As we mentioned in part one of the Foo Fighter build (check out part one here), the goal of this project was to do something relatively cheap to make the XT225 work well at a “fun” trail pace. Well, the “cheap” part might be getting blown away a bit … Some of this stuff is necessity, some is bling and some is just cool. Whatever. Here’s how the transformation of project Foo Fighter looks so far.
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| Clarke Manufacturing makes plastic tanks for the XT225 and just about every other dirt bike made. They provided a Yamaha-blue tank that holds nearly four gallons of fuel, giving the Foo Fighter a commuting range of about 180 miles before going on reserve. | The Clarke tank looks bulbous from the side, but in reality it is fairly narrow, unobtrusive, bolted on easily and made the XT feel more like a regular dirt bike. |
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This bunch of goodies from Moose Racing included Moose Flex oversize CR-Hi bars, Moose 30mm rise bar clamps, Moose Contour wrap-around handguards and Moose/ODI locking handle grips. UFO provided the Oregon headlight/numberplate with integral turn signals. |
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| The Moose bars we selected bolted into the Moose riser clamps with no trouble at all. The locking handgrips install with set screws, making glue and safety wire a thing of the past. The throttle side grip is moulded to the throttle tube and was designed for the YZ450F, but it fit the XT perfectly. The handguards bolted on with no hassle whatsoever, easily clearing wires, cables and levers. |
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| Installing the UFO Oregon headlight was the hardest part of this project to date. The XT is a weird little bike, and universal-fit stuff is always fussy to install at the best of times. It was fairly straightforward to make a run to the auto parts store to get the necessary connectors so it would plug it directly into the stock XT wiring harness. |
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There are piles of wires hiding behind the XT headlight shell. To make all this stuff fit we ended up moving the handlebar clamp mounted choke knob off to the side of the instrument cluster, and then we repositioning the instrument cluster itself to the top of the triple clamp. The wires and choke cable were long enough for the move, and the mod gave me enough room to install the UFO Oregon headlight shell easily and still reach the choke and odometer reset knob with gloves on. |
The front of the XT now looks like something from out of this century. The lights on the XT all work great now, though the turn signals flash a little too fast due to the smaller UFO bulbs and the 35W headlight isn’t as bright as the stock unit. |
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| Out back we installed a YZ450F rear fender and a UFO drop-down taillight/license plate/turn signal combo. It looked like an easy job at first, but it turned out to be an exercise in head scratching that required a bunch of Dremel Tool blades. | The top half of the YZ-F fender was cut away to mimic the stock fender, as were most of the front side sections. Holes were drilled to allow mounting in the stock rear fender mount locations. |
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| Cut, grind, heat and bend. Several hours later the fender was installed decently, if not optimally. The UFO License plate extension with built in taillight and turn signals was bolted to the YZ-F fender with only a little fiddling and a couple of zip-ties to help keep it stiff. Again, the local auto parts store was the source of materials to make the stock XT wiring harness plug into the new tail section. | The finished rear fender is sleek, modern and works even better than the stocker for keeping gorp off your back. |
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| While we were at the back of the bike we installed an FMF Power Core 4 slip on muffler. I can hear you guys whining already. TOO LOUD!! Hey, I think quiet is cool too. Well, the FMF Power Core 4 muffler isn’t obnoxious on the little XT, especially with the spark arrestor insert installed. With two-tiny valves, a tiny header pipe, a wimpy compression ratio and a low RPM ceiling the XT just can’t move enough air to make much noise. The FMF PC4 is also several pounds lighter than stock and made the bike pull noticeably harder at every point in the powerband. |
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| We went an extra step to keep things quiet by installing an aluminum tube across the spark arrestor core outlet, which knocked down the noise even further. |
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| Our goal was to build something that looked like a 7/8 scale Enduro racer. After laying on some Factory FX Yamaha graphics, we stood back and saw the Foo Fighter looked like it had spent some time at the fat-farm, now sporting a trimmer midsection and a slimmer rear end. Stay tuned for Foo Fighter part three, where we install some real tires and do something to fix the teeny tiny stock footpegs. Hey, we might even ride this thing! |
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