Tall And Small
TALL AND SMALL
I`M PERFECT. YEP, 5-FOOT, 10-INCHES, 175 POUNDS. MY mother tells me I'm cute, too. Or is that handsome? Thanks, Mom, but what I really mean is that most off road bikes are built for riders my_size. What to do if you’re 6-foot-something? Or coming up on the short side of the stick at 5-foot-4?
You can buy bicycles sized for you, your car seat slides fore/aft and your steering wheel tilts, but most motorcycles fall into the one-size-fits-all category. We set out to rectify that by modifying a couple of dirtbikes to fit the extremes, showing just how advantageous right-sizing a bike can be.
We started out by making a small bike smaller because my father, Jim Sr., rode a buddy’s lowered Honda XR400 and went bonkers over the scrunched saddle height. Dad isn’t real short (that’s not him in the photo), standing eye-to-eye with me, but a life of hard knocks in the Fire Department and a serious car accident in his younger days has made him a bit less limber than most. Plus, his idea of dirtbike riding is an open-air sightseeing tour to places he can’t drive. Modem suspension is great for the wheel-swallowing bumps, but it doesn’t do him much good when the bike is laying on its side ’cause he couldn't get his foot on the ground on some nasty trail!
So, we took a Suzuki DR-Z250 and dropped it 2 inches. Quite easy w ith the help of a $70 lowering link—basically a 12mm-longer pull arm-from Kouba (w ww.koubalink.coni). Installation time, about 20 minutes. This works fine on bikes with similar-style shock linkages, but for Hondas or linkageless KTMs, more drastic measures are necessary. This requires open-shock surgery and a competent specialist who can shorten the stroke.
Dp front, we just slid the fork up in the triple-clamps to level the bike out, making sure the knobby didn't hit the underside of the front fender when bottomed. (You can also go internal with the help of a qualified suspension specialist and utilize a longer top-out spring or spacer.)
Chopping seat foam is also an option. Careful here because on some bikes this can seriously reduce comfort, but there is easily an inch or 2 of bonus foam on the DR-Z if we’d needed it. And don’t overlook something simple like reducing spring preload.
Downsides (pardon the pun)? Turning is not as sharp as stock, the rear suspension with its altered linkage ratio squatting more and not putting as much weight on the front wheel. For trail paces this was okay, but anything faster caused bottoming. A stiffer shock spring would easily solve this.
Next, we threw' on a $75 FMF 909 handlebar (www.fmfracing.com) with a slightly sweptback bend.
On a peripheral note, we dressed up the bike with a Cycra Lite front fender and handguards, slipped on a Big Gun Quiet muffler for some added lowend power and weight savings, and opened up the top of the airbox and replaced the flimsy air filter with a No-Toil unit.
With the ground so much easier to touch, the DR-Z becomes an even less intimidating ride. Sure, you have to pay a little more attention to your toes around rocks and stumps because ground clearance drops as much as seat height, but if you're inseam-challenged, that’s an acceptable tradeoff.
CW PROJECT
What to do when dirtbikes aren't sized for you
JIMMY LEWIS
Our tall guy, friend of the magazine Andrew Justaikis, stands 6-foot-5 and dwarfed his personal DR350S so badly he didn’t enjoy riding it as much as he should have. So, we took a big man’s bike, the Honda XR650R, and made it even bigger with the addition of a few key products. First up, a $110 “Scott Summers” tall seat foam and cover kit from Guts Racing (www.gutsracing.com), which added 1 ^2 inches of legroom. Then we turned to aluminum sculptors BRP (www.brpit.com) and their $190 billet-aluminum adjustable top-clamp with a raised/more-forward bar position. This, combined with a $90 tail-bend Pro-Taper handlebar from Answer (www.answerracing.com), moved the handgrip position a good 2 inches up and an inch forward from stock. But this still wasn’t enough!
Sitting on the newly elevated seat for the First time, Andrew thought he needed even more height, so his knees didn't fold so acutely. A call to Guts and some serious explaining yielded the $200 custom saddle you see here, a special double-decker foam job reminiscent of early-'80s works motocross bikes. Now, he sat comfortably without getting that bent-knee syndrome, and could still easily flat-foot the ground. We even rotated the handlebar farther forward for yet more room in the cockpit. What a giraffe! But now the bike Fit Justaikis to a T, the First motorcycle he’s ever felt truly comfortable on.
Another consideration for big guys is the suspension. At 200 pounds, Andrew is a lean, mean, ridin’ machine, but when you start punching the scale a little farther into its stroke, the same happens to the suspension. And not just from extra weight, either. A larger body acts as a bigger pendulum, which can have serious consequences on suspension action as you move around on the bike. Stifter springs are usually necessary, but so are internal valving changes by a competent tuner who understands what is going on.
To Finish the job, we added an FMF Q series exhaust system because running in unrestricted, full-power mode, the stock muffler is a bit loud. We spruced up the XR's looks with a Factory Effex graphics kit and put on full-protection handguards from Acerbis. For a regular guy, the Honda is now a skyscraper (and a little silly-looking), but it allows AJ to stay spread out while sitting and not get bunched into a ball. Also, the transition to standing up is a whole lot easier, and putting a leg out for turns is no longer akin to unfolding tent sticks.
Both these bikes required less than $500 in modifications to make them twice the rides they were originally, tailored specifically for their owners. Riding became more tun and skill levels improved noticeably just from setting up the bike properly for their size. Simple and effective. Now, tall or small, hit the trails! Œ
