The Can-Am Ryker

Love to here more about your Ryker, any new developments. Are you happy with the CVT transmission? Are you considering ordering any accessories or custom fabrication?

Yes Joe, i have already started working on my ryker. I am changing what i think is poor designing by can-am. My first change will be the seating. They have designed the side body panels incorporating the seat base as part of the paneling. I then went to the dealer looking for the framework seat option for a passenger seat. They don't carry them so you have to special order them. From the design i have seen online i am not going to buy one. My next step was to see if i could remove the seat frame from the ryker to modify. That's a no-go also as i will need to remove the shock and some other brackets just to get the seat frame off the chassis. This will keep me from riding the trike until i get a good design seat built and installed to check that it fits, looks good and works well. It is obvious that they are designing for compactness of the design and are not interested in people who want to make the trike their own style. It looks like i will need to become a chassis manufacturer to make a useable bolt-on dual seat for this trike. i'm really not interested in vesting a lot of money making parts just for my trike and i don't want to start a business making multiple parts to get my money back. I'm still going to make my dual seat, but on my own schedule since right now i want to put a 4-5000 miles on it before i start tearing it apart. Of course another new thing i want is a wind screen to get the wind blast off my chest when riding on the highway. Again, i do not like the styles the manufacturer's are designing for the ryker, so i will be making my own screen too. All this will have to wait until i get tired of riding. It's a bit cold to ride for a while anyway, so the windscreen may get built.

I am still slowly working on the body plug and chassis for my homebuilt trike. Busy, busy all the time lately but still having fun doing this kind of stuff.

So here is the Ryker frame. If you look at the framework for the seat(top right) you see the pan which holds the plastic seat part of the side body panels. The seat pan and side panels are a one-piece unit. Notice there are 4 threaded sheet metal nuts welded in place on the seatpan. These nuts are the mounts for a passenger seat assembly made of aluminum with a foam insert much like the factory drivers seat. The passenger seat aluminum frame replaces the 3 body panels below the drivers seat. What i don't like is the length of the seat frame. So i am designing and building a steel framework to replace the aluminum and also forming the passenger seat to the same shape as the driver seat. The foam seats will also be better shaped to fit a human rear end.

Ryker frame



Passenger seat aluminum frame



ryker seatpan plastic panel



seat pan assembly

Dave, the rear tire is a 205-45-16 on a 6.5 inch rim. Fronts are 145-60-16 on 4.5 rims. OH, and the ground clearance is only 4 inches on the driveshaft tube and the front suspension wishbones.

I have been investigating on how to get the seat panels off the Ryker. It seems that you need to take the whole upper body panel off just to get to the seat brace. Guess what, Can-am decided that you need to take the lower body panel off to be able to access the bolts holding the upper body panel in place. What a PITA. This is too much work to try at this stage of the trike. I do not want it down for 3 to 10 days just to work on the seating. I'd rather be riding.



So i am going to try designing a passenger seat frame using aluminum rails and 2 removable backrests from 1/2" round steel tubing. I will have pictures later. The rails are cut and during the week i will buy the rest of the materials needed. I am leaving the stock seat on the Ryker for now( brand new trike, Ya Kno) and will try matching(somewhat) the seat design with the passenger seat.Later i will replace the main seat as the back of the seat dig's into my rear on longer rides.

NOW, a update on the seat pan itself. I have had a lot of problems mounting the seat back to the seatpan when i took it off trike. It would not stay in place and always felt like it was moving around when i was cornering on the road. I looked at the mounts closely and found the cause. It seems the Can-am decided to lock the seat down to the pan(plastic) by having the ears on the bottom of the seat fit down into slots formed into the seat pan. They used 2 small torx bolts to put pressure on the ears to hold the seat in place between the plastic pan and the steel plate the seatpan mounts to. I removed the torx bolts, then pulled up on the back of the seatpan and stuck a 1/2 inch narrow piece of plywood in so i could pull the ears thru the pan and spread them out under the pan. I replaced the torx bolts with hexhead metric bolts because i wanted easier removal and reinstall, pulled the plywood out and tightened down the bolts. the 1st Picture shows the ears squeezed between the pan and the frame plate when tightened down. The 2nd picture shows how the bolts tighten down on the ears to hold the seat in place. While i could not raise the front of the seat pan to get the ears under it, i trimmed them to 1/2 their width so they would fit the holes in the pan. The front of the seat foam has a large lip that hooks over the seat pan and holds it in place there. This will have to do until i replace the seat with one of my own design.





Update on the seat: Even with trimming the ears the seat does not move around anymore. So far for the last 6 months i have had no problems with the seat( other than the rear lip digs into my butt).

Because i am having problems with the Can-am dealer on getting manuals, information on parts in their catalogs and finding real pictures of the parts of the Ryker,i guess i will have to make my own service manual for the ryker. So i have started copying the parts diagrams from the ryker website. I am increasing the sizes of the diagrams to where people can see what the part is and how it fits. I'm making them in varying sizes from around 1200 pixels up to 4400 pixels so you can see the details easier(you still have to deal with poor can-am resolutions on the pictures). I'm including a parts list text file for each picture that you can print out to make it easier to find the part on the pictures. I wish i had the money to be able to get a second ryker to take it completely apart and photograph every part on them.

If anyone would like some of the diagrams and pictures i have already made, please message me and i will post them on this Ryker thread. I may start on the Spyder if i ever finish the ryker pic's.

admin

PS - i have already found a part that has no number's on one of the diagrams. This is on the Suspension-Front-A-arms diagram. It only shows a shock attached to the a-arm.
160a - shock, 160b - suspension spring, 160c - spring stopper. The rally edition has different part numbers. I would guess there is no need to show the part numbers since the dealer only sells the whole shock(no separate parts).

It seems that in the Riker VS Vanderhall it was 1 rider on the Riker and the Vanderhall had 2. I still think the Riker would still win but without the extra 160+ pounds of rider 2 in the Vanderhall it'd be closer. EDIT Looks like at the end they do race with one rider each and the Vanderhall wins.

Its like a full built 70 Camaro at 2500 pounds with a 375 HP 350ci VS a 72 Chevell at 3500 pounds with a 425 HP 454. The Camaro will win in most races. At 0.15 horsepower per pound Camero VS 0.12 Horsepower per pound Chevell it comes clear that the Chevell would need another 100 HP, 525HP, just to be even

Don't tease us like that skiff,   I'd like some details. Likely not many have driven a sling shot and vanderhall in short succession and given an account of the contrasts.
I imagined I might  like the vanderhall but not a big fan of front drive and the really narrow cockpit. Can't  get past the  looks of the sling shot to even consider other shortcomings.

Anyway, either look a better bargain than a T rex.   Did I  hear recently  T rex is no longer in production?

Dave, i bought the ryker simply because i thought it would be a great around town urban vehicle. Now, after riding a while, i still think it's a great around town bike plus places around florida i have gone to with friends are quite easy. The only real problem i have is the slightly loud noise from the high rev's the trike makes, a bit annoying. I'm the kind of guy that just says lets go with no planning whatsoever. Makes things more fun for me. Clothes on my back and a trike underneath me is all i need.

I think you would probably like the can-am spyder better as a longer trip touring trike. It's a little larger and heavier but some models have a lot of storage space on them. i seen a ad on a spyder F3 in Georgia that a dealer was selling for 13000. The only problem i have there is the 1800-2000 extra costs the dealers put on the bikes that they never seem to mention until your ready to buy (almost used car salesman attitudes to me). I went to look at a spyder RS a older man was selling with a friend of mine who's looking to buy one. It had all the bags you could put on the trike and some other options. He had only rode for 4000 miles on the trike and was asking 15000 for it. He quit riding because his eyesight is getting bad. I talked him down to 13000 with a 24 hour buy window, but i don't know if my friend got it.

You might ask Joe Sarasota about his spyder as he has had it for a while now.
admin

Well, i have now needed to use the warranty on the ryker to get a problem fixed. Here's what happened. 2 days ago went for riding with a friend that has a yamaha 1800. FYI, He cant keep up with the ryker till we get past 80. I also saw 98 MPH on my spedo(don't know if it's accurate). Yesterday i decided to ride up to my friends house But the bike wouldn't start. Checked the battery but it was good. Checked the starter wire connections - they were tight. So it is under warranty but i had to wait until today to call someone to take the bike back to the dealer. Said they would be here in a hour but it's been 3 hours now, oh well. And just now i get a call from the road service company that they are in traffic and itll be another half hour. Can-AM reliability? starting to wonder now. Hope it's just a fluke deal, not every part made is perfect.
Admin

Breaking News We have found the problem with the Ryker and Can-am says it is a common problem with new Owners. It seems there is a problem sometimes with the computer operations on the trike. They commonly call this error the ID-10-T error. So now today(2-27-19) i can go get the Ryker and get it back to my garage.I did find out the warranty people said the cost to get it to the dealer was $180, meanwhile the tow truck driver told me he gets $45 to pick up any bike or trike to take it less than 25 miles to a shop. Wonder what the extra charges are for when i only talked to the warranty people for 5 minutes or so. Glad it's under 100 % warranty. I also found out this 1400.00 warranty only covers 2 tows per year and does not pay any costs over $200.00 per tow. Someone has a pretty good scam going here(just my opinion).

It has been a while since i've been to this thread, so i thought about updating.

The problem with the darting has pretty much disappeared on the Ryker. This trike has very quick steering and small movements on the handlebars makes it steer quite a bit. With 3 shorter road trips i've done lately perhaps i am getting used to the steering also. The suspension on the Ryker is pretty stiff so the older roads do make for a rougher than normal drive. I do not seem to get any bump steer. It's just that the whole trike shakes over the rough sections. On these same roads i feel nothing in my toyota rav4.

The second thing is the safety system on the ryker. I have been pushing it harder on the cornering to keep up with my friends on their sport bikes. I still don't think i have tripped any sensor's yet because i have yet to feel the trike slow down suddenly(what the shop mechanic said would happen). Because my legs are touching the side body panels normally all i feel is some pressure on the inside leg going in the corner. Hitting the gas a bit coming out of the corner seem to stabilize the trike and the pressure stops on the leg. I don't know if i am compensating the speed increase by turning the handlebar's a bit more. It just seems to track very easily. If i am not careful i catch up with the bikes too quickly and have to let off the gas when i get too close to them.

One thing i did find out is the gas gauge does not start working until the half tank level is reached. Then it goes down to empty quicker than you would think it would. The gauge started dropping at 75 miles and the low warning light came on at 155 miles. Funny that the next day a fill up only took 4.3 gallons, so i still could have gone 25 miles before running out.

I love driving the Ryker around town. A throttle, a brake pedal, and me. It's all i need.

Yes, Liteway, I have had my Ryker at 92 and 94 mph on I-75 with a little bit of throttle left. BUT, because the suspension is so stiff, i do not care to ride it at those speeds for very long. Also once you get past 75 mph it does take longer to creep up to the top speeds. I am content to cruise along at 70-75 all day long if necessary. The real reason i bought the Ryker instead of getting a Spyder F3S is because i wanted the smallest trike i could possibly get. So, the ryker won out. To me around town and on short cruises the ryker is perfect for me.

I watched that video 4 months ago. Here's the results i saved from it.



Just for kicks i raced a Suzuki GSX-1000 till one of us quit. Yes, i did quit at 80mph. What surprised me was while the suzuki pulled ahead from the go, but i passed him when he had to shift, then he disappeared on me. So we switched machines. He beat me very handily while on my ryker. That's because i have never been on a sport bike( never likes them). I have other excuses like missing second gear, trying to keep the front wheel on the ground, and more. I will say it was illuminating to my friend on the ryker. He does understand now why i like the ryker for around town riding. He says i need to put a big basket on the back to carry stuff(ain't gonna happen)LOL.

Hey, never thought of that, liteway. I think they are all good idea's. The rubber bulb horn is probably louder than the stock horn. I can't even hear the stock one when riding down the road. Thinking about barn red brush paint when i get too many scratches on the plastic body, Hehe.