Going into it I was already disappointed with the fact that it didn’t come with a starter. Granted a few years ago I would have never wanted a starter on a two stroke, it is something I’ve become accustomed to on any off-road specific bike. While the bike starts super easy and it runs very crisp there is something about being in race mode and tipping over and just hitting that button to get back going again. When racing the bike in Arizona I actually lost 2 positions in 2 different occasions because I had to throw the leg back over the bike to get going. Otherwise, the bike is amazing from back to front! All the little improvements actually make the bike better and they throw in a reserve, 18”, wide ratio and side stand for an extra $100!
Being carbureted two stroke jetting is very important and adding an aftermarket spark arrestor significantly changes the jetting characteristics. It was running really fat and sloppy at 7k feet with the FMF Turbinecore 2.1 but bropping the needle one clip helped but I definitely need to do a little fine tuning to hit that sweet spot, which is different with all aftermarket pipes.
I forgot to set the sag to my personal ride height – it was set to 85 not 100 – so the back-end felt a bit twitchy which translated into the front being twitchy at speed. This also illustrated how important it is to get the simple settings done before you jump on a brand new machine. With the sag set correctly it should take care of any headshake issues.
With all the new additions to the bike it is very strong and can compete straight up with any other 250 two stroke on the market and do very well!