Everyone loves bling bits right? If you haven’t admired the sexiness of anodized triple clamps, Kashima Coated a kit suspension, magnesium hubs or just something as simple as a seat cover, are you even a real fan? You certainly can’t consider yourself a vet rider (which I now am). Although these parts may look sweet, occasionally they can have a real sour effect on your bike and its handling, and it can leave you in a real pickle when it comes time to build your dream bike. It’s true that I went fairly ‘all out’ on this 350 build, but I am confident that nothing that was added to this bike had a net negative effect on the ride; in fact they all had their place when it came to the overall performance. Look good, feel good – right!

As luck would have it, right around the time we were getting into this build, the team at MXTech were just about to release their all new 49mm Kit Fork featuring their epic Black Jack inserts. These things were as trick as it gets and if you listen to the podcast at all you will know that I can be rather picky when it comes to suspension. These forks, paired with the fantastic National Shock from MXTech make up a massive piece of the puzzle for this build. I have often spoken about how different I wish the stock suspension was and for me, this suspension combination is really the dream on this bike.

That is also the cool thing about doing a build on a bike that you have spent a lot of time on in stock form. Going into this I knew exactly what I wanted to change and the parts that I needed to make it happen. I have never liked the feeling of the air fork as I feel that it doesn’t offer the front end traction and plushness initially that I want out of a bike. Quite honestly I am not sure who you have to be to like the feeling that they give on the types of tracks we ride in QLD. 

As well as a massive suspension upgrade we have teamed up with Jed Parsons from JPM here on the Gold Coast to give this motor a really solid spec internally, and then bring it to life with his custom mapped Vortex ECU. This is the first time that I have ever had an ECU that was mapped specifically to my bike and I don’t know that I ever want to own a bike that hasn’t been tuned like this. There is so much more connectivity and predictability and it really brought this 350 to life.

Add to this a bunch of parts from the guys at MXSstore, P3 carbon, Dubya wheels from the US, Luxon clamps (plus more) and you have yourself an extremely capable 350. And when it is all said and done, I don’t just want you to take my word for it… I have invited Gypsy Tales Hall of Fame’r Mike Sleeter to put this steed through its paces.

Parts and nerd talk aside, the real question is did these parts improve this 350 Dream Build?

Originally Mike assumed the bike would be relatively out of balance…. Which it was. I was instantly happy with the MXTech National shock but I knew that we could improve the fork but I wanted to wait until Mike jumped on it to get his thoughts. It turns out that the rebound setting was way out which was giving the bike the unbalanced, and deep-in-the-stroke, feeling; and once we went back to more of a stock setting the front end was transformed into more of what you would expect from one of the best forks on the market.

Getting the balance right allowed us to go tighter on the fork compression without sacrificing comfort which helped the bike on the bigger hits and while I was happy with this setting, the real knowledge of Sleeter came into play as he added some high speed compression to the shock to add more leverage on the fork which again gave us more front end feel. Genius.

As far as the moto goes, well, you can watch the video for Sleet-Dawgs initial reaction. I can’t speak highly enough of Jed Parsons’ knowledge and attention to detail and I think he is one of Australia’s premier dirt bike builders/mechanics.

I think you might get a solid idea of if we made this bike better or not if you have read this far into the post, but no more spoilers. Check out this video that Ronz and Alex have put together and see for yourself.

We also have the full build video coming but we are still grafting away at that one. A massive thanks to all of the brands that pitched in for help on the parts for this build and a huge thanks to our title sponsor of this project Maxima Racing Oils. They have just changed hands here in Australia and are now being distributed by one of my great mates Johnny McLean and his team at Lusty. Not only do they make amazing oils, but their whole line of fluids, cleaners and sprays are top tier.

Lets face it, we all should be changing our oils more than we do, so if you enjoyed this video, show Maxima some love the next time you go to change your oil, do a filter or lube your chain.

Thanks so much for reading and watching! We love making this type of content for you guys.

Jase