2007 Honda XRM 110cc

I had been wanting to tour The Philippines via motorcycle, but it took a few months to figure out that a big touring bike, large enough to carry two people and plenty of luggage, was not appropriate here. Big bikes are pretty hard to come by, but there are these underbone scooters all over the place.

I researched on the Internet and found a company that offers motorcycle tours of The Philippines, and I was surprised that the bikes they put their clients on are all Honda XRMs. They offer a six-day tour and an eight-day tour.

Since Marissa and I have already done a good bit of traveling around the islands, but all via plane, ferry, or taxi, I knew that the amount of luggage we would want to take with us would just not work on a single scooter. We need one large, heavy duty laptop bag, just for for our two laptops, our cameras, battery chargers, and all the various accessories we carry. Then we need one backpack for my clothes, one for her clothes, and then we need a common bag for toiletries, rain gears, tools, spare innertubes, and stuff like that. Two people and four bags would just not be comfortable on my 2007 Honda Wave 125.

About a month ago, Marissa and I spent a few days on Camiguin Island and we went there on scooters. I strapped my laptop bag to the luggage rack in the neck of my Honda Wave, and Marissa carried my bag of clothes on her back. Marissa rode on the back of my scooter. We took a friend who had his own scooter. He carried on bag for himself, and we loaded him up with two additional bags, Marissa’s clothes, and our common bag of toiletries and stuff. He was driving a new Skygo 110cc scooter.

The Skygo broke down twice. Once when the screws came out of the hand brake clamp and we had to stop and disassemble the front air fairing, a 15-minute repair job. The other breakdown was the rear engine bolt broke and we had to replace it. I found one made of hardened steel at the local hardware store, and someone pointed us to “the best mechanic on Camiguin Island”, who only wanted P50 for making the repair.

The trip to Camiguin made me realize that to motorcycle The Philippines, a person does not need a big bike. I have rarely been on roads that I would care to drive at speeds in excess of 80 kph. But one bike wouldnt’ do. So after returning from Camiguin, I bought Marissa a 2007 Honda XRM 110cc scooter. These are the most popular motorcycles in The Philippines. The parts are manufactured in Japan, but they are assembled in The Philippines. This keeps their cost low. I bought this one for P52,800, and a wealthy cousin of Marissa’s financed it for one year for me. Annual full-coverage insurance for the bike was just P3000.

Marissa had been on the back of scooters before, but she’d never driven one before, and teaching her was a bit of an ordeal, I suppose mainly because when I learned to drive a bike I just got on it and took off. I knew I could ride one and just did. (Just do it!)

I was trying to get Marissa to start off in 2nd gear, but her brother Ryan suggest she start off in fourth gear, until she learned more about the throttle and how to shift gears, just so she could concentrate on learning how to balance the bike to start with. After a couple of weeks of daily practicing we took of for Duka Bay to do some scuba diving and stayed two nights there. Marissa was able to log a few good hours of road time and now she’s a pretty confident rider.

I did make a few modifications to the bike. First, I swapped out the wheels from the 17-inch stock ones to 14-inch ones, and put some semi-knobby tires on it. I then replaced the rear 330mm shocks with 305mm shocks with adjustable pre-load. The preload is on the highest setting to help keep the centerstand from bottoming out. I lowered the front shocks by sliding them up in their clamps. I also replaced the rear stock 34-tooth sprocket with a 32-tooth sprocket.  I should have used a 31-tooth sprocket instead as it would have better compensated for the lowered gearing from the smaller wheels, plus a 31-tooth sprocket, being a prime number, will reduce synchroneous wear on both sprockets. I replaced the kickstand to a shorter one. We put on a Kitti Racing exhaust pipe, for the increased noise, as a safety precaution. We next installed a shaved seat with just 1-inch of padding. We installed pink neon lights, a pair both front and rear. And then I installed a cigarette lighter into the U-box and bought a car cell phone charger, so that if we’re traveling we can just charge our phones on the bike. Finally, we bought her a helmet with a little propeller in front that drives a magneto which powers blinking LED red lights in the back of the helmet.
The changes to the seat, the wheels and tires, and the shocks dropped the seat height by four inches, and Marissa is able to put both feet flat on the ground, which markedly improved her level of confidence.

So, now we are planning for a trip around The Philippines on our scooters. RORO (roll-on roll-off) ferries ply the waters between almost all islands, and when they don’t, most ferries will still accomodate scooters. The cost of transporting a scooter via ferry is a lot less than for a car.

I’m hoping to travel around Mindanao, down to Davao, then up to Surigao, then across to Leyte, up to Samar, then to Cebu, Bohol, Negros, and maybe even do Mindora. The rainy season starts in June and because I’ve so much work to do right now, I don’t think we’ll be able to leave before then, but from what I’ve seen of the rainy season it does not rain all day every day, but it pretty much rains for an hour or two every day. I think we could still tour during that period. Check back here for updates.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.