Haven't been on the site in awhile - vacation (4500 mile sidecar trip - awesome!), followed by the requisite weeks of overtime making up for the vacation...
Sigh. I hope I live long enough to retire.
I used to race Open Class in AQMD District 37 desert races with a stripped DT250. The Ponderosa was about 10 miles from our house! Best I did was 7th overall (out of maybe 100 riders) in maybe 1968, maybe 69? I was about 14. The reason I did so well is that I had a major get-off on the first lap - the damage locked the throttle full open... finished the race with a ON or OFF throttle! Talk about peaky!
Anyhow, here's one almost running...
Started with a 1980 DT175. The weight is at the max for strapping onto the MoHome bumper.
Doing a few upgrades to bring up to Y2K+.
Disks front and rear, EXCEL 18" rims front and rear (great for sand), upgraded swingarm/shock/forks via a 1998 RT180, KX100 seat, low fender, fork brace, and a retro early 175 tank graft.
Going to keep the engine stock (about 15hp), as upgrades mostly decrease reliability and seem to make it real peaky.
OTOH, a 200cc Blaster engine is almost a bolt in...20HP stock, and 25HP mods are still pretty reliable - and if I want to go nuts, guys on the Quad sites have taken the 200cc Blaster to 38HP!
As the 200cc equates to about 12 cubic inches, that's about 3HP/cubic inch!
As a comparison, a well-built 350 Chevy can give you 300HP - call it 1 HP/cubic inch...
On another 2-stroke topic... here's a video of a great 2 smoker "build" and race. Great photography - some superb slo-mo's of suspension work over whoop-de-doos. The speeds the long travel suspension allows would have killed me on the DT250...