A stock Surron LBX is pretty good. If you take it easy on it, it’ll last you a long time. If you’re just riding to work, exploring some chill local trails, and staying well within the bike’s intended capabilities, it’ll all go just fine for as long as you want it to stay that way.
That’s my second favorite thing about the LBX. It’s balanced. Reliable. Chill even.
But there’s so much more potential in the driveline and the chassis, and if you start pushing those limits, things start breaking – and some of them break fast.
Take it from the team here at GritShift. We’ve got MX riders, road racers, street stunters, and hard enduro champions, and while we all love the LBX, none of us trusts a stock one for anything more than very light riding.
It took our team years of riding, modding, and breaking countless Surrons to figure out all the weaknesses. Lucky for you, we can get you up to speed in 10 minutes or less.
If you improve everything on this list, you’ll discover my favorite thing about the LBX: the beast within.
If it’s ever crossed your mind to use your trusty LBX to grow your riding skillset, these are the things you need to look out for.
Speed Limiter? Cut That 💩 Out!
Let’s start with a free mod you can make yourself!
If you hopped on your stock LBX and felt underwhelmed by its top speed, welcome to the club. There are boring legal reasons why Surron limits the top speed from the factory, but the fact of the matter is, that speed limiter’s gotta go.
You can’t upgrade your battery, motor, controller, or any other power part without fixing this problem. I mean, I guess you could – and for that matter, you could keep riding around with the stock top speed in place – but why? You can just switch to Eco mode if you need something to stop you from sending it when you shouldn’t. Remind me when that is, again?
Solution: Cut the wire that limits the top speed. Use wire cutters, scissors, or a knife. Don’t use your teeth.
Recommended Upgrade: Check out this article for step-by-step instructions on how to cut the LBX’s speed limiter yourself. If you get in there and feel like a nervous action hero about to cut the wrong wire, contact our team and we’ll walk you through the defusal.
Read More: GritShift’s Guide to Surron LBX Top Speed
The Throttle Ain’t It
The stock LBX throttle feels light as a feather. That effortlessness feels nice at first, but as the primary interface between you and the bike, a super-light throttle makes the whole experience feel like riding a WalMart bike.
For the bike to go where you want it to go, you need confidence in the controls. The stock Surron throttle doesn’t build that confidence. As you attack a corner with your trajectory precisely managed, the last thing you want is to wonder how your bike’s vague throttle will respond this time – or if it will at all.
Telltale signs of this problem are:
- Throttle twitchiness
- Lack of resistance
- Difficulty controlling your speed, especially over bumpy surfaces
Solution: Install an aftermarket throttle with more resistance. For the LBX, we’ve found ¼-turn throttles maximize precision. Make sure whatever throttle you choose is compatible with your bike’s controller – some only fit aftermarket options, while others only work with the stock one.
Recommended Upgrade: Domino Twist Grip Throttle
Note: This throttle is not compatible with the stock controller.
Read More: GritShift’s Guide to Surron LBX Throttle Upgrades
Brakes From a Mountain Bike
This is not me being obtuse for clicks – the stock brakes on a Surron LBX are literally pulled straight off of mountain bikes. Many components cross-reference to MTB parts you could find at your local bicycle shop. You know, the one with the tricycle with a basket full of flowers. And that’s cute and all, but it’s not very badass.
The Surron LBX has a phenomenal driveline and chassis that can handle 72v of power and as big of a battery as you can fit under the lid (or bigger… just move the lid!). But an LBX weighs a whole lot more than a typical mountain bike. So it’s no surprise that the very first thing to break when you ride an LBX hard is the brakes.
Even a new rider – still getting used to the machine – can easily overcook the brakes. Even on stock power, the stock brakes are only really good enough for casual stops. Sure, I’ll just stop casually before I overshoot this corner and end up in the trees. Right.
To be frank, the stock LBX brake pads are trash, the stock brake fluid has poor thermal properties (it overheats and stops working), and the stock discs and calipers would be great at stopping your dad’s bicycle, but not your fast-as-hell LBX.
Look for these clues that you’re reaching the limit:
- Brake discs overheating
- Brake fade (they get worse if you stop several times in quick succession)
- That crisp initial bite disappears over time
Basic Solution: The best bang for your buck is to upgrade the brake pads to something designed for higher performance like these sintered pads from Hayes. If you’re doing more miles or riding aggressively or competitively in any sense, you should also flush out the stock brake fluid and replace it with DOT 5.1 fluid. Hayes makes a brake bleeding kit that comes with DOT 5.1 fluid and anyone can use it, even if you have no experience working on brakes before.
Pro Solution: It’s a big ask, but replacing everything – calipers, rotors, pads, fluid, and master cylinder – is the only way to truly fix this problem if your goal is to ride your Surron aggressively or competitively. Take it from someone who once pushed a Ducati past what the stock brakes could handle, and onward into a telephone pole: if you want to go fast safely, you need brakes you can trust. You might not need them until you do, but when you do, you will. You get what I mean.
Recommended Upgrades: Hayes Dominion A4 Sintered Brake Pads • Hayes Pro Bleed Kit With DOT 5.1 Fluid • Heavy Hitter Front Brake Rotor • Heavy Hitter Rear Brake Rotor • Hayes Dominion A4 Brake Master Cylinder
Read More: GritShift’s Guide to the Best Surron Brakes
Suspended Suspension
After the brakes go, the suspension is the next component to show the strain.
A stock Surron is great for street use, easy trails, and general commuting, but it will easily bottom out on most jumps. The fact is, it’s just too soft to sustain hard riding.
Your mom doesn’t put up with that, and neither do we, because all our LBXs have upgraded forks, shocks, and linkages to handle whatever kind of riding comes our way.
Solutions
There are several solutions to improve the stock Surron LBX suspension, depending on how far you want to go with this.
Rear shock, triangle, and linkage. Pretty self-explanatory – the stock LBX rear shock is ass and cheeks. Get a better one and you’ll notice a difference immediately, whether you’re commuting to work or flying across a finish line.
Jackshaft bolt. Have you ever derailed your chain without actually hitting anything? Well, that’s swingarm flex. All that lateral load is going right to your jackshaft bolt on a constant basis, and over time the weak Surron component just gives up. The best version of that is suddenly your chain won’t stay on. The worst is a crash. This upgrade is like $50. You can see why we suggest it.
Forks. This single mod transforms any old flimsy LBX into a race-winning surgical scalpel. You do this by installing real motocross forks from a KTM 85 dirt bike, and you need our MX fork conversion kit to do it. GritShift pioneered this conversion because we wanted to win. You’re probably not interested in this unless you’re using your LBX for competition riding (or you’re loaded and want to flex on your friends, no judgement here), so if that all sounds too serious for your riding style, just throw on some stock air forks from a Talaria Sting and you’ll get a big improvement for anything shy of competition use.
Battery, Motor, and Controller
Now we’re crossing into some serious modding territory. If you upgrade these components, your Surron will no longer be a regular LBX, it will be a weapon. By upgrading these three components, you can achieve power-to-weight ratios that would reduce any gas dirt bike to tears.
You could beat a Yamaha R1M in a drag race, you could out-pull a KTM 450 for the holeshot, you could run a hard enduro with less fatigue than someone on a supposedly “lightweight” 250 gasser – all because your modded LBX has less weight and more power.
Your LBX could have the power-to-weight ratio of a Lamborghini, like our record-setting DragRon shown above… but there is a catch. You have to upgrade everything else first – brakes, suspension, all of it. If you’ve ever pulled a heavy trailer with a light truck, you know the feeling – and danger – of having plenty of power and not enough of anything else.
Solutions
Of course, this isn’t all-or-nothing. You can make good power on a lightly modded Surron LBX while getting new features like hot-swappable tunes and custom tuning parameters, customizable throttle curves, and the ability to install any aftermarket throttle you want. That’s all the controller.
And you can get more range with a bigger battery, giving you longer-lasting riding. Your mom likes that, and so do we. We don’t have a single Surron on a stock battery in the entire GritShift fleet. That doesn’t mean you have to go 72v and a battery so physically large that it sticks out the top of the bike. It could just mean getting yourself an aftermarket battery with slightly better range and using your stock battery as a midday hot-swap.
You really only need to upgrade the motor if you’re going for serious performance. It is possible to overheat the stock motor if you’re really thrashing it, but really, the stock Surron motor is a good unit and you can get a lot of performance out of it. If nothing else though, please throw a bash plate over it to protect it from the elements. You don’t want a rock to decide today’s the day you’re replacing your motor.
Recommended Upgrades: If you’re eyeing a motor, controller, or battery upgrade, take it from a team that’s used every available aftermarket part – and broken most of them. Buy from EBMX. Whether that’s an X9000 controller, XLB-60 race motor, or just an uprated battery from stock, get them from us here at GritShift for prompt technical support and warranty processing if you ever should need it.
Recommended Upgrade: EBMX X9000 V3 Controller (Surron LBX) • EBMX XLB-60 Race Motor (Surron LBX)
Read More: GritShift’s Surron LBX Driveline Upgrade Guide • GritShift’s Battery Upgrade Guide • This Is How To Upgrade Your Surron Motor The Right Way • The 60V vs 72V Conundrum Explained
How to Plan Your Upgrades
Now that you’re aware of the Surron LBX’s most glaring problems – the ones standing between goodness and greatness – the first step is to work out what you need to upgrade for your riding style.
As a frugal big sender myself, I tend to suggest finding a bike that’s already modded so you can save some coin. But, that’s not where everyone’s at. I’ll turn to our resident Dirt Bike Mom, Margie, for her somewhat parental take on upgrades:
“My recommendation is always to go for the safest way to upgrade. For example, if you want to head to the MX track, then I’d suggest looking at suspension first. If you want to do a big power upgrade, consider upgrading the brakes either first or at the same time.”
Going fast in a straight line – without being able to stop or turn fast – is a recipe for disaster. So start there.
Why did you just dunk on my stock LBX for like 10 minutes?
If you’re new to your Surron and you feel like you just read a complaint list a mile long, rest assured, I’m coming at this from a unique perspective.
I’d rather you know about all the potential weaknesses of your Surron now, before you find out the hard way. And it all depends on your riding style. The stock LBX is great when ridden within its capabilities. Commuting, light trail use, that kind of thing – but I’m someone who constantly finds themselves pushing the limits, and if you’re kind of person too, it’s a lot better to prepare the machine for that beforehand, rather than breaking it along the way.
Everyone here at GritShift has been a competition rider to some degree. We’ve broken everything on an LBX, and in fact, that’s what led us to develop our own line of handmade parts – because we broke everyone else’s while trying to ride our Surrons hard. That was in 2020, and now our competition-quality parts for the Surron LBX set the standard that others copy. Check out this skid plate – it’s nearly invincible!
You can check out our handmade parts here: Heavy Hitter Parts for Surron LBX
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And of course, you can contact our team anytime and pick their brains about what you should upgrade on your Surron and when. We’re happy to help!
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