Dirt Bike Mag. - L.A.SLEEVE KLX450 "Fire in the Hole".
by L.A.SLEEVE
Updated: February 13, 2011
"Fire in the Hole: Giving the Kawasaki KLX450R an alter ego" - Dirt Bike Magazine Oct. 2007
"L.A. Sleeve worked over our KLX450 test bike with the following instructions: make it fast, keep it a 450. What came out is a trail bike that can be raced."
"...the Kawasaki is a new bike, so we had to either use existing KX450 parts or help develop new stuff. The guys at L.A. Sleeve are suckers for doing things the hard way, so they were all over the latter. Our KLX test bike dis- appeared into their back room for over a month while they experimented with different ideas..."
"...A Wossner piston was used keeping the displacement stock... That combined with a Dr D. slip-on pipe to completely transform the motor into a new animal..."
"...The KLX still ran super smooth, still was unstoppable off the bottom, and it still was easy to ride. But it had teeth. Where the stocker just wasn&squot;t fast enough to hang with an uncorked motocross bike, the L.A. Sleeve machine was a rocket. It never seemed out gunned, no matter what bike you put beside it..."
Click on the link above to read the Dirt Bike article (pdf).
"L.A. Sleeve worked over our KLX450 test bike with the following instructions: make it fast, keep it a 450. What came out is a trail bike that can be raced."
"...the Kawasaki is a new bike, so we had to either use existing KX450 parts or help develop new stuff. The guys at L.A. Sleeve are suckers for doing things the hard way, so they were all over the latter. Our KLX test bike dis- appeared into their back room for over a month while they experimented with different ideas..."
"...A Wossner piston was used keeping the displacement stock... That combined with a Dr D. slip-on pipe to completely transform the motor into a new animal..."
"...The KLX still ran super smooth, still was unstoppable off the bottom, and it still was easy to ride. But it had teeth. Where the stocker just wasn&squot;t fast enough to hang with an uncorked motocross bike, the L.A. Sleeve machine was a rocket. It never seemed out gunned, no matter what bike you put beside it..."
Click on the link above to read the Dirt Bike article (pdf).
