2005 Kawasaki KX280F
Kawasaki builds the ultimate 280F off-road
bike, and we get to race it
e guys at Kawasar are always up to
something. And since
many of them are
hard-core off-road
enthusiasts, when they get that
the urge to build something, it
usually winds up being something way cool, like this super
tricked out KX280F off-roader.
The 280 featured here began
life as a KX250F motocrosser.
As you can gather by the photos, just about every part of this
bike has been modified or
changed, whether it needed it
or not. It pretty much goes without saying that it got all of the
standard modifications and
updates you do to a bike to
make it more off-road worthy
(you know, installing guards, a
pipe, hand savers, a bigger fuel
tank, an 18-inch rear wheel,
etc.), but there are a few mods
on this bike that are a bit out of
the ordinary that caught our
attention, such as the Muzzy
280cc big-bore kit, the Rekluse
automatic clutch, the addition of
a sixth gear in the tranny, and
the swap to the "good" '05
KX250 (two-stroke) fork.
We rode the bike at the
Washougal round of the World
Off-Road Championship Series
(WORCS) in Washington, which
proved to be quite the test for
both bike and rider. (Rain usually has a way of doing that.)
X
With the big-bore
kit comes more
compression, so
Kawasaki installed
the aptianal KX250F
decompression lever
to ease starting.
Nonetheless, we still
had starting issues
with the bike, as we
kicked our brains out
while our race left
the start line without
us - twicel We also
encountered starting
frustrations during
the race. We later
traced the problem ta
a faulty stator, but,
either way, electric
starting is a must
when it comes to
four-strokes and off-road racing. Finding TDC ond all
that nonsense is fine when you're in the comfort of
the
nat when you're covered in mud, exhausted,
far
home and stranded sideways on a slippery
hill during a race - or on a noisy start line, far that
C
matter.
30
JULY 27, 2005 • CYCLE NEW
