It's been wet but that hasn't slowed down the Sherco.
Long Term Test Bike | SHERCO 300 SEF FACTORY
I recently took the Sherco 300 SEF Factory to a sand track to cut some laps and even that was wet.
Every ride I go on at the moment it’s wet, so wet that I sometimes think I’d be better off on a jet ski! But, I think I’d prefer wet conditions than dry and dusty. Pushing and pulling bikes up sloppy hills is in a strange way, fun. I think it’s a sadistic dirtbike thing where we like pain and torture.
Wet sand can be one of two things: hard and tacky (like the hard sand on a white sand beach at low tide) or soft and sucky. The sand we had on this day was the latter.
The sand on the main loop was soft, soggy and and lacking traction. My front wheel would sink into the wet sand and plough through it while the rear wheel would get caught up in all the slop. It probably didn’t help that I was running Nitro Mousse tubes and soft gummy Dunlop AT81 tyres. This softer setup is great for hard pack conditions but it is also a little heavier than tubes and motocross tyres so it was hard going in the sloppy sand.
That was until I came to this ledge in the main photo. As you can see above, our Enduro Editor Geoff Braico went ahead of me to check the softness of the sand and the depth of the water. He confirmed it was soft and the water was at least shin deep. The ledge was just less than a metre high from the base of the pool of water. I also decided to get off and get a feel for the softness of the sand before attempting to get up the ledge.
In the dry this is an easy ledge, the double blip would be all you’d need. But when it’s wet like this, you run the risk of the rear sinking and failing to loft the front wheel, which would send you over the ‘bars, full scorpion mode. The sand sucked my Gaerne SG10s down about an inch so I assumed the Sherco was going to sink even lower. How wrong I was.
As opposed to the track we had just been riding, the AT81 and Nitro Mousse got way more traction than I expected. I popped the clutch and gave it more throttle than I normally would while yanking hard on the ‘bar to account for the sinking sand and boom! The front wheel was way too high and I was flying towards the ledge.
I urgently grabbed some clutch to slow it down and dropped my right leg out to cushion the impact my rear wheel was going to make on the ledge. The front wheel missed the double blip by about 60cm!
The Sherco 300 SEF Factory KYB shock handled it like a champ. It absorbed the full impact as you can see and tractored up the ledge without spitting me over the ‘bar. I did flame out once at the top but the bike felt like it had hardly hit a bump! Braico was watching on and seemed disappointed I was still on the bike.
SHERCO 300SEF FACTORY
RRP: $15,799
WARRANTY: Six months, parts and labour
DISTRIBUTOR: Sherco Australia
SO FAR
TOTAL HOURS: 18
MODS THIS MONTH: Blasting the sand out
MODS NEXT MONTH: One day I will get heavier springs