Turning a dirt bike into a road racer.

I'm in Philly and ride there all the time. Yea the kart tracks are a little tight but still a lot of fun. 150r's are the best bikes there but the 450's are still fun and hell of a workout. The best part it's only $65 bucks and it's open almost all Wednesdays through Sundays throughout the summer. I've gone on a couple Thursdays and I had the whole track to myself and it was amazing. I'm also not a morning person so a start time at 10 or 11 is another plus for me haha.

You can also go to OVRP in NY and it's only 3.5 hours from me. The track is bigger up there and they have open practice and have races as well. However, I'm not a big fan on the repaving they did over the winter. Still a fun track though. There's a few SM guys that race in our area and travel all over the place. We we're just in Wisconsin a couple weekends ago and a few guys are going to Canada next weekend. You don't have to do that much traveling to ride but there are some big races with good turnouts far away.

I'm a Honda guy so I can't confirm fit but I think these would work for you and their only $500. https://frederick.craigslist.org/mcy/d/2009-yamaha-yz450f/6645564026.html The guy should be pretty close to you as well. There's your start for $500 and build your bike up from there if you need it. You'll be fine with MX suspenion and I still know guys that carry a good pace with MX settings.

 

Motor had a crazy build and stuffing it into the tiny TZR chassis left no room for a proper air box or filter. Getting it to run right was super difficult and never happened. Had to figure out how to make it run at high revs without belching oil, gearing was always to low because of clearance, etc. Original tank had a leak, had to buy a fancy schmancy composite tank, vibrated like a mo-fo and shook everything apart, ran HOT, and finally had some wiring issues that were eventually fixed. Seemed like I had an issue every time taking it to the track. It ran great down the street the million or so times I was tuning it... here's the info sheet when I sold it!

 

Wow, that is quite the motor build. The bikes do vibrate a lot, pretty much every bolt has to be wired or glued (loctite). I think that a lot of the problems on the dirtbike roadracers are pretty well understood if you look for the info (see post 31). My bike seems reliable as long as I keep an eye on the valves. Things can go wrong quickly if you ignore maintenance since it is all RPM all the time.

 

+1, it's fantastic.

 

The only vibration related problem I ever had was an aluminum belly pan I built that was rigidly mounted, cracked out. Don't think I ever had anything vibrate loose. Only mechanical I ever had was completely unrelated to the motorcycle.

 

Warmed over stock engine and I bet you'd still be racing it. YZ is incredibly reliable. Shame, sounded like an amazing setup!

 

Here's Jeff Wood and Doug Henry going at it at Loudon. Their lap times were only about 5 seconds off the motorcycle lap record. A tight track like Loudon is really fun on them.
Very few modifications needed.

 

I have an Aprilia RS250 Cup bike frame/swingarm modified for a Honda 450X motor if anyone is interested. Only problem is that its in my Montana home and I won't be there until October.

 

Those bikes are beautiful. I could hang that combo on my wall

 

Get out your checkbook and have Steeltoe draw you a map.