After two days of sand-surfing and 98 hours on the clock, Grabbo has finally agreed to put a piston in the GASGAS EC 250F long term test bike.
This month, my time with the GASGAS EC 250F long term test bike has been spent in similar fashion to the last few, plenty of hours being logged and a minimum of maintenance being done.
My month started not far from Mildura in the red sand for some Hattah coaching. I had the GASGAS EC 250F to coach on because my usual KTM 500 EXC-F coaching bike was in Alice Springs for Finke. To be honest I was not exactly looking forward to riding the GASGAS EC 250F long term test bike on a desert track as previous experiences have not been enjoyable. Riding bikes in the desert without at least a steering damper and Stegpegz is no fun. My EC 250F has neither but was a way better option than not riding at all!
I was only really using the EC 250F to ride between training sections. It was not until I had to lead my group the whole way around the track, so they knew where it went, that I got a chance to push it in desert conditions. The GASGAS EC 250F long term test bike proved very capable and quite enjoyable to ride in the sandy whooped-out conditions. Handling-wise I was ripping all the corners as comfortable as ever and putting it onto lines that bigger capacity bikes normally push straight past.
The 250cc four-stroke engine does need me to keep the revs up quite high in the rev range and providing I did, it would keep charging forward not much slower than a 450cc does. This is pretty impressive considering the engine has over 90 hours on it and the only engine maintenance I have ever performed on it is filling it up with fresh Motorex engine oil and fresh air filters.
After coaching for the weekend, I loaded up the GASGAS and continued my journey to Alice Springs for Finke. Once I was in Alice Springs, the GASGAS did not fire a shot until the day after Finke was over, when I ventured out with a local crew to sort some potential tracks for our VIP Experience Trail GASGAS ride out of Alice for 2024. Billy from our crew was the rider in charge of steering my EC 250F while we scoped out tracks. As the rest of us were on 450s and 500s I was not expecting to see Billy during any of the open, sandy, power-sapping sections. But Billy soon showed us that his 50kg body weight and a habit of not backing off, meant he was never more than a few meters from my rear wheel.
At first, I was a little concerned for the engine on my EC 250F as it is getting close to the 100-hour mark without any internal maintenance (I would normally put a fresh piston in this capacity bike at 70 hours). But seeing as how we had a support vehicle, I just let him pin it. After two days of bouncing off the rev limiter and sitting on 130km/h during the open sections, I am happy my EC 250F survived Billy’s torture.
I am pretty sure this little thumper has gone over and above my standards for reliability, so the plan is to show it some love and give it a fresh piston for what will be potentially my last month with this ripper of a bike.
Ben Grabham