Trail Hopping — A Quick Look At Suzuki’s Mini Machine

What can I say? It’s a mini bike. It was released in a time where mini bikes were the logical first step for a young future motorcyclist. Honda changed the game with the Z50, and it’s larger sibling, the CT70 Mini Trail. Their tiny 4-stroke engines ensured that youngsters could reliably zip through neighborhoods and blaze trails in backyard woods without excess smoke or noise.

Suzuki took another approach. Obviously an answer to the Honda mini bikes, Suzuki released their own line of small displacement fun runners, the MT50 Trailhopper, and the RV90 Rover. Both sported 2-stroke engines with oil injection, and neither seems to have had quite the same impact of the similar Honda models. The Trail Hopper is physically a bit larger than the Honda monkey bike. It is about halfway between the size of the Z50 and the CT70. Like the Honda, it has a 3 speed semi-auto transmission. Rather than using a manual clutch controlled by your left hand, a centrifugal clutch does the work for you. The left lever engages the rear brake (The foot brake lever is also still present).

Like the Z50, the TrailHopper uses 8” wheels. These are suspended by simple telescopic forks at the…