Super Cub Volume 1 Chapter 38 - Class 2 Motorcycle

A Class 2 Motorcycle is a motorcycle with a displacement of 50cc or more.

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After the opening ceremony, in the classroom where the general classes began, Koguma wondered if there was anything different about herself from the first semester.

She woke up at the same time she did during summer vacation when she had been working part-time, and rode to school on her Cub in the same way. In the morning, Reiko was as unsociable as ever in the morning, even when you talked to her. This morning she was reading a magazine about car maintenance.

The only thing that changed was that Koguma, who only had a moped license, now got a motorcycle license.

She was hoping that the earnings from her job would allow the second semester to be kinder to her wallet, but she spent most of her savings to get this little card.

Even when she bought the Cub, she felt like she had used up all of her savings from the scholarship money. She wondered if motorcycles were machines that carried a curse that made people who ride them spend extravagantly. The fact that it wasn’t unpleasant made her laugh, feeling vaguely alarmed about the future.

Lunch break. Reiko came to invite her to lunch as she had always done.

Koguma looked at Reiko’s arm as her hand was taken, and noticed another thing that changed.

The brown patch on her wrist. The tan on the border between the gloves and jacket would always appear whenever you rode a motorcycle.

A golden brown bracelet shared by Koguma and Reiko, who had been riding scooters all summer.

Feeling strangely embarrassed, Koguma decided that she would go to a thrift store or motorcycle supply store next weekend and look for a motorcycle jacket that would properly protect her wrists.

With the temptation to splurge whispering in her ear once again, Koguma shook her head and settled into her lunch position, the seat of her Cub parked in the bike parking lot.

Koguma covered her lunch box full of rice with ready-made chop suey. Even her lunches were the same as ever because she was living on a scholarship, which didn’t allow for luxury. And there was another reason why she had to cut back on what she ate.

Koguma sat sideways on the seat of her Cub and spoke to Reiko, who was sitting across from her on her Postal Cub and taking out a sandwich.

“Just as I thought, I have to modify my engine.”

What Koguma decided to do with the savings from her job was to free herself from the legal inconvenience of using a 50cc scooter.

After actually riding on public roads, it became clear to her that even a scooter, a machine that could go anywhere, had a limited range of activities under the thirty-kilometer speed limit.

Koguma wanted to do something about this self-imposed speed limit, which was lower than the ones for other cars and motorcycles. Until now, she had only accepted and obeyed the countless restrictions that bound her, but now she wanted to break some of the bonds that were placed on her Super Cub at once. With her own power, with her own money that she earned.

She thought that she might have been influenced by Reiko’s strange act of climbing Mount Fuji on a Super Cub.

Ever since Koguma began riding a Super Cub, she had become interested in the Super Cubs shown on TV and in internet videos, but what she often saw in foreign videos was family, friends, and couples riding together on a Cub. She couldn’t even do that on her current Cub.

Koguma imagined her Cub being able to carry two people. She didn’t have a specific person in mind, but she thought it would be fun to have Reiko riding in the back.

In order to obtain such a modest freedom, Koguma spent the last week of her summer vacation obtaining her lesson, but there was nothing she could do until she evolved the crucial motorcycle from a moped.

However, there was no way she could afford to replace her Cub with a high-end 90cc or 110cc model.

While attending the driving school, Koguma made time to go to school, borrowed a library PC, and do research on the internet. She found out that there were many bore-up kits for sale that could increase the engine displacement for Cubs.

The most inexpensive kit could have been bought with the remainder of the money she had spent on the driving school, but Koguma didn’t feel like putting that sort of thing in her budget.

Koguma, who knew nothing about other motorcycles and had never compared her Cub with them, learned from her research that the Cub was a strong and durable scooter, but she thought that if she carelessly added parts that the manufacturer wasn’t concerned with, the unbreakable Cub would break from there.

Reiko, who at least attached modified parts in a uniform blue color to her liking throughout her red Postal Cub, was always talking about what she broke and what she replaced it with.

She wanted to somehow register her Cub as a Class 2 motorcycle without having to replace the current parts. So Koguma decided to ask Reiko, who knew more about motorcycles than she did.

Reiko answered while stroking the 90cc engine of her Postal Cub.

“There is one way to do that.”

Koguma listened to her talk as she ate her lunch.

Apparently, it was called block modding.¹

It was best not to leave the engine of a mass-produced commercial vehicle as it was if one regarded longevity and reliability as important, but even for that, processing could be said to be an exception to the rule.

Minor deformations and distortions on the cylindrical combustion chambers inside the engine, called cylinders, were corrected by shaving them back to a perfect circle with equipment that was more precise than the processing machines used in the production line. 

Then, by reassembling the engine with oversized pistons, which were supplied by the manufacturer as repair parts, it was possible to extend the operating life and the displacement at the same time.

Koguma could only understand about half of what Reiko was saying, but she understood that the shape and usability of the current Cub didn’t need to be changed.

She was interested, but of course she couldn’t do the work by herself. She didn’t know where to ask for help. She was going to ask Reiko about it, but she decided to do her own research and find out before that.

On her way home from school, Koguma first dropped by the used bike shop where she bought her Cub and had her oil change taken care of.

She asked the owner about increasing the displacement with block modding, hoping to hear something helpful, and the owner answered her easily.

“Oh, no problem. I’ll send the engine to a machine shop, so I’ll have to keep the Cub here for a few days, but I’ll give you a loaner bike.”

As soon as he tried to get Koguma’s Cub into the shop, Koguma hurriedly asked him about the cost.

Without even looking at the price list, the owner tapped on a calculator and told her the estimate.

The price was about the same as the cheapest bore-up kit on the market. The only new parts she needed to buy were the pistons and the gaskets, and if there were no visible improvement in performance, then that’s about right, the owner told her.

Koguma made a formal request for the block modding of her Cub.

She asked the owner, who was pushing out a blue Cub that was the loaner bike, one question.

“It seems that it was a lie that my Cub killed three people, sir.”

When the owner heard what Reiko told her, his eyes widened, he stared at the Cub that Koguma had bought for ten-thousand yen, and smacked his bald head.

“Ah, blast it. If this was a Cub with no history, I could have sold it for another hundred-thousand yen.”

He then smacked his head again and began to chatter, which was rare for the untalkative owner.

“Cubs are a real pain for bike shops. If you buy one, it won’t break down, and even if it does, the parts are cheap to buy, so you won’t make any money. And yet, people who ride them rush the work, because they use them for work.”

Koguma took the key from the griping owner and rode home on the loaner bike.

The loaner bike she borrowed, a blue Cub called a Press Cub that was used for newspaper delivery, looked a little battered, but the engine ran well. A few days passed as she rode around on the blue Press Cub, feeling like she was wearing a different color of clothes than what she normally wore, and then Koguma’s Cub came back after the block modification.

After making the payment, which was a little cheaper than the original estimate, and getting the paperwork prepared at the bike shop, Koguma went to the Hokuto City city hall’s branch office, which had jurisdiction over moped and scooter registration, on the loaner Press Cub to complete the registration.

After returning the white license plate she had been using until now and receiving a yellow one, Koguma quickly installed the new license plate on her Cub.

When she was little, she remembered playing a game with her friends where they would look at the license plate numbers of cars, and see which color brought them good luck and which brought them bad luck.

At that time, the local rule was that if you saw three yellow license plates, you would have bad luck, and Koguma was a little reluctant to put the yellow plate on her Cub.

When she actually put it on, it looked cooler than the white plate she had before. It was the sign that she was freed from the law where the police could arrest her just for riding normally. 

Koguma murmured to herself, feeling as though she was facing her childhood self.

“It’s not unlucky, at all.”

Because Cubs were so interesting, and she was sure that they would become even more interesting in the future.

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1 This is kind of funny but when you look up ブロック修正 or block modding online most of the results are Super Cub (the series) related. I think it's probably a term used only by the bike shop the author frequents or something since most of these results are just "what's block modding?" I'm sure this is a real thing that goes by a different name but there's no use in finding it. Also when you look up block modding in English you just get minecraft stuff.^↩

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