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1968 Maico X4-A 360 Motocross Road Test - 5-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine article.Page Size: Approx. 8\" x 11\" (21 cm x 28 cm) each pageCondition: Good
SANTA CLAUS CAME early tothe staffers of CYCLE GUI DE thisyear in the form of the new 1969 MaicoX4A 360 Moto-Cross motorcycle. Be-tween our permanent staff and our twoguest testers, it seems we have riddenmost of the 360 bikes offered to thepublic. In our opinion, the Maicowraps all the good traits we have foundon various machines into one neat,fairly inexpensive, highly desirablepackage. It handles, Oh Lord, how ithandles. On the top end it will run with,or beat its competitors, and for torque,well, it starts in the cellar and goes allthe way to the attic. To say we wereimpressed would be doing the bike agreat disservice.Actually, the X4A started life twoyears ago as the X4. At that time, itwas hard to start, handling wasn’t outof the ordinary, but it did have oneredeeming feature, reliability. Sincethe bike was first introduced the dis-tributor, Frank Cooper (a well knownname in the cycle industry), has kepthard at work developing the bike to thepoint it’s now at.In conjunction with his close friend,Brian Fabre, a bike nut and an engi-neer to boot, Frank has put in literallythousands of hours working over theframe, engine, and perhaps the mostimportant, the suspension. The X4A isthe culmination of two years\' work.The one area where the least amountof change has taken place is in theengine. But with Maico’s backgroundin engines, not too much of a changewas needed. What has been done is togo to a forged Mahle piston that utili-zes a Dykes compression ring. ADykes ring is ‘L\' shaped and the ad-vantage to this set-up shows up on theignition stroke of the engine. Verylittle side wall pressure is normal witha Dykes ring until the engine fires. Atthat time, the exhaust gases try toescape past the piston, i.e.: blowby. Asthe gas charge explodes, it forces thelip of the ring against the side of thecylinder, thus blocking the chargefrom the lower end.The other big change in the mill canbe found at the connecting rod. Thecrankpin has been enlarged to 25mm,or for all practical purposes, one inch.This has allowed the factory engineersto enlarge the bearing area which willlead to better engine life, which wasreally not a problem in the first place.Also, a needle bearing has found itsway to the small end of the rod, new for’69.One important point that not toomany people know about is that themain bearings of the Maico are lubri-cated by the transmission oil. The bigadvantage to this is that the bearingsurfaces always run in an oil bath, not amixture of the oil and gas.The wet, multi-plate clutch has atendency to drag if the bike is left ingear with the clutch disengaged for any...
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