Ask The Editors: 2-Stroke Learning Curve

The same but different.

This is an interesting point because performance 2-strokes are getting rare enough now that a lot of ATV racers coming up through the ranks have probably never encountered them much less spent time behind the bars on one.

2-strokes make good power, oftentimes rivaling that of much larger 4-strokes but there is a caveat. They typically don’t do so with the same type of breadth. Or, another way of saying it, they make peak power in a much more narrow spread of the powerband when compared to the more linear acceleration of a 4-stroke.

So what does this mean in action? Well, depending on the build in question, you should probably be prepared to fan the clutch a lot more when entering each gear and keeping the engine RPMs high. Back in the day when 2-strokes ruled the world, there was a phrase you’d commonly hear called “falling off the pipe”. What this meant is letting the RPM dip too low for the given gear of choice and the engine simply falling flat on its face until you downshifted and got things cranking again.

We will say that since the glory days of 250R racing, many innovations have come along (like fuel injection) that have broadened out the 2-stroke powerband, allowing it to pull from much lower RPM and make power all the way to the very top. If the machine you are considering has been built with modern 2-stroke technology, we would suspect it wouldn’t be so peaky in its power delivery.

If, on the other hand, this is truly a race machine from the late 1980s or 90s, there absolutely will be some adjustments to your riding style needed to make the most of the power delivery when compared to a modern big-bore 4-stroke. You’ll be using the clutch a lot more to keep the engine revving and that left foot will be dancing on the shifter to keep the machine in the correct gear at all times. It can be challenging at first but once you get the hang of it, there really isn’t any sensation quite as satisfying as keeping a high performance 2-stroke singing.

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