Well, it's out of our hands now and the rest is up to the test riders at Dirt Rider.

We lucked out and had a few minutes of dry weather when we first arrived to snap off some shots before the rain came.

It was a fun day of riding, but I was a bit disappointed that I didn't get a chance to ride the bikes from the other web sites. All of the bikes looked great, but once the test riders got their hands on the bikes in the morning, they weren't giving them back so none of the web sites had a chance to check out each others ride.

We started off the day on a short ride so the magazine could get a bunch of pictures of the test riders in action on the bikes. The riders managed to find a natural terrain double jump that they must have hit 30+ times with each bike trying to get the perfect shot. I'm not sure what jumping a double has to do with testing a dual sport DRZ, but the bike handled it well. It sure is funny to see blinkers, license plate and all flying through the air. That was followed up by some log climbing action where the KTM bike introduced Jimmy Lewis to the dirt courtesy of a head over heals tumble over the bars.

After the test riders finished jumping doubles, and climbing over logs we asked them "So, now that you've jumped and log climbed with our dual sport bike how about we take it out on the road and see how it handles at 90mph like it was built for". The response was "We can't do that, these other bikes weren't built for that." I'll admit it was kind of satisfying to see the DRZ jumping, and log climbing (something it was never intended to do) and handling it just fine, but the test riders didn't dare try to put the other bikes through the dual sport portion of the test. It appears TT has managed to pull it off and build a bike that can truly be a jack of all trades.

I did get to take a nice loop on the DRZ, and I have to say it performed flawlessly.

While out riding the DRZ Bryan and myself manged to get a little lost and a 20 minute ride turned into an hour but we did find our way back eventually. But by the time we got back the rest of the group had taken off on a ride led by Jimmy Lewis of Dirt Rider Magazine. At first I was a bit disappointed we missed out on that ride, but it turned out to be a good thing we missed the group ride.

After being gone for several hours, one of the guys that was on the group ride comes back to camp alone. It turns out Jimmy led the group way up into the mountains into 1 1/2 feet of snow. Several of the bikes ran out of gas up there, most of the other bikes were too low on gas to make it back and the test rider burned out the clutch on the CRF's only project bike. So with a burnt clutch, and several bikes running on empty most of the group was stuck up on the mountain with less than an hour of daylight left.

The guys from service honda had a spare clutch pack for the CR500AF but no one knew if it would fit the CRF450. At this point in the day I was all loaded up and just about to head home when I learned about the burnt clutch. So I had to unload my personal bike (a CRF450) and open up the clutch so we could see if the spare clutch pack for the 500 would fit the 450's. It turns out it did fit so the guys took the new clutch pack and headed back up the mountain to try and get the stuck bikes back down before nightfall.

I'm not really sure what happened after that, since I left to start my 6 hour drive back to Las Vegas.

Predator said:

ok,if you say so.

This bike just feels well put together. Almost hard to describe. Sort of like a german car compared to a chevy. Everything felt tight, controlled and positive.

The suspension is sooo plush, almost making it feel like it would be too soft to push, but when ridden hard, it's very progressive and never harsh. Nice, nice work Mr. Curea!

The motor's power delivery was a bit harder to get used to, since my CRF450R power delivery is like an on/off switch, so I tend to ride a gear higher (I'm a lugger) and the bike will overrev with a flick of my wrist. The rotating mass of the stroker motor means that the initial power delivery is a bit slower to come on (quiet core in), but when it does, it's a beast and will rev out far past what the vast majority of riders will even need. I'm convinced the DRZ would hang with or pull my CRF450R from the mid range on up. Rev the DRZ, riding it a gear lower and it will be right in the meat of the powerband. You've built a beast Eddie & Ron!

The DRZ475TT really is a bike that you could play at the track with, ride just about anything off-road and still dual-sportable. I'll be riding the bike in SM trim in a few weeks, so I'll report back how she runs on the pavement.

The only bike that would be better would be several bikes in your garage, each built for a very specific purpose.

Thanks to all that contributed to making this happen. Regardless of what DR says, good or bad, I'm proud of the bike.

They ARE going to test the bike on SM wheels at the track. They've only had the bike for one day.

Traily riding them? Sort of. However, it was a bit more like finding MX obstacles to play on, on the trail and enduro/trials type of obstacles.

But, it was only the initial day of testing, as they'll have the bikes for a few more weeks and the terms are to test the bike for their intended purpose.

So, the DRZ475TT DID the doubles just fine and was taken over a good sized log, proving it's more flexible that we even intended.