off roaders beware

[homerchuck]

Learned something today, the hard way as usual. Bought my Ruckus to ride in the woods. Thought it is what it was at least in part designed to do. Having a great time but had confined my riding to mostly dirt roads, fire breaks and similar stuff. Took it a little deeper today and fried my clutch in about 30 minutes. Service tech at the dealership (they know my name w/o asking after I earlier learned that rough contacts can result in the kill switch
deciding for itself when to activate instead of me) said I wasn't turning enough rpms while creeping through the woods to keep the clutch from continuing to slip instead of engaging. Got too hot. I'm talking toast. Guess I'll stay on trails so I don't go so slow and at least listen for the clutch to engage. It would have been nice if Honda had mentioned this in the owner's manual. At least this is a warranty item since I haven't had it about 6 weeks. Still love my Ruckus! ;D

[db50]

homerchuck-

Sorry to hear about the cooked clutch. Hopefully your Honda mechanic will have your Ruck fixed ASAP. Can you provide a bit more detail as to the conditions you were riding in? I do some off roading too, discovered some rougher terrain today. My Ruck romped right through. The trails are basically deep tire ruts but haven't been navigated by 4 wheelers in some time so the weeds were high (in some spots over 5 feet tall!) and the surrounding brush too thick to walk through. I don't want to get into a bad situation and have to push 180lbs of Ruckus back to the house. Thanks for any info...db50.

[homerchuck]

Sandy, hilly, lots of leaves and brush. I have been in some other rough spots before but not as hilly and not for as long. By the way, when the clutch cooked, the rear wheel locked up and you're dragging, not pushing, the Ruckus. I ,luckily, had made it back to a road before it got that bad. I was surprised this happened and hope I just got a bad clutch.

[reckess]

Maybe you did have a bad clutch from the factory. I have 1700 miles on mine and my girlfriend has 1550 miles, 90% offroad.
We've gone extremely slow up hills and through slow tight trails. No clutch problem.
I'm glad Honda covered it.

tim

[Keystone]

I'm glad you guys ride off road on your ruckus, it shows how tough these little bikes are. I look at a ruckus and anything thats really made to go off road and I see no similarity.