If you could build the perfect motocross bike, what would it be? Well, since Honda essentially started from a clean slate when designing and testing the 2009 CRF450R, perfection is what its engineers were striving for.
Honda sought to build "the aerial battle weapon," those words straight from the mouth of the project leader for the bike, Yuichi Kato. His 360-degree design philosophy looked at the big picture of modern motocross: trying to achieve 250cc two-stroke-like handling with the better control and stronger acceleration of the 450cc four-stroke power. From the beginning they knew they were working with some new elements-like programmed fuel injection-as well as incorporating improvements that the previous bikes needed to fix the poor air filter access. Yes, it may have taken seven years, but they knew they had to fix that airbox.
The Honda CRF450R was redesigned from the engine outward with mass centralization in mind, a theme playing everywhere this season. Every current technique for shortening and thinning the engine came into play. The cam is built lower into the head, the connecting rod is shortened and the crank has been milled to allow the piston skirt to clear it. Millimeters were cut and shaved off of gears and shafts, and extra weight was eliminated from parts like the clutch which now uses four springs instead of six. About the only engine part that bulked up was the ignition and its electrical power-producing department. It now boasts a fully wound stator that sends a claimed 100 watts of power to a regulator/rectifier. That power is sent to the capacitor, the fuel pump, the ECU and the ignition.
The rest of the bike was carefully constructed around the motor, so the crank center could be lower and closer to the front wheel. The shorter motor allowed the smaller fuel tank (and its internal fuel pump) to sit lower and let the seat extend farther up and more flatly across the bike. The design of the exhaust was integrated into the machine, exiting on the left side and getting a good portion of its length along the front of the frame, allowing the muffler to start earlier and stay more compact in relation to the center of gravity of the bike. New seamless styling blends the sidepanels and shrouds with a look introduced by Italian and Austrian brands a few years ago and now in vogue. But this style is functional, too: less stuff for mud to stick to. There are hundreds of little tweaks to axle sizes and lengths; there's a slightly longer swingarm, new brake rotors and a more-flat gas cap. Change on this '09 CRF really encompasses everything. Even so, most discussion boils down to one thing: EFI.
A batteryless EFI bike takes about three kicks to start when cold. This is required to get enough electricity to the computer parts. After this initial charge it should only take one kick to get it running. But you have to learn how to kick this CRF. Just like every four-stroke has some sort of starting procedure, so does the '09 CRF450R. It seems long smooth kicks work, finding TDC doesn't hurt either. And it likes to be in neutral.
For us, 70 percent of the time the CRF was a first-kick starter, and in our daylong riding impression our bike never got cold, so you'll have to read the full test (up on DirtRider.com) for cold-starting reports. But what we did learn is that making sure the idle is properly set (around 1800 rpm) and knowing that you can clean out the bike (slow kicks through the stroke with wide-open throttle) if it isn't starting easily will get this CRF to fire right back up. After she's running, you really get to the FI goodness.
Ivan Tedesco shows what accurate...
Ivan Tedesco shows what accurate handling can do to a Texas berm.
The fuel injection on the CRF is unbelievably responsive to throttle input, and light on the wrist to boot. So much so that you wonder how the electronic pulses are so good at replacing jets, even if you don't understand how it works. When you ride it you should just forget that the bike is fuel injected because you can't really tell. It runs just like a perfectly carbureted bike does, but the throttle response is insane; like a factory bike except you won't need a factory mechanic tuning on it after every session to keep its throttle response that good. FI resists bogging or hesitation on hard jump landings and doesn't seem to care about the bike kicking or bucking. It gives one-to-one control from your wrist to the rear wheel, and the Honda system can even be tuned with a kit we'll be evaluating during our full test.
While its performance is impressive, it's also worth noting that FI is more efficient since nothing spills out of the nonexistent carb vent tubes, promoting an almost 25 percent efficiency gain right there. We can attest you'll get the same run time or range out of the 1.5-gallon tank as the old 1.9-gallon one, maybe more.