AOF mini rally.... very mini


OneLapper

"You don't *really* need the water pump...."
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Call it what you will, but this past weekend I met up with @Duncan at one of my favorite places to ride, and one of the only legal places on state land, Pachaug State Forest in CT.

It was great to met up with a fellow Alta owner! Duncan is, as I expected, a super nice guy and a true motorcycle enthusiast. My best riding buddy and son were with me, but for the first time (maybe) the Alta to ICE ratio was 50/50!

I had previously run a 37 mile loop that I can easily complete with my Alta. Duncan was a bit unsure with the distance, but with plenty of bailouts onto the public roads we had options if DTE was a real concern. The day was extremely humid but not too warm, everything was damp and covered with leaves, including moss covered rocks. Adding to that, many of the dry water crossing were flowing with water! Lots of mud, water, and slippery rocks.

We had some different tires to compare as well. I was on the MotoZ Hybrid Arena Gummy and the Shinko Fat Tyre up front. Duncan has the Shinko 505 Cheater and Fat Tyre as well. My buddy Tim, on a Husky FE250, has a new Kenda IBEX Gummy on the rear and Kenda Triple Sticky up front. The condition were mostly wet with a slight green moss on the rocks, with wet leaves on top of that. To say that the conditions were slick would be an understatement! Opinion: I was very happy with the MotoZ Gummy, and thrilled with the Shinko Fat Tyre. It appeared that the Kenda IBEX Gummy had the advantage in the rocks given the conditions.

Duncan and I swapped bikes for while. Although a direct comparison might be hard to make since the two of us have a 4 inch and 40 pound delta, we had a good time trying out each others bikes nonetheless. My 17' MX has the stock suspension at full soft, Duncan mentioned he as done some work on his 18' EX suspension. Hopefully he can chime in and give his opinion. I thought EX was a little bit stiffer than my MX, and had a bit less damping on rebound. His EX had a 13/50 setup, my MX is stock at 12/53. It felt like my bike had more pull in mode 2 which should be expected.

My MX has the LHRB. I can say I missed it when riding the EX!

One significant difference was the DTE indicated. Our riding styles were different which may explain most of the difference, Ducan was harder on the throttle coming out of the corners and would wheelie through the whoops vs rolling through them and letting the suspension do it's thing. The other difference was what we did with the key. I keep my bike on throughout the entire ride, shutting off only the throttle when stopping. Duncan would key off the bike. Although our actual total range might have been the same, my battery indicated I had quite a bit left when we bailed off the loop to head back to the trailers. We ran 37 miles, about 7 more than Duncan though we could, but I figure I had about 5 miles left beyond that.

We had a great day riding. The conditions were especially tough but the Altas really shined with the right tires. I can also say the puddles were fairly deep and especially cold.........


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Duncan

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Nice job on the ride report OneLapper.
Thoroughly enjoyed the ride yesterday and pleased to meet you...and your MX.
Those were some slick conditions; allowed our Alta's to really shine with their linear throttle response.
That's one of the features I appreciate; immediate, predictable, precise throttle response with no surging, hiccuping, ring-dinging and hesitation of ICE bikes.
Anyways, to fill in the gaps, all I have done with my suspension is go up about one notch with springs to 5.4 N front, 6.4 kg rear for my 205 lb/6'2" stature.
As others have noted the damping is very soft.
I ride with all the clickers fully in and need even more damping thus will be revalving to make damping stiffer.
I currently have the Shinko fatty up front and the Shinko R505 Cheater out back; good performance in the rocks.
When we swapped bikes first thing I noticed was the MX bars are not as wide.
Otherwise, the two bikes were surprisingly similar.
On other matters, finally got my New Rage LED headlight to work by putting the small running headlight in parallel, could not get it to work with supplied resistor, now need to get a resistor with same ohms as the bulb.
Enjoy the fast charger but peculiar thing is that mine will not charge unless the bar graph is 3/4 or less, it just says "stopped".
The standard charger I initially had from dealer was fine.
Alta says I need to update firmware, which I will do some time.

"The only thing better than riding the Alta is riding the Alta behind another Alta!"

OneLapper, we are all looking for more detail on exactly why you think the puddles were cold?...
 

OneLapper

"You don't *really* need the water pump...."
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Here's an example of the conditions. This is coming up Babyhead at Pachaug.

Even Duncan's Shinko R505 Cheater had it's work cut out for it!

 

OneLapper

"You don't *really* need the water pump...."
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OneLapper, we are all looking for more detail on exactly why you think the puddles were cold?...

Yeah, about that. I got what I deserved. I should not have been bombing through huge puddles, not knowing if a huge rock was just under the surface. It was quite the surprise to land in the water, and I was really surprised at how damn cold it was!
 

Duncan

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Newport, RI
Your backwards swan dive in the big puddle provided good humor OneLapper but in all seriousness you rode very well and we appreciated you showing us where the sunken obstacles were to prevent us from doing same.
You have your MX set up very nicely and that left hand brake lever you custom built is sweet.
Look forward to doing same loop again with you, this time I will not turn mine off and see if bar graph diminishes less.
On Sunday I had zero bar graph for the last 3 miles, total 37 miles, but you still had roughly 1/8 bar remaining.
 

OneLapper

"You don't *really* need the water pump...."
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Location
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I suspect you had more range left than indicated. I can get 42 miles of riding in and get back to the trailer with zero bars. I have pushed it to 45 with conservative riding and a max of 25mph on the roads. At 47 miles Tim throws me the tow strap of shame and drags me back...... what a nice buddy, huh?

Thanks for the comments on my MX. I feel as if I have the bike sorted out and set up the way I like it. Now I can continue to push it faster and improve my riding skills. I need to get some more motocross track time, improve my cornering speed and build up the confidence to start clearing the table tops and doubling. Been thinking about getting a riding coach for the motocross track stuff.

Looks like October 21 Sunday will be the next time we will ride at Pachaug. Next weekend is a JDay GP in Plainfield CT which I hope to do. Maybe we can get some other Alta owners to join us!
 

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