Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126076
o e<"l l-o IlJ ..0 S IlJ >o Z o DeC()/ter~ bObyl CD E E 0=: v.ryone In the motoreyd. community I. ".d to ••• the relell•• of the new RM'O Suzuki mlnlcyd., with the po••,bI• • xceptlon of Y.m"'• • Cerlllln d ..... through period. of onemarque domllultlon. Y.mah. '. 011 the road r.c• cours••, Suzuki 011 the motocro.. tl'llCk., J.w. In .peedrny .nd H.rI.y on the Gl'lInd N.tIonal dreult .re .11 .x.mpl••• Well, •• It I. In the bl, world It I. the ••m. In the .m.lI.r world. Mllllcyd. radn, h•• b••n domln.t.d In the pa.t coupl. yurs by Hond., with th.1r four-.trok. XR·75 and more rec.ntly by the elUmposln, Y.mah. YZ'O. Th. XR·75, .ven In the h.nd. of J.ff Ward .nd hi. m.,Huck mini'. I. un.bl. to .t.m the YZ tid•• Th. n.w Suzuki RMSO will provld. more th.n anoth.r alt.rn.tlv., It will be a succ•••ful oppon.nt. Th. mini cla.s.s throu,hout the country will s •• an Infusion of comp.tltlv.n.ss th.t Int.r-brand rlv.lry c.n brln, back. L.t's d.ar up on. thin, 'mm.d'at.,y. Th. RMSO has no rel.tlon to the .arll.r TM75. Th. t.nd.ncy wh.n dlscu..lng the Suzuki RM'O Is to talk of Suzuki's " firs t .ffort." That Is how b.d the TM75 w.s. Wh.n the T.am Suzuki m.chanlcs _re offered TM75's to us. as pit blk.s th.y refus.d and bought th.lr own XR-75 's. As bad as the TM75 was the RM Is equally as good. '0 Motorcycle testers by in large are large. Mlnlcydes are small and thus the two rarely meet. I . fit b.tter on an Open dass bike, best on a 250, tightly on a 125, barely on a 100, but the only time I fit on a mini Is on the ",ay to the porta-can. Thousands of racers my size are going to buy RMSO's for full blast charges to john and concession stand, but for testing purposes we gathered up every mini racer we could find. And It was easy to find them. We just set the RMSO out In the open for ten minutes and a crowd gathered. President Ford would have been able to swing a majority had he made each campal,n speech from behInd this bike. " It 's really neat. It sure does handle good. " said Bryon Antonacd, who spent the be.t part of a 20mlnut. moto trying to shake RMSo-mounted Jeff Ward off of his trlcked-out Y's tall fender. " It se.ms pretty fast for a .tocker. The shock. don 't work at all, but It Is ,ood." replied Jeff who put a great ride on a motorcyde we had handed him only an hour before the race. It wasn't dialed In at all, the Jetting was way off and Jeff had to step off his fourstroke and adjust to a two-stroke. If the moto had been much longer he might have caught Bryon. Two divided by one is two R.gardl... of what some of California 's fastest mini riders say we ne.d to look at the motoreyde In two ways. What It's got right now and what we can ,et out of It. The stock RMSO Is a great little mo'slele. Suzuki probably spent a half a million dollars tooling up to produce this machine alone. The engine Is a miniature 125 engine, with a five-speed transmission. It has bridge exhaus t and Intake ports and case reeds. Carburetlon Is through a 24 mm Mlkunl with a push."ull choke knob. The alre leaner Is an Ingenious little sllde-ln plate ' that resembles putting a piece of toast In a toaster. The alrbox Itself Is plastic and hidden behind yellow plastic side panels. Access to the alreleaner Is through the seat, which Is a small replica of the big RM seats. The fenders are of course plastic, as Is the Ignition side case. It looked like metal, felt like metal. but when we pulled the engine down It was plastic. The Ignition Is electronic, what Suzuki calls PEl {pointless electronic I,nltlon}. The black box Is behind the front number plate. The suspension supposedly oHers 5.J." of travel. We could only ,et 4.5" out of It. The rear end Is suspended by 12" 011 dampened shocks with adjustabl. pre-load on the spring•• The forks are an Inch and on""alf lon,er than 1976 Yamaha fork. and the slider h•• on. Inch of addltlon.I over-l.p. The .uspen.lon works In that the front .nd rear ends up and down. It can be made to work better. It Is . bett.r than or equal to all the other mlnl.uspenslons on the market, .s It sits. It has more potentl.1 to '0 work,reat. The stock en,'ne really puts power to the back wheel, via a 42' chain, to a point. Lance Morewood, former ace mini rider turned 125 Expert, say. It has 24