Project Honda Ruckus – Part 1
Since MotoIQ is hurting for Honda content, we took a look at our Honda inventory to see what sort of project material we could conjure up. Annie Sam has her EK Civic Hybrid with a B18C in it, but she did her swap many years ago and she was reluctant to tear into her daily driver.
This left us with our Honda Ruckus. This little 49cc scooter has been our pit bike at races, our move the photographers around bike for track events and our run to the corner for coffee and bagels machine for two years. Although we like our Ruckus’s 95 mpg, especially now that fuel prices are going up again, we sort of laugh at its jogger like acceleration and sorta dangerous 37 mph top speed. The Ruck is something that you only want to ride in the neighborhood because higher speed main streets are suicidal. You would get immediately ploughed by cell phone wielding distracted soccer moms in huge SUV’s.
The Ruckus brakes and suspension also earn big pluses in the super sucking category but what can you expect for what is probably the cheapest vehicle in the Honda line up? The final blow to our Ruckus’s dignity was when Steph Papadakis started to shove stuff into our Ruck’s exhaust at a race at Willow Springs and it ran around with the exhaust corked up, not making much difference in power.
In typical MotoIQ fashion we decided that our Ruck was going to need some help in the suspension, handling and brakes department before we increased the power to help keep things safe. We had almost rear ended cars due to weak brakes and ended up doing a flying W by hitting a water dip at 35 mph on the street. Although this sounds somewhat comical, it was not safe and had to be addressed.
With a little keyboard research we found that the Ruckus scene is blooming and many Ruckus aficionados are crossovers from the import tuner scene. Most of them hang out on the web at www.totalruckus.com and ruckuscentral . We also discovered that we knew people in the Ruckus industry, guys like Brandon Leung. Brandon used to work for HKS and now owns a fashion and Ruckus tuning boutique called Bowls in San Marino California. We also are buddies with the guys at Password JDM who have launched a line of Ruckus parts. Another Ruckus tuner, Rucksters Customs signed up to help us out.
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| The packages arrive and it's time for deconstruction! |
The first bit of sadness we had to dump was the entire front end. The Ruckus had these really bad handlebars that were impossibly high and rearward. They were not adjustable either. This made for cramped rider positioning and gave us a Peewee Herman riding position, uh. We had one word for the stock Ruckus fork, awful. With no damper, it was like a pogostick. The forks would nearly bottom from us just sitting on the bike and if a dip was hit at speed, the coiled undamped springs would try to launch us into the air. Not cool. The front brake was ok for a mechanical drum but was barely adequate and could not come close to locking the front wheel. Since 80 percent of a bike's stopping power is generated by the front, something better would be needed for safety.
The front steel wheel looked dorky and was heavy. The weird semi knobby tire had the grip of a plastic wheel. The lame tires resulted in our first crash; we slid out trying to hang a turn and thrashed the Ruckus body plastics, levers and bars. We also got a case of road rash. Fail. Rucksters came to our rescue with a complete NCY front end.
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| The NCY Front end included this cool and light 6 spoke alloy wheel, carbon wrapped billet fork sliders, Ti coated stanchion tubes with the huge 2 piston caliper hydraulic disc brakes, all for a price of less than one Brembo on our EVO. |
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| To give our Ruck a touch of JDM flavor, we added a Kijima headlight and turn signals in addition to a dry carbon Password JDM front fender |
This trick piece is economical, giving you a lot of lameness fixing hardware for a decent price. The NCY front end features a really good fork with honest to God hydraulic damping and spring rates meant for something other than a little kid or an anorexic import model. We chose their Ti/carbon model which had titanium nitride coated stanchion tubes just like your 1098S with carbon wrapped alloy sliders. Pretty tricks stuff, orders of magnitude better working and lighter. To make things cooler, the NCY front end comes with an alloy oversize 12mm axle and an alloy wheel with hydraulic disc brakes! The hydraulic disc brake features a slotted wave rotor, alloy bolts, a fixed twin piston caliper, braided steel brake line and a master cylinder with a billet clamp. We installed the front end with a sticky Michelin Bopper semi slick front tire from Bowls in 120/90-10.
