I may be out until the middle of October by my X440s is still on the track. I got next Friday to the doctor to get my should blade X-rayed and find out when I can start building the muscle back up in my should and when I can get on the bike again. Meanwhile, I encouraged my brother-in-law, Scott, to race it at Lincoln Trail Motorsports (www.ltmoffroad.com) on August 10th.

He entered the +30B and 250C classes with it. Scott weighs a little more than I do but he commented on how much power the Dale had. In fact, he said he didn’t see why you would need any more power for MX racing. He also loved the suspension and raved about how it handled everything on the track and never bottomed-out on him. We had the rebound clickers set to factory specs and went 5-clicks out from full on the forks and 12-clicks out from full on the shock. Traction never seemed to be a problem for him. Although he got the rear to slide a little it always hooked up and shot him in the direction he was pointed.

I’ve had some problems starting the bike after it gets hot from racing. So for this race day we brought along a fan to use to blow air across the motor in between motos. This worked very well for getting the engine temperature down to “warm to the touch.” The bike started without any problem before each moto that day! Yeah! Unfortunately, we did have a stalling problem. The bike stalled about 6-7 times that day. Scott took blame for all but 2 of them. Those two both happen going down straight-aways under hard acceleration. It took about 60-90 seconds in both cases before Scott could get the bike fired up again. So I was a little perplexed why the bike did this. The other stalls, Scott claims he was in too high of a gear coming out of corners.

In the first Moto Scott tried to ride the Dale like a big four-stroke. That is, using the low-end torque and not revving the engine very much. I told him the bike likes to be revved out and that he should drop a gear from where he was to get the RPM’s up. After trying this, he stated that the bike seemed to run better this way but he wasn’t accustomed to riding a four-stroke that way and it felt unusual to him.

Even though it wasn’t me on the bike it was fun to see it in action. I video taped Scott’s races and have been studying the tapes to see how the Dale reacts to different things.

All in all, Scott was very impressed with X440s. I told him that now that he had raced one, he knows what he be getting if he bought one (he currently races a KX500). The stalling problems did bother him quite a bit though. To me the problem is not so much the stalling but getting the engine to fire back up afterwards. When I got the bike home I went through all the connectors to make sure nothing was loose. I put dielectric grease on all of them. The worst one was the relay that is mounted on the plastic plate that mounts to the cross-member above the spark plug. You non-X440s/MX400 guys may not know what I’m talking about, because you don’t have a cross-member. It was very dirty and when I removed it there was a lot of dirt down in the contacts but there was a lot of ‘factory’ grease in there too attracting all that dirt. I cleaned it all up and re-greased it. I also zip-tied all the connectors so that they cannot come apart.

After finishing up checking and cleaning the connectors I started the bike without any problem and let it run for about 2 minutes and then hit the shut-off switch. I then tried to start it again immediately but it took about 10-12 tries before it finally fired up again. Every now and then it would turn over like it was going to start but didn’t. I’ve been checking TT daily to see what you guys are experiencing. The fuel pump is working fine. I haven’t checked the stepper yet. I also think that the bike is still running a little rich. There’s a lot of sooty material on the exhaust pipe and the plug is usually black whenever I pull it. The bike seems to run just fine. Getting it started when it is hot is really my only problem right now. I’m open to any suggestions that any of you might have.

I’m hoping to race again on October 12th, back at the track that I broke my shoulder blade on, Planet X-treme (www.planet-x-treme.com).

Stay safe everyone!

Troy