If you were to look to racing results, especially in outdoor motocross, to guide you in your dirt bike buying decisions, there would be a pretty heavy bias toward going green. Maybe even more so if you're looking at a 250F. Kawasaki, specifically the Monster Energy/Pro Circuit team, has been on a tear this year, proving weekend after weekend that it has the bikes and the riders. Sure those bikes have a whole lot of modifications, and the best riders on them, but they start out as KX250Fs.
Simply put, the green guys have a great platform to begin with and didn't see much reason to jack up a good thing, so they made small changes. The biggest was offsetting the engine mounts 10mm to lessen the rigidity of the overall chassis giving the bike a lighter feel, a mod especially evident on the KLX450. A small spline adjustment to keep the chain off the shift lever (which made some funny noises for some riders last year, though never affected our shifting) is the next biggest improvement on the list. The suspension received some small internal tweaks, and the muffler has some structural changes. Lookswise the bike takes on a race bike guise with black rims and black number plates actually made with black plastic, a welcome change to those few AMA pros who have to run the black backgrounds--and all the riders who want to look like them, us included.
So what does it ride like? A lot like last year's bike, just a little better, as expected. Right away you notice the muffler and its sharper sound. It seems to have also given the bike a boost in power in the low-end or midrange depending on where a rider classifies that portion of the power. It definitely seemed to pull better down low, giving the bike a fuller overall spread than we remember. Or was our old bike that clapped out? We suspect a bit of both. It was enough of a boost that some riders were torquing the bike through the turns more like a 450, something that they wouldn't have done before--when they thought there wasn't the same low-end tug.
The suspension seems to be just a tad better at dealing with larger riders, especially at bottoming. It was hard to notice or feel if the bike seemed lighter, but most of our riders commented that the front end helped the bike turn better. Could those new Bridgestones be on to something?
We didn't notice the shifter change, all three degrees of it, nor did the black plastic affect the bike's performance, except in the pits where its looks signaled it was a fresh 2008. It's much easier to bling out this new bike like those racer bikes now! Small changes to say the least, but good ones nonetheless.