Tinkering Might Be An Obsession!

Doug's New Project

When you have a racing accident or any time you find yourself incapacitated for any length of time and find yourself with too much time on your hands as I recently did, that can be a very dangerous thing. And in my case that proved to be all to true.

I started thinking, a very scary prospect in my case and came up with the bright idea to sell a couple of my bikes so I could buy a brand new one.

So that’s what I did while recovering from my Hangtown crash and hospital stay. I cleaned up my 2017 Husky FC450 that I used for motocross and sold it within a couple of weeks advertising it. Then I cleaned up my 2017 KTM 250XCW and sold it within an hour of advertising it. Which tells me I probably sold it to cheap and it is a very desirable bike.

 

So what did I buy, a 2020 Husky TE300 TPi? Why, I wanted a 300 when I bought the 250, I had thought about converting it to a 300 but never did. I spent a lot of time working with a Smart Carb that I had installed on the 250. Even did a bunch of videos on it, had about a three page article already written about the Smart Carb, then one day it started bogging in 5^th and 6^th gear if I hammered it through those gears. I spent several months working with the people at Smart Carb trying to figure out why it all of a sudden it started doing that. Even went back to the Mukuni just to see if it was the bike, the Mukuni ran fine. I finally gave up, so that was part of my thinking or rationalizing for buying a new bike. The Smart Carb people could not been better to work with and the Carb did everything it was advertised to do, I was very happy with it until I wasn’t. I wouldn’t hesitate recommending them though. 

So now I have one bike to ride off road with and the same bike to ride motocross with. I’ve only had two short trail rides on it. It’s only been 57 days since my racing accident so I’m trying to take it easy.

What I can tell so far is WOW the fuel injected motor is amazing, it runs just as clean and crisp as a four stroke no matter what gear you’re in, it just pulls. The 300 definitely suits my style of riding, I’ve always liked to torque it around and this motor certainly does that. Husky made lots of changes to the two stroke line up this year. I’m not sure KTM made the same kinds of changes. Husky has been slowly making changes to their lineup and are becoming very different from their brother KTM’s.

 

Husky changed the Carbon fiber sub frame it’s lower than before and the seat is also lower I think it’s an overall of about 20mm. You can definitely feel the difference when you swing a leg over it and while riding. They are using the same linkage ratios as the MX models this year. They moved the motor forward 1% which doesn’t sound like much but it supposedly puts more weight on the frontend to improve turning, which it does. I believe they made some frame geometry changes as well. The pipe and muffler off the 2017-2019’s will not fit on the 2020’s. I think the motor up dates, fuel injection, pipe, muffler and   mounting changes are the same on both brands.

I couldn’t have imagined that the 2020 Husky TE300TPi could have improved this much over a 2017 KTM 250XCW. Now I know the KTM has a PDS rear shock and the Husky has linkage. One is a 250 and the other a 300 and the 250 has a wide ratio and the 300 feels like a close ratio and for me works much better. They both have the Explor Forks. But the husky feels a little lower, corners better and just feels more together. But both bikes suspension felt/feel very good and I found no need to revalve the 250. However if I use the 300 for motocross I may not be able to stiffen up the suspension enough, we will see.

The only negative I’ve found so far is the TE300 comes with solid mount handle bars the TX comes with rubber mounted handle bars. So I noticed vibration, on the roads, my hands started to buzz a little. So I put Flex bars on it for the second ride and that helped.

I’ll up date you as I put more time on it.

Doug 21J