I went down to the DMV yesterday and with fingers crossed... got the KX5 all street legal in NY!
I was just waiting for the guy to say... "Are you crazy? You can't ride a KX500 on the street!" but he didn't.
The first ride, the fuel line came off the petcock and spewed most of my gas onto the highway. I had just put 2 gallons of gas in it and about 2 miles later I'm running out of gas?! WTF? I look down and gas is flowing out.
I got running again and met up with a friend on a gsxr750.
We rode about 5 miles when I noticed my rear brake not working. No weirds sounds or anything to indicate something was really wrong... other than the brakes didn't work. I ignored it and headed for home. When I got parked, I started looking around the rear brake and noticed that all the bolts holding the rear disc to the hub had backed out and were gone.
The disc was just hanging there and the pads were now pushed together.
I got the wheels from RTR precision lacing in Florida. They put the disc on. I didn't check the bolts for tightness. I figured they'd be competent enough to tighten the frigging bolts and maybe even use some loctite. NOPE!
I'm glad this didn't turn into a more serious issue like me crashing in the street or the hub being ruined.
Luckily, I still have my original wheel and scavanged the bolts from it. I was back on the road in about 30 minutes and soon running out of gas again... this time, for real. I guess I lost more gas earlier than I had thought! DOH. I waited on the side of the highway while my friend got me some gas and came to the rescue.
All in all, I'm really liking the big KX. The power is astounding but not scary like I thought it might be. The DOT knobbies SUCK on the street. Too slippery.
While the work that went into the compression release mod is top notch, I am not impressed with the functionality of the unit itself. It keeps popping out almost everytime I kick the bike over. I find myself pushing the button, kicking the bike, pushing it in again, kicking it again and over and over until the bike finally decides to start. I think it's probably just not suited to release compression on a 500cc single cylinder engine. It is designed for a tiny 35cc chainsaw engine. The compression release is almost too annoying to bother using. If it's going to need resetting after every kick, a handlebar mounted lever would be much easier to live with. The KX isn't that difficult to kick over anyway. IMHO, the "button in the head compression release mod" was $140 wasted.
Many people were staring at the bike and giving the thumbs up.
The FMF pipe is loud but not obnoxious. I checked out some local trails but they're still mostly snow covered. I'll be riding the street for a while.