2006 Kawasaki KX-450F Dirt Bike - Long Haul - Dirt Rider Magazine

I've been continually flogging our KX450F, and the bike has been taking it well. I'm pretty stoked on my setup, which was explained in "Fixing the MXers" (May '06), and I haven't found the need to change much, though the pipe shootout has me thinking about trying some of the other pipes, especially the Big Gun quiet one.Some of the small things I have been changing out included a fading stock clutch that I switched over to a Barnett kit that included fibers, metals and springs. I've been dealing with a weeping fork seal for the last 10 hours. It's from a rock ding on the lower leg, which I smoothed out with a fine grinding stone, but it cut the seal enough so that it loses just a little oil when the bike sits. The impeller seal for the water pump was also leaking coolant out on every ride through the pressure release hole in the sidecover, so I swapped that seal as well. Pretty average for a bike reading 13 hours on the Motominder timer, plus the 20 it had on it from shootout.I let the Dunlop D756s that were on the bike go a long time, then switched to the 90/100 D742 front and a D952 rear since I was going out to the desert and wanted some tires that would take the abuse and still be good for a few track days afterward. Oil changes have been routine (four so far), and I've been happy with the Silkolene 10W40 that I've been using. It has a red tint, so it is easy to see that an oil change is due with a quick look through the view window in the sidecover.I'm still pretty impressed with the bike on the track, especially the traction the bike finds both in the turns on the front wheel and in the straights on the rear. Although I'm not a fan of riding a moto bike out in the trails, I was able to suffer through it for a day on the KX. I felt it was every bit as good as the Team Green 24-hour bike because my suspension was softer! The four-speed just plain sucks in either slow or fast extremes, but I found myself adjusting my ride into searching for jumps, which the bike does just fine.All I see in the future of this machine is more laps and races when time permits. Plus, I've been loaning the bike out to friends (even my doctor, pictured left), so I really know it's getting beat, regardless of how nice they claim to treat it. And we are getting into that summer moto season!Running Tally

Hours on Bike: 33
Modifications: $2020.50