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Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
It was clapped out and had no brakes.
I got to ride one at the Shineray factory in China. It was pretty cool coming into the factory, the buildings where massively impressive, there was a row of GP style transporters, and a massive MX track out front. I met a few of their engineers and they talked about having me do a couple races for them, was all pretty exciting.
Then we head to the track and I notice that it's atrocious up close, terrible dirt poorly maintained and just in general incredibly unsafe looking, in terms of the shapes of the take offs and landings. Then they wheel out the bike for me and I had to hold off a look of disgust, it had broken front and rear fenders, snapped levers and slightly bent bars. They then inform me that it's running a rear spring that's 25% stiffer than usual, it's a linkage free rear end but there is nothing progressive about the set up.
So I head out on track with a suspect Chinese helmet, it was a real struggle to lift the front end up, I guess a combination of being too stiff in the rear, excess weight and lack of power. So I skipped a few of the jumps first time round, not confident in the bike to get me over them. Apparently I tried the biggest jump at some point, all I recall is coming to while standing in a circle of Chinese talking away, a good 15 or so minutes later, none of them seemed to realise I was on another planet! I was in a world of confusion, having just moved to China "Where am I? What language? What am I doing?..." Turned out I couldn't get the front up high enough and was piledriven into the ground.
Definitely worst bike I could even imagine. Putting aside the fact that it weighed significantly more than a 450, the real kicker is the fact that the engineers stated that power from the engines fresh off the production line varied between 17 and 22kW! How the HELL do you get so much variance in engine performance off a production line?!!!
I was racing the 125 class and thought it was a cool idea to ride the Open class as well. The bike was a loaner from a guy who worked for my Grandfather. I basically picked it up Saturday without ever riding it before and headed to the track Sunday morning. All I did is slap numbers on it.
Bad idea.
It weighted twice as much as my 125, handled like a wagon, suspension was never set up for me, and was way too much bike for me at the time.
I putted around for two motos.
Waste of time, and put a quick end to trying to be "cool" as a kid racing the open class.
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
This one isn't mine but I had one exactly like it minus the orange frame. Extensively ported, 46mm Lectron carbed, fire breathing, bucking bull of a motorcycle. Ladies and Gentlemen, the 1995-1996 KTM 550.
The damned thing made more power than the clutch could handle so I had to run super heavy springs in the clutch. This in turn caused the pressure plate to warp when the lever was pulled in. It was impossible to get the clutch to fully disengage if you had a finger between the lever and the bar. This meant that at launch time you had to drop the clutch and regrip the bar while it was dumping 90hp of big bore two strokeness to the back tire. The scary part was when the back tire would go from looking like a Top Fueler in the burnout pit to FULLY hooked up within 1/100th of a second while I was trying to regrip.
The motor far exceeded any sort of suspension components from the era and I was positive that I was going to bust the big bastard in half at most of the races we attended together. I'll never forget the way that damned thing ran although the rest of the bike was a piece of shit. Even as a hillclimber it constantly had some damn thing broken or falling off of it.
After 3 years and countless victories I decided it was time for us to part ways while I was still able to walk and talk.
The only bike that ever really scared me was a Husaberg FE450. The bike was great 99% of the time, then you'd find yourself violently tumbling accross the ground. I had three big crashes on that bike and couldn't figure out why any of them had happened. Not willing to take a chance on a fourth I had to let her go.
And maybe the shitiest was a Carabela Centauro 360.
I sold it to a customer who raced in my class, he would get Monster holeshots and check out till he got tired from the power and faded like a cheap suit. bike was crazy !!!
Pit Row
I can tell you this, my friends on their 80s & 100s ate a lot of 400 roost on the straight-aways though !
Our little track ran next to a 15ft deep drainage ditch and one turn was right at the edge, you would jump this little 1ft bump then have to hit the brakes and make a 180* turn and that's were it all went south. I come in hot to that turn and start downshifting, well unlike my CR 80 the shift was 1 up 3 down and that's were it all went south. I come into the corner start downshifting and the SOB is gaining more speed! I little brain just couldn't grasp what was going down. I flew over the turn 15ft out and 15ft down to the bottom of the ditch. Sunk the trail bike and smelled like ditch water for an hour. Never rode that thing again.
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