This little thing ran FANTASTIC! I was surprised with how torquey the little 432cc engine was. I had spent a little bit of time on it, out in the fields behind my house and felt that it really needed to be revved to work, which may still be the case for wide-open fields, but the point is when I was actually on and off the gas, in tight woods it was working VERY well! I???m a rev-happy rider anyhow, so this engine suits me perfectly.
My Cannondale has a Houser front-end and Blaze Ohlins with Quadshop re-valves. The suspension was fantastic, the engine was fantastic, and overall the whole race went great! ??? for me??? My friend???s KTM had some issues as he broke the rear brake line somehow, and thus, lost his rear brakes on the first lap. He then took out my YFZ, which had an electrical issue when he accidentally bumped the light-switch. For those who don???t know, the 06+ YFZs will not charge or rev properly with the lights removed if you bump the switch to on. He didn???t know that, so he stalled it out a bunch of times and had a heck of a time getting it running again. I was watching him go by at one point, and he yelled at me that it was running like crap, so I stopped him, flipped the switch to off, and away he went. However, between those two issues, the damage was done and we were too far down on time to fix it. So out of the 8 teams in B, we finished 4th. Last year, there were also 8 teams in B??? and we finished 4th. Haha!
Either way, the bottom line is, the Cannondale performed absolutely flawlessly all day and I was ecstatic! For those who don???t know me, I run the GNCC series in the Junior B 22+ class and finished 8th this year after a LOT of bad luck with my KTM. I have a lot of sponsors who I???m not sure would be too happy with me campaigning on the Cannondale full time at the national level, but I???m definitely going to look at running locals on it next year, and maybe a National or two as well, but we???ll see???
Anyway, I???ll post some pics as they pop up from the event because I saw a few guys out there taking pictures, but for now, below is a pic of my Dale anyway.
Special thanks to Timbomoose for getting this thing back together and running so well!
-Walt # 728
