Enduro Cub? Trial Cub? Fun Cub!

Another busy month, another late post. Cold weather. Warming weather. Pandemic restrictions and restrictions lifted. Work stress and random days off. The usual litany of excuses could be inserted to explain why, but I'll skip that this month and get right to the heart of this post. In an effort to get out and ride more, I have taken the Super Cub in a decidedly interesting direction. As usual, I'm trying to do it on the cheap. I managed to put a few things together and have ended up with a great time from doing it. Read on for more Super Cub fun!

I started off by getting an idea. I found an area nearby my house that is a pretty well known riding area amongst the off road crowd here in Eastern Japan. Getting tired of living in a very urban town has gotten me interested in getting back to dirt riding. The road riding near me hasn't been very satisfying lately and long trips to better riding areas or to a track are hard to plan for thanks to the ebb and flow of pandemic related curbing of travel activities. My thought was to outfit the Super Cub for dirt riding and use it to get out and ride some off road. Being an naturally thrifty person, I didn't want to dump much money into this idea in case it didn't pan out as expected. Amazon Japan to the rescue and these babies showed up at my door. These are some Deestone 2.75 x 17" knobby tires perfectly sized for the Super Cub. $65 USD and a quick two day wait later and they were at my door. Deestone is a Thailand company that makes all types of tires from Industrial sized to small motorcycle/scooter tires.

I wasted no time getting them onto the bike. I started with the rear tire since it is the more difficult to get off the bike. Difficult is a relative term. You can see that the hub stays on the bike while the rear brake and the wheel/tire combo comes off for service. There was the rear brake arm and brake actuator to contend with as well. Easy enough and within a few minutes the street tire and tube were off the rim. Working on my knees like this is getting to be a pain, but it is what I have for now. I urn for the day when I have a covered, conditioned shop with bike lift to spend my hobby time. The same tire levers I got to put the new street tires on the Cub were used to take them off. These are good levers and I'm glad I have three of them.

The new tires are a pretty chunky, knobby tire that is both DOT and E4 compliant for road use. They are 13mm (1/2 inch) wider and significantly taller than my OEM style Super Cub tires as can be seen in the pics. They are really nice tires from the looks of it. They have the balance mark appropriately marked and have a recent construction date marker as well. They were well wrapped and have all the look of a decent off road tire. With the big lugs and wide spacing, I wonder how they are going to ride on the street. They look like they'll do really well in the dirt.

I have done tires many times. The Cub's tires have been the easiest by far. Easy doesn't always mean without incident however. While I was removing the rear tire, I felt like I might have bitten too deep with the spoon on the last little bit of the tire bead. After removing the tube, which I intended to reuse, I pumped it up with my makeshift air compressor set up only to find that I did in fact pinch the tube. I bought another new one from the same hardware store I did the last time I pinched the tube, but also decided to try and patch it since the tube was basically brand new. The patch went well and I saved the new tube for possible use later. I still had another tire to work on after all. I managed to install the patched tube and new knobby tire to the rear rim without further drama and was rewarded with a tire that was holding air and looking really good. I did notice that the new tire/wheel combo was much heavier than the OEM version. With only 4.5 hp on tap, this could be a big deal.

The end result for the rear tire came out looking pretty awesome. Here is a comparison to the stock front tire/wheel combination. The new rear has plenty of room and doesn't come into contact with the body, even with my big butt on the seat. Just rolling the bike around my driveway didn't produce any strange noises or obvious fitment issues so I went to work on the front wheel. This was much easier than the rear and without any tube pinching drama. Before you know it I was done and had the bike reassembled and ready for the test drive.

It didn't take long before I noticed some noise coming from the front end on the test ride. I planned a quick one kilometer loop near the house in case anything broke. I didn't want to have to push the bike too far to get back home. There was a distinct rubbing sound that got louder with speed coming from the front. I had taken some measurements of the front tire clearance, but didn't know how those measurements would compare to the actual tire when mounted. Halfway through the ride I was stopped at a light and noticed a yellow discoloration on the front tire. Oops! I scooted back home and looked at the damage. Basically my new front tire was chainsawing through my front fender at an alarming pace. I was another half kilometer away from cutting a hole in my front fender. 

Having no other means available to fix the issue for the time being, I decided to just remove the fender and go from there. I think it looks pretty cool without the fender. We'll see how it goes when I encounter a bit of wet road or muddy trails. The new tires look very aggressive and beefy. I went for another quick test ride and was rewarded with a nice, silent ride and no more fender noise. I did notice that the heavier tires had much more rotational inertia. This wanted to hold the bike more upright through the curves. The lugs are stiffer than a pure dirt bike tire. I didn't feel any funky road handling characteristics from the knobby tread pattern. Aside from a bit more slower acceleration and the need to push a bit harder to get good lean angle, the tires were fine. I was ready to hit the trails!

In my next post I should have a ride report for how the bike did in the dirt and for how it rides on the street. I managed to get all of the work done on a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning of wrenching. I plan on loading up and trying out the new tire set up at the dirt area I found. I'm very excited to try something new with bikes. The pandemic has really hurt my progress on getting to know the Japanese motorcycling scene and this trip would be the first track like ride I have been able to do in more than a year and a half. You can be sure I'll have a trip report very soon! If you can, ride safe friends.

Mat