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Saturday, 07 September 2002 |
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Dietary fiber by Mike Emery and DaveW ~ Silly Sod Stuff by AlexF
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| Cars suck! They really do. I never passed my car test till I was in my mid twenties. The cage never garnered my interest like a two-wheeler did. It always seemed to me that in order to get your jollies in a car, you have to drive dangerously fast, and they cost silly money to fix if you happened to get it all wrong. I don't even have a car. Sure, "her indoors" drives a German luxo-mobile, but the only reason I got that, was because I knew she'd give me less hassle about my preferred mode of two wheeled transit. |
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Now car vs. bike write-ups are nothing new, but most comparisons usually star the latest big bore sportbike vs. a $100k sports car. There have been questionable results in the past so I wanted to set the record straight. We did this by tracking down some low priced bikes and a suitable econo-box. |
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First off we managed to grab a flock, herd or gaggle of MZ's from Motorrad of North America. They kindly supplied us with a road biased RT, a halfway-house Supermotard and a dirt only FunX. All three bikes share a common drive train and frame. The geometry has been adjusted with different fork lengths and shocks and by the styling of the seat and gas tank.
The motor is a solid German built 125cc fourstroke. It's a little "smogged up" thanks to our tree hugging friends, but is very willing to rev and has a nice punchy low end. All three bikes run out of revs and some need re-gearing to stop over-rev at higher speeds, top speed is around 70 -75mph. Fit and finish on the bikes was superb and nothing broke, even with all our silly goofing around.
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Brakes are Grimeca two pot calipers front and rear. The front single disk was quite powerful once it had bedded in. The rear too was powerful but easily modulated to aid panic stops (of which there were plenty.) Both front and rear lines were also braided, a great feature. The front forks were non adjustable and the rear was a Paoli unit that offered preload only. Both the RT and SM had decent size grab rails and performance wasn't too badly hurt even with 400lbs of chubby twins on board. |
These motorcycles are billed, as the fastest 125's available in the US. Now, having not ridden a 125 since I was a spotty yoof, I couldn't really tell if that was a fair description. What I do know, is that these bikes easily kept up with and roosted in most cases, city traffic.
On the Cycle Riders Dyno the RT made a pretty decent (for a 125) 12.8 bhp, I suspect more can be had for the price of a free flowing exhaust and a little time sorting out the lean jetting. |  |
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