a new Yamaha Breeze DX 125 scooter. I have found that when I drive on bumpy roads my rear suspension feels a little loose. What I mean is that is seems to wobble a bit from side to side not much but enough to make you think. It’s a brand new bike less than 300 km’s. The breeze model only has one spring in the back. Unlike the Cygnus or the GTR which has two. I’m wondering if getting an after market part might tighten up this problem. Any help insight would be appreciated.
stare[/quote]
you could have an aftermarket brace made(perhaps one is available off the shelf, depending on the popularity of your scooter model) for the engine, and upgrade the suspension unit with something that doesn’t jump around when presented with poor road surfaces. a brace might run you 1,500 to 6,000 depending on how its made(machined, cast, welded, err glued) and a new shock absorber may be 1,500 to well over 20,000.
have you upgraded your rubber yet? better tires stick to the ground better, giving you more control and feedback.
As for my rubber I don’t think I need an upgrade. It comes from the factory with Dunlops. I would have to say that those are pretty good tires off the line.
What exactly is an engine brace and how do I say this in Chinese?
Also what will an engine brace do for the ride?
I think I will go the suspension upgrade I just don’t know any good names to go with. Any help in that department would be great.
I’m sure folks with more scooter specific knowledge than me will jump on this thread soon with suggestions, but if you’re looking at aftermarket shocks be very wary of buying anything made in taiwan… I’ve seen locally made aftermarket shocks that sell for NT$5k a pop for Majesty / Cygnus etc. that are just plain crap, worse than crap in fact…
proper bomb proof suspension comes from European companies with the best in spring shocks arguably being Ohlins, WP and Wilbers… that said they are pricey and may well be overkill… probably around NT$15K to 20K and in fact I don’t even know if they make them in scooter sizes… in fact you’d probably be better off ignoring me and waiting for one of the scooter experts to arrive…
They make Ohlins in scooter sizes, although very expensive as stated above. My Cygnus has RPM rear shocks. It might be a local brand, but they cost 9,000 for the pair. And it made a pretty huge difference. Tightened my rear end right up. Just shortly after I got them installed I gave the finger to a blue truck…it was quite the introduction to high speed cornering with a blue truck on my ass trying to ram me. But the difference was huge…as I said.
[quote=“stare”]As for my rubber I don’t think I need an upgrade. It comes from the factory with Dunlops. I would have to say that those are pretty good tires off the line.
What exactly is an engine brace and how do I say this in Chinese?
Also what will an engine brace do for the ride?
I think I will go the suspension upgrade I just don’t know any good names to go with. Any help in that department would be great.
Thanks
stare[/quote]
engine/frame brace = 引擎架(yin2 qing2 jia4)
it will hold your engine/transmission unit to the frame better than the stock unit. it reduces flex and unwanted lateral sideplay.
as for suspensions, mordeth mentioned rpm, there is also msp and several other local brands. there may be many other options available depending on the overall length of your application. bitubo, ohlins, wp, showa, even a kyb may fit in there, however big bike shocks may need to be re-worked before they will work in a scooter.
Thanks for that post it really sorted a lot out for me, now I know how to ask for it when I got to the shop.
The other thing I’m wondering is if an engine brace will be available for such new model of scooter. Or do yout think I should go the suspension route. It sounds like a toss up.
As far as Taiwanese suspension manufacturers are there any cream of the crop scooter products out there. Plasmatron mentioned in an earlier post that many Taiwanese products are quite bad. Should I go with European or a Japanese manufacturer.
Thanks for everyone’s help on this one much appreciated
So I got new rear suspension for my scooter. I went with RPM’s it has really improved the handling of the bike. The side to side wobble I was experiencing has deminished greatly. Although, I went back to the shop where I bought the part and asked them to make an adjustment. It looked like they tightened it up. Does anyone know what exactly they are doing when they tighten up the part? What should I be looking for when I ride the bike? Haven’t driven it much since the adjustment so I don’t know what to look for.
With after market suspension on the scooter…I usually go for the “softest” setting. A scooter is fairly light and the suspension doesn’t need to be too hard. Even on the softest setting it will be much firmer than with the stock suspension.
But, maybe someone else can describe the “feel” of a good rear set up.
what they are “tightening” is the preload… that basically boils down to how much tension the spring is under before you add any weight to the suspension by getting on the bike… it’s adjusted by a collar at the end of the spring either with stepped intervals or a threaded section with a ring and locknut that you can tighten/loosen arbitrarily… ideally you want to set the preload so that when you are sitting on the scoot in your normal riding gear the shock is at roughly 1/3 of it’s total travel… this process is generally referred to as setting the static sag…
ask the place you bought the shock from what the spec is to find out the total travel for the shock… for example if the total travel of the shock is 100mm (very hypothetical distance, it’ll be less) then when you sit on the scoot in your normal riding gear the shock should be compressed about 33mm… that leaves 66mm to absorb hits and allows 33mm to extend into dips giving you the ideal suspension tracking of the road surface… technically you can use preload to adjust ride height, although you don’t want to stray too far from the 1/3 ideal range and if you have to to achieve the ride height you want then you need to get a heavier/lighter spring to suit your weight…
how “hard” the shock is depends on how it’s valved and is what’s usually called compression damping… how fast it returns to rest after being compressed is called rebound damping… on a locally made scooter shock it’s unlikely these two variables will be adjustable although if they are you can use this to fine tune the suspensions behaviour over various terrains and give you the ride quality you are after…
setting up your suspension to suit your weight, riding style and road surface is absolutely essential to achieving a quality ride on a scooter/big bike/bicycle you name it… however on a bike you’ve got a whole new set of adjustment variables at the forks and then the balance and interaction between the front and rear suspension settings, there’s a lot more to adjust, all of which needs to be set up correctly… even on a scoot with limited adjustability a good setup should track uneven road surfaces, absorb hits and extend into dips without the tire ever leaving the road or the scoot “bouncing” up and down, the scoot should feel composed and taught, and feel like even over uneven surfaces at speed and at extreme lean angles it is “planted” to the road surface… since you cannot adjust the front suspension you’re alway going to be aiming for a happy medium type of compromise and unless you can adjust your preload on the fly, if you are going to ride two up it’s a given your suspension settings will go to hell…
if you don’t have much suspension setup experience, the best advice IMHO is to set the static sag, then set all adjustable variables to standard and experiment in small increments until you find something you like… hope this helps…
Thanks for all that info I feel like I just finished a course in bke suspension. Really all of it was very informative.[/quote]Me too. Thanks, Plasmatron.
I have the preload on my FZ’s monoshock set to a compromise between “1-up” and “2-up”. At least that’s what I asked my mechanic to set it to. Is this really a compromise or is it the worst of both worlds?
