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/128318
s this a crazy, whacked-ou t world o r what? I'm reminded 01 this eve ry day when I open up my morning newspa per, and I was also rem inded 01 this as I sat on t he sta rt line of t he Palat ka, Florida, roun d of the Grand National Cro ss Country Ser ies. After all, here I was , your average -Joe B rider, who had no chance of winning the Industry class, sitting atop Mike Lallerty's full-on "wo rks" KTM 250 EXC, and with his tuner, Alan Randt , standing right next to me , taking care of my every need , muc h like Jeremy Albrecht would with James Stewart. Pretty wacky, huh? Pe rhaps God was paying me back lor ret urning that wallet I found with $80 in it last month . Well, for whateve r reason, here I was , about to spend the next two hours racing Mike Laffeny's bike - not a "Lafferty re plica," mind you, but his actual GNCC race bike. Unfortunately for Lallerty, the six-time endu ro champ reinjured his knee at the o pening round of the enduro series in February and will be laid up for quite some time. "Bad for him, good lor me ," I thought on the start line, and, yes, accompanied by a fair amount 01 guilt. I have to than k Randt for offering me the chance to ride Lallerty's KTM, and he certainly didn't have to ask twice . I hoo ked up with Randt and "the bike" the mo rning of the race , and my only wann-up period on it came whe n I rod e it from the pits to the start I 32 APRIL 7,2004 • line, w here, along the way, the bike passed the sound test with flying colors, even with the Enduro Engineering E-3 Series afte rmarke t exhaust system in place . Lafferty's ride is far from stock, but ve ry few of th e mod ificat ions are what I would call extens ive. Most of the changes are simp le, bol t-ontype mods, mostly to make the bike mo re comfortable and mor e reliable; only a lew mods are des igned to really enhance overall performance . Case in point: the mo to r. Internally, there isn't much diffe re nce between a stock EXC and his: The piston , cylinder and cylinder head are all original equ ipment and have not been tampered with, but to improve throttle response, th e stock reed cage has been replaced by one fro m V-Force lor better low-end throttle response, and the exhaust syste m has been substituted lor the afor eme ntio ned Enduro CYCLE N EW S Engineer ing system with a now-nontraditional black finish. Lafferty even uses the stock clutch and flywhee l (w it h no additio nal weights). The clutch and ignition covers have been re placed by Enduro Engineering's billet covers to kee p things as light as possible. The suspension, however, did get the full-on treatment. Both the WP shoc k and fo rk have been rev alved by Enduro Engineering, which also added a high/low- 40th Anniversary speed compression ad justment from the SX model to the shock. Lalferty uses a numbe r-eight progressive spring in the back instead of the 8.8 straight-rate spring that comes stoc k. Lafferty also runs stiffer .44 springs up front instead 01 the stoc k .415. To accommodate my lighter weight, however, Randt installed a number-seven progressive spring and one-step-softer fork springs. If you 've eve r met "Junior " in person, then you know that there's a reaso n that