been a while since last post…so this will be a bit all over the place while I catch up. Apologies, please bear with me, there’s a lot to cover and some really exciting stuff to follow. Details on that as soon as I know for sure 🙂

Sooooo… the B-motor investigation didn’t go so well, scored bearing surface on the little end (wrist pin) bearing on the con-rod, which means new con-rod, which means bottom end apart and basically new crank which comes with free con-rod (or separate/re-join crank which will cost about the same as replacement). Ran out of budget on that so that’s been paused for the moment.

In the mean time.. been trying to get ready for winter. Got the winter tyres on but I kept finding I was getting cold hands despite big gloves and surgical gloves underneath. so finally caved and bought some heated grips. The fitting of the heated grips is not as straightforward as it sounds either but will be covered another time.

Now that I’ve got a dedicated stunt bike I’ve been hankering to put the R125 back to stock bars, sport-bike position, all original.

Fortunately all the changes I made to the R125 were reversible (not by accident) so reverting to stock isn’t an issue. The only bit i can’t undo rn is cutting down the thin ends of the screen supports on the front plastic, but one of them was held on with a ziptie and a sticker anyway so was purely decorative. My front plastic is fcuked anyway so the whole thing will need replacing at some point anyway but not today.

Also since getting the autotune and the convos I’ve had with people off youtube recently, I’ve been curious how fast she can go. I was never really that bothered about top speed before but now that the bike is sorta coming together, it’s kinda the best metric of how good the setup is so NOW I HAVE TO KNOW.

Also it’s kinda getting to the point where it’s fairly usable on A-roads and dual carriageways and I don’t get bullied by literally everyone like I used to. We’re still by now means “fast” (yet! haha) but we’re now faster than most of the other traffic and can keep up quite nicely, and overtake things, plus being able to filter adds the usual decongestion benefits.

The motox bars, cut-down screen and crash cage really killed the aero and I lost a few mph off the top end the moment i put the raised clipons/motox bars on. It was immediately noticable but I loved the handling so it was a trade-off i was ok with. The cut-down screen made that worse. The crash cage seemed to make surprisingly little difference.

So after adding the 180cc, whilst I wasn’t really thinking she was that much (or any) faster than before because I wasn’t getting a higher top speed (though she gets there a LOT quicker now)..actually the situations then and now are quite different.

Stock (as a 125) she’d do max 83 on the 14t according to the speedo. GPS reading is less but the speedo is my reference here throughout since I don’t always have the gps.

Later on after she’d just had the PCV added and been dyno’d we had a fluke “fastest recorded speed” whilst full of luggage and me with a backpack for a trip to the coast, still on 125cc, original bars etc, on the longest downhill in the world with a tailwind. Despite being massively overgeared on the 15t she managed 85mph, though a lot of that was gravity and wind.

That ‘record’ has stood since then, even with the 180 kit, since I did the bars and stuff after that which dropped the top speed to 78mph. Then I added the 180 kit and just the other week we managed 84mph *with* the motox bars, cut down screen and crash cage (and barely any plastics), and still wiht the top end not really being her strongest area atm either (lots more mids).

So, inevitably my brain is like:

“SO WHAT TOP SPEED MIGHT BE POSSIBLE IF WE REVERTED TO STOCK BARS, PLASTICS ETC?”

Also: Spark Joy or GTFO

The old oem clipons were a bit crusty and (plastics notwithstanding) I’ve gone to quite some lengths to try to restore her to “pristine” condition elsewhere, so having scabby corroded clipons wasn’t gonna do it for me. They’re what I see and interact with when I’m on the bike and I want them to spark joy when I look at them, and want it to feel like it’s almost too nice to be using (almost!). I wasn’t really feeling the $$ and waiting for some replacement ones, plus the fit is always a bit random, I just wanted the oem ones but nice. So I got polishing.

So as it turned out I had a bunch of front-end stuff to do and could almost build the new (old/oem) bars with the heated grips on whilst off the bike.

I picked up this very pretty screen from Slipscreens on Ebay, and isn’t it beautiful? The fit was excellent too, very happy with it, even despite my janky front plastics 🙂

I figured may as well do it all in one go so now we have heated grips, the polished oem clipons, new screen, crash cage removed for now too.

I might put the cage back at some point as I like the look and the peace of mind, but want to test the top speeds without first.

I also finally removed the stickers on the plastics. They were added by the previous owner, my very good friend (RIP) so I was reluctant to remve them but I want to paint hte panels nicely so they had to go. One boomerang panel is pristine and the other has a few minor marks but should paint up ok 🙂

So here’s where we ended up…

So is it any quicker?

Actually, Yes!

Bear in mind it was literally the first test run out, plus it was raining.

That meant I had my helmet with the pinlock visor, which doesn’t have a camera, and the crash-cage camera mount is no longer there since no cage atm, and I’ve not finished the new tank mount yet.. so no recording of it, but!

Now she’ll pull 85mph on the flat under her own steam, and I saw 86 when I was playing with a car.. must have been some slipstreaming going on though. I think under favourable conditions we might see higher still and with the stage 2 cam, and posssibly some further engine refinements we might see in the early 90s, which would be EPIC.

I’ll have to take another trip to the A14 round cambridge where I managed the previous best the other week. Those swooping high speed corners on the A14.. wow. My new favourite thing!

The riding position feels compeltely different again, back to how it was, which I like a lot. The cornering is much tighter and I feel more connected to the bike (which you would expect really)..either way I’m enjoying it 🙂

Header pic is from a socially-distanced ride with fellow R125er ‘Axion’ a couple of months back (who also took the pic).