Rucking Amok
Rucking Amok
When factory character is not enough, it's time to Ruck Out
JOHN BURNS
DOWNTOWN L.A.-ADJACENT ON A SATURday morning last March, who knew a place called Little Tokyo would be filled with tidy little cafés serving pastries and coffee, people sweeping their sidewalks and planting things in flowerboxes, friendly young couples pushing strollers full of babies and seniors walking their ankle-biters. The smog L.A. is famous for was nowhere to be seen on this brisk morning as 100 Ruckii converged along Second Street, stockers few and far between. There was a definite Asian persuasion, and why not? Custom scooters are huge in Japan. Maybe the Ruckus craze is the first wave to make it to the U.S.? Carbon-fiber fuel tanks, stretched swingarms, Yoshimura exhausts—it’s difficult to determine if we’re into high performance or mocking it. 1 think a little of both.
The Ruckus movement is nicely embodied in the official motto at totalruckus. conr. “We would like to ride in zoomer which is not easily defeated by anyone.” And there is plenty of advice to be found there in how exactly to achieve that state. Need parts? To do it up right, you can go to rucksters.com and get a complete GY6 conversion kit for $1695 (sold out, when last we checked), which includes your basic GY6 150cc engine and everything you need except exhaust—which you can get from Yoshimura or Two Brothers or many of the usual suspects. Extended swingarm? Goes with the territory, since the swingarm sort of is the bigger new engine. Disc brake kit? Can do. Turbo? Why not bolt one up to the 208cc Zuma four-stroke in your Ruckus? No one’s preventing you. Rucksters Customs, located in Arcadia, California, calls that particular hybrid “Game F—ing Over,” and they were right: GFO won Best in Show at the first-ever (and planned annual) Cycle Wo rid A londa/ Alpinestars Ruck Out.
To tell you the truth, by the end of the Ruck Out, I couldn’t remember what stock looked like anymore. What did we start off with? And how did we settle on the Ruckus as our target, anyway?
Because the Ruckus asks for it, that’s why. Any other scooter is covered in plastic (or steel if it’s an old Vespa), so what can you do but put on stickers and mirrors? The Ruckus hangs itself out there like a half-dissected frog. And don’t quote me on this, but since it starts out as a 50cc scooter, I’m guessing (hoping) normal modification laws may not apply to it. And as we wove our merry way from Little Tokyo to Honda’s Torrance HQ and onward to Alpinestars, there were zero hassles
by The Man.
As a mat ter of fact, ere were zern hassles yanybodyand this in parts of town conventional wisdom tells us are famous for hassles. As our Ruckus-cade made its way southward along Western Avenue (which was the western boundary of Los Angeles many years ago), all we saw were big smiles and thumbs up (one working girl working overtime in a pink wig gave us more than thumbs up, much more...).
On this bright Saturday morning, everybody in front of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church is turned out in their Sunday finest. Say, didn’t they have Ray Charles’ funeral there? Chain stores and fast-food places are really nowhere in evidence, but there is no shortage of Jesus, and plenty of intriguing-looking places to eat if we weren’t part of a rockin’ convoy. Isn’t Jesse Owens Park where the Williams sisters learned to play tennis? No, but it would’ve been good for the story. Past the Coliseum, where the old Supercross used to be and some football team, once upon a time.
Further south on Western, the citizens become less Black and more Hispanic and Asian. Fewer churches, but still plenty of activity and construction going on—and still plenty of smiles and waves. We motorcycle journalists used to think it was the height of sarcasm to call ourselves “roving ambassadors of motorcycling goodwill.” On the Ruckuses, it actually seems to be the case. The machines are small, they’re cute, they’re not frightening—think Shriner's parade or clown carand when people wave, you ave to wave back in a self eeding, semi-nauseating dis lay of human kindness. Could you do it in a car? No,
it wouldn’t be the same. On a bigger motorcycle? Not really; motorcycles still project a slightly threatening message after all these years. No, I can’t think of any other vehicle that could pull it off quite like the Ruckus. Similar to the “Prius statement,” it tells your fellow man that you’re willing to live simply so that others may simply live, that we’re all in this thing together. I’m down with that, so much so that maybe I’ll even ride a Ruckus next year instead of the petroleum-swilling Ducati Diavel Carbon Godzilla-footprint I Rucked Out on this year (all the Ruckuses were taken). But probably not. I love my fellow man, but I like to be able to outrun him just in case. □
