Small bike for both dirt and kart tracks

Hey guys, I've always been a creeper here but never posted. Curious to hear opinions on a small bike recommendation. I'm an Expert racer at Arroyo, and I have a little junker stock 2005 CRF150F that I thrashed around on last summer. I have Musselman's Honda Circuit kart track, a pretty nice track that holds AMA Sumo events, and their whole dirt facility with a couple MX tracks, a small flat track oval, and some trails right close by here in Tucson, so I'm thinking about getting a small-ish bike to take advantage of all those. Any recommendations? I don't believe there are any direct swap OEM suspension improvements from other bikes for the 150F, and I'm not eager to dump thousands of dollars into an old junker that I only spent $500 on to begin with. Instead of throwing money at this old bike that needs just about everything, I'm thinking something newer, maybe even 2-stroke, with an asphalt wheel/tire set and a dirt wheel/tire set would be a ton of fun. Or am I crazy and there are actually a lot of options with the 150F that I just don't know about?

 

Race bike or play bike? For race, find out what class limits are, your 150F may be the hot ticket. For play? CRF150R.

 

Kind of both. The motocross series at Musselman's is a 85 2T and 150 4T class, so 150Rs are allowed in the same class as the 150F. So I don't think anyone rides the 150F. At the same time, I'm not buying it for the express purpose of racing, more just riding and training. But knowing myself, track days turned into racing so I would probably want to race it as well.

 

I can see ZERO ways in which the tarted up 150F would be a better choice than a 150R if they are allowed in the same class.

 

Absolutely agreed. Plus hop up parts are plentiful for the 150R. But then again, the engine is a race engine, which means lots of maintenance.

 

How's RM85s/CR85s for what I'm interested in? Just wondering if I should keep all options open, or if there are certain models to avoid. I'm going to try to find a big-wheel version of whichever one.

 

The 85s are good fun, but not as fast as a 150r around a kart track. They all can work well but the Yamaha seems most popular.

 

I'm actually in the same boat now.

Just came back from SoCal Supermoto and definitely want to build a small bike to have some fun at Musselman on.

 

I have a yz80 that you can have for a great price. If you are interested, call or text 909-938-1057

 

Honestly just depends on the classes and what you want to get out of it. Since you already have a 150f, I would probably just put 17's on that. With 17's you can race supermoto and flat track depending on tires. Keep the stock rims for MX. I do the same thing with mine and I love it. It's not fast but it's reliable and requires zero maintence compared to the r models. However, it will not be competitive at all if 150r's are in the Same class. In my area though, 150 air cooled engines have their own class. No doubt a 150r is more of a racebike.

 

Well I think I went the way of reason. There simply isn't a mini scene in Tucson, despite there being an awesome track in MHC. So instead of hitting the kart track by myself, I'm just going to stick to dirt as I do have a couple friends with dirt bikes that I can convince to come out and ride with me from time to time. With that said, I've made arrangements to sell my CRF150F when I get back from vacation in the next couple weeks, and a buddy of mine seems willing to sell me his KX100, so I'll be getting that thing resprung and it should be good to go for my purposes of taking advantage of the different dirt tracks.

I've never wanted a "big" dirt bike -- in my mind, big dirt bikes make big injuries, so hopefully I can be happy on a 2T 100 for the foreseeable future. It does have probably double the hp of the CRF150F and much better suspension to boot.

 

My worst injuries and only broken bone came from riding lil bikes.