I'm a fairly recent convert to the dirt side of motorcycling. I moved to New Mexico about 2 1/2 years ago and they seem to have a lot more dirt than Washington does... Anyway, I bought a '83 Yamaha TT600 (dirt only version of the XT600) for $800 in order to get my feet wet (actually, one rarely gets wet feet in NM as that would require water...) in the dirt bike biz. I just couldn't (and still can't) see spending $5-7,000 for a dirt bike so that you can take it out and beat it to death over rocks etc. Anyway, I've enjoyed my TT600. Great sounds, great low end torque etc. However, a little on the chubby side (but then again, so am I...). About a month ago, the TT started to give me some problems, so I bought the newest cheapest replacement bike that I could find. A friend of a friend had a '90 KX500 that he was unable to ride due to a skateboard injury (and some people think that bikes are dangerous...). Anyway, the bike was in good shape. He'd owned it for the last 5 years or so and seemed to be pretty meticulous about maintenance. I tend towards the 4 stroke end of the bike spectrum. Probably too many years of growing up with small block Chevys and then my long stint with street bikes and road race bikes (all 4 strokes). Anyway, the KX wasn't really what I was looking for as we tend to ride mountain trails more than the open desert, but I figured that I could buy it ($1300) and ride it for a year or so and get my money back out of it if it turned out to be the wrong bike. Well, I've taken it out three times now. Once in tight mountain trails. Beat the hell out of the expansion chamber because I hadn't yet purchased a pipe guard, but fortunately the flimsy plastic skid plate kept the cases intact. The second time out was a bit more open and with deep sand. Not my favorite place to ride. and then today, We went out to a nice combination of tight trails and more open dirt roads with an occasional monster sand hill thrown in. The KX flat shined. My buddies were on a late model XR400, a YZ400F four stroke and an older XL600 Honda. I took turns riding each of the other bikes and the KX was my favorite by far. The power is tremendous, the suspension works real well and the bikes light enough and stable enough to really wring out on the open stretches. I have purchased a FMF gnarly pipe and a reed spacer kit along with a Steahly flywheel weight to try and adapt the bike a bit more to the tight mountain stuff, but even in it's current condition, it's tough to beat. So, I now believe...
