#Custom postie motorbikes how to#

Keep this in mind if you’re making your own seat and/or swapping the tank. You don’t want a super short seat/long tank combo on these either, they look great ok, but if you need to get up on the tank or put your weight over the back wheel you won’t be having fun with that set up. I grew up on dirt bikes so love the feel of Pro-Taper bars, but Renthals or the cheaper brands have much the same height, spread and rake ratios. Handlebar and seating position Having good ergonomics is crucial to good off road riding, you want grippy mid-set pegs, a nice high seated position and a good handlebar height.Going a little smaller and wide on the rear comes down to traction and torque. If 21” is too large I’d urge you to go as large as you can and stay relatively thin on the width. Larger Diameter front tyres make it easier to navigate tough terrain and give you more control in sticky situations.

If you can stick to this philosophy with your bike please do, your forearms will thank you when you hit a dirt track. There has been teams of people far smarter than me put together to work out the optimal wheel size ratio for off road riding. Wheel size What Size wheels have MX bikes been running since their birth? 21” front 17-19” rear.Thin on the front wide in the rear, you cant go wrong. Get yourself some good durable dual sport tyres, some I’ve used of note are the Heidenau K60 Scout and the Shinko E805 Big block. Tyre selection I see a lot of trials tyres used on smaller bikes, great in photos but wear like butter on the road.This is only really critical if you’re going to get serious off road, in which case you should be looking for an enduro bike anyway. Bash plates can help if you don’t want the high exhaust. Ground clearance some will re-route the exhaust down the side of the engine like old Honda CL’s just make sure you’re thinking about heat shields too.I cant stress enough how much a good suspension set up will positively affect your fun in the dirt. If it’s an older bike, don’t bother asking questions, rebuild your forks and replace the rear shocks. If you can find a bike that has decent suspension as standard your streets ahead. Good suspension Fork and rear shock swaps are doable but costly.Four 4 cylinder engines just add weight on the front end you’ll instantly regret as soon as you hit a soft corner. Single or Twin cylinder small to mid capacity engines This is more about weight than power, you don’t really need 1000cc’s on a dirt track.

#Custom postie motorbikes how to#

It seems this has some how to become a little lost, so here are some check points to work towards listed in order of my personal opinion of importance: NOT GOOGLE SEARCH “bike model scrambler”.įrom the beginning, the off roader’s wanted a lighter handling bike, well balanced with good bottom end and ground clearance. So what are the targets you should be aiming to hit if you’re looking to Build a scrambler? As always you should take your queues from bikes built by those who know best (Manufacturers + Racers), Old Enduro and VMX bikes as well as your modern Motocrosser’s. These enduro bikes evolved into what you see today tearing Supercross tracks apart.Ĭheck out this Video of some 60’s British racing gold. Better ground clearance, more suspension travel, and the thinner more padded seat/tank section. As you would imagine these guys quickly realized that their road bikes were no good and needed some modification, the industry eventually reacted with Knobby tyres and the release of enduro style bikes. The shortest distance might have been the toughest terrain but, if you could handle it, you won.

Last chance, if alternatively, you’re looking for a cafe racer, check out our cafe racer parts guide here.īack in 19-Dickety-3 some mad Brit racers took their road bikes into a paddock and started racing time trails with a start and end point and no real track. Purpose is the center of our universe after all. So I wanted to take a look at what makes a good scrambler and more importantly why that is. I won’t claim to have ever built the perfect off-road machine, but jeez you gotta at least try. Previously to this, I was seeing a huge surge in heavy road bikes having the tyres swapped out for Knobbys, a set of tracker bars slapped on and branded a Scrambler. As things go I’ve had a run of Scrambler bikes come through the garage recently which got me thinking on just how these bikes came about and why. They have history, a story and their own little ticks that you grow to love.

Why is it so that you can’t get enough of them? PERSONALITY is the word. Everybody loves them, they are outdated, rattly, and perform pretty horribly in comparison to modern motorcycles.