The Italians are home!

Thanks for the kind words.

I still like the bike, haven't had a chance to ride it in 165 trim yet other than to break it in around the yard.

The stock carb is difficult to keep it jetted crisp, fortunately it's the easiest bike in the world to perform carb adjustments on. Tons of room and access. Pepole are switching to the smart carbs because they just work better than any Keihin or Mikuni is capable of, and once you make a couple of minor tweaks they shouldn't need any more fuss. More power, better throttle response, cleaner burn, less soot, better fuel mileage and as close to perfect carburetion as we're likely to ever see until direct injection is here.

As a 125 it wasn't enough for my heavy ass, very hard to keep it on the pipe even with tremendous clutch abuse. The modded 144 was the answer, it was perfect. Tons of power with plenty of mid to keep from falling off the pipe. I only went to the 165 kit because I can.. I'm not sold on if it will be better for moto or not. The woods guys sure love it and swear up and down that I will too.. So I went with high compression for more punch and a pipe that will really let it rev. I'll get a chance to give it a shake down this weekend. If it works better than the 144 I'll be impressed, because I thought the 144 was about as good as it gets.

The only concern I have is excessive frame flex. If you jump big the headstays break on these bikes and the new ones are substancially beefed up around the footpegs with a redesigned headstay to help fix this issue. A lot of people were able to get replacement frames, I'm going to try to press for one too. If not I'm going to be watching for cracks, and after this riding season I'll either be getting rid of the bike, or stripping it down and doing some welding/gusseting for more strength.

I haven't ridden the bike in stock 144 form, but mine was super fast with a semi-high comp head, modded powervalves and some light cylinder work with Scalvini pipe.

Handling is like it's on rails, best I've ever ridden bar none.

The bike is built well, besides the excessive frame flex, and I broke one kickstarter. The wheels have stayed true and haven't had any other issues.

Some people never have problems with the headstays and some do. I don't know if it depends more on the rider, or if it was a certain batch of frames. Keep that in mind and make sure you're getting the bike at a bargain price, the resale sucks on these bikes and even brand new they regularly get liquidated at rediculously low prices on this side of the pond. Right now you can get a brand new 2013 for about $4k which is a steal. Sucks for us owners because now our low hour used bikes are only worth $2500.

I tried to turn the WR300 into a CR but it's just an old world feeling bike. The 144 felt like it was just as fast, just had to be ridden a little differently. The 300 felt big, awkward, heavy, revved way too slow slow and it vibrated like hell compared to its little brother. Maybe if I'd done some engine work to wake it up it might have felt like a whole different bike, I focused on fixing the chassis instead. I didn't find it fun at all to ride but some guys love them. Maybe I would have liked it better as a 250. Hell, if the 144 wasn't outperforming it in every aspect maybe I would have liked it more.

Take them off the track and into the trees and the WR300 felt like a bulldozer, it would chug through the gnarliest stuff all you had to do was point it and hold on. Total cheater bike. It would idle through stuff without stalling like it was a diesel.