2011 300ec six day ride report. Finally

[Colemanian]

Well I finally got a ride on my new gasser. For those of you that are unfamiliar with my setup, I'll give you some background.

I started riding in mid 2010. I started off on an older KTM 300. I rode EVERY week for about a year. I rode a couple hare scrambles in the fall and quickly realized my bike needed more work than I wanted to spend. My friends were swearing about 4ts so I ended up buying an 07 yz450f. I set it up for woods and liked it, but it was too much work to throw around in the tight woods. By this time I had gotten more serious about racing, so I was preparing to buy a rekluse and have the suspension done. I ended up trading it for an 07 KTM 250xc. It had a rekluse,damper, and I got the suspension revalved. By this point I had moved to the b class and I was stating to get faster. I sold the bike in may of 12 with the intent to take a year off and focus on school. I'm going to school for engineering, which takes a lot of time. But I stumbled across a smoking deal on this super low hour bike.

After a little reassurance, I decided to snag this bike. I read about several of the mods to do so I immediatly sent the head to rb designs to be modded. I also sent the forks to Richard at the house of horsepower/cannon racing. While the bike was apart I disassembled it and greased all the bearings, they were nearly dry so I'm glad I did it. I had a jd jetting red needle laying around so i through it in too. I also ordered a motion pro throttle cable for protection. I also did a couple little mods like the master link kickstand return, and I moved my ignition map switch to the handlebars. I got all my parts in on Wednesday and I assembled everything and went for a little ride. The carb was off so I shut it down for the night.

Well today I went to Chadwick mo, there is a huge riding area there that is part of the mark twain national forest. It has a lot of hills, trees, rocks roots and loose gravel. This riding area is very washed out and eroded. I got there at 10:00am and it was about 43*f. The bike started on the first kick and idled like a champ while i got dressed. I noticed the bike turned a few heads as i passed some other riders. I immediatly noticed that the bike felt nimble. I hit some single track and was impressed. Power was nice, brakes where ok (the tires on this thing are JUNK). I started getting into a rhythm and started to turn on the heat..... Then I tried a steep downhill, and I took a pretty good spill as the ass end tried to pass me. I fiddled with the rebound on the shock and nursed my wounds (couple scraped). I started off slow again and made a few adjustments four an hour or so. I called Rick at HOH and he told me to take all the high speed dampening out of the shock to try and get around the cross talk on the comp/rebound. I felt a lot better on the bike after another hour or so and I put some speed on again. Me Likey.

After lunch I rode with a few guys for an hour or so. They were a and b-vet guys. I was able to keep up nicely. The carb still isn't right. It is decent off idle and pretty good wide open, but when cruising at 1/4-1/2 it's weak. Seems like I have to turn the throttle more than I should to get it on the pipe. I'll spend some time tomorrow riddling with the air screw.

So far, I'm very happy. The bike reacted well to input from my knees, I was able to lean harder into corners before the bike wanted to fall. I like the enduro feel of the motor. If I screwed up and blipped in a bad spot, I was able to keep it out of the trees. The only real negative I can see is the ground clearance. I bottomed the skid plate out pretty hard a couple times on some rocks that wouldn't of given me so much trouble on the pumpkin. I have a 5hr race tomorrow, I'll give you a race report tomorrow. On second thought, you may have to wait till Sunday. I'll be much too tired to text.