Honda CRF450X – the bike that everybody likes. We had people call our office and say: “what??, you don’t have any 450X? only XR’s?”. Well not long afterwards we had answered the call of our clients and purchased new Honda CRF 450 X for you. Well done we thought and showed up at long off road rides in Baja Mexico with our brand new bikes. Happy dirtbikers so we thought…

Not for long. On our first trips we had problems starting the new bikes, guys were kicking them like nuts…it looked like you have to charge them up with your leg so you can go a few miles. In our misery we have tried for years now to resolve this problem. At one time we wrote a nice letter to Honda of North America and explained them the situation. It took about a week for Honda powersport to give us a call to explain to me that our fleet of over 10 bikes were not problematic. His words: “These bikes are more sensitive than your Honda XR400 and you have to do a better job cleaning the air-filters” !! – I told the guy that I used to race Pro AMA Supercoss and know how to clean an airfilter and that a SX bike might be sensitive too.

So for 5 years now we been struggling with CRF450X valve problems, cylinder head issues, and have been trying to give these bikes a good number of valve play. We have been tinkering with decompression systems and valve shims…I don’t even want to mention how much money was waisted with this issue..

Today i got my revenge when Motorworld of El Cajon called me and told me about a Honda CRF450X recall!! A recall I asked? I got told yes… “they have a hard time starting”. My words – No S.! – It took them 5 years for this!? Well at least they have been selling plenty of valves and head gaskets and have made some honda repair shops a small fortune (or long lasting head-aches) from customers complaining about their dirt bikes not starting while their buddies ride off on them old XRs and KTM’s right from the first kick or crank with the electric starter.

Let me bring these bikes over there next week and see if they start as good as my XR’s or our new KTM 450 which we switched to after these nightmares. Make sure if you own a 2008 or newer CRFX to call your Honda dealer and see if you are eligible for this engine recall and free repairs they will do for this recall.

A closing message to all your Honda people. Keep building bikes like Honda’s founder, Soichiro Honda.
And when you build a bad product, DON’T WAIT 5 YEARS FOR A RECALL.

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