early on; you don’ t feel like you’ re constantly chasing revs or rescuing it with the clutch. In tight trees, that makes the whole bike feel calm. Midway through the test there was a weaving downhill section, and that was the one place where I felt the fork was a little soft. For my weight and pace, I think the answer would be going up a spring rate rather than just adding more compression damping. We were already firm on the clickers, and I’ d rather get the holdup from the spring so the fork can still stay comfortable and active over the small chop. From there the test opened into more of a semi-bulldozed, flogged-out trail, and that’ s where the motor really showed its range. Rolling it on and letting it climb into the topend, the 250 is strong – it revs out cleanly, pulls nicely, and has more than enough motor for those conditions. The final section went into an uphill, and again everything felt pretty spot on; good drive, good chassis feel, no drama. The chassis has a very similar family feel to the
TF450-RC, but in this terrain the 250-C feels more forgiving. In fact, for this sort of racing, I think I actually preferred it. It feels like a more rounded package for enduro, with enough power to be competitive, but not so much that it drags you around or wears you out. The best proof was the time. In that first test, after nine years away from enduro racing and on a bike I’ d picked up the night before, I was only about three seconds off the test win. That says a lot. The TF 250-C is absolutely raceready – you can jump on it, do the basic setup, and be competitive straight away.
TEST TWO AND THREE: STILL IN THE MIX Test two was slightly different again. It ran through smaller trees, was a bit faster in places, and had more uphill sections. Once again, the bike started off really well. The power is easy to use, the chassis comfortable, and I still had that feeling that I could just get on with riding rather than thinking too much about the bike. This was also the test where I started to find
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