So did a fantastic ride with buddy Jake yesterday. Jake is pretty hard core rider. My friends always say "no one loves bikes or rides more than you do" and my answer is "Jake" Anyway were very good friends, have rode together for years but lately don't ride a lot as he does more hard core rides than I want to usually. He is 15 years younger than me and a super talented rider. Anyway he called me looking for someone to do a longish loop and clear some trees in the amazing high country we have here. These are semi gnarly trails, cliffy, technical, rough, challenging, fun. I rolled the dice and brought the YZ450. I knew we would be stopping a ton to cut out trees and there would be lots of restarts for the day. Acid test for the Lectron time. I changed a lot of things on this bike. Due to the previous owner at his wits end with it it had been shoved int he corner and left for dead. This bike was owned by a local fast A class racer friend of mine and he has a pile of race bikes. 09 YZ450F, 2 yz250's, 2013 WR450, YZ125 oh and a 08 TXC450 husky he bought after riding mine. So he is not lacking bikes or Yamaha experience. He basically said get that thing out of here. Has been jetted all over the map to make it a reliable starter to no avail. When I got the bike it was abused and no one cared about it. tire flat from sitting. rad empty for evaporation, kick starter flopping and about to snap off (the second one on this bike so you know it has been kicked and kicked and kicked, wheel bearing, air filter, oil. Basically wen through the whole bike. It needed it bad. I swapped to 0-40 oil, geared it lower for my woods needs, adjusted and massaged everything I could. Loaded it up, cross my fingers for the best and headed out into the great pacific NW trails. Starting: First the bikes start EZ now. Carb totally fixed this. I would say it starts as EZ as any kick start bike I have been around. I started it probably 40 times yesterday as we stopped a lot to cut out trees. Not once was it hard to start. I had one streak going of 8 in a row 1st kick starts. Sometimes it takes 2. This is a bike that took between 6-20 kicks before. Transformed the starting. I laid this bike on its side many times to clear trail, zero issues starts right up. Starting is totally fixed and made the bike so much more lovable. Power: So this is interesting. A motocross bike with a non accelerator pump carb. Stock this bike had an odd powerband. Big huge hit right off the bottom, ok mid and not much top. Spoke to the original owner and he said no matter where he jetting it to try to make it start well it always had that powerband. BTW this bike has a full FMF megabomb exhaust. With the Lectron the huge bottom end hit is tamed slightly. It is still kinda there but you need to twist the throttle harder to get it there. I will admit it has lost a slight amount of initial hit. The bottom end is much smoother and the whole powerband is one big linear curve. the mid and especially the top have gained a noticeable amount. instead of a hit and sign off motor it is now much more linear and makes power across the board. Feels more normal. For me it is much better. It actually feels a lot like my uncorked and hard running EFI TE511 now, just oozes power across the rev range. I could really get in a flow and the carb, the gearing, the adjusted Rekluse and thinner oil transformed this bike into one dangerous woods weapon. This bike has a tire more bald than any I have ever run and still tosses you forward at an alarming speed. A new rear tire will be eye opening. The bike runs flawless. Idles perfect, stalled twice all day both times when I was 2 gears high climbing some gnar and blipped over something and chopped the throttle. The rekluse is not quick enough to catch this once in a while. Before I made all the changes this was the norm. You really had to be careful not to pop and stall it. Now i tried everything I could on purpose to stall it in the name of testing and could only make it do it twice. On top of that when you would pop and stall it before it would take forever to get it relit. Now it does not care. 1-2 kicks and you off. This has a good decomp system so 1-2 EZ kicks at that. For me the bike is transformed. Starts crazy EZ, runs super smooth and big linear power. I was freaking stoked all day. Was super user friendly even in tight woods. Oh, this bike is now a freaking billy goat. This area separates the men from the boys. It is challenging in many spots and lots of well used trail with huge root wads and big step ups on tight narrow steep trails with cliff sides kinda stuff. The smooth power gave me so much more confidence than the huge hit and sign off power it had. Jake asked me at one point "no bog at all?" nope. In fact it seems you have amazing roll on power and drags you up the hills with a never give up attitude. Your simply along for the ride, it is going to the top. its a technical hill climbing beast now where before it was a handful with the narrow powerband. I had a great day on the bike, it treated me right, started fantastic, made so much more useable power and was a joy to be on. MPG: Jake was riding his old trusty WR250 Yamaha (he owns 3 huskys) because it has the chain saw mount. That bike gets ridiculous milage and feels like it makes 14hp. Jake has owned the bike for many years and it has a billion miles on it and he can make it fly through the woods. It is his utility bike for long ass rides and trail work mule. 52.88 miles for the day. His bike took 1.5 gallons and the YZ... 1.6 Riding them back to back the YZ450 makes easily 3x the power of the 250. so I got 33mpg. Called the original owner on my way home, he rides this same area a lot too. Asked him what he would typically get MPG wise riding technical steep trail like this. 25mpg was his answer. He was shocked to hear it got 33mpg and said it NEVER got anywhere close to that. 8mpg better and I was hammering it a lot to feel the top and throttle response and overall jetting etc. Amazing. The 3.1 gallon oversized tank now will allow 100 mile rides. Fantastic. Summary: I could not be happier with the results. Really the only down side I can find is it did soften the big bottom hit slightly and for someone doing SX this might be an issue. I really cant see it being a down side for most anyone and it has gained a bunch of mid and top. Much more usable powerband. It is still a very powerful bike and has rediculious roll on and pulling power. You can be 2 gears high and just give it gas and it pulls like a modern uncorked diesel truck, relentless. never bucks, pops, bogs, lags... nothing just freaking pulls like a freight train from any rpm. Had zero issues all day with anything on the bike. Was super stoked and had a fantastic ride with buddy jake and got some great trail work done. Was just one of those days, great ride with a great friend on awesome trails on a bike that treated me like a king all day. Loved it. Jake has a bunch of vid following me I will post a link to when he gets it up. I will also have him post his thoughts of riding it as well. Pretty freaking happy about all this. The ride... A whopping 1.9 miles in and were already at work... 9.8 more miles and another big one. Jake is a trail clearing animal. Packs a huge saw and pack full of stuff. At the top of shark rock for a break. Amazing vies and you can see Mt Rainer, Hood, Helens, Admas and Jefferson from here. Top of the world. Even cell service. Jake discussing more ride plans with buddy Rick. Right past this picture is a set of switchbacks many find scary. It is on the side of a very exposed cliff. not super hard but if you go off things would be very bad. the beast and the trail clearing machine. Ok enough rest, back to work. this was a messy one as it was sprung and we stuck the saw. Spent a half hour here getting it done. your welcome... This what a day of hard riding and trail work looks like... but clear trails like this is what makes it all worth it... With the saw mounted to the forks it takes a little body english to get it to turn Had a great day, thanks Jake.
Sounds great. I'm curious at what idle speed you have it running? Do you set it to the same as previous carb, lower, higher? Have you tested how low an RPM it can run at & still be usable? I'm loving the increased mpg info, hoping I can stop using my oversized tank altogether on longer rides.
It has a rekluse that engages early so it needs to idle strong and low and does so just fine. Xcuvator (Steve) here also said his Lectron is getting 8 mpg better than his FCR and reports great running as well.
Cool report and thanks for clearing trails! On my yz450 the auto comp release would stick open often. No compression. Had to put in gear and rock backwards to reset it. Cool mod for FCR mx F bikes!
Hmm, might have to inform my buddy about this option. He has an 09 YZ250F which is an absolute pain to start most of the time. If he actually shuts it off, it will usually refire in 2-3 kicks, but if he stalls it, nope, 10 kick minimum it seems.
I'm assuming that those trees that needed to be cut fell over this last winter? Does that mean this trail hasn't been ridden on since then and here it is late July? Do they let anyone go in there and cut trees or do you have to be part of some crew or organised club? (BTW those trails look absolutely amazing! I've got to make it up there someday)
Yes, most these down tress were from last winter. Many of them had work arounds which kinda destroys stuff. Some people were dragging bikes over. this is the high country for us and gets lots of winter snow so april you can start getting up there and it usually take a month or two to get them all as there is about 200 plus miles of trail and it is all the more technical gnarly trail. It is mostly volunteer and there are great guys like Jake, Tom, Rollie and a few others that go up every year and cut them out. Sometime there are 40 plus trees down on one trail. this year was not bad at all. Anyone can pack a saw and cut them out and we turn our hours in to the forestry so we can be counted. Good for the trails, good for dirtbikes as they see us up there working and our hours are counted as ORV hours worked. Win/win if you got people who will do it. This place it much loved by a good group of hard core riders and people like Jake cant wait to get up and clear it.
Here is something you don't see every day. Me on a yamaha!!! Two thumbs up I'm already eager to hit more of this fine ass trail system. yummy... braaaaap
Glorious photos. One more reason that a wr is better in the bush/forest than a YZ, electric leg, purpose built. Did I say how glorious that view is ? Jeez yer a lucky bloke. Ps, I am a huge Yamaha fan, best Enduro bikes out there IMHO, yes I love my husky but for the sheer ease of ownership, the wr is such a peach.
0-3xl which is slightly richer than most 4st carbs as my YZ450 has a open FMF mega bomb on it. What are you running?
I have a 4-2m4 rod in my SMR450. It would be interesting to know how this rod differs from the 0-3xl. I think I have a 1-3xl rod in my TE250.
The Lectron Metering rods are determined by 2 numbers, first number is the top end. The second number is the idle and low speed. Example: 4-1XL rod, 4 is the top end fuel and 1 is the low end fuel. The higher the number the richer the fuel into the engine is. The top end numbers go up to 20 and the low end numbers go to 4
Not sure why ours are so different but both seem to work well. Mine seems pretty much perfect but I'll still be playing with it.
