Frequently Asked Questions

The short answer is yes, it will fit. The real question should be whether it is safe? The answer is that it is not safe, yet many do it and promote it since they never have had an issue. The tire was not designed to fit on a stock size rim and at the end of the day, it is marginally wider than a 260 wide tire, so the juice is not worth the squeeze.  

We have used the Motobatt, Odyssey and the Xtreme from Batteries plus to name just a few. I have had customers come in with a variety as well as the junk AutoZone and Walmart batteries. If you are running LEDs on your bike, that is going to hit your battery hard, especially if the voltage gets extremely low, and that will end up shortening the battery life. About 5 years ago we started using a battery called “Renegade”. This battery has 350 CCA, compared to the stock 225. We ran it for 3 years, with no issues. I even left it in the bike all winter a couple of years ago, off the battery tender, and it fired right back up 4 months later, and it was as strong as the day she last rode the bike. I had a customer come in for second gear last year and his battery was toast. Instead of him having to pay for a new battery, I gifted him her battery and put a new one in her bike. He is still riding with that battery. I have told a lot of people about this battery and everyone that has gotten it has loved it. FYI, we are not affiliated with this place or battery in any way. Click here to go to their website.  

The only answer is that OEM is the best clutch for the M109R. EBC makes an aftermarket clutch and most of the problems we have seen are from those clutches. In addition, they only offer for model years 2006-2009. 

If you are riding and feel second gear jerking, which means it is trying to pop out of gear but hasn’t and is in the very early stages of going bad. It will get progressively worse. If it is popping out of second gear, that means the transmission needs to be fixed. There is no other way around this. Any of the other suggestions will not help this situation. You will even see people tell you that they just skip a second altogether, but there is still the possibility that the selector fork will break. If that happens, you will have two gears floating and engaging to each other, which will either shred the gears and leave metal through the motor or lock up the rear wheel. Not saying this will absolutely happen, but it has happened, so food for thought. For U.S. models (not sure about overseas)2006-2007 is the first generation of the M109. Both years have identical transmissions. These are the worst. 2008-2009 is the second generation. These have been upgraded by Suzuki. Still a ton of problems, and honestly, about the same as the first generation from what we see. 2011-present is the third generation. This is the latest update from Suzuki. You will see people post up that the problem is fixed. Is it? Absolutely not! We have done quite a few of the later year models. When this happens, your selector fork is damaged as well as the dogs on the gear. The leading edge on the dogs is damaged and centrifugal force pushes the gear to disengage naturally, and since the dogs cannot hold it… it pops out. The fix is to get hardened shift forks, hardened shift rods and have the gears back cut. This will prevent this from happening again.How much does this cost? Well, it depends on who is doing it. Whoever you have do it, make sure they are doing it with the right transmission parts, and NOT OEM. Obviously paying a lot of money to put the same junk parts back in makes no sense. The average cost is around $3k-4k depending on what needs to be done and who you use. Some places will do the undercutting only and tell you that you don’t need to do anything with the selector fork or shift rods. Other places I have talked to offer billet rods, undercutting and stock selector forks. You just need to figure out what you want to spend and if it is worth it to save a few hundred dollars to do it all over again later.. 

Asking tire questions is like asking for the best exhaust…they are all subjective. However, there are a few tires that stand out for the M109. The Dunlop E3, Avon Cobra and Metzler 888 were tires that were popular back in the early days of the M109R. The newer tires are now dual compound tires. What that means is that they are harder in the center and softer on the sides to give you more mileage out of them before they wear out. Those three manufacturers now have the E4, Cobra Chrome and the Cruisetec hat are dual compounds. Which is better? As stated, it is subjective, but I have personally run all three. I found that the E4 is a decent tire but did not give me great confidence in mountain roads in the rain but handled well in the dry. The Avon Cobra Chrome and the Metzler Cruisetec are my favorite, and both are great in all weather. I would not hesitate to run either one. For me, it really depends on which is cheaper when it comes time to look for tires. There are also other brands out there, and I have no experience with those as I tend to stay with the two that I know well. 

The short answer is no. The shift drum is part of the transmission and rotates when you press up or down on your shift lever. The shift drum still needs to turn a specific amount internally for the selector forks to move and change the gears. Nothing will change the amount of rotation needed for that. The Pro Evo shift star kit offers a shift star that is slightly smaller than stock. What that does is make it like a short throw shifter. Let us say you need to shift into a higher gear, and when you lift your toes up to shift, the whole motion is three inches of total travel on your foot. The new star reduces that amount so maybe the new motion will be 2.25 inches instead. Does it feel better than stock? Sure, anything that reduces your motion will feel better than stock. What it does is help you make a quicker shift, and can help eliminate a missed shift, which could cause damage to the transmission. However, the M109R has a transmission flaw that is common on most big v-twin bikes and that is the dogs on the gears are not back cut. This is why you hear of the second gear issue. The shift star will never prevent that, so anyone that tells you it does, well to put it mildly, they are wrong. If you ride hard and you are missing shifts, then yes that might help you. But if you ride hard and have never missed a shift, the star will not help you in any way other than reducing your travel of the shift. Only you can determine if it is worth your hard-earned money.