Honda XR's
 

I am compelled to write this after visiting the western gathering thread.

I used to love racing an XR 250. Beating people on a "girls bike" is awesome. My favorite quote came after a race where another guy and myself battled, he would pass me on his KTM 400 E/XC and I'd pass him back when it got tight. He finally ended up beating me, relegating me to a 2nd place four stroke A trophy. But the icing on the cake was standing there after recieving our trophies the KTM rider looks at me and says, "you know, that XR 400 has more beans than I thought it would, but maybe that last straight stretch will convince to to switch to KTM." I smiled with a coy sort of smile, looked around to see if I could gather some attention and said fairly loudly, "oh, it's not a 400, it's an XR250, stock, right down to the exhaust, plug removed of course." Silence followed. I polished my second place trophy with my glove as I skipped back to my pit, pony tail bobbing up and down (not really).

Moral of the story, don't mock the guy on the girls bike, you may have to eat crow.

lovely!! :D
just enjoy any and every ride you can make :)

I love it. If you can ride you can ride ANYTHING FAST!!!!!!

My club (Arkansas Dirt Riders) put on two Leroy Winters Memorial ISDT Reunion Rides (05 and 07).I forgot woh it was but a six days vet that can rid any bike (all others must ride vintage)road a 84 KDX.The only one to ride vintage TOTALLY SCHOOLED them on the grass track on Sunday. He even lapped two riders :o:o to frigen sweet.

Mike, Great story, and love the XR's.

My brother and I are gasser owners and ride quite a bit with our cousin who rides an XR250 with FMF pipe as only mod. We have raced harescrambles, enduros, rode countless miles of trail riding, and even have hit the motocross track a time or two, and everytime I pull over to wait for my cousin, that XR is right on my butt!

Great, timeless bikes, that just plain work. I've owned 2 XR400's and loved em'.

BTW, Mike there is a very nice XR400 w/ 440 kit and pumper carb on Seattle C-list! Bet that monster would be a hoot to ride.

I love XR's. Set up like Les and Jeff, they are really cool.

Les has this xr250r page hidden on his website :

http://www.lt-racing.com/html/xr250r_s.html

My xr280 has same suspension as newer gasgas - 45mm zokes front and ohlins rear. Les has ohlins front and rear....

The reason I bought my '01 gasgas ec300 was that it had what I wanted and liked in these 'trail bikes'. Tight steering, tractable power that puts it all to the ground, and ohlins.... And I was sure I would die in cardiac arrest trying to kick my XR to life - Les calls them "kick-a-thons".

My best xr story involves a marriage proposal, a 3 day ride out with some friends & Malcolm Smith, and my "dialed" '95 XR300R (WP forks/ohlins shock...) .... Yes, I wanted to go riding, so I got engaged - somehow it made sense at the time! ;)

jeff

When I moved from a more urban area to where I live now and got back into riding, I got a new '96 XR400, which was the rage at the time. Good bike except for the hot starting, I did the Rhody national one year on that bike and got heat exhaustion 15 miles from the finish, from kicking it so much. Turned very well for its weight though and would climb anything. There were a couple ECEA fast guys on the XR250s then that did very well on them.

Oh yeah. I don't miss the hot starting. It was the main reason I started searching for a new bike at the time. It turned out okay, I got a Gas Gas 250 after that bike. I think I learned a lot about line selection and momentum while I owned that bike.

This was my XR400 Dualsport. It had a pumper carb, so no hot start issues. Great bike. Heavy though. Would have been fun to put a 416 kit and stage 1 cam and update the suspension.

http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/l...ighter/022.jpg