How bad was the Cannondale MX400 really ?

It was mostly just a crying shame for the co. Cannondale and it's stockholers/investors.

Cannondale was riding high at the time. The most innovative bicycle company and making incredible products and the MX400 bankrupt the company. 

Reliability wise, absolutely terrible, specially electronics.  With the Ohlins suspension stock on it though, handled pretty well for that big of a bike during that time. Had really explosive power. Only bike I ever jumped over the gate (before it drop) on. I had a dealer bike, once I started having issues with it just shutting off, Cannondale asked for it back, shortly after they went under.

The prototypes are in the museum at Barber Motorsports. They have wires going everywhere.

Good vid and report.  I enjoyed it.

If his insurance is paid up (or National Health is worth a shit) he should saddle up an old BSA 441 Victim or TM 400 Cyclone or an old Phantom.  Those'll wake you up in the mornin' boy.  Those weren't bad...they were DANGEROUS.

by "explosive", do you mean no low end, and a huge hit after that?  I'm guessing the 6" straight header out of the back of the cylinder had something to do with that.  Hence the serpentine header on the YZF's....

I also recall a front fork that was way too soft, but yeah the Ohlins were a good baseline.  

Cannondale just wouldn't listen to the subject matter experts, and allowed hubris to lead them astray....kinda like the Titan disaster (but financially deadly vs. physically deadly)...

I seem to remember the Cannondale having what they called a cassette transmission.  I cant for the life of me remember with any certainty why they called it that. I seem to remember something about it being a modular design or something. 

                      John

Yeah, I believe it was totally removable w/o splitting the cases; you could pull the trany out one side....pretty cool "works bike" type stuff....

Chuck Lunde at Southbay Moto figured out the short comings and made the the bike a dependable machine.

I have 3 street bikes from the 90's that have cassette transmissions. Remove the clutch cover clutch parts. Remove sprocket Remove the 6 bolts holding the transmission plate everything is attached to. Pull entire transmission out. 

It was for gear changes in the transmission for quick swaps. Great for street. But the backing plate that supports the transmission fits to is kinda heavy so it would add weight to the engine and size. 

 Great video !  The early prototypes looked better in my opinion , this one having a forward facing engine . Probably when they were still using the Folan engine .  Looking forward to the comparison video .

I don’t have a utube page to many ads would love to try a Cannondale tho saw one once leaned up against a tree in what I believe to be some farmers place out kind of near lewiston area on a dual sport ride years ago you could ride for miles and miles and not see a soul on those old farm roads my buddy and I just had to stop and take a look no one bee came out but we weren’t there long basically just had to confirm  that our eyes weren’t deceiving us it had a eerie aura about it almost like seeing a serial killer in public or something it’s a shame we never got to see the bikes true potential and they folded so fast I would bet that eventually after 10 years or so they could have got their stuff together but guess we will never know kind of like Alta they say electric is the future sure if you live in a suburb and only ride at the motocross track but now you can’t even use a generator in California so how are you supposed to charge the thing between rides probably have to buy a second very expensive battery it reminds me of the pharmaceutical companies they want 3000 dollars for a month of my wife’s medicine without insurance how is anyone supposed to even pay that… anyways thanks for posting the video man I just can’t get with the utube thing but this one I may have to make an exception and watch the ads

Ride on!
BB #975 

Thats why you download ad blocker browser and you get zero ads. Same as YouTube premium. 

I was at the Demo that Cannondale put on for potential new dealers at the Gorman track (I-5), The bikes had their idle set at well over 2k rpm and they stalled (flamed out) in just about every corner. I decided very quickly that I didn’t trust the bike enough to hit the bigger jumps and I wasn’t the only one thinking that the bike was far from safe to ride.

I told the owner of the dealership I worked at to cancel orders and drop the franchise,

He ordered them anyways... pissed off a few of our good customers who I tried to warn off from buying them and we ended up with a stack of crated bikes that never sold.

really, really, really bad! The first time I changed my oil, it looked like metallic silver paint........

A mate of mine has one here in OZ.

I think he got it, and a spare motor with all of the 'Fixes' from ADB and / or that fellow mentioned in an earlier post.

Here's an interesting use for a CDale rolling chassis  ; a Rotax 406 engine transplant:

  A f**kwit I did 674 hours of work that he never paid me for had a whole box of CDale Ohlins shocks he had acquired. 

I only saw one Cannondale at a track back in the day. I thought it was an awesome looking bike and was curious about all of the technology on it.  The owner said it was the biggest pos he had ever owned. I never did see him actually out on the track with it though. Not long after that MXA hit the newsstands with their article warning everyone just how bad the bike was, and the rest is history. I wouldn't mind having one now just to tinker with. 

That thing looks incredibly slooooooooooow.

For what remember, had good bit of bottom, was fast on top end but bottom end power was the noticeable to me. I was only about 170lbs at the time. The engine produced a ton of noise! Sounded awful.  

I liked mine, short of the aircraft carrier anchor weight. If they just stuck with a Folan engine(or sourced), it may have turned out much differently. I remember trading in a VOR 503mx for this bike. Not sure who lost on this deal 🤔 

I remember seeing them testing it out at Glen Helen the concept was ahead of its time the engineering fell very short!

Bought mine used a year and a half ago.Always said if I come across one I'll grab as its a piece of American Motocross history(Time has shown that bad MX bikes have value as time goes by, although not the reason I bought it) Supposedly has all the updates and my engine is not the original. First one was warrantied with a model year newer so it has the hydraulic clutch. Well once I owned it and made it look nice I had to see how it works, is it as bad as they say? For sure you feel the weight moving it around and on/off a stand. But on the track it was not nearly as bad. And yes the forks are to soft, bottom to easy in my opinion. But other than that racing it at Unadilla MX rewind in June, I had a blast. I do have to say I have not owned a modern 4 stroke since 2010 and just race vintage 70s and 80s bikes. I'm looking forward to racing it again at Southwicks NE vet championship in the fall as I love that track.

My good friend Pete24 woulda been the first to chime in on this thread but unfortunately we lost him a while back. Miss ya every day you grumpy old bastard. 

Looks like ATK can keep you in parts!  

https://atkusa.com/parts/atk-cannondale/

Pete was the first guy I thought of when I read this thread.

He helped me and my kid a ton.....miss him.

Yes, they have a lot but there's 2 other guys with a ton of knowledge and parts and there prices are super reasonable.

Better for Cannondale to try and fail than to not try at all...

I`d bet they might disagree......

Pete died? RIP.

Yes, back in 2021. 
He would have no doubt had some amazing insulting and offensive commentary for this thread, 60-70% of which woulda been spelled incorrectly. Guy was the best. 

A lot of the Cannondale technology was used on other bikes later on, fuel injection, electric start, rear facing engine. They just pushed into production too soon. They also alienated their bicycle base with a dirt bike