That seems like a LOT of bike!!!!

It was bad to the bone, I had the cylinder re-nikasil coated and bought a new OEM mahle piston. When I first put it together I could stand on the Kickstarter (238 lbs) and it would sloooooowly go down lol. Very good compression. It would carry the front wheel AND spin the rear tire in all conditions in all gears at any time 😂 . Not practical for woods riding but it was a LOT of fun in an open field. I should have kept it. It went to Italy by way of eBay about 5 years ago.

When I was a kid in high school 88/89 time frame I had several bikes125's and 250's as well as 250R and Banshees I fixed, bought and sold. I bought a basket case 1984 KX 500. Was excited to get it togther. I was a 2 stroke motorhead and learned porting from a local race team at Rossini's. Long story short I rode and raced all of them hard... Once the KX 500 was done just starting it put the fear of God in me. No bike ever scared me like that thing. That MF'er would pull the wheel in every gear and I was just gnarley for a 150lb high school kid. In the first 1 hour it scared me so bad I put it in my dads truck and begged the original owner to take it back for a loss.... Dont forget, I rebuilt it too! LOL! Years later I still rode other 500's but damn, 2 stroke 500's are just so ridiculous. Especially the mid 80's, they were just total uncontrollable power. Your biceps would hurt after just a few minutes.

Dadgum it now I’m smelling the bean oil in the air. Holy crap I don’t need to buy a dirt bike my wife will kill me. I love the old big bore impractical monster bikes. I never was a great rider but always loved having the horsepower under me to roost everybody.

I have an 84 250r 3wheeler and an 86 250r 4wheeler. The 3wheeler I built the engine. Light switch. Keep that baby near wot and you better be hanging over the handlebars because the wheel is coming off the ground in every gear. The 4wheeler is a 330 built by Norris Quinn. It's a beast of a little engine built for cross country and flat track racing. His grunt comes in much sooner but still hits hard on the top. It's just the nature of a 2 stroke engine. They do not make linear power like the new aged 4 strokes do. I like it old school. Braaaaaaap braaaaaaaap

Speaking of 500's, after i stopped racing competitively, i thought it would be fun to get a big bore bike and run the open class. So I bought a KTM 525 SX. Keep in mind it was a 4-stroke, but after an exhaust and some port work it put down more HP than a two stroke. That bike was so tame just to cruise around on but when you twisted it wide open it, the trees started to fly by pretty quick! Very fast bike but unfortunately, the suspension wasn't very good. It worked, but i could never get the no-link sock to dial in. I never put so many chains and sprockets on a bike either. It would eat three sets of sprockets in a single race season. Once i figured out that my lap times were consistently faster on my CR 250 two-stroke that KTM hit the classifieds!

I know what you mean Keith about being scared of the power. 😬 good times. You guys ever mess around with old 2 stroke street bikes. I had this a few years ago. 84 rz350, had the banshee motor with electric power valves. It was a lot of fun too.

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you take that sacrilege 4 stroke talk somewhere else!😉

Never rode that bike but had a Banshee that had heavy work done to it... They SCREAM!

I'll bet that bike was a nightmare for regular 600's and 750's.

It had port work, stroker kit and I think larger bores, I can’t remember I’d have to go to the rz350 forum and read what I did lol. They are fun old bikes but the 4 strokes are stronger on the top end. Newer 4 strokes are stronger everywhere. The rz’s were pretty strong up til like 80mph. Accelerating hard thru the gears they sound so sweet. Everybody looks to see what that is coming up the road! Check out this guys video. Theres a guy over in Cullman who has an rz500, they are super exotic 80’s 2 stroke race bikes. Really cool.