First ride on my 2012 CR125. Trail riding in wet conditions in Pennsylvania 80% humid 70 degrees elev 2000. My last bike was an 08 YZ 125. I'm 5'-10" 160 lbs with 12 years riding experience. Use maxima 927, 32:1 with 93 octane pump gas.
Day 1
Impressions - The Good: great ergonomics, feels light in the woods, great brakes - way stronger than the YZ. Engine is strong, but narrower than the yz.
The bad: forks/shock are way stiff for trails. I felt every root and bump. The rear felt unsettled and couldn't get consistent traction coming out of turns and going over roots. Front end tends to push on exit of turns too. I tried tweaking the fork damping, it's a work in progress. I'm hoping to work out the problems by tuning and without a revalve (no $ for it at the moment). --- jetting is off - bog at wide open and stutter at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle.
Great bike so far, I look forward to learning it and tuning. Any suggestions for suspension and jetting?
Day 2
Forks
Backed the fork compression out 6 clicks and the rebound 2 clicks from their stock position. It helped with going over roots on turns and seemed to have much better traction around turns and through berms. The rear end still feels a little loose going around flat turns, I think changing the geometry by lowering the forks will help, along with tuning the shock (which I haven't touched yet). The conditions I was riding in also weren't great for rear end traction. It's still a work in progress, but it's improved dramatically - I don't feel like the front end is going to wash out at any given second like on Day 1. I think I can tune to something that's 'good' for my application (woods 95% of the time, MX track 5%), not as good as what it'd be with a revalve however. I still haven't touched the shock, didn't have time, and I want to do one thing at a time (I realize shock/fork tuning are dependent on eachother, but they have to be in the ballpark first and the shock doesn't seem awful, it does need to be softer though too).
Transmission
The gear ratios are unusual. I got a chance to open it up on long straight (dirt road). When speed shifting I originally thought the bike was bogging or couldn't stay on the pipe for some reason. I realized though that the drop in RPM I was feeling was due to the gears being too far apart. I had to feather the clutch at each shift to keep it on the pipe. It was weird. This could be why I perceived the engine to have a narrower power band in comparison to the YZ. As a correction to that, I think it has good low end and mid, maybe even more than the YZ, but the gear ratios are way too broad which is why it falls off the pipe easily. I'm hoping a 144 is enough to bridge the gap between the wide ratios. I'm optimistic. I've never felt a bike that was geared like this before, it's just too broad for the 125. I'm running stock sprockets, which I believe is 13/50.
Misc.
What a weird fuel valve. My brother in law couldn't figure out why the bike stalled after riding it for 5 minutes (ran out of gas in the float bowl, and the fuel was turned off). Once he realized, he couldn't figure out how to turn the gas on - it was pretty funny as I walked 100 yards to turn the gas on for him.
I love the brakes, and the clutch - very smooth.
Day 1
Impressions - The Good: great ergonomics, feels light in the woods, great brakes - way stronger than the YZ. Engine is strong, but narrower than the yz.
The bad: forks/shock are way stiff for trails. I felt every root and bump. The rear felt unsettled and couldn't get consistent traction coming out of turns and going over roots. Front end tends to push on exit of turns too. I tried tweaking the fork damping, it's a work in progress. I'm hoping to work out the problems by tuning and without a revalve (no $ for it at the moment). --- jetting is off - bog at wide open and stutter at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle.
Great bike so far, I look forward to learning it and tuning. Any suggestions for suspension and jetting?
Day 2
Forks
Backed the fork compression out 6 clicks and the rebound 2 clicks from their stock position. It helped with going over roots on turns and seemed to have much better traction around turns and through berms. The rear end still feels a little loose going around flat turns, I think changing the geometry by lowering the forks will help, along with tuning the shock (which I haven't touched yet). The conditions I was riding in also weren't great for rear end traction. It's still a work in progress, but it's improved dramatically - I don't feel like the front end is going to wash out at any given second like on Day 1. I think I can tune to something that's 'good' for my application (woods 95% of the time, MX track 5%), not as good as what it'd be with a revalve however. I still haven't touched the shock, didn't have time, and I want to do one thing at a time (I realize shock/fork tuning are dependent on eachother, but they have to be in the ballpark first and the shock doesn't seem awful, it does need to be softer though too).
Transmission
The gear ratios are unusual. I got a chance to open it up on long straight (dirt road). When speed shifting I originally thought the bike was bogging or couldn't stay on the pipe for some reason. I realized though that the drop in RPM I was feeling was due to the gears being too far apart. I had to feather the clutch at each shift to keep it on the pipe. It was weird. This could be why I perceived the engine to have a narrower power band in comparison to the YZ. As a correction to that, I think it has good low end and mid, maybe even more than the YZ, but the gear ratios are way too broad which is why it falls off the pipe easily. I'm hoping a 144 is enough to bridge the gap between the wide ratios. I'm optimistic. I've never felt a bike that was geared like this before, it's just too broad for the 125. I'm running stock sprockets, which I believe is 13/50.
Misc.
What a weird fuel valve. My brother in law couldn't figure out why the bike stalled after riding it for 5 minutes (ran out of gas in the float bowl, and the fuel was turned off). Once he realized, he couldn't figure out how to turn the gas on - it was pretty funny as I walked 100 yards to turn the gas on for him.
I love the brakes, and the clutch - very smooth.
