AGAINST THE GENERAL

It started as a dare I did not think through. Brian Deegan was across from me on the podcast, and somewhere in the middle of it I challenged him to a two-stroke build-off. He said yes. It was only about a week later, when the room had cleared out and I thought about what I had actually agreed to, that it hit me. I had just picked a fight with the General.

This is a man who has built some of the most iconic two-strokes of all time. I am a pretty terrible mechanic. Manage your expectations accordingly.

I had just picked a fight with the General.

The one thing I had going for me was that I knew exactly what he was going to do. If Deegan stays on brand, Deegan goes black. Full Metal Mulisha. Murdered out, menacing, the whole thing looking like it wants to fight you. So the plan wrote itself. Do the opposite.

Yamaha handed me the answer. The 50th Anniversary YZ250, purple and white, drawn straight out of the YZs of the nineties. It was my first brand-new 250 two-stroke, and there was no chance I was tearing it down without spinning a few laps first. The shakedown was ten minutes of two-stroke fumes and adrenaline, with the sound doing most of the work. Then I rolled it into the garage of my Airbnb, looked at it for a while, and started taking it apart.

Stripping a perfect motorcycle down to a bare frame feels like vandalism. Motor out and bagged. Every piece of electrical off. Before long, this brand-new YZ was a pile of parts on a concrete floor, with me standing over it fairly sure I had bitten off more than I could chew.

Stripping a perfect motorcycle down to a bare frame feels like vandalism.

THE FINISH

Everything went out to be done properly. The motor came back vapour blasted and looking better than new. The frame went into the sand blaster, then the spray booth, then into an oven roughly the size of a small car because Cerakote needs serious heat to bond to the surface. That was the point where it stopped feeling like a collection of parts and started becoming the bike I had pictured in my head.

The swingarm and subframe stayed stock. That was deliberate. When everything else has been touched, you need a couple of pieces left honest so the eye has somewhere to land.

THE PARTS

Once the direction was set, the fun part started: opening MotoSport.com and ordering everything I thought the bike needed, plus plenty it probably didn’t. We went absolutely nuts there, then went nuts again in the Yamaha GYTR catalogue.

MX-Tech suspension front and rear, DLC coated, titanium fittings, CNC everything. Adjustable offset triple clamps run at 23mm. Moto Tassinari VForce reeds. A Pro Circuit pipe and carbon Pro Circuit parts, the exact stuff you stared at in magazines as a kid and could never afford. Titanium footpegs, because you cannot say you have done a build without them. And one fabricated piece, made once, for this bike only.

Ironically, the part that changed how it rides the most is one of the least glamorous. A GYTR flywheel and clutch combo pushed the power and delivery exactly where I wanted it. You can buy suspension comfort. Getting an engine to feel like it was built for you is harder.

You can buy suspension comfort. Getting an engine to feel like it was built for you is harder.

THIRTEEN HOURS

The final day was the eleventh hour in the literal sense. Everything had to go together at once, in one room, with my mate Cole doing the parts that required an actual mechanic. Electronics in, motor in, shock and forks in, subframe, linkages, swingarm, plastics, graphics. Slowly, a pile of expensive parts started looking like a motorcycle again.

There was one job I could not do. A real man gets a brand-new tyre, a tyre stand and some rim locks and just makes it happen. I am not that man.

Thirteen hours from start to finish. I have watched plenty of builds come to life, but this one hit differently. Partly because it came out better than I had any right to expect, and partly because of the friends who were in that room helping me make it happen.

GLEN HELEN

A bike like that needs somewhere to be understood. Once a year, tucked into the San Bernardino hills, thousands of two-stroke diehards bring the most exotic premix machinery they own to Glen Helen and race it for all the marbles. The Two-Stroke World Championship is an annual reminder that these things are very much alive.

The YZ250 makes sense there. Other brands are fuel injected now and doing newer, cleverer things, but the Yamaha remains stubbornly analog. There is still something old-school about it, and that is the appeal rather than the compromise. In a world where motorcycles are getting more complicated, the YZ still feels mechanical, familiar and connected to the bikes that made so many of us fall in love with motocross in the first place.

THE RIDE

Here is the embarrassing bit. I had been so focused on beating Brian that the actual riding became an afterthought. When it was finally finished, part of me did not even want to get it dirty.

That feeling lasted about thirty seconds.

I got on it and went through two tanks of fuel without stopping. Came in, filled up and went straight back out. I did not stop smiling once.

Somewhere in those laps, the build stopped being about whether mine looked better than Brian's. I just loved the motorcycle.

Win or lose against the General, I am proud of this bike. The paint is worth a look and the anodising has got to be worth a second, but that is not really what I will remember. I will remember the Airbnb garage with a brand-new YZ scattered across the floor. The thirteen-hour night putting it back together. The friends who showed up to help and the sponsors who made the whole thing possible.

It started with me talking shit to Brian Deegan across a podcast table. It ended with two empty tanks of fuel at Glen Helen and the best motorcycle I have ever owned