Return of the Killer Bee...My P650 is finally Repaired and held up well in XC race!

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Dec 5, 2005 | 04:35 PM

MikeyBoyesq

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Pro Rider

Joined: Jun 2003

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From: Texas

Return of the Killer Bee...My P650 is finally Repaired and held up well in XC race!

FINALLY...
Sat night at 5pm, I finally picked up my lil 02 P650 (called the "Killer Bee") from the shop where it has been for the past month getting the front diff rebuilt and the recall knucles/lower a-arms installed. Spent $1K for the front diff rebuild...The cause of the problem was blamed by a bolt that worked itself loose inside the front diff and mashed up some pinion gears and tore up the middle diff case too.

I got my quad home at 7pm (the shop was out of town). Was forced to go to my wife's Christmas party with her co-workers and finally got home at 11pm Sat night. I quickly began prepping the Killer Bee for a race on Sunday afternoon...however, this took a little longer than I expected b/c I finally got it ready and loaded into my truck at 4am Sunday morning. I then got 4 hours of sleep and hit the road towards Jacksonville for my race. While I was a little concerned that the freshly rebuilt front diff and new steering knuckles/a-arms would work properly, I'm VERY happy to report that I raced my quad on Sunday afternoon and everything held up very well! The following is a review of my race.

TRACK CONDITIONS:
This race is held at my favorite course at Mud Creek Offroad Park in Jacksonville, TX. For those of you who attended the 2005 Mud Nats in TX, this is the SAME place where that was held. The course was laid out on 7 miles of mostly open pasture areas and small rolling hills with occasional woods sections and a few narrow bridge crossings over small creeks. In a nutshell, it was an EXTREMELY rough course with lots of dust to keep the racers blind at all times. However, the biggest obstacle by far was the many, many WHOOPS that were KILLER on your arms and body! I got tossed around like a rag doll for 76 minutes and boy am I ever SORE today!

THE COMPETITION:
This was the LAST RACE of our local XC season (East vs West race), and I'm happy to see a big turn-out for this race with folks from all over Texas. In fact, there were 10 Utes in the Ute Class. Half of these were were Kawasaki's (As I recall, there were 2 P700s, 1 BF750, 1 BF650 and the Killer Bee). The others included 1 Rincon (driven by the points leader in my Ute class and he's also a good friend of mine), 1 AC 650, I Kodiak 450, 1 Yam. Wolverine 350 and 1 Honda Rancher.

At the start, I took 4th in the holeshot, but then I worked my way up to 3rd place right behind the Rincon by the end of the 1st lap. About 1/2 way into lap 2, I tried to pass the Rincon...I got even beside him and then we hit more whoops and he took the lead again. A few minutes later, I pulled along side him in an open pasture with little or no whoops and I nailed the gas...it was SWEET b/c my quad just walked away from him. That put me in 2nd place at that moment. The dust was pretty bad b/c I had literally ate the Rincon's dust for 1.5 laps...had MUD caked in my mouth, eyes, etc. On lap 3, I caught up with the Ute class leader (a guy from the West division riding on a stock Prairie 700 that had some heavy 589 tires), but then the P700 seemed to pull away from me and I eventually ended up in 2nd place out of 10 utility quads today.

Was a close race...The winner on the P700 only beat me by 1 minute and I think I beat the Rincon by only a minute or two.

MY QUAD HELD UP WELL:
The one and only problem I had with my quad was the tiny rubber (oval) button on the speedo that resets the clock fell out during my race. I've never had this happen before and not sure where I can find a replacement. I definitely need to put something in the hole to keep mud, dust and water from getting inside the speedo...that would be a costly part to replace!

MY OLD BODY DIDN'T HOLD UP AS GOOD:
My arms tired quickly from gripping the handlebars so tight and they felt like Jello by the end of the race...it was all I could do to just hang on! The whoops were so bad, I got arm pump in the middle of the 1st lap! This was a big deal to me b/c I can't remember the last time I had arm pump...its been over a year for sure! On lap 2 or lap 3, my right hand and thumb went totally numb and I could no longer move my thumb back and forth to push the throttle past 1/2 way...so I had to move my entire right arm forward to pres the gas over 1/2 way...how freaky is that??? After a few minutes, the numbness wore off and I could use my thumb again.

That's my report...hope everyone enjoyed reading it. BTW, I think I ended up 3rd in my local series (east division) with the points I earned in Sunday's race. I could have done better, but missed most of the races this year thanx to major problems (I broke 2 front diffs this year!!!). Hopefully next year will be a better year for me and my quad!

Happy trails...[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img]