Superstomp 140 Yx Review

[stompracing]

Superstomp 140 YX Appraisal

Ok, so maybe this is not an independent review, but those who know me know I am an honest no bull**** sort of person so hopefully, you will take on board the following review. One other point, you will have never seen me write a review on the previous superstomp….? Why? Well the reason is I never felt it deserved one. Being an Engineer & a bit of a perfectionist, there were so many things I didn’t like about the bike. For Stomp as a company, it was all about getting big power into a cheap bike. Why a review now? The reason is, now we have created a bike that is worthy of a full review.

On Friday we took delivery of the all new superstomp 140’ 110 fx’s & Elite 140 Marzocchi’s. Yesterday as it was such a lovely day we decided to build up the new Super 140 & take it for a major hammering (some clips will be uploaded to youtube during the week).
The 1st thing to note was the build time, from 15 mins this has gone up to ½ hour, however the packaging is far superior than before & we hope this will result in far fewer damaged bikes in transit.
The bike was easy to assemble & everything lined up perfectly. Once assembled we PDI’d the bike & to be honest it had been assembled really well with only a few bolts needing that extra tweak to get them nice & tight.
The following observations were made during assembly:
Swing-arm – superb welding, very well finished, no weld splatter & no signs of corrosion – the previous bike always had a little corrosion just starting & from pictures of used bikes we were always disappointed to see rust on the swingarm.
Frame – The quality unchanged on the SDG frame – excellent as per the previous model.
Wheels – SDG alloy hubs on quality steel rims – excellent as per the previous model.
Engine – As per normal we checked the inner rotor kit to ensure both the rotor & coils were tight. To our delight we discovered the same inner rotor kit as fitted to the new SR150-M engine. The quality is superb & we are very confident there will be very few warranty issues with the new kit. The rotor was tight as were the coils & the ignition advance was set as we had requested by the factory. The wiring was tidy & there were water/dust shields on all the connectors. We fuelled her up & turned on the fuel expecting the usual deluge of fuel through the overflow due to incorrect float height setting we were very pleased to see that there was none. 3 kicks on the starter & she fired into life & oh-my-god, how good she sounded. The exhaust note was nice & loud with a deep thump. Checking the front pipe it was clear to see it was mandrill bent with no kinks or reduction in diameter on bends like the previous superstomp. Also the chrome plating was far superior. After a few blips on the throttle she settled into a comfortable tick-over, which did not need adjusting. The idle fuelling had clearly been marked on the air-screw & also required no adjustment. It was nice to see a decent filter in place on the 26 mm carb as we have seen premature piston ring wear caused by substandard filters on previous models.

Sitting on the bike everything feels in the right place. The bar height is perfect & the seat nice & comfortable. The bars look the ticket finished in matt black, the look very similar to pro tapers, even the grips are nice & soft & provide the feel you expect (no disappointment there). Also the yokes are of superior quality & finished in matt black as per our request. The plastics are CRF style with one flat rear panel & again the quality has been improved. The Graphics look fantastic, nice deep heavy set genuine reverse printed 3M MX graphics (& I am not saying this just because I designed them - haha). Rather than that horrible oversized & unnecessary front brake master cylinder there is a far more appropriate & trick looking mini master cylinder which provides ample stopping power in unison with the all mini twin pot front calliper. The brakes? Well, loads of people complained about the old single pot calliper on the previous model. This front brake maybe ½ the size & weight, but in provides double the braking power of the previous version. Again the rear brake has been resized & looks far more appropriate, its performance is ample. The Wavey disks have been binned as an old fashioned over-the-top fad & replaced with vented circular disks which in our opinion look the bollocks & provide more stable & predictable breaking performance.
When your weight on the all-new tough steel pegs, both the front & rear drop in unison showing our spring selection has been optimised. When you take your weight off the bike the front & rear rise together showing the rebound damping is spot on.
Checking the tyres, the finish out of the mould is as good as the Kenda range (a vast improvement on the previous cheap k***blies we used to fit. The compound is also very similar to the carslbad, with a Millville tread pattern. 3 Hours of very hard riding proved the durability of the tyre to be on par with the Kenda’s, with very little wear noted.
OK, I guess the part you have been waiting for is how does it go? Simply put, this is the fastest, best handling budget pitbike I have ever ridden. In fact I will go so far as to say it is better than the majority of pit bikes on the market for over £600. We all know the YX engine is immense, but with this new inner rotor kit, the engine factory seem to have improved the ignition curve & not the response & low down grunt is even better that before. The fact that the carb was set up perfectly from the factory mean’t that we didn’t stall the bike once all day – even with a rotor kit fitted. The other major thing to note is it is SO EASY to ride. Because it is comfortable & because everything does what it’s supposed to do & because the power delivery is so smooth & part load performance superslick, anyone could ride this bike – even your granny. The all up gearbox didn’t miss a notch all day. The other thing that amazed me was the chain hardly stretched in 3 hours of hard riding!! Now there are clearly chains that say KMC on them & there are KMC chains, this is obviously a genuine KMC chain.

So, what sort of riding did we do? Well fortunately for me I am friends with a few farmers round here & even more fortunately I live at the foot of the South Downs. This all means a massive playground to ride pit bikes in when I get the time away from work & racing i.e. hardly ever. So, we have woods, endless green lanes, fields, hills & jumps. The new bikes got thrashed & to make sure it was up to scratch we took along the more than doubly priced Elite 150 Marzocchi. This is not a review about the Elite, but I have to say…eeek it scares me.

After 2 ½ hours riding the very bumpy & rutted green lanes we hit the woods & jumps & took a little video footage that I will hopefully get on youtube later this week. I pulled a few jumps (which I am not very good at) crashed & twisted my knee. Then crashed again. Then decided to do some hill climbing, crashed several times & flipped the bike over my head only to watch it crash back down the hill into a tree bending the bars. By this stage we were starting to get annoyed that the bike would not break (apart from the front brake lever). Nothing had fallen off either, nor had come loose. So we decided to simulate a big air crash by driving it off the top of a 5 foot high pile of logs onto gravel. It didn’t appear to break from that either, just bent the bars a bit more. So we gave up & thrashed it home amazed at the punishment this £450 (crate) bike had taken. Sadly, when we got back we realised the drop off the 5 foot log pile had broken the rear shock. Watching the video back we could see the impact to the back wheel, in the opposite direction to shock operation. So in all, bent bars, snapped rear shock, broken front brake lever & a few scratches from what was deliberate & unfair abuse i.e. just like how many of our customers treat their bikes!!!!!

In conclusion all I can say is the bike is awesome & IMO finally deserves it’s SR logo

MR STOMP