Upgrade to enjoy this feature!
Vital MX fantasy is free to play, but Premium users receive great benefits. Premium benefits include:
- View and download rider stats
- Pick trends
- Create a private league
- And more!
Only $10 for all 2026 SX, MX, and SMX series.
😂
Gotta hate it when you get gut hooked! 🤣
👍
I wanted a Bike Shoe, but if I remember correctly they were super expensive. Also wanted a 406. Test rode one and loved it. Too much money for me though.
Yeah your right I saw the 500,s race at Millville in 91 . The bikes sounded mellow & not ever close to being as good as the 125 class. After 15 - 20 minutes the 500 riders where just surviving riding them. Only 4 riders doing any racing. Where the 125 class was the top 18 going wo swamping positions . 18 to 30 th racing for positions 30-40 th fighting to keep pace . A 29th 125 place rider gave more entertainment.
Fuel costs killed the 500s! 😆
Those things DRINK.
The Shop
DeCal Works Huge Plastic Inventory of UFO and Polisport kits.
Luxon 4-Post Bar Mounts
$189.95 - $239.95
Not when you ride (hard !) on the PJ circuit, and just (barely) into the Needle circuit, they don't........ 😁
Rob, if you're still watching this thread, I'm interested in your insights how you and your peers in the GPs approached riding the 500s as opposed to the 250. ✌️
I can’t speak for other riders, but for me, I hated riding 500s at first. Too heavy, too much power when you didn’t need it, and not enough power if you were in too high a gear. I felt so much better on a light, snappy, flickable 250.
But back then the main British championship was an open class. So, you could race a 250 if you liked, but you would always be at a horsepower disadvantage against 500s (and ridden by guys who knew how to race them!) I had both bikes. I would ride my 500 in practice, but feel awful on it. Then I’d switch to the 250 and feel much faster, confident, aggressive, and flowing. But I would inevitably get buried off the start and struggle with being underpowered despite seemingly feeling faster.
It was a Catch 22. Ride the bike I preferred, but be underpowered? Or ride less well on the bigger bike but at least have the same horsepower as the competition?
I only got good on a 500 by getting rid of the ‘easy option’ of the 250 altogether and riding a 500 exclusively (a wise decision that I have to credit my late father for). By only having a 500, I had no option other than to learn how to ride them properly. Riding a 500 well was all about managing the power delivery, and riding it in the right gear, at the right rev range. Carrying momentum and flow, and getting the bike to put the power down without spinning up or freaking out the suspension was a learned skill.
Racing in British championships and later, 500 GPs also allowed me to learn first-hand by watching (and chasing!) the experts of this craft. And I eventually got the hang of it.
Best feeling ever.
While I was in B class I raced both 125 and Open and during the week I practiced on the 500 and on race day when I got on the 125 it felt really really slow and I could throw it around like it weighted nothing. I did Have to learn to adapt quickly between the two very different power styles.
The shop I worked at another mechanic had been racing the shops 414 Montessa and when the shop owner saw that I was a top 5 125 B rider he let me start racing the the 414. Thats how I started racing the Open class.
Thinking back on this that was when that shop hired me to do work study my senior year of high school when I was 100% green into the industry.
Appreciate your response, Rob, much respect.
It used to crack me up seeing the local pit dragger break out his macho inspired 500 and do nothing but rip up in a straight line, no jumps, no turns, no whoops just drag racing to impress everyone.
As an old guy at 56 I had opportunities to ride and race 500s back in the 80s. Never raced one but rode them on occasion. Never liked them at all. Fast forward to a couple years ago. Very good freind of mine put a brc motor in his 300xc. I rode it a fair bit. I honestly thought it was ok at best. powerful but sluggish. Slow revving. Heavy flywheel feeling. Lots of clutch to get it moving. He also became freinds with the owner of brc. The brc guy gave him a 2013 yz250 with the brc motor. Same feeling as the ktm but worse. I absolutely hated it.
Ran across an 83 or 84 plated CR500 on PCH the other day. Sounded bad ass!!!
I rode my buddies 1 time back in 93. Made half a lap and brought it back to him. Thing was a violent tractor.
Posed questions here about the BRC conversions a year or so ago and folks familiar with them said essentially the same thing, not really stand out performance relative to an OEM 500 or the original bike that had been converted. They look pretty cool and address the small market of folks looking for a 500 two stroke.
Putting aside the show off stuff I can tell you there is nothing quite like ripping through the gears like that on a 500 to put a silly grin of your face. It's a pretty breathtaking fun experience, but, yeah, not all about making it work on a track the way someone like Rob or his peers were able to in competition.
Darrin, If you were 56 when you rode 500’s in the late 1980’s and rode a BRC500 recently, that would put you at about age 90 now when you rode the BRC, and you thought it was sluggish? Can I have what you’re drinking? 😉
Oh shit ya. Good point. I probably should stay off them beasts and stick to my walker.
Rob's first paragraph summed it up for me.
I was a promising C class rider when I bought a YZ490.
Too heavy, vibrated, didn't stop, couldn't turn, no low down power, the top end was power ferocious and amplified all the these bad points.
I was now riding mid pack instead of the pointy end. A year wasted.
I was much happier on the 125 the next year, and faster.
Pit Row
There's your problem - having a YZ490 for your first Open bike experience is like having Roseanne Barr for a first girlfriend and thinking that's what all women are like.
There really are much better options than that noisy, vibrating, obese, detonating, flatulating pig.
And you could do a lot better than the YZ490, too.
I came out of schoolboy racing in the early 80's , just as the 500 class was in its prime, and was a decent amateur Expert, raced 250's and ended up with an RM500 as a practice bike, while racing the 250 , and having both, i got to race 2 classes in some places
As RobGVX said, the 500 off the gate was the most important thing, i could gate on that like nothing else, even though it was a bone of a bike, but it beat me up over a race , whereas the 250 was way easier, but you would end up coming through to where you dropped back to if you had ridden the big one.
We went all in with a CR500 in 86, and i got used to being at the front , getting good starts, and using the bike, i was never a balls out guy, just steady and calculating, but that season i learned how to ride.
What killed it was the way the tracks started to change, certainly in the British Championship, ( which i was never good enough to get anywhere near) , as they went from rough as fuck tracks that never saw a digger , to being prepped and more jumpy , and technique went away a bit, meaning the smart 500 guy couldnt beat the brave bloke on the 250 any more, and where in 1980, being on a 500 was a must , by 87/88 it really wasnt.
And also , people spent too much time making them fast , instead of easy to ride.
People wanted to be Rick Johnson and Damon Bradshaw by then, and they were 250 guys as SX started to make the 250 the main class.
As an aside, i just finished an RM465/500 build, and think that a well sorted air cooled 2 stroke in a 2020 chassis would be a great bike to ride.
Think that's bad? My first race bike was a '72 Suzuk TM400 in '72 at the age of 15 and 140 lbs. I wanted a TM250 but my dad said I'd outgrow it too fast so got me the 400. It was brutal. After breaking a couple bones and setting my racing career back a couple years we got rid of it and bought a new Penton 250. Much better lol. But my '90 KX500 was probably my favorite bike, loved it for hare scrambles.
This sounds like one of those Forensic TV shows where they found out one relative had taken out a large insurance policy on another shortly before the insured had some unusual fatal "accident". A '72 TM400 could certainly help facilitate that scenario! 😄
I've owned several of those last generation KX500s (and still have a '97) and enjoyed them all. 👍
Roger DeCoster
Roy Jansen
Suzuki
Yamaha
I think answer should be simple, it is speed in pro series, in GPs 250 was fastest class, then 500 and then 125, i believe in US same thing. All fans want to see fastest riders and bikes, so 500 class became class for veterans...and for all others 500 had just too much power
I got the scoop from Cooksey ,
Davey and Feld conspired with the FBI to put an end to 500's. Davey knew the general public would still want them. So he bought them all and has been slowly selling them and made well over $100Billion so far.
But seriously , they were faster than most people wanted a bike to be, and or had a reputation of being too fast and harder to ride. That is what I remember hearing around the group I rode with around the time they started dyeing off.
Horsepower Killed the 500's. The other bikes got so fast you didn't need an open bike anymore. The 500's got too fast for mere mortals and it hurt sales.
Pretty sure the 500 died the day men’s testosterone levels started declining.
Suzuki dropped the RM500 first. Then Yamaha kept the 490 as is for years. Though Broc Glover did just fine. I remember all the fast New England Suzuki guys started racing KTM 495 in the open class and stayed with Suzuki for the 125/250 classes. I did get to see some good 500 races between Keller, Waddington, Scott and a few others in the 1980s
So you’re saying that vaginitis killed the 500s?
I think part of the problem was the addition of so many classes, we used to have 125, 250, and Open class now there are 340 classes anywhere from +30 to + 31 1/2. The Open class was badass to race in and watch. Although I had a YZ490 and man that bike would test your skills the hit was nuts, got a KX500 and so much easier to ride. The stock pipes would always crack and guys would buy Pro Circuit or FMF pipes and they made the bikes hard to ride, the stock pipes worked great, I would buy the stock pipes and weld them (constantly) but the mellowed out the engine. I remember when the 30 second board came out I would snick it into 2nd gear, when the 15 second board came out snick it into 3rd gear for the holeshots, badass bikes loved those days.
Post a reply to: What killed the 500?