Dirt Rider's 24-Hour off-road test is a unique affair with an ever-changing theme. It's a social event. It's a bike test. And it's a party. To try and summarize and classify such a gathering is quite difficult, but one thing is certain: It's the one place where the greats of the off-road industry, whether in business or on a bike, congregate for good riding, good testing and good times.
It began humbly enough with our sister publication, Motorcyclist (yes, the streetbike magazine). Until the late-'70s, Motorcyclist tested off-road bikes and motocrossers as well as the gamut of street machines. When the magazine completed its 24-hour test of the then-new 1979 Honda XR500R, it invented the concept we now claim as our own. This continued each time Honda brought out a new big-bore XR. When Motorcyclist determined on a street-only format and spun off Dirt Rider, we continued and expanded the 24-hour concept. When DR was testing a single bike for 24 hours, it was a task filled with many hours of solitary riding, naps grabbed where we collapsed and many favors from good friends. Then 10 years ago we opted to test four stock bikes for 24 hours and four modified bikes for 12 hours. We may be writers, but we can do rudimentary math. Figuring an hour on each bike as the average, we were looking at 144 one-hour slots that needed butts in the saddle. We took that opportunity to ask industry friends to help us ride the bikes. Having enough riders for 144 time slots naturally made the endurance test a social gathering. Then-publisher Dick Lague recognized the power of the test as a business function and invited industry guests to come ride the course along with the test bikes. It made business sense but also made course conditions more realistic when compared to a genuine off-road racecourse. The types of machinery changed each year, and the Baja Designs lights grew more sophisticated. But throughout the years the test has stayed much the same as it was a decade ago, until, with the influence of Jimmy Lewis at the editorial helm, we decided to knock some dust off the old format.
The original premise still remains the same: Pack a performance test and reliability run into a small space of time. Because, in reality, off-road readers like you want (and need) to know about performance and longevity.
With its tradition still intact, this year's 24-Hour format was planned to not only satisfy our appetite for testing excellence, but provide the social atmosphere expected, appreciated and enjoyed by the industry as a whole. This is a delicate balance of work and play. For instance, on one hand many factory off-road racers claim our 24-Hour is the only day of the year they can enjoy riding with other top stars without the pressure cooker of needing to win. On the other hand, roughly half of our readers are off-road nuts, and they look forward to an issue or two that bulges with hard-core off-road testing. This year, we tried to keep the enjoyment up and the testing fierce.
Each year the search is on for the best group of off-road machines to include in our test. Last year was a slam-dunk with the herd of new 450 enduro-type machines on the market.
For 2006, we looked for a test direction and a way to include factory riders and industry types to pump up the society of the test. Since there was no clear trend in off-road manufacturing that needed exploring, we put out a call for proposals from OEMs and the aftermarket. Our guidelines were simple: build a bike our readers would find intriguing, pass a 96-decibel sound test and have a spark arrestor. We set a deadline for proposals, and more than 20 prospective builders responded. Our staff voted, deciding which machines would make the cut. With a range from 100cc to 570cc and from stock production bikes to full-on racer replicas, we felt we had enough hard-core off-road badness to satisfy every dirty appetite and hardware preference.
The big difference this year, though, was that the event was not the actual test of the bikes. It was a qualifier. Bikes that successfully completed 24 hours with at least 75 percent of the mileage accumulated by the team covering the greatest distance would be held over for DR testing. We didn't make it easy, so each bike was fitted with a new hourmeter before the start, subjected to a rigorous sound test and run past a radar gun. Each team could select their own riders, but Dirt Rider installed one rider/spy to make sure every team stayed on the straight and narrow and also to get a feel for what it took to keep the bike going the distance.
As we have come to expect from modern machinery, all 15 bikes made it through with a minimum of problems, and all qualified to be tested. The full test will be included in the June issue of Dirt Rider.