The XR600R
Going
Bush
As you’ve probably read in his bio, Steve is no stranger to flying over
the handlebars of a motorcycle and doing himself injury. He started riding
road bikes in 1997 and since then he’s written off a couple in big smashes.
Naturally, there have been other smaller bingles as well. In recent years,
however, the frequency and severity of Steve’s get-offs has decreased. Some
people might speculate that experience has engendered some small measures
of skill and caution, but we know the truth. Steve has become bored with
crashing roadbikes. The large areas of bodywork, exposed engine covers, frequency
of roadside obstacles and high speeds attainable on a roadbike makes it
pretty easy to write one off. Steve had gained a fair bit of experience
in doing just that, and the challenge had worn thin.
In the early months of 2004, Steve decided to take up a new hobby – dirtbikin’.
It was the perfect choice for a mobile disaster area like him. His riding
skills would come in handy, but off-road bikes are slower, simpler and
much tougher than roadbikes, and hence harder to destroy. We encouraged
him desperately, ‘coz he’d have to try a lot harder to write off a dirt
squirt, and there’s a good chance he’d write himself off too. We live in
hope, anyway.
Once he’d decided (with our urging) to expand his stable and buy a chook
chaser, the right bike had to be found. Steve doesn’t have a car, and has
no intention of buying one. No car means no trailer, so the dirt-squirt
had to be road registrable. This narrowed the number of possible bikes down
immediately - only diesels (4-strokes) need apply. There are registrable
two-smokes, but they aren't very reliable on the road. All high-performance
two-smoke motors blow up regularly (if they don't, they're not being thrashed
enough), but smoker dirtbikes on the road are worse than most. Steve doesn't
mind thrashing the odd glorified whipper-snipper, but for reliable dual-purpose
grins, he just had to go diesel.
The other factor Steve had to consider was price. Being a lowly-regarded
and even lowlier paid gumbynut employee with a crippling mortgage and three
kids by different mothers (two of whom may discover his identity any day
now, damn these DNA tests!), his funds were severely limited. Waltzing into
a dealership and forking out big bucks for a flash newie was most definitely
not an option. What Steve was looking for was an old 4-stroke snotter that
had been well thrashed but was still reliable. That reliability requirement
pretty much limited his scope to two manufacturers: Honda and Yamaha. Steve
owns two Suzuki roadbikes, and he reckons their build quality leaves a
bit to be desired. Krappysakis are simply a joke. Who’d want to ride a
snot-green bike anyway? Nope, Steve was after something blue or red, and
that meant a TT or an XR.
Through his nefarious underworld connections, Steve heard rumours of
a mythical XR600 that had been seriously tweaked. Apparently, the mod list
read like a catalogue of go-faster bits from the best in the hot-up business.
This legendary beast was currently in the hands of a Pommie tourist who
was gently puttering around Cape York on it (probably in search of a decent
cup of tea and someone to listen to his whinging…) before heading back to
South-East Queensland. He’d have to sell the bike to scrape together enough
cash for his plane ticket back to the rain, sleet, hail and cold of a Pommie
summer, and Steve arranged to be first in line to buy. Unfortunately, he
missed out on the deal by 15 minutes and was forced to watch the bike he
could have bought for $2,500 being advertised in the Trading Post for three
straight weeks by different people at escalating prices before it finally
disappeared, presumably sold for the final asking price of $5,000. It was
definitely the same bike. ’93 XR600R, 630 big-bore kit, race cam, Ballard’s
pumper carb, RaceTech forks, Ohlins shock, Goodridge braided lines, Acerbis
24l tank, alloy bash plate, et cetera, et cetera, et bloody cetera. There
aren’t too many around like that, especially for less than three big ones.
Dejected, Steve went back to phoning dishonest imbeciles from the trading
post and listlessly surveying tired TT350s and overpriced XR400s. Then
he heard about a bike from a co-worker. It wasn’t anything flash, but the
price was good and the seller was open to negotiation. Steve wandered around
to have a gander, and initially he wasn’t too impressed. The XR600 was
old, having left Japan in the year of Australia’s bicentennial (1988, for
those too young and/or drunk to remember). It had been well thrashed and
pretty much neglected. Most of the external steel parts had surface rust.
Steve started to feel a bit sorry for the poor thing, ‘coz it was propped
up next to the house and half-covered by spare building materials. Once it
was dug out, the Ballard’s big-fin head was revealed, along with a plethora
of “630cc” stickers. A Ballard’s pipe was also present, and the seller confided
that the bike had refused to run properly until he’d operated on said pipe
and removed all those nasty power-sapping, thump-stifling baffles. Both
pipe and head looked fairly recent, and despite obvious disuse the bike fired
up on the third kick. Brakes and suspension were stock, both front and rear,
and although it didn’t look too bad for an ’88 model bike, Steve mentally
compared it to the deal he had missed and wrote it off even before the test
ride.
As soon as Steve hoisted a leg (damn, that seat is HIGH!) over the XR,
however, his opinion changed. The long stroke, high compression and non-existent
exhaust baffling created a thump that rattled windows, set off car alarms,
and knocked over little old ladies at 30 paces. The throttle action was
short and touchy, and the torque was prodigious. The front wheel refused
to talk to terra firma in first gear, and tended to take flight in second
as well. The clutch was light and progressive, and the gearbox was sweet.
Although the frame showed evidence of plenty of hard landings on rough surfaces,
the wheels were in line and the bike didn’t exhibit any handling problems,
even at speeds over 160kph (on a private road, naturally…). The suspension
didn’t sag and still had plenty of damping. It may have been old, but it
went like stink and had handling to match. Steve came back from the test
ride with his tongue hanging out from under his helmet and his hand in his
wallet. He wasn’t intending to buy a 600 as his first dirtbike, but after
sampling big-bore torque and wheelstandability, he was hooked. He bought
the bike for a nice price, went shopping for off-road riding gear and then
headed for the scrub on one wheel and with a huge grin.
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