things to do?

[status92]

hi all, sorry if this is posted under the wrong section of the forums, but i think you could class my question as mechanically related.. anyway, i've recently got back on my bike, i know its only a small bike and alot of people will suggest passing my full bike test and getting a bigger bike before i start spending all my money on my bikes, but i know im gonna be keeping my 125 for life. its completely stock atm, i know im gonna be getting a stage 2 remap, and a scorpion full exhaust system, but im unsure on what else i should do to it! im looking at a new rear wheel, new mirrors, and a new seat. just curious if anyone has any suggestions on what else i could do? and if you know any uk based websites i can have a mooch around i shall try to upload a pic of it as soon as

thanks for reading, and sorry for the wall of text

joe
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yamaha yzf-r125 / carbon fibre grey

[MCN]

(Just in case this gets FZ1Ecal.)

You will get a lot of 'advice' from the maggots on here so a thick skin or one-piece leathers required.

They're most of them at school just now but by all means hang around.

You are dealing with an more or less fixed capacity (i.e. amount of development potential) on a 125. You can do odds and ends but unless you go balls out and race prep it there is not a massive amount of things to play around with.
Weight is the easiest thing to get rid of. Go on a diet and don't carry extra load. Getting a mass moving is what the engine does.
You can spend a fortune on this venture.
Why not consider a bigger engine if you want performance.
The 125 will only realistically give you some reliability and economy as far as fuel and service goes.

Just sayin'.

ps that Sir, was no 'wall of text'. You just ain't seen nothin' yet.

[status92]

yeh i was in fact thinking of going ball deep and race prepping it, i will be getting a bigger bike i was looking at the 300 ninja, i wanna keep the 125 cause it costs a tenna to fill the tank and thats a whole day of fun. im looking at what weight i can lose as well.

yeah in the preview it looked like a much longer paragraph lol, first post on this site if people wanna say shit let them, water off a ducks back :L
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yamaha yzf-r125 / carbon fibre grey

[MarJay]

An exhaust and a 'stage 2' remap won't do jack shit on a four stroke 125. In fact, the whole concept of a 'stage 2' anything on an 125 is laughable.

The easiest, cheapest and best way to go faster is to buy a bigger bike. It's that simple.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F; Cheap project: CBR900RR FireBlade
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[MCN]

[P.addy]

You can't make your bike faster, even if you could a Ninja 250 will beat it... with no issues.

My suggestion, you be trollin'

[monkeybiker]

[unitynotsocri...]

No,just keep your 125 for when your new big cc missile refuses to start because its engine management system has a dizzy fit !
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nearly a normal tax paying tosser.......with ferrileness suzi100,cg125,cb125scb100n,cb175,cd100,cj250t,kh250,c15,125 bantam,super 6,rickman gs750,xt500,250rs,dt175,lifan125,dolomite1850,metro,Morris220ld,morrisfg,leyland princess,range rover,corsa,vw camper .now struggling with legs. MORE ORDER = MORE CHAOS

[monkeybiker]

[Teflon-Mike]

First of all, odds of you keeping your R125 'for life' are heavily against you.
- Before you begin, the presumption you'll want to step up to something bigger are high, and you even say it yourself.
- Next, 125's get theived, and desirable sporty ones with a reputation for eating thier own pistons or being crashed by teen-tearaways shocked at the price of replacing the plastic they mash are even more thievable as they are worth more in bits than they are as a whole bike on e-bay!

THEN.. you start 'tuning' it... you spend money to remove value.. even if it did actually 'add' noticeable performance, its not exactly a smart financial move... BUT, lets see... you want to keep it 'cos "cheap"... and only costs £20 to fill and does maybe 250 miles on that.... well, you dont 'save' money by spending money... you save money by NOT spending money.. so chucking money at a 'cheap' bike, seems rather retarded to me... especially as its not a very cheap bike to begin with!

You want 'cheap' buy a CG125! Save a couple of grand off the top of the trade in, and on subsequent insurance premiums and on parts and maintenance AND you have a LOT of cash left floating about to put the little extra fuel in a 300 Ninja or whatever!!

Meanwhile.... you start chucking cash to make your not so cheap 125 a bit bit less athmatic... Power = Rate of Change of Energy, and you dont get owt-f-nowt! So IF you actually get any more power (which is muteable).. use it.. and it will burn more fuel... defeating the reason you say you want to keep it.. in fact, likelihood is that re-piping and re-mapping, will richen up the fuel map in areas the map's already 'weak' for economy, and or made so by the pipe.. so it'll likely ruin what economy you have even if you DON'T use any extra 'pep' its unlikely to offer.....

NOW.. little nugget for you... another formula says Power = Force x Speed.. force in question on a bike is 'Drag', which is mostly wind resistance, which is pretty much a function of frontal area.. that is pretty much the same, the outline of the bloke riding it, regardless of the size of the bike beneath them... 'aerodynamics' make very little odds at UK Legal road-speeds, and where 'faired' sports-bike manage better speeds or mpg, its more often from a 'crouch' riding position reducing frontal area as it is from any greater 'aerodynamics'.

SO, as far as economics is concerned, you get it, or not, as more often the case, from HOW you ride, not WHAT you ride.....

I can get close on the MPG I see from my 125 from my 750... and if I'm being a bit 'gentle' touring about sight-seeing, I can actually get better mpg from the 750 than I do, ragging the shit out of the 125.....
Back to the fallacy of your economy.... 'keeping' a second bike, paying for a second insurance premium, or the added for a two-bike policy; paying a second tax disc, paying for a second MOT each year... all ADDED costs, to actually NOT save you any fuel riding the thing, you could save just riding the second bike a little bit more gently...

Which brings us back to the top.. and if/when you do step up top a bigger bike, you are likely to discover this, but ALSO that the 'frustration' of not having the added performance on tap, that made you want the bigger bike to start with, will remain, and either way, you'll quickly decide that the 'saving' if there even is any, isn't worth it, and you'll neither ride the big-bike 'gently' to save fuel, nor suffer the tiddler for the same!

So... whole precept of the plan is flawed from the start... and more, 'cos it ent likely to do what you say you want it to.. before we consider that 'weak' top end, likely to lunch itself without tuning the thing, resulting in not so many happy miles or lack of expensive bills to keep the thing 'working'.. and only more likely to turn itself into shrapnel if you do...

So, cut the crap, stop looking for reasons to justify the endevour, be honest.. you have a 'slow' 125, and can't have anything bigger for maybe a couple of years, so you want to try and beat the sytem and get more out of it....

Remember, it may be a 125, but the Learner/A1 regs also impose power and power to weight restrictions... you turn the thing to offer more performance than your licence allows, then you may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and ride a bigger bike you dont have licence enmtitlement to ride that really DOES offer some added performance for the risk, and that is likely to prove rather more reliable whilst doing it....

Another equation for power for you.... Power = cylinder displacement x cylinder pressure x crank-revs. So if you want the motor to deliver more power, basically, you need to get it to suck more petrol and air through it, and get more charge going bang more often... mpg will then inherently fall... BUT.. whats stopping the thing sucking more charge at the moment? Little cyclinder that can only suck 125cc of charge in at a time is an obviouse one... but, that little pot also has little valves to let the charge in and out.... and them valves is opened by a cam-shaft that can only push them so far open; and THAT is where the 'restriction' lies.. not in the exhaust pipe, that is HUGE in comparison to the diameter of the valves; or the throttle-body, that again, is huge in relation to the size of the valves.. neither of which stopping the motor suck charge and make power.. fuel injection map? all that carbs or fuel injection does is add the right amount of fuel to the air going into the engine to make a charge that will burn... it REALLY has little to no influence on how much power the engine might or can deliver....

So a pipe and re-map? Maybe even a 'performance' air-filter.. its mucking around in places where there ISN'T anything stopping the motor deliver any more than it does.. its not the weak-link!!

You want to make that engine deliver more power, then you have to burrow into the engine, and completely re-engineer it to for more power; new cam, possibly bigger valves, possibly a big-bore kit.. THEN you can start fucking about with pipes and air-filters and EFi maps to suit the new state of tune.. And you MIGHT, if you are very rich, very conscientious and more than a little lucky, achieve an extra 2-3bhp...., and you MIGHT manage that without significantly reducing the motor's reliability, but it WILL be at the expense of its service life... put bearings under more load, carrying more power, even if they dont break, they WILL wear out faster....

As an excersise in futility; an accademic challenge for its own sake, there is nothing wrong with such endevours... I have a little 4-stroke 125 engine on the bench at the moment I have just rebuilt I hope will be punting about 16bhp when I've prepped a frame for it to go in... BUT, whole BIKE has cost me barely £500, and that included the knacker I started with! It's a bit of pocket-money fun.. and I don't really have too many concerns about how 'reliable' it'll prove, I don't expect to ride it every day, so I can afford to write it off as a 'total loss' if when I've had my fun, its completely dead, or no-one else will give me what I have spent on it!

Spending significantly more, on a bike that cost significantly more, and you expect to provide useful every day transport.. and STILL be 'cheap' to run? Well, it's your money, who am I to tell you how to spend it, B-U-T... if you want to fuck-about with something... get a project bike and fuck about with that!! Leave the R125 alone!

Your plan is flawed from the outset, both in what you say you hope to achieve, and why, and even what your hidden motives may be...

WHICH is why, we all say, suck it up. Keep it standard, preserve what life and reliability and resale you have in it, and enjoy the thing for what it is.... there will always be some-one who can go quicker than you, whether they have a 'faster' bike or not; they'll have more skill to get more out of it, or they'll just be daft enough to take more risks than you.. but either way; old bit of 'paddock-lore' at the race track, when a rider comes and asks what they can do to make thier bike faster? "Fit a better Rider!" better rider, goes faster, crashes less, blows less engines up, wears out fewer tyres and brake pads, and spends less money fixing stuff thats broken....

AND THAT is where you should be looking for 'improvements'.. ways to make yourself a 'better rider'..... will make this bike faster, AND cheaper, wont cost you money, wont make the bike less valuable, and it will work on every single bike you own or ride there-after.....

If you want to get into creative mechanics.. get yourself something else, to play spanners with, as a separate 'hobby'.. but be warned, there in lies madness!
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'