Gilera DNA v Italjet Dragster
Scooters in StreetFighters magazine? With our reputation?
They’re not just any old scooters though – I mean
one of them, Gilera’s DNA, doesn’t even look like a
scooter, more like a bike that’s shrunk after being left
out in the rain. As for the other one, the Dragster from Italjet,
it looks like… well a streetfighting scooter.
Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions about these two
machines though. Firstly, we’ve not completely lost the plot
and put a pair of mopeds in the mag. Both of these scoots are relatively
big bore (by scooter standards, remember?) machines – a whopping
180cc each. Oh yeah and one’s been worked on too!
I’ll start by telling you all about the Gilera, as it at
least looks like a motorbike. However, underneath all that plastic
lies a pukka scooter. Put the key in the ignition, pull the brake
lever in, thumb the starter, release the brake, a quick twist of
the wrist and that’s it - you’re off. When
a bike's that easy to operate, it’s easy to see why it appeals
to the slacker generation that is today’s youth. Cue old
timers going; "It’s not like it was in my day, blah,
blah, blah…"
Okay, so the DNA looks like a bike, but it’s not controlled
like a bike, so does it ride like one? Well, yes and no. The riding
position is instantly familiar – knees tucked round your
ears, nose on the tank… literally. Like I said, it’s
a really small bike or, at least, it would be if it had a petrol
tank where the petrol tank is supposed to be – what you actually
get is a dummy with enough space underneath it to swallow a helmet.
It takes a few minutes to get the hang of the handling too ‘cos
all the weight’s at the back and this makes the front end
a little more twitchy than most people are used to. It’s
not a problem; it’s just something that takes a wee while
to suss.
And anyway, let’s face facts here: if any scooter was going
to throw up weird handling traits it’d be the Dragster. I
mean what’s going on with the front shock between the frame
tubes? Hub-centre-steering, that’s what. Cool… This,
in theory, means you can ride like even more of an idiot and get
away with even stupider moves. The plan goes something like this:
the brake forces are isolated from the suspension movement and
vice versa. In plain speak it means you can slam the brakes on
mid-corner without the whole plot going ‘a’ over ‘t’.
I wasn’t going to put the theory into practise (‘Cos
if it didn’t work it wouldn’t be my bike I was trashing
would it?) but decided against it on the grounds that slamming
into the floor, if it didn’t work, hurts just as much on
someone else’s bike as it does on your own. Mind you, one
look at the pictures of Dave Coates and Paul Gower doing their
thing on it will prove just what you can get away with if you’re
(a) good enough, (b) brave enough, or (c) just plain stupid enough.
Anyway. Getting back to the plot, is the extra weight the DNA
is carrying worth it? Well it all depends what you compare it with… Certainly
away from the lights I’ve been having heaps of fun pissing
off R1s, ‘Blades, Bandits and the like – you name ‘em,
the little Gilera’s scalped ‘em. Surprising really,
given that the motor hanging out the back is a four-stroke single
and, as we all know, little four-strokes usually have the puling
power of a WWF wrestler’s armpits, but gas it away from the
lights and the fact that there’s no gearbox allows you to
just wind it on right up to 70mph without any of that tedious gear-changing
stuff you have to do on a "normal" bike, and so it’s
not that hard to keep ahead of much bigger bikes. The fact that
they can’t nail it away from the lights without risking major
front wheel aviation’s definitely in your favour too. ‘Course,
once past seventy they’ll soon catch you up but, if you’re
in town, the small wheels and short wheelbase make dodging
through the cars piss-easy. The really weird thing with the DNA
at speed is that it seems to be going a lot faster than it really
is – I’ve managed to get the electronic speedo to show
76mph, but it felt like I was going much faster. The dash, incidentally,
is a dead ringer for the one fitted to MV Augusta F4s.
Unfortunately, the Dragster just isn’t as fast off the mark.
Don’t go thinking it’s a case of all mouth and no trousers
from the mad-looking Italjet, though, ‘cos there’s
a reason for this. Y’see, the bike (?) here isn’t a
stocker – the guys at Italjet have had this one in the workshop
for a bit of open engine surgery. This included fettling the variator
weights in the automatic transmission which means, for those
of you not familiar with the inner workings of scooter transmissions
(all right, so that’s all of you…), that scooter tuners
fit heavier weights to the variators in the auto transmission so
that the engines run at higher revs before the clutch kicks in
and puts the power to the back wheel. On its own, on an otherwise
stock engine, this is a complete waste of time but seeing as the
lump in the Dragster has been tweaked so that it runs at higher
revs than stock, it’s a mod that makes a whole load of sense.
You get a significantly higher top speed at the expense of a little
decrease in the acceleration stakes, a little bit like upping the
number of teeth on your front sprocket. This particular Dragster
has also been fitted with a tuned spannie (expansion chamber, for
all of you who don’t do two-strokes) and wennie carbon end
can which changes the exhaust note from boring commuter to mad-arsed ‘crosser
on speed… or at least it did until it destroyed itself – someone
had forgotten to replace the brace that ran from the can to the
main body of the spannie and the resulting vibrations tore the
metal of the bend between the two completely apart. Oops.
The Dragster’s by far the best looking of the two… err… too.
It’s completely mad: if (unlikely, I know) you went
to Harris and asked them to build you a scooter frame you’d
probably get something like this. Well, once they’d
stopped laughing at you that is… It’s all tubular and
comes with the streetfighter builder’s favourite wotsit as
standard – a single-sided swingarm. A single-sided back end
with a hub-centre-steered front? How trick do you want it? Our
test machine has also had the rear end… ahem… altered – the
number plate should sit a lot lower on a longer mudguard, but it
doesn’t look as good so it’s been changed. The new
position, however, makes it ever so difficult to read from behind… hmm,
maybe that’s why I’ve not yet had a speeding ticket
despite the needle bouncing around the speedo.
That, in a nutshell, is what both of these machines are about – they
really do bring out the hooligan in you. Every journey, no matter
how potentially dull, turns into a mad-arsed ride that sees you
winding the needle as far round the speedo face as possible, trying
to push in front of much bigger and faster bikes and generally
behave like a complete twat. All done at a speed at which you’re
a hell of a lot less likely to end up six feet under than if you
were to ride that way on a "normal" bike. Perhaps you
ride like that because you have to prove your manliness on such
a small vehicle, perhaps you don’t…
But enough of the psychobabble, the truth of the matter is that
a big (relatively-speaking) engine in a small scooter equals a
hell of a lot of fun. That and the fact that once you’ve
got these funky machines up to a reasonable speed it’s not
difficult to keep ‘em up there.
If you think I sound like I’ve had a good time with these
two bikes (?) then you’d be right – personally I think
everyone should have a go on a scoot before they start slagging
them off. Would I buy one? ‘Course I would, but which one?
Well for me it’s got to be the £2,749 Italjet… Okay,
so I’m buying with my heart here but it looks mad, rides
superbly and there’s a plethora of aftermarket goodies available
for it and the specialist tuners have been known to build versions
capable of hitting speeds of over 90mph. I’m not saying the £2,599
Gilera’s a bad machine – it’s just not as much
fun. The four-stroke motor isn’t as tunable and there’s
not much out there to tweak the rest of the machine with. Oh, and
if you’re over 5’10” then you’ll soon get
pissed off with the riding position. Anyway, enough of this bollocks – I’m
off to arse about some more on the Dragster before Italjet come
and take it away from me. Laters…
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