After some delay, I finally wrangled a ride on the new Beta. It is a good news/bad news scenario. The bad; we could not get a bike from Beta. Don’t know why, we just didn’t get the invite. I am sure it is a story of high demand, low supply, blah blah blah.
The good; we got an invite from a first time Beta owner in Hawaii to come out and ride! Thanks to Richard Garcia for the hook up. More good: we also got to compare a KTM 250 Freeride, 200xcw and a sweet 300xcw ISDE model in our testing. I had also raced a 200xcw on the same course the day before. Thanks to Sam Bird of Hawaii Rides, Chef John and Mark Jefferies for those bikes. FYI, those are some of the guys you may see in some of my more extreme Baja rides. But there is more! We got to ride on Oahu Hawaii on some super cool single track, just the kind of thing for these quasi extreme bikes.
As we were spending our test time on someone else’s brand new baby, this is not going to be an all out “ride it like you rented it” test. We were gentle, but is was still enough to get the basics and more important, some significant comparisons with the other bikes.
Because this is really just a first ride impression, not a full review, I am going to give you a quick and dirty ride impression. It is enough to tell you at least half of everything you need to know about the X trainer, the rest can only come with extended ride time.
Right Down The Middle
What Else?
Freeride or X Trainer?
X Trainer Versus 300rr or 300xcw
Just about everyone I have encountered wants to debate this question and I am not sure there is a perfect answer. Add flywheel, Rekluse and old KTM hockey stick silencer to any 300 and you might build something pretty close. I wonder if we can get Don Emler to build some of these crazy looking pipes? Or, you can just plop down $7,299 for 2016 model Beta and have it ready to roll.
The bottom line for the X Trainer- super easy to ride, very natural feeling and an amazing motor for someone who is only looking for smooth power delivery. Be cautioned, this is not intended to be an out of the box extreme race bike. I say that because I have encountered a number of riders who assumed as much. As for our X Trainer owner Richard, he was looking pretty happy and confident on his new ride.
May 23, 2020
May 5, 2020
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