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.
The Bikes
We voted in an eclectic mix of 15 off-road machines for this year's test and kept last year's returning champ, the KTM 450 EXC, as a baseline. Also submitting largely stock bikes were Beta with a 450RR and Husaberg with its muscular FE550E.
 FMF's Danny La Porte heats...  FMF's Danny La Porte heats up |  "See you in 24 hours... don't...  "See you in 24 hours... don't blow up!" |  |
 Industry folk, BlueRibbon...  Industry folk, BlueRibbon Coalition volunteers and San Felipe Bob all got to roost. |  |  Art guy Joe McKimmy: man of...  Art guy Joe McKimmy: man of many talents. |
 There is tight stuff at Gorman,...  There is tight stuff at Gorman, you just have to dig for it! |  | |