Broke Bike Mountain
Story by Trevor Hunter, Photos by Greg Eddinger
After a successful run at last year’s 30th Annual Big Bear Trail Riders’ Big Bear Run, tackling the Hard Way Route on near stock 300cc entry level dual-sport bikes, we came back looking for that same success, albeit with a different take. We wanted to answer one question – does size matter? Is a bigger, faster motorcycle truly better than an underpowered, easy-to-ride bike? Our friends at Honda gave us another CRF300L to go up against their full size CRF450RL at the 2025 edition of the Big Bear Run.
We left the CRF450RL mainly stock, installing a 3.0 gallon IMS tank to safely go the distance and Dunlop AT82 tires front and rear, stuffed with mousses, to tackle the primarily dirt route better than the 50/50 tires that comes stock on the RL.
We bought this complete “FMF knock-off” exhaust system on Temu.com for $109. The header fit fine, but the muffler required more than a few hard hits with a rubber mallot to lineup enough that we could “properly” bolt the thing on. As far as performance goes, it took a small amount of torque and low end grunt away, but boosted the mid-range and increased top-end performance quite a bit. As far as sound goes, it sounds exactly how you think it would — like some Chinese pit racer that makes a bunch of obnoxious noise for no reason.
Similar to last year, we started our day with a 4am wakeup call to get in line at 4:30am and again sit about 40-50th in line. This is right where we wanted to be as passing riders on Gold Mountain was quite fun and made it exciting to start the ride out in the midst of the chaos. Just after 6am, we rolled through the start, grabbed our ticket, and were headed down HWY 38 on our way to Gold Mountain. While not as chaotic as last year, there was still plenty going on as we ascended the rocky uphill. For the CRF300L, all was going well and we were cruising up the mountain with ease, showcasing how easy the small bore bike is to ride in terrain like that. On the other hand, the CRF450RL was struggling as the GPS fell off at the bottom, then a few tipovers left both the clutch and brake levers in pieces. As I neared the top of Gold Mtn, I looked down and saw oil spewing out of the oil filter cover all over my boot and the rocks below. I made it through the last little rock ledge where I immediately went to work trying to fill the hole with the little JB Weld that I had sitting in my pack.
Close to 10 minutes later, the CRF450RL finally rolled up on me and we waited and watched the chaos unfold in front of our eyes. After over an hour, we were finally back on our way with the leak sealed up and moving forward near dead last on the trail. We got lost more than a few times, sat in dust for miles and miles, and continued to have issues from here on out. Whether it was the 1 inch lower ground clearance that the CRF300L offered, or the different terrain, I felt I was constantly bouncing off rocks and debris — much more so than last year’s regular height 300L model. This plagued our day as I constantly hit the rear brake pedal on rocks and bent it out more and more — to the point where it was wrapped completely around the footpeg and unusable. This was less than ideal but I soldiered on and just relied on the front brake. Doing this wouldn’t generally be all that bad, but the ABS system on the front brake made it all but worthless more times than not as I’d grab a handful and continue to roll down the trail nearly brakeless. About halfway down “Redonda Ridge”, I had way too many close calls with a lot of steep drops, loose rocks, silt, and switchbacks. We ended up fitting a pair of vice grips to the brake pedal and to our surprise, it actually worked better than a brand new stock pedal!
We kept chugging along with a goal to make it to the finish, and this brought us to the first gas stop in Lake Arrowhead around 50 miles in. We got gas at the gas station, fueled our bodies, and were set to keep going. Until we couldn’t. The CRF450RL wouldn’t start. Then it started, but wouldn’t run. We sat there for 5 minutes before we could get the 450RL to run enough that it was rideable on the highway, albeit that was even tough. As soon as it hit dirt, the bike barely ran and even shut off for a minute. We pulled the seat off and the air filter was dirty but not completely clogged. Not knowing exactly what was wrong and not wanting to get stuck deep in the Big Bear backcountry, we decided to pull the plug early and limp the bike back home. Eventually, the 450RL started running cleaner as we neared the trucks, but our day was over after just 53 miles. We suspect it was just some bad gas as Tyler filled up at a separate pump and it proved to not be consistent – it started to run fine after 15-20 miles on the highway.
While our day came to a premature ending, and was very disappointing, we were at least able to answer the one question we had going in — does size matter? After waiting for Tyler at the top of Gold Mountain, he exclaimed “Bigger is not better. I want a 300!” Size doesn’t matter and bigger, faster motorcycles aren’t always better. The 300L has a lot of good traits to it and really is so easy to ride. We proved last year that it’s more than capable of completing this route, and if you are someone who continues to show up to the Big Bear Run and want to complete the Hard Way but can’t make the finish, we highly suggest looking at a bike like this. Or at the very least, “detune” your bike and make it easy to ride. Boosting power, modifying triple clamps and making crazy chassis changes don’t always equate to a better motorcycle. While it was more of a joke to run the Temu exhaust on the 300L, it does what a lot of aftermarket mufflers do on all bikes and it made the power harder to ride and just louder — not really better.
With the disappointment that this year was, we’ll be back in 2026 for revenge and possibly on some even smaller displacement motorcycles?
