What bike would suit me best?

[Trappedinchitown]

I am not new to bikes, ATVs, motorcycles, or 800 horsepower manual trans cars , but I can't seem to make heads or tails out of what bike would be best for me so here goes:

1) your physical size 5'7-5.8ish. 165lbs
2) How physical / aggressive are you? Very, very aggressive. Love shifting. Want violent acceleration.
3) what do you plan to ride- MX/SX tracks, woods, fields with friends or? Mostly fields and trails with friends but love the idea of doing MX
4) Do you have any riding experience? Yes, minimal on dirt bikes, but tons on fast motorcycles, cars, and modified banshee
5) Do you think you will race? Not likely
6) Are you mechanically inclined and will you be doing your own bike work? Very mechanically inclined.
7) Do YOU have a preference to a brand/ motor choice (2 or 4 stroke)? I do love the violent acceleration of the 2 stroke but if there's a four stroke that can scratch that itch, I'm all about it.
8) Do you have a dealer close by your home that you might use and what brand(s) does he carry? Yes I'm in the Chicagoland area. Mostly Yamaha.
9) How much ($) do you plan to spend on a bike? I'd like to keep costs minimal and buy used because I won't have a ton of time to ride.
10) Your age? 40
11) Do you live in California? No.

 

[truespode]

If you want violent acceleration the best is a CR500... Honda doesn't make them anymore but you can still find a few used ones. They are costly b/c they are very popular. If money is no object you can get a Built500 conversion which is basically a modern chassis with a CR500 engine put in. AJ Wagoner builds them and does great work. His builds were used by Robbie Madison, Mythbusters and an RMZilla version (RMZ chassis with CR500 engine) by Travis Pastrana.

Keeping costs low and reliability are going to be your sticking points.
For me... if I was mechanically inclined (I can do it but not inclined to), I would buy an old 2000-2005 era YZ, KZ or CR 250 (I prefer Yamaha YZ) and restore it. You can get the engines bored over to 280-300cc depending on the model (Eric Gorr does a great job with those).

Restoring your own would be the most cost effective. You should be able to rebuild and valve the suspension on those yourself with Race-Tech stuff or send it off to some place like MX-Tech to have them do it.
If money was no object I'd pay someone to fully restore a 2006 WR450F and make it street legal with extra tires, Rekluse clutch and lots of bling :)