CMSP Tales & KLX300D Upgrades

The better way to pass the actual Motorcycle driving test?

So, once I decided (after years of mulling it over) that I wanted to get back into the dark arts of Enduro based motorcycling, the not so nice bit of that (for me) was getting to California legal to be all kosher and legit for the bits involving riding the bike to the Enduro trail.

I heard 68% of riders are not licensed in California which is a scary number so this aspect worries me a bit as there must be a reason why this is so.

Paperwork and time is what that is…. horrid stuff is paperwork!

In my lifetime to date, I achieved so many motorcycle training and advanced course certifications from various military and civilian training organizations in the U.K, Germany and South Africa that I honestly feel like it should just translate to a US license.

They just gave me my various aircraft ratings based on my British and South African licenses when I came here in 1998, so I am fascinated that the motorcycle piece was such a comparative chore!

However, some 40 years later, with minimal riding experience for 30 of those years that I was not a regular bike rider, meant that doing a suitable motorcycle training course once more was actually a rather splendid idea, all things considered!

California roads and general car driver bad manners are a very dangerous proposition when riding motorcycles out here in California.

I have actually ridden a fair bit on my British Motorcycle license here in the USA on a Kawasaki 250 and an Indian Scout and my Moto Guzzi rides in South Africa before I stopped riding regularly had ABS braking from the 1985 point onwards.

My KLX300 does not have ABS as it's light weight in my opinion does not require it, though for some bizarre reason, I do see the Kawasaki KLX230 actually is equipped with ABS braking.

It was with these various factors in mind percolating inside my sole surviving synapse, that I enrolled for said CMSP training course recently.

At first, I was not really expecting to learn anything much that was new as motorcycles are still motorcycles and I have owned a lot of them and not just road bikes.

Riding motorcycles in South Africa was a very dangerous endeavor outside of the main metro areas because there are a lot more things there that can potentially kill you than that which lurks out here in the wild of California.

Johannesburg car drivers and Californian ones are almost exactly the same in terms of the danger and road rage risk they represent but Californian roads are much worse than South African roads by a wide margin.

They have absolutely no idea how to build roads in California by the way and you can see that by the sudden potholes that appear with moderate rain.

Neighboring states to California all know how to build roads and the quality is instantly noticeable when you drive out of California onto any of its neighbors' roads.

Anyhew, back to the subject of my current CMSP adventure and training course which I have to do to complement my written license requirement so that I will be licensed to ride in California, which consists of two parts.

The first is an e-online training course that takes about 6 hours to complete which you have to do before the 2-day course at a CMSP range near to where you live.

The current cost is $425 and is held over various calendar spots they offer.

You need an A grade on this e-learning piece that you can do from any suitable computer armed with a html5 browser.

You are only eligible for the 2-day range training on the designated Saturday and Sunday you paid for once you have successfully completed the e-online training course.

You need to appear with all your paperwork and signed forms with your permits and license with Insurance etc. 15 minutes before the course gets underway.

They also check your boots, helmet and clothing attire by the way.

The Pleasant Hill location is located in the overflow car park on Golf Course drive.

I went looking for it the weekend before my appointment and just found a shipping container with a locked porta potty - there are no signs indicating it is NorCal Moto training btw, so leave early to be there in plenty of time.

The motorcycles they have for this jolly jape are an assortment of 200cc bikes that look very agricultural, and they are rather similar to a Honda CM200 bike with a flat handlebar.

They are in fact Lifan KP Master 200 Motorcycles and unless you are rather small and of average dimensions, these machines will not work well for you.

I did not see these GS machines when I was there.

They had some 150cc Lifan KP monkey bikes as well for really short ladies by the way.

I tried to get them to accept me doing the training on my own bike but they were not keen and they provided resistance, so I went go with their fare to see how it went. This was a mistake on my part.

I had already decided that If I failed their test, I would likely not return and would just do the DMV skills test as I suspect this CMSP thing is a bit of a revenue generating lark more than anything based on many online reviews I have read about the place and I now have my own conclusions on this CMSP affair, such as it is, post my own training course experience.

Marcello and Alfonso are quite good instructors by the way, but this is offset by the noob dropping and stopping Olympics they cater to which is not so good for refresher riders coming back after a few decades away.

I wanted to turn up on my own bike now that I have the license and permit with insurance et al to drive it, but getting there for sunup legally on my permit is a problem as you cannot drive when dark or on freeways until you are fully licensed.

You also need a DOT certified helmet, but they will provide you with one if you do not have one, but you do need suitable clothing and shoes with gloves as well as a rain suit in case it rains.

They store their Lifan motorcycles in a shipping container next to a porta-potty on site which I think all the Lifan gear should parked in (the porta potty that is), cause IMHO, them things be a bit on the crappy side of life.

In terms if suitable gear, I bought myself a suitable armored motorcycle jacket, 2 pairs of motorcycle ankle boots, armored motorcycle gloves and did a lot of practice riding around my home vicinity in Oakley, Brentwood and East Antioch to get ready for said 2 days of what I thought would be useful refresher training.

I went and bought a Bilt one-piece rain suit as well as I did not have one and it was threatening to rain the weekend when I was booked to do this range training!

I was never this organized with motorcycle gear when I rode in the bush or in North Wales when I was 16 by the way (did not have the money then).

I can tell you tales of me turning up soaked to the bone at college or at home in the fine cold Welsh weather they have over there and when it snowed in May of 1980, I still marvel that I did not freeze to death or crash my CB200 driving from Bangor to Bala in the dire weather we were blessed with that year.

The CMSP e-online training course was very good apart from a few low viz examples they showed on a small square of computer screen.

This is my only complaint on that e-online training, but it did help a lot, and it was a great refresher course for me.

While doing this I also upgraded my KLX300D motorcycle a fair bit with better components and pieces here and there.

KLX300D 99% Upgraded

I got a new custom seat, AS3Performance gear shift lever, foot pegs and added Bark buster protectors, pressure washed it several times, lubed the chain and bought new tires and much suitable gear for wearing while driving it.

I also adjusted the suspension for my weight and totally transformed the bike while I was at it.

The ISR footpegs I acquired for it dramatically changed the rideability of the KLX and motorcycle boots were the biggest pain in the ass to sort out for riding it as well but these are essential as I drove it 131 miles in just Hooka trainers and can tell you what a bad and painful idea that was!

I just received the bright red bash plate I ordered from Amazon for it over the weekend and fitted it Monday morning between calls but I am still awaiting the AS3Performance gear shift from the U.K.

The bash plate by the way was a pain in the ass as the front lip resonates with the engine and vibrates beyond belief which prompted me buying thick hoses and rubber pieces to wedge between metal plates and tie down with tie downs to overcome this vibration noise.

I found the suspension settings online and was amazed at the difference it made so it will be a while before I get stiffer springs and such for it, if at all.

The guy I bought it from was a skinny 130 lbs guy.

After the M1 license is squared away, I will find some 10-17 mile trails to navigate on it and try avoiding bears and big cats snacking on my nutty but tough South African, Hebrew ass!

I already gots me a big bunch of happy smiles to go with my new jazzed up KLX!!

So on Saturday April 5th I turn up early (6:23 AM) at NorCal Moto's range at the DVC overflow car park in Pleasant Hill for 2 days of said CMSP training.

To say I was underwhelmed at this 2 day experience would have be a serious understatement!

10 minutes into this training, I realized I was not on the right training course - this was when we goose walked the motorcycles from one side to the other side of the range while seated on them but with them switched off.

The Lifan motorcycle equipment they have for the task was also a problem for my particular dimensions.

If you are of average build and dimensions these Lifan bikes are just fine.

If you are going to do this sort of training on any motorcycle it is imperative that the machine is at the very least adjusted somewhat for your dimensions.

This is why I had asked if I could bring my own KLX300D in the first place!

They were not keen on this idea at all, insisting that it would be better on their equipment.

It turned out that I was in fact vindicated and completely right on this score.

The second issue that soon became a challenge was the other student bikers varied in skills from familiar to never ever having riden a motorcycle before.

The art of a clutch operation and changing gears eludes most Americans and there were 5 folks in our group who constantly stalled and dropped their motorcycles, and it was evident we would all be dragging to the capability of the lowest common denominator as we all had to stop when the less skilled fell or stalled which was every 90 seconds.

As a result, I just did not get my $425 worth from this training.

The rules where you cannot pass by anyone who was struggling and so consistency was always getting interrupted by this continual start, stall, drop and stop bollocks as you patiently waited behind the stallers and droppers to get their shit together.

It was immensely frustrating and infuriating for me to be waiting impatiently for these noobs to get their shit together and I felt I was being robbed of my paid for time to get the reps in.

After having the CMSP experience for myself I can definitely say this sort of training is vastly inferior to the BMA training I had in the U.K back in the 1980's.

At roughly 11 o'clock (AM) on day 2 of the CMSP, which was Sunday the 6th, Marcello, one of the instructors announces we are now being tested for all the bits we just did the previous 2 days.

I struggled with the clutch bite on my Lifan machine for slow speed work and despite doing all the cone weaving right in the lessons (with difficulty), on my turn with the testing phase I completely screwed up the speed and the clutch work on my machine and halfway through the cone weaving I overcooked the power and screwed the rest of it up completely.

By now I had lost all interest in what now felt like complete physical torture and I was just rushing through the remaining testing bollocks as I knew I had failed and was now just hoping it would end.

You really need a fair bit of practice on these particular small Lifan machines to get all of this right and your confidence built up by the way!

You cannot seriously expect to properly manage a Lifan KP machine that has not been adjusted to your dimensions and seating position on these CMSP range courses either by the way.

In the debriefing the other instructor whose name was Alfonso told me I had not passed but that they could see I could ride and with some personal coaching could pass their test and they would help me but it sounded like a proposal for some custom like thing all over again.

I think if I had time on a properly adjusted machine then sure, but on their Lifan gear? This is highly unlikely!

For this reason, I will ride around a bit more on my own KLX machine and practice cone weaving as well as doing the DMV lollipop course on my own bike until I can get it all right.

The first order of business is to adjust the KLX for my dimensions properly and fine tune it.

I have in fact done a lot of this tuning now and rode my machine back to the CalMoto range the other day and rode their range for 2 hours practicing all the stuff bar the cone weaves (nobody was there, and my cones are too big to transport on my bike).

It was a totally different story on my bike set for my dimensions!

Unless you are of average dimensions, these CMSP Lifan KP series bikes are not very useful, and all students should have the handlebars and such adjusted for their arms before the course commences regardless of their average dimension ranges.

We did this on each of the BMA BMW R100RT motorcycles, and it did not take the technician long to adjust the handlebars and controls for each rider either.

Although I am 6ft 3, my legs are what they call standard length, it is my torso that is very long, I had to accommodate for this fact when I engaged in golfing, surfing, skiing and snowboarding activities.

I fit the BMW R100RT perfectly for this BMA training purpose before I started the training by the way.

After the CMSP Sunday failure, I decided to go and try the DMV lollipop on my KLX300 the very same day and it was indeed far more difficult than I thought but I did manage two flawless runs on the serpentine test and three on the normal one.

I have done this every single day after 5 PM for the last two weeks and I am quite good at this DMV lollipop test now!

I am about to do the DMV lollipop test and complete the CMSP motorcycle training course on May 4th in Pleasanton.

The skills and techniques they taught on the 2 day did come in handy for my further 1 hour 30 minutes of lollipop practice at the Pittsburg DMV though, so I will just master the lollipop arts until I am an expert at it using what I learnt on the CMSP and my prior 17 plus years of previous riding experience.

I will admit that it was at first difficult doing the lollipop tasks on a Dual Sport machine though but I pumped up the tires and did a few adjustments to make it a whole lot better.

I am sure that familiarity and skills to do it with repetition on a properly adjusted machine I drive all the time will in fact solve the problem.

I will keep you all updated where I am with it all as I go!

I spoke to some of my British Motorcycle training pals in the U.K about this the same evening I failed out of the 2-day CSMP course and they told me the whole CMSP thing is viewed by them as a bit of a joke.

They actually ran a few similar styled trainings themselves a few years ago (CHP sent some folks over with motorcycles and officers) and found they had to have an instructor leading groups of no more than 3 students at a time on a separate range that had more than twice the dimensions the CMSP folks use to be effective.

They also did not use Lifan 200cc motorcycles for the demo either!

We had 12 students on this CMSP lark and 7 of them had zero prior motorcycle experience.

The UK BMA training folks also expect all students to be able to ride a motorcycle with 2 years minimum riding experience and be able to operate the clutch and gears without stops, stalls and falls that was too long in duration to recover from.

I think this 2 day CMSP program should have a learner driver course prerequisite before students qualify to go on what we did these past 2 days and they need 6 months regular riding experience to go with the requirements as well.

Although it's been 30 years since I last rode regularly, I rode from 16 to 34 years old as my main mode of transportation on various big road bike machines - I had over 23 different motorcycles in this period.

I started on a Suzuki B120P, graduated to Honda CB200E, then a Honda 250 Superdream N, then a Moto Morini 500 sport, Yamaha XS750-D, Yamaha YB100 (long story), Yamaha XS400 US Custom, Moto Guzzi V50 Monza, Kawasaki Z400-J, Custom Kawasaki Z500, Kawasaki KH400, Kawasaki KH500, Kawasaki KH750, Yamaha XJ650, Yamaha XS750-E, Yamaha XS750-SE, Yamaha XS750-F, Yamaha XS850-SG, Suzuki GS850-G, Moto Guzzi 850 Le Mans MKIII, Maico 500, Yamaha XJ900 4BB1 & Yamaha FJ1100.

I also owned a Vespa 175 scooter, a horrid Hardly Movingson 1200 Wide Glide, Van Veen OCR1000, BFG 1300 Odyssey, and a Laverda 500 Montjuic and a Kawasaki KZ1300.

I owned these latter machines less than a week before I gave them away. They were all suicide machines.

The point is I had a few machines when I was an active motorcyclist. Oh, I also had a gutless BMW R45. In fact, I still own the 850 Guzzi and the BMW R45.

I also had a 2nd job where I rode a BMW R100RT and then a BMW K75. I rode 50,000 miles on each of these machines doing that job between 1985 and 1994.

Stalls and restart failures happen on new gear, even with my past experience, I had 2 stalls myself on the Lifan KP 200 these 2 days of the CMSP, but I did not hold up anyone more than 10 seconds when I did, and I certainly never dropped the bike.

Stalling and falling happens on unfamiliar gear and strange low speed tasks but it is not reasonable to tolerate as much interruption as I experienced on this CMSP experience these 2 days and I would never recommend experienced folks getting back into 2 wheels with 5-10 years riding experience ever do this training with noobs either, because it's totally ridiculous to subject them to that constant noob stopping and starting and stopping again.

I did relearn a few useful things on this CMSP course though, I just needed to practice them somewhere on my own and get the hours and reps on my own machine,which I have now done.

I am quite confident I am back to my former level with the riding I have done. Obviously a KLX300D is a very different machine riding experience to an FJ1100!

When I did my BMA UK training in 1981, if you dropped the BMW R100RT you were on, the course for you at that point was over.

There were exceptions based on conditions - we had a guy hit black ice on the course one morning and he lost it and was allowed to carry on.

We did our training with British army military police and civilian metropolitan police officers who were going to be motorcycle mounted on a permanent basis and they all knew how to ride already.

Our BMA training course by the way was 10 days long with classroom stuff with the riding lessons and video to review mistakes we all made at each stage post mortem style.

There was nothing we did on that BMA course that we did not cover these past 2 days from a basics point of view but the BMA training circuit we drove on had stop streets, traffic lights and places to make emergency stops as well as weave to avoid road debris and other cars in a hurry and it was very big, about 4 times the size of the entire car park the CMSP range was inside of in fact.

The outside driving track was 2.43 miles in total as well and you had to get to 50 Mph for some of the training steps.

This training facility was just outside of Birmingham in the U.K.

We did emergency stops from 15, 30, 50 & 70 Mph for example.

This is one of the reasons they only want little bikes on these CMSP mini range affairs.

For the CMSP training to be effective, they need to remove the zero experience riders from the course for it to be useful to everybody trying to master the training and get the reps in though.

Either that or have classes for ab initio noobs and another one for people with past experience (counted in 5 to 10 years minimum).

I was pretty disappointed about my CMSP experience and more to the point I feel I was cheated out of my $425 as well.

My 2c on the matter.

The joke is on 4/7, I turned up at Pittsburgh DMV to book my Lollipop test and lo and behold, I get offered an immediate appointment for right now.

So, I bump the tire air pressure down to 15 PSI on both tires and just went for it.

I had tried to do it the day before without touching the brakes on full tire pressure because my CMSP training the day before said no covering brakes, just 4 fingers on the throttle when you test and I was operating under that assumption when I tried the course.

I let this BS distract me from practical results and this also cost me on parts 3&4 of the range test on 4/6.

Use all the controls at your disposal to control the bike, despite what these CMSP folks tell ya, cause that advice is complete bollocks!

I looked at a few videos yesterday where several folks were dragging their rear brake for speed control on the lollipop test with CHP officer commentary.

So in any event, I sent CalMoto a long email cataloging my long list of injuries and also set about adjusting my bike for the lollipop test at the Pittsburgh DMV and practicing it endlessly.

I also looked up tire pressure for a Dunlop D605 front and rear for my weight and they suggested 33 psi front and back.

I went with 31.5 front and 32 rear and it sure changed the road manners a whole bunch.

The lollipop needed a new approach though but it was easier to keep the bike controlled if I looked ahead.

I did overcook a few turns and almost dropped the bike once (oh the shame that woulda induced!), but after another hour I got to the harmony level.

My control of the machine has scaled up dramatically on a daily basis!

In the meantime, I got a return email from CalMoto stating they had no idea of my list of challenges and that they would accommodate me on my machine on May 4th.

I also reached out to a guy with a Yamaha Vino 125cc scooter and will practice the day before a DMV test at Daly City DMV and take the test at the same DMV.

If I don’t get it, the CMSP 2nd bite test on 5/4 will be my third test stab at it.

I am confident that I will be able to do it on my KLX as well.

I ride every day now and it has made a huge difference.

For enduro riding I will probably drop the PSI to 21/22 and pump it back to 31.5/32.5 with the aid of one of those portable pump thingamabobs.

I also bought a tire gauge with a flexible hose and pressure relief valve at Auto Zone for $28 and discovered gas station pumps also needed flex hoses for the rear tire.

I was literally gobsmacked how much better the KLX is on the road @32 PSI. It literally feels like a laser scalpel now!

As the next developments transpire, I will update the journey!