California's Smoke Screen

California's Smoke Screen

Coming soon to your state?

CALIFORNIA IS TRYING TO CLEAN UP ITS AIR, AT THE expense of me having fun. Not that I don't appreciate clean air, you understand, but somewhere between environmentalist-wackos suing the Air Resources Board for ever-tighter standards and jetting so lean that my bike won’t start, let alone perform decently, I get a bit confused. Bureaucracy is giving me a headache.

Basically, no more “green stickers” (off-highway vehicle registrations) will be issued for bikes manufactured after January 1, 1997, unless they meet California’s new and very stringent emission standards. This measure of hydrocarbon and carbon-monoxide emissions was arrived at after a negotiated settlement between the major motorcycle manufacturers and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) back in 1994, with the expectation that the bikemakers would be able to develop cleaner-running off-road motorcycles. (Motocross bikes, defined as “closed-course” competition models, were and are exempt.) Though this was not an outright two-stroke trailbike ban, it pretty much eliminated the possibility of two-strokes passing with current technology.

In fact, the sniffers are so tight that even Yamaha’s new four-stroke WR400F is not able to pass, and therefore will not be sold through dealers in California. As a Yamaha spokesman put it, “The WR is an off-road bike, not a closedcourse bike like the YZ400F. Because of that, the WR is not legal to sell in California.” Yamaha is hoping that, suitably tweaked, the WR can be sold in California in 1999.

So, even four-strokes are banned in Barstow. This tipped off Cal riders to the suddenly clear and present threat to

their hobby. What can be done? Currently, the AMA is looking at modifying the definition of “closed course” so riders of competition bikes can compete in off-road events other than motocross (enduros, hare & hounds, etc.). There is also talk of licensed racers being exempt from the ban if they use “special practice and competition areas,” whatever and wherever those may be.

If all this isn’t confusing enough, I just got the 200-page, Documentation of Input Factors for the New Off-Road Mobile Source Emissions Inventory Model, in which I can’t even find how many pollutants dirtbikes supposedly are responsible for. How many trees had to die to give us this useless opus?

Good news is that the manufacturers are working hard on their current Thumpers. I’ve ridden Honda’s 1998 California-model XR400: It actually runs better than the previous XR400s and remains as fun as it ever was, though it required an inordinate amount of testing on Honda’s part. And don’t even think of pulling that plug out of the XR’s muffler unless you enjoy open-carb surgery and have a boxful of jets ready to go.

Will there ever be legal two-strokes ripping across California’s deserts? As it stands, even Honda’s advanced ARC-technology bikes aren’t clean enough to pass the test-and even if they were, performance is well below that of current two-strokes. Oh yeah, if you live someplace else and think there’s no need to worry, our good friends at CARB are only too quick to point out that other states usually adopt air regs passed in California. Consider yourself warned. ' -Jimmy Lewis