Edited Date/Time:
Hey guys. Just picked up the new Honda CRF450RWE last week and finally had a chance to take it out for its first rip this weekend. Since there was so much positive feedback on my last GoPro, I decided to grab some clips and make a little "first ride impressions" video on the day. Gotta say, Honda absolutely killed it with this beast! If you guys enjoy the video and want to see some more, I'll definitely continue to film the process of dialing in the bike on other tracks over the next few weeks and getting it race-ready for the upcoming National season.
Day 2 Update:
Today I took the bike out to 74 Family Fun Park which is another track literally four miles down the road from FTT. This place is a bit sandier and tends to get a lot rougher than FTT as well as being super high-speed, so it was a great day for testing! I started off with the settings I ended with last weekend at FTT which were as follows:
Fork Rebound: 2 clicks out from stock (faster)
Fork Compressions: 2 clicks in from stock (stiffer)
Shock Low Speed Compression: 2 clicks out from stock (Softer)
Rear Sag: 107mm
Bar mounts in the forward position with the offset backwards (you essentially have 4 positions you can achieve with the 2 mounting points and offset bar mounts. If 1 was the farthest forward and 4 was the farthest backward, I have mine in setting 2)
Everything else was left in the stock setting. Right off the bat I was getting some serious front-end twitchiness which I ended up chasing for most of the day. I decided it was a rear-end issue and started going to town on some clicker settings, but nothing was really working until I arrived at the shock rebound. Can't believe I didn't notice how dang fast the rebound is from factory! I slowed that down four clicks and it immediately felt better. I could tell it settled the rear end down a lot coming into rough corners which made the front feel a lot more stable as well.
I didn't end up getting any commentary today like I did from FTT last weekend, hence my type-up. Tomorrow i'll make an effort to document the process better throughout the day. Nonetheless, here's a couple laps from today:
Day 2: 74 Family Fun Park
Day 1: Florida Tracks and Trails
So in this video, I have the mount flipped upside down so it dangles underneath my chin like the first photo.
You need to ride like me so you can get a good look at everything.
