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2013 TM 85 First Tests

The New 2013 TM 85 arrived Tuesday May 28th. After assembling the bike my dad set up the suspension and I went out to break in the motor on our track behind the shop.

The bike seemed to have plenty of power but seemed to be geared a little high ( I t never seen 5th gear on our small track) but never lacked for power.

The suspension seemed a little stiff but I knew we would have to fine tune it on the big track so I wasn't worried.

I burned a gallon of fuel (VP110) mixed at 20:1. TM calls for 98 octane so we figured 110 was good.

On Wednesday we took the little ripper to our local track (Houghton MX)

The bike simply rips. And although I heard rumors that the front suspension was so stiff it wasn't ride-able I found it quite ride-able. After about 15 to 20 laps we started to fine tune the suspension. I weigh 87-92 pounds the factory settings seemed to be set right in the middle. we changed the compression setting to 4 clicks out and the rebound 8 clicks out. On the rear shock we adjusted the rebound to 8 clicks and the dampening to 6, these settings were alright till I really started riding hard and at high speeds the bike wanted to slightly buck me so dad adjusted the high speed dampening back 4 clicks and we hit the magic.

On the straightaway the TM handled great and i never hit 6th gear but the bike ripped. the 85 was verycontrollable in the corners, although I did need to work the clutch to keep the R's up. I got arm pump quick the TM wanted to rip my arms off at the shoulder and it was all I could do to hang on once I opened the little blue devil up. The more I rode it, the more I knew I was goingto have a great summer ahead of me racing.

Now we had to try some starts.... Because the bike seemed to be geared high we decided to try a 1st gear start. Wow!!! the rip this bike has.....First too much.. then 2nd gear, the same result. so we decided to try 3rd, What a start we had. The TM flew out of the hole and pulled hard. my first thought was Holy Smokes Hang On!!

Over all the bike seems great. it wouldn't hurt to gear it down a bit so you didn't have to use first gear in tight corners and i'm not surethere's a track around here that you would ever use 6th. The factory tires (Golden Tyre) hook up great. The bike did have someoccasional sputtering in the high R's but my dad says a little jetting will fix that.

I give the 2013 TM Racing 85 MX a BIG thumbs up andrecommend it to anyone daring enough to venture into the uncharted waters of the Italiano small bikes.


They do makeFerrari's you know :)

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