You may have heard about this elsewhere... but here ya go.
Several of the boards out there have been invited to build-up a bike and submit it to the magazine for testing, then publishing in the August issue.
We of course accepted the challenge.
Time is the big problem, it has to be in their hands on April 2. So basically, we have thirty days to put it together. DRN will source everything, the bike, the chosen aftermarket parts, etc. Members are not required to purchase a single item.
You've seen some posts recently that seemed to ask obvious questions, this is what it was leading to.
We have to determine what form of bike to send... MX'er or Off-Road.
Then, the actual bike, then the mods and we have little time to do it! This project is only open to Subscribers and SupportTeam members to eliminate the potential noise level. Your input is what will put this bike together.
Below is the info directly from Jimmy Lewis (DR mag editor):
Several of the boards out there have been invited to build-up a bike and submit it to the magazine for testing, then publishing in the August issue.
We of course accepted the challenge.
Time is the big problem, it has to be in their hands on April 2. So basically, we have thirty days to put it together. DRN will source everything, the bike, the chosen aftermarket parts, etc. Members are not required to purchase a single item.
You've seen some posts recently that seemed to ask obvious questions, this is what it was leading to.
We have to determine what form of bike to send... MX'er or Off-Road.
Then, the actual bike, then the mods and we have little time to do it! This project is only open to Subscribers and SupportTeam members to eliminate the potential noise level. Your input is what will put this bike together.
Below is the info directly from Jimmy Lewis (DR mag editor):
Dirt Rider's Internet Bike Story
Who is in:
www.thumpertalk.com
www.crfsonly.com
www.dirtrider.net
www.ktmtalk.com
www.minibiketalk.com
www.dirtrider.com
(there is the possibility of a freestyle board, still pending)
Dirt Rider magazine has invited the above listed forums to participate in a bike build up, where the motorcycle that the members of each forum decide to build will be featured in an article in the magazine. Some boards are small and some are huge, hopefully we'll get an interesting mix of bikes for the story. The rules are pretty simple and as follows:
--We must have the finished bike delivered to us in Southern California no later than April 2nd.
--We will need the bike for 2 weeks to photograph and test it. The bike will be tested for the purpose it was intended. MX bikes on MX tracks and trail bikes on the trails. Don't try and out think us on where we are going to test. We promise to get the bike in its element. Build the bike that represents the members! It would be best if the bike were set up for an average sized guy of average ability level, say 180 lbs, intermediate ability, but this is not a rule.
--The bike and what is done to it must be decided in a single forum on message boards by members of the site. In other words, there must be a clear and easily locatable track history of what bike is selected and what is done to that bike. We will have an address to that form in the magazine so the Dirt Rider readers can look in on it themselves to see the history. You can use polls, votes, other threads to make decisions, but everything should be traced back into a single thread to make it easy to keep track of. It is up to the forum moderator to make the final decision on specifics, but it should be done in the forum (in public) for all members to see.
--You can use whatever parts and changes to any bike that your forum sees fit, there are really no hard and fast rules other than these:
Using the MIC published RPM numbers for sound testing and the SAE J-1287 test procedure,
MX bikes must be below 99db
Off-road bikes must have a Spark Arrestor and be below 96db
--Ideally the forum will first select the brand (very easy in some cases), then the model, the displacement, then decide how to make that bike the best it can be and show off the expertise of the members and what they believe is the best bike out there.
--Dirt Rider will not be shooting these bikes out or doing a comparison test with them. We will test them individually and show our readers what your forum thinks is the best bike out there.
So good luck and I'm really interested to see what shows up in April!
Jimmy Lewis
Editor
Dirt Rider Magazine