125-200cc First Ride Impressions

First ride on my 2012 CR125. Trail riding in wet conditions in Pennsylvania 80% humid 70 degrees elev 2000. My last bike was an 08 YZ 125. I'm 5'-10" 160 lbs with 12 years riding experience. Use maxima 927, 32:1 with 93 octane pump gas.

Day 1

Impressions - The Good: great ergonomics, feels light in the woods, great brakes - way stronger than the YZ. Engine is strong, but narrower than the yz.

The bad: forks/shock are way stiff for trails. I felt every root and bump. The rear felt unsettled and couldn't get consistent traction coming out of turns and going over roots. Front end tends to push on exit of turns too. I tried tweaking the fork damping, it's a work in progress. I'm hoping to work out the problems by tuning and without a revalve (no $ for it at the moment). --- jetting is off - bog at wide open and stutter at 1/4 to 1/2 throttle.

Great bike so far, I look forward to learning it and tuning. Any suggestions for suspension and jetting?


Day 2

Forks
Backed the fork compression out 6 clicks and the rebound 2 clicks from their stock position. It helped with going over roots on turns and seemed to have much better traction around turns and through berms. The rear end still feels a little loose going around flat turns, I think changing the geometry by lowering the forks will help, along with tuning the shock (which I haven't touched yet). The conditions I was riding in also weren't great for rear end traction. It's still a work in progress, but it's improved dramatically - I don't feel like the front end is going to wash out at any given second like on Day 1. I think I can tune to something that's 'good' for my application (woods 95% of the time, MX track 5%), not as good as what it'd be with a revalve however. I still haven't touched the shock, didn't have time, and I want to do one thing at a time (I realize shock/fork tuning are dependent on eachother, but they have to be in the ballpark first and the shock doesn't seem awful, it does need to be softer though too).

Transmission
The gear ratios are unusual. I got a chance to open it up on long straight (dirt road). When speed shifting I originally thought the bike was bogging or couldn't stay on the pipe for some reason. I realized though that the drop in RPM I was feeling was due to the gears being too far apart. I had to feather the clutch at each shift to keep it on the pipe. It was weird. This could be why I perceived the engine to have a narrower power band in comparison to the YZ. As a correction to that, I think it has good low end and mid, maybe even more than the YZ, but the gear ratios are way too broad which is why it falls off the pipe easily. I'm hoping a 144 is enough to bridge the gap between the wide ratios. I'm optimistic. I've never felt a bike that was geared like this before, it's just too broad for the 125. I'm running stock sprockets, which I believe is 13/50.

Misc.

What a weird fuel valve. My brother in law couldn't figure out why the bike stalled after riding it for 5 minutes (ran out of gas in the float bowl, and the fuel was turned off). Once he realized, he couldn't figure out how to turn the gas on - it was pretty funny as I walked 100 yards to turn the gas on for him.

I love the brakes, and the clutch - very smooth.

Right out of the box the CR will not feel comfortable in the woods, but you can get it there with adjusting. I bought my kid a WR125 and its a tad soft so it works both ways. I'm riding upon 228 in cranberry.

Out of curiosity, what made you decide on a CR rather than WR?

Hey I'm in cranberry too, that's crazy. What are your suspension settings?

I st

I may race mx (again) someday, and I'd rather have the cr ignition. The biggest reason was tht I bought this bike used for an incredible price.

The 2013 wr has the cr ignition, at least that's what Shultz cycle told me. I bought it for my 12 year old son but it is earily fun for me to wind out.

I ride a wr300 setup for a slow fat old guy. It sill manages to pull me up just about any hill and lugs like no other bike I've had.

I'm guessing you're NOT going to find any clicker settings you're happy with. I'm almost 5'10", 165 lb, mid pack A rider in Hare Scrambles and nothing with the stock suspension worked well for me in the woods. I had the same issues as you but for me the worst thing was the way the forks reacted when I'd hit a granly tree root or rock while the bike was leaning----honestly scared me several times as my mind prepared to hit the ground or the tree really hard. Fortunately the harsh forks only caused one crash and I only grazed a tree on the way down.

I never noted the front end pushing in corners though. I raised the forks to the first line right after break-in though and only had the clickers backed off 4 on the compression and 2 on the rebound at that time.

I ended up going the semi-DIY route with Race Tech. I did the fork compression kit ($170) myself and they turned out great. It does bottom out once each lap on the supercross track but I can live with that. Next step this winter will be their fork rebound kit.

I had the dealer do the Race Tech shock kit ($170 + $80 labor) for me----crazy thing about the shock kit was that the access code they gave me to get my "custom valving" on their web site for the shock yielded nothing because they had no settings for off-road with the Sachs shock (only a 160 lb MX Pro----why would I want that when the MX valving was exactly what I was trying to escape?) Anyway, the dealer called Race Tech, they gave him a shim stack recommendation only for the dealer to find out that the shim they called for weren't even in the kit so he improvised with the wide selection of shim he had on hand and it turned out great. The back end used to buck pretty bad over good sized logs---now I just feel the impact while the rear tire just continues to drive over the log and maintain traction.

Very pleased with how the Race Tech Gold Valve Kits works----I've race it twice----not so good results at the first race before the suspension mods and a second in the +30 A class after the mods. hmmmmm. What I really like about the Race Tech approach is that I can now make any changes I want to the fork valving myself by changing the shims and can have the dealer do likewise with the shock when the time is right. I've had Factory Connection work on two bikes--a CRF 450 for MX and a KTM 250 XC for Hare Scramble and while I especially love what they did with the KTM, if I want the valving changed I have to spend $50-$75 for shipping and wait about ten days for them to do it for me and get it back.

Yeh i mean heck you can change that suspension to work for anything. Just was curious. I have this crazy nagging in my head to by a WR125. Its making me nuts haha. I have a WR300 and no reason to buy a 125.

Did you try

Did you try removing fork oil to try to take some of the harshness out? Or did you only adjust clickers?

Cr ignition is different .Seen reports on here of guys changing Wr '13 digital ignition to CR and getting good improvement - in mid range power.

Try getting a 150 kit - It will help with power delivery - I found my Cr was hard to jet but change to 150 helped. There is also a lot of guys that went to RM needle and 5 slide - try researching in index -
Whatever you to the 125 - I think the delivery is more top orientated with good luggability .

I considered lowering the cc's by 5-10cc's because several here mentioned it but ended up calling Hall's and Zip-Ty----Jay at Halls and the tech at Zip-Ty said the same things "Lowering the fluid level will NOT get you where you want to go" (well, I'm paraphasing but both agreed that oil level was not the problem--it's the VALVING, simple as that) Jay's obviously a big name in the Husq community but add to that that his son races a 150 in district 17 so he's intensely familair with this bike. The next issue to deal with now for me is getting the rebound kit because it also addresses the mid-valve issue which will yield a much plusher ride.

Also, forgot to mention that I had to go up 2 sizes on the shock spring---I think I ended up with a 5.4

I just read your thread where you voiced the same concerns as I did when you first rode the bike. Honestly, like you, I just don't have the money to throw at the bike right now. So I may experiment with fork oil height/weight and clicker settings to get something better.

I realize throwing money at the situation will fix it, but I've avoided suspension adjustments for years because I was scared of it (as a teenager). Now that I'm back in the sport after 8 years, I'm willing to go at this as a learning experience. At the earliest, I wouldn't be able to do a revalve until January - so I'm going to tune.

Maybe I'll document what I try and post it on cafe husky as I go. It could help everyone in my position.

For woods riding with the CR, try backing the compression clickers nearly all the way out.

There are several guys on here doing suspension work themselves, I suspect if you opened your fork up and posted up what was in there, they'd be willing to make some recommendations...

I have been backing out the compression and some damping. I believe I backed compression 6 clicks and rebound 2 clicks from their stock settings. It's better, but it can improve. I havent touched the shock yet. I want to lower the forks in the trees too, but I don't want to change too many variables at once.

I'll tune as much as I can this riding season. This winter I'll tear it down and do some more extensive work.

5-6 mm

Cr 125 is a harsh ride in the woods even at my meager 145 lbs.

Rode mine stock for nearly 2 years. Now that I've had the suspension re sprung and revalved the difference is ridiculous.