Mini Moto Mayhem
MINI MOTO Mayhem
RACE WATCH
The tiny bike revival starts small, gets big
MARK HOYER
HAVE YOU RECENTLY LOOKED OUT YOUR BACK WINDOW, ONLY TO see what looks like your neighbor’s helmeted head moving quickly around above fenceline as though he were running behind his lawnmower? Or perhaps you went to your local motocross track, only to see adults, full-grown adults, roosting around on tiny little bikes that are plainly too small for them, leading you to think that perhaps the Shriners had gone Gen X. Or is that Gen Y? Actually, it’s Gen Z!
That’s Z50, or its much more popular descendant, the XR50, what Honda’s miniest mini became in 2000. That little bike has been the ignition and the fuel for a crazed boom in adult mini-cross racing. While grownups have almost always raced around on minibikes for fun, the latest wave has taken minis to a whole new level. The sport’s roots are in small backyard events, but it’s now expanded to adult-mini-specific tracks with actual purse money. Current and retired Pros such as Jeremy McGrath, David Pingree, Travis Pastrana and Jeff Emig all do it for fun.
And it’s not just on Honda 50s, either, as “midsize” divisions for bikes such as Kawasaki’s KLX110 and Yamaha’s TTR90 and Honda’s XR70 have sprung up, as well. Along with all this, specialist companies are now making piles of super-trick parts.
“For the XR50, we make everything except the gas tank and the engine cases,” says Craig Mason of Fast 50s. “And we’re looking at making those right now.”
Fast 50s (www.fast50s.com) was one of the first companies to focus specifically on the little XR. But you have to wonder what sparked the interest for Mason-and everybody else-in the first place.
“Man, you play with these things a little bit and suddenly it’s the funnest thing you’ve ever done,” Mason exclaims. “I made a few things for my buddies, then all of a sudden, bam! Next thing I know, I’m trademarking Fast 50s, buying product-liability insurance. And this year, we’re probably 10 times bigger than we were last year. But the whole time it’s just been based on fun, which makes it pretty cool.”
BBR (www.bbrmotorsports.com) has been in the mini(and full-size) bike business for some time, with supertrick, twin-spar aluminum frames for bikes-well, engines-such as the XR100 and TT-R125. XR50 parts have now taken over.
“We’ve been doing 50s about two years and it’s huge,” says Duane Brown, one of the Bs in BBR. “We’re selling 50cc parts 5:1 over the big-bike stuff-selling them as fast as we can make them. It’s nuts!”
Brown says they haven’t made a CRFlike twin-spar frame for the 50 because most of the rules mandate stock frame dimensions and it can’t have a cradle. But he added that he’s sure they’ll produce one at some point. There’s just too much interest not to.
Like these guys who’ve turned a fun sideline into big business, everybody we talked to involved in the sport is mad for it. How mad? Mad enough to make tracks in their suburban backyards, mad enough to use them in freestyle jump contests or ride them in half-pipes usually reserved for BMX bikes or skateboards, and mad enough to spend big, big money on these little, little bikes.
Start with one of the ultra-trick aluminum or chromoly frames for about $1500. Add a 4or 6-inch travel fork (with Ti-nitride coating, of course) for around $700. Or for a little bit more than the cost of the whole bike, you can outfit your 50 with a five-speed transmission and manual clutch, quite the upgrade from the stock three-speed auto. No matter what you do, stick with the stock-size 10-inch wheels (billet or alloy, if you like), because that’s in the rules. If you go full-ride with any one of several companies-BBR, Fast 50s, Sano Racing, Five0, Two Brothers Racing-they’ll set you up with nearly a complete bike using a custom/frame swingarm with 4-6 inches of travel front and rear, and build you a 70-100cc motor. On this, you can spend as much as $6500. If you want the ultratrick 124cc engine kit with four-valve, dohc cylinder head and five-speed tranny, that alone could set you back more than $5000!
But that’s not entirely the point, as anybody who’s riding and racing these things will tell you. Sure, there’s the parts-fetish folks who have to build the trickest, most bitchin’-looking bike, but the guys who are really racing them are simply looking for the happy numbers, the ultimate combination of lightness, suspension travel and power.
The sweet balance, in other words, for a sport that is based on the imbalance of big people on little bikes.
“Yeah, you can spend $6K,” says Johnson. “But you can also spend $1250 out the door for an XR, spend about $200 more on a (big) handlebar kit-you’re on! After that, you can add parts like a shock or something, or bling it out with cool gas caps or some rims. You can spend $20,000 on a big bike, too, but not everyone does.”
Sano (www.sanoracing.com), along with several of the other specialists, now both manufacture and import pieces for most minis. Much of the import stuff for the XR comes from Takegawa in Japan. They are the Masters of the Monkey bike, otherwise known as the Z50, most parts for which fit the XR. They have the coolest catalog and website (www.takegawa.co.jp), and not just for the fun with English: “Special Parts Takegawa Super Head: The highest level of the world.” For while that is some sweet haiku to the minilover, it’s the photos of all the different parts that will make you drool. Take the Super Head. How super? Big valves (relatively speaking, of course), cool rockers, better materials and a port job. But there’s also the bored cylinders, lightweight valves, all kinds of cams, big pistons and stroker cranks. Of course, the ultimate item in the catalog has to be the aforementioned dohc fourvalve setup. It’s so beautiful and delicate-looking, you just want to own it as a sort of piece of watchmaker’s art.
Two Brothers Racing (www.twobws.com), which offers these sick kits stateside, says it has sold exactly zero of them because, aside from being expensive, it isn’t really the most practical thing to ride. With just 18 horsepower on tap, you might think, “What’s the problem?” But try to envision something with 10-inch wheels and 6 inches
of travel that weighs less than 100 pounds, doing 70-plus mph, in the dirt! Most stick with engines between 70 and lOOcc and not much more than 10 bhp, still well up from the 3 ponies a stocker produces, and still a 40-50-mph mini-missile.
“If it has too much power, it’s just unmanageable,” Mason says. “And if you make it too tall, it handles like a pig on stilts.”
But the glow of all these trick parts and superstars has made 50s cool, and not just for adults.
“In 1999, before the whole minibike thing was big, the average 11or 12-year-old would have told his dad, T don’t want a 50,1 want an 80.’ Now the kid wants a 50,” says Sano’s Johnson.
And so does Dad, he says: “We get fathers all the time who told their wives they were getting a bike for Junior, but it’s really for them!”
This has meant an incredible spike in XR sales for Honda. Get this: The difference between Z50 and XR50 sales is huge-up 147 percent between 1998, the last full year of the Z, and 2000, the first full year for the XR50. And ’02 is set to be much bigger, almost double the ’00 figure-possibly more than 20,000 units sold. The whole youth market is up, but little XRs are way up!
Why is it so popular? Fun, fun, fun. Also, everyone says they’re the Great Equalizer. Even former AMA Supercross champ Emig-who gets at least some credit for the current mini-rebirth because it was his backyard Z50 races that showed up in the original Crusty Demons of Dirt video-says he’s stoked that he can ride with any of his friends, no matter their skill level.
“We did it because it was a good way to be able to ride around with your buddies who could be Novices and still be competitive with Pros,” Emig says of those old-time Z50 stocker races. “You could bang around and mix it up pretty heavy and be safe, too. But now it’s getting crazy!”
It may be getting crazy, but it hasn’t stopped him from riding. Still, you have to wonder what the attraction of a 50-even a totally trick, aluminumframed 50—is for a former SX champ.
“It’s so great because the techniques, tricks and strategies are the same as when I when I was racing stadiums,” Emig says. “And when I’m riding, I have the same enthusiasm, but it’s not as serious. The coolest thing is now I just show up and somebody gives me a bike!”
Factory riders...
And while the racing scene is definitely on a big rise just for the fun of it, the fact that open space and riding areas are at a premium surely has played a part in the boom as well. For many, the days when you used to be able to ride down your street to go roost around in the local hills are over. Urbanization has put a stop to that. Except that with a minibike, you can literally ride in your own backyard and have a good time. Heck, even CW has its own mini-dirt-track!
But big races and adult-mini-specific tracks are popping up everywhere, from California to Texas to New York to Ohio. As you would expect, the scene is particularly thriving in Southern California.
“You know, our first race we had about 15-20 people-it was like a little party,” says San Diego-based Johnson, who like most parts-makers promotes his own races to help build enthusiasm and sell products. “Next race, we made a flyer, had a keg and invited some industry people. That one had about 40 people. After that, we advertised it again, and everybody heard Jeremy McGrath was coming. He came out and Motoworld TV was involved. It was huge. We had about 800 people in this backyard, and it’s like less than an acre! From then on, The Buzz was going on. Now, almost every race we have, at least one big name shows up: David Pingree, McGrath, Chris Gosselar...”
Now, entries at many of the Southern California races easily top 150 riders, and spectators pack the venues.
Late in the year, one of the big events, the 50 Nuts National in Lake Elsinore, California, had 250 entries, with a halfpipe and freestyle jump contest. And for March, Johnson has in the works a celebrity minibike race at the same track.
“We’ll have industry tag-team classes, and like a little dealer show for all the guys who make 50 parts,” he says. “I made a bike for John Maurer of Social Distortion, and we’re hoping to get some big bands out there. We made bikes for Carey Hart and Pink, and we’ll have like an X-Games freestyle course set up so BMX guys can roll in on their bikes, and 50 guys will be able to use it, too. You’re almost guaranteed to see a backflip from the 50 guys.”
The latter point is one of the more interesting crossovers. The mini-specific tracks have high-banked turns-like BMX tracks do to keep up momentum-and many guys who ride the minis (successfully, anyway) do so with a very BMX kind of style.
“Actually, BMXers tend to be a little better on 50s than motocrossers,” Johnson says. “The way to go fast is to keep the bike super-low on jumps, trying to keep it on the ground. You’re always pushing the bike down. By the time you get off, you feel like you’ve done 1000 squats.”
Where it goes from here is anybody’s guess. But Fast 50s has already sponsored races run in conjunction with the National Arenacross series, and proponents are working to try to get big-people/little-bike races into AMA Supercross and outdoor motocross venues.
Crazy stuff. But no crazier than an Over-35 class for 50s.
