Our new Scrambler's baptism in the bush

[Aussiebikerdave]

I took delivery of our new Scram late Thursday of last week. The next day being last Friday was spent hacking off some uneccessary frame bracketry and fitting more stuff to the brand new Scram. The dealer had already swapped the 'ironing board' for a more comfortable single seat, fitted the Arrow two-into-one and done the tune install. So the weekend arrived with the promise of much rain and the weather gods were detirmined not to dissapoint!

Saturday dawned wet and stayed that way all day so I figured if the bike was going to get dirty riding in the rain (stayin home wasn't an option!) it may as well get properly dirty so we headed straight for the Mapleton State Forest. After a good dose of slippin and sliding on the stock tyres we arrived at Bellbird Creek Tearooms (a popular biker hang-out in the hills) where Pete, the proprietor and owner of the blue Tiger 1050, brewed up his usual excellent coffee.

The YSS shocks are 20mm longer than stock at 380mm and are the top-of-the-range jobbies with low-speed and high speed compression damping adjustablity. Going down this path has paved the way for the possibility of fitting a 21" front wheel down the track but in the meantime I notice in the twisties that the steering is sharper with nice quick turn-in.

 

[Iceseven]

Man you Aussies really scramble on the Scrambler! Nice looking bike!

 

[Rhodie]

Great pix Dave.
The bike is sure looking good
and you've moved fast on the improvements.
Congrats
Rhodie

 

[DIRK]

good on ya nice to see it dirty as it should be. grand jacket the bmw w/ goretex liner, dry for you ha!

 

[oldknobies]

nice!

Beauty of a scram mate! I've had my black 09 scram for about a month and really love it. Have done some "mild" dirt with it but it's still pretty much stock. I'm thinking of doing the back brake mod so it doesn't get wacked....

 

[Aussiebikerdave]

Here's a couple of little mods we have done that may be of interest. The Arrow two-into-one displayed an annoying squeak at the outlet on a shut throttle after a good rev so we decided we needed to fix it. We suspected that the end of the baffle insert was too short causing the sound to vibrate at the outside end of the pipe so we cut the internal peice of pipe off (thats the long part with the blanked end and the holes drilled in the side) then removed the remainder from the baffle flange. This was replaced with a short section of larger diameter pipe that was welded in place so as to protrude past the end of the main stainless steel muffler body. This has done three things. Eliminated that annoying resonance squeak, given the bike a lovely meaty note on full throttle without being obnoxiously loud and best of all, a extra little performance boost which is always welcome. Hey, horsepower for free is the next best thing to sliced bread aint it!

The internal diameter of the removed internal baffle is 24mm while the internal diamter of the shorter piece we replaced it with is 26mm.

This afternoon we installed the front fork PD valves according to the 'destructions' however we chose to not trim the spring spacer by the 14mm that the valve takes up inside the fork leg. This was done for three reasons. To beef the suspension for the big hits, to give a little more ride height and to allow the possiblity of triming back if a good test ride demands it. Since the spacer resides right beneath the top cap of the forks, it is no biggie to pull them out and trim back if needed. While we had the forks out I noticed that the four mudguard to fork stay screws projected through their captive nuts by about 6 or 7mm. I just happened to have 4 x 6mm spacers floating around the bench top so we inserted these between the guard and the front fork cross brace/mounting bracket which has given us a little more guard-to-wheel clearance for those muddy days out on the trail.

PS. Note the new for 2009 front brake rotor.