Long Term Test Bike | GASGAS EC 350F
With summer conditions finally arriving and majority of my coaching work being held on sand dunes or Junior MX tracks, my ADB GasGas EC350F has not logged a huge amount of ride time. Generally I would not be happy with minimal ride time on the EC350F, instead ithas given me the perfect opportunity to go right over the 350 and give it some love before things get busy with coaching , racing and pre running tracks for the VIP Experience rides that I have partnered up with ADB and GasGas for.
Not since the EC350F was new thirty five hours ago has it seen new rubber. Once the standard tyres wore out they were replaced with whatever second hand, half bald knobby I could find laying around the shed. Seeing as we will be running Maxxis tyres on all of the VIP Experience GasGas customer bikes it made sense to test a few of the Maxxis off-road tyres and make sure I was happy with them before sticking anyone else on them . After checking out the Maxxis range I decided to start with a Maxxis New Enduro 90/90-21 front and Maxxis Maxxcross IT 110/100-18 rear.
After fitting the fresh new Maxxis tyres I decided it was time to pull on the rubber gloves and get dirty. So next I removed the swing-arm and rear shock linkage of the EC 350F to give it a good clean and lube up all the bearings. Normally I would do it before I even ride a new bike but seeing the last few months have been quite busy I just haven’t found the time until now.
As you can see in the picture, even after a few months of horrible muddy conditions the Gassers seals have done a great job at keeping the mud and water out, but you can also see there is not a huge amount of grease in these out of the factory. I have found this to be the case with all brands of motorcycles straight off the production line and that’s why I like to pull them apart and take a bit of time to grease them up properly. Once I had greased up all of the shock linkage and swing arm bearings and re-assembled the rear end it was time to give similar attention to the steering head bearings.
Just like the rear linkage you can see, the steering head bearings of the EC 350F were all clean and dry but lacked the amount of grease I like to see on them. For grease I use Motorex long term grease. I have been using it for over twelve years without one bearing failure so I keep using it. Once all the front end was assembled back into place I gave all the nuts and bolts a once over, as I have never really put a spanner on the EC350F to check for loose bolts before, I was actually expecting to find a few. Surprisingly out of all the nuts and bolts, I only found one loose bolt on the brake pedal, pretty impressive really.
GasGas EC350F
RRP: $14,490
WARRANTY: One month (31 days)
DISTRIBUTOR: GasGas Australia
SO FAR
TOTAL HOURS: 32
HOURS THIS MONTH: 2 hours
MODS THIS MONTH: None
MODS NEXT MONTH:
Fit a map switch to gain access to different power mapping and TC mode
