Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128148
Reid Nordin's 2002 Kawasaki KDX220 WE RIDE ONE VERY TRICK KDX (Left) This KDX220 In KX clothing Is the work of Kawasaki Team Green's Off-Road Manager Reid Nordin. (Above and below left) We raced the bike at the Okeechobee GNCC, where we came to appreciate the Revloc automatic clutch that Nordin had Installed. (Below) Nordin built his own aluminum tank for the KDX. BY KIT PALMER PHOTOS BY KINNEY JONES would've been satisfied with some old clapped-out motocross bike even a ratty 125 - but when Kawasa ki Team Green's off-road manager Reid Nordin offered me his personal and very, very trick KDX220 to ride, I could not have been any happier. You see, I had brought my riding gear to the opening round of the Grand National Cross Country Series in Okeechobee, Florida, but had no motorcycle to ride for the moming's industry race. I was hoping to borrow a bike and, like I said, any bike would have been fine, as long as it produced a spark. After all, beggars can't be choosers. But I had no idea I would be riding something as trick as this. Nordin went all out on his KDX220. He had Mr. KDX himself, Jeff Fredette, of Fredette Racing Products, go through the engine and give it the works, which included an FMF exhaust pipe and silencer. But Nordin wasn't afraid to do some of the work himself. He busted out the hack saw and cut off the KDX's rear steal sub-frame and replaced it with a lighter KX aluminum sub-frame, and he replaced the stock plastic gas tank with an aluminum tank that he built himself, which he designed to incorporate KX radiator shrouds and a quick-fill filler cap. The new subframe also allowed him to use a KX rear fender, seat and side panels. I 40 APRIL 3. 2002' II: U II: I e As far as suspension is concerned, Nordin swapped out the stock conventiona I fork for an inverted KX fork and rebuilt the rear shock. Obviously, Nordin knows how a KDX oughtta be. But Nordin wasn't finished just yet. To make things even more interesting, he installed one of those new Revloc automatic clutches, made by Drussel Wilfley Designs of Denver, Colorado. In a nutshell, the Revloc clutch makes it so that the rider doesn't have to manually use the bike's clutch/lever - you still shift the bike like you always do, but you don't have to use the clutch. At low rpm, the transmission automatically goes into neutral, so the bike becomes next to impossible to stall, as long as the idle is set correctly. You can even start the bike in gear without having to pull in the clutch lever; you just kick, turn the throttle and go. The normal clutch lever, however, is still mounted to its usual spot and can be used to over-ride the clutch if you need an extra burst of power exiting a turn or something. (For more information about the Revloc clutch, check out their Web site at www.revloc.com.) My only practice time on the bike was riding to the start line, but I did practice a few dead-engine starts and quickly found out that you do not give the engine a lot of throttle when you kick the starter lever if you leave the bike in gear, which I wanted to do for the race. If you do grab a handful n e _ s like you normally do, the bike will leap forward as soon as it ignites, which could make you look pretty ridiculous. I absolutely loved this bike. It made extremely good and useable power, and the suspension was more than capable of handling the deep, sandy Florida whoops and those softlooking fuzzy caterpillar-like things, which turned out to be extremely unforgiving and rock-hard palmetto logs. This bike was like no other KDX I had ever ridden; rather it felt more like a user-friendly KX250 than a mushy trail bike. The automatic clutch was definitely interesting, but I liked it. I never did stall the bike, even when I crashed it. I threw the bike away once going into a turn and when I walked over to pick it up, there it was, on its side, "ba-baba-ba," idling away like nothing had Now, the KDXs have never been accused of being hard starters, so had the motor died, no big deal, really, but what if I had been on a big-bore thumper? Say a WR426F, perhaps. Need I say more? Yes, I can see the Revloc clutch being a big hit with four-stroke owners. (We'll be doing more testing and experimentation with the Revloc clutch down the road.) After the two-hour-Iong race, I felt I could not have been on a better bike than Nordin's very trick little KDX220. I was certainly impressed by the motor and suspension mods, as was Kawasaki's Larry Roeseler, who rode the very same bike in the Alligator Enduro two days later. "LR" said that he was also impressed with the Revloc clutch, which he felt was advantageous in a number of situations in which he found himself in the Florida swamps. Hopefully, the folks in Japan will take notice of some of Nordin's mods and consider incorporating them into a production KDX in the near future, because Nordin certainly knows how to make a KDX work. eN