Ron’s Wrap

The 2023 KTM 350XC-F Factory Edition was just announced by KTM. This is a premium model based on the 350XC-F. We heard this was coming and were lucky enough to send Nic Garvin to Crawfordsville, Indiana to ride the bike in the final GNCC of…
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It's here! The Husqvarna TX300 two-stroke is available now and we have one. This has a completely new motor with throttle body fuel injection. We've been going nuts waiting for this bike and it actually arrive sooner than we expected.…
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The 2023 Kawasaki KX450 has been available in dealers for some time now and we have been testing it for weeks. Actually, it’s more accurate to say we’ve been testing it for years. The bike hasn’t changed much since its debut in 2019. In…
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Most of the manufacturers have now announced their 2023 models so we have gathered all the prices together in once place for comparison. Some makers have held the line without price increases, but the overriding theme is that prices are…
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The KTM 390 Adventure is proof that you don’t need to be a retired CEO to participate in an Adventure Bike gathering. I spent last weekend riding one at the KTM Adventure Rider Rally in Tamarack, Idaho and had an absolute blast. The 390 is…
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The SWM RE500 is a brand new model--sort of. It's a new name for a bike that we find very familiar. When we last tested it in 2020, it was called the SWM RS500 and it was a fully certified dual-sport bike. Now, the 2023 version is back as a…
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The 2023 Kawasaki KX250 snuck in under the radar. When we saw the initial press release, it looked like the bike had no changes. It turns out to have a long list of very important redesigns. They include: A new head with smaller…
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The KTM 250XC-F is one of about a zillion redesigned bikes in the combined KTM/Husqvarna fleet for 2023. We’ve already reported on many of them, including the KTM 450SX-F, The KTM 350XC-F, the Husky FC250, the Husky FC450, the Husky FC350…
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The 96th edition of the ISDE is set to start on Monday, August 29th in Le Puy en Velay, France. The U.S. team has arrived, their equipment is in park ferme, and our 10 teams are preparing for the week ahead. The U.S.contingent consists of…
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Long before the controversy surrounding Haiden Deegan and his Star Yamaha at the 2022 AMA Amateur Nationals, the YZ250F was the center of another debate.  There was a time when a number of riders and team managers wanted the bike banned…
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For a long time, our favorite size for an off-road four-stroke has been the 350. We didn’t really care which 350. All of the offerings from Austria were light, easy to ride and had tons of power when you needed it. The differences were…
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We just spent our first day riding our brand new 2023 Husqvarna FX450. It’s a beast! The FX is billed as a closed-course competition off-road bike, which is code for GP and desert racer. About 90 percent of the bike is the same as the FC450…
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Glen Helen Raceway just announced that the 2022 Edison Dye Lifetime Achievement award recipient will be Jeremy McGrath. The award is presented each year as part of the Vet World Championships, which was founded by Tom White and now is…
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Going into the year 2000, we kinda thought the world might end. Everything was changing; a four-stroke had just won the National championship the previous year. Who saw that coming? The 250 shootout for the year 2000 took place in late 1999…
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There’s no better waste of time than diving into the Dirt Bike photo archives. Most of the bikes we’ve tested over the last 30 years I remember perfectly. Others, not so much. I arrived on staff in 1990, so I’ve ridden a lot of winners and…
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We finally got our first chance to try a Beta motocross bike this week. The Beta 300RX is a 300cc two-stroke based on the 300RR off-road bike--more or less. We have been big fans of Beta’s off-road bikes for a long time and have always…
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In the October, 1996 issue of Dirt Bike, Roger DeCoster talked about the future in a story called "Motocross Bike: 2000 A.D. It's kinda fun to look back at what he saw coming. What will motocross bikes look like in the year 2000?…
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We just got our hands on a 2023 KTM 350XC-F and we love it as much as ever. KTM’s XC line is over 16 years old and it more or less defines the category we call, “closed-course cross-country.” Setting aside the nonsense nature of the term,…
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Earlier in the week, we took delivery of our 2023 Husqvarna motocross bikes at Fox Raceway. We got to take the FC250, FC350 and FC 450 away with us for extended testing, but the two-strokes were unfinished prototypes and we had only limited…
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As the year 2005 came to a close we were used to  four-strokes being the center of attention. All the manufacturers still made two-strokes, though, and would continue for one more year. For the November 2005 issue of Dirt Bike, we were…
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