If you line up at any UK Hare and Hounds, Cross-Country, or Hare Scramble event this weekend, you can guarantee the grid will look identical. It will be a sea of KTM EXCs, Husqvarna TE/FEs, and GasGas ECs, mixed in with a few dedicated motocross track weapons.
What you almost certainly won’t see is a KTM XC, a Yamaha YZ250X, or a Yamaha YZ-FX…. Maybe a few XC’s but you could count them on one hand!
In North America, these “cross-country” models dominate the off-road market. If you watch the youtuber ‘Onboard Offroad’ he regularly documents the new zealand racing and you will see almost every single bike is a cross country model. Over here in the UK, they are rarer than hen’s teeth. Dealerships rarely stock them, and most riders don’t even look for them. But here is the truth: (Excluding Wales) for the vast majority of UK hare scramble tracks, the cross-country bike is actually the ultimate weapon.
Here is why they are so rare in the UK, why they are perfect for our tracks, and how you can easily build your own from a standard motocross bike.
Why the UK Ignores the Cross-Country Bike
The disappearance/lack of the cross-country bike comes down to one major factor: the Green Lane culture.
In the UK, the vast majority of off-road riders want a bike that can do it all. They want to race on Sunday, but they also want to ride public Byways on Wednesday night. Because green lanes are legally public roads, you need a fully road-homologated bike.
European manufacturers built their entire business model around this. A KTM EXC or Husqvarna TE comes out of the crate with a V5 logbook, indicators, headlights, and a horn.
Cross-country bikes (like the XC or YZ-FX) are sold as “closed-course competition” models. They have no lights, no speedometers, and no road registration. Because they require the hassle of a Daytime MOT and DVLA paperwork to get a registration plate, UK buyers and dealers simply look past them.
But if you are a dedicated racer who transports their bike to the track in a van or on a trailer, ignoring these bikes is a massive mistake.
Why They Are Perfect for UK Hare Scrambles
A Hare and Hounds race is not an Extreme Enduro. You aren’t trying to drag your bike up a vertical wall of wet limestone or hop over huge tractor tyres.
Instead, you are flowing through open fields, carving through tight woods, and hitting fast, chopped-up holes and in some cases going on and off of motocross track sections. It is a high-speed endurance test.
True enduro bikes are built for the mountains of Romania, or in UK’s case – Wales, while motocross bikes are built for groomed jump tracks. The cross-country bike sits exactly in the sweet spot between them—making it perfect for British hare scramble tracks.
- The Perfect Suspension Balance: An enduro bike (like an EXC) has incredibly plush suspension. It is amazing for absorbing rocks at walking pace, but when you hit a fast, rough straight at a Hare and Hounds, it can blow through its travel, wallow, and feel unstable. Cross-country bikes use motocross-derived forks but with softer, off-road valving. They hold up in deep ruts and high-speed braking bumps, giving you massive confidence to keep the throttle pinned.
- Fire-Breathing Motocross Engines: Cross-country models use aggressive motocross engines rather than choked-back enduro engines.
- Gearboxes Tuned for Flow: Traditional enduro bikes have an ultra-low first gear meant for trials-like rock sections. Cross-country bikes feature semi-close or wide-ratio gearboxes optimized specifically for cross-country speeds. First gear is low enough to navigate a bottleneck in the trees, but top gear is tall enough to pull away from the pack on a massive stubble-field straight.
Can’t Find One? Build One. (It’s Easier Than You Think)
Because official cross-country models are hard to find in UK showrooms, many riders assume they are out of luck. But here is the industry’s best-kept secret: converting a standard motocross bike into a cross-country weapon is incredibly easy.
Better yet, it makes massive financial sense. The UK secondhand market is absolutely flooded with motocross bikes, meaning they are significantly cheaper to buy than over-inflated, beaten-up enduro bikes. Eg. 2020 EXC is roughly £5,000-£5,800, 2020 SXF350 is roughly £3,000-£3500. You can save thousands by buying a clean MX bike and spending a fraction of those savings on parts to customize it perfectly for your racing style.
If you want to build a giant-killer for your next race season, you only need to address a few key areas:
1. Swap to an 18-Inch Rear Wheel
Motocross bikes use 19-inch rear wheels, which leave very little tyre sidewall. For hare scrambles, you want an 18-inch rear wheel. The taller tyre sidewall acts as extra suspension, absorbs square-edged bumps, and crucially, protects you from pinch flats when hitting hidden tree roots or rocks. You can easily find aftermarket 18-inch rear wheels, 18” wheel from an enduro model, or lace a new rim onto your stock hub.
2. Bolster the Fuel Capacity
A standard motocross tank is designed for 30-minute motos. In a two-to-three-hour hare scramble, you don’t want to be pitting every four laps. Companies like Acerbis, IMS, and Clarke make oversized, translucent fuel tanks that bolt directly onto standard MX bikes using factory mounts. They don’t make the bike feel bulky, but they give you the range to run longer stints with confidence. Or if you cant stand these oversize tanks, depending on what bike you want to convert you can sometimes pull a tank from its enduro sister model for perfect cheap and fast fitment. eg. your converting a KTM SX250 use the tank from a EXC250 or XC250 of the same era.
3. Smooth Out the Power (Optional but Helpful)
Motocross bikes have a snappy, aggressive throttle response that can tire you out over a long race.
- For 2-strokes: Adding a weighted flywheel kit takes minutes to bolt on. It slows down the rev acceleration just enough to give you massive traction in slick British mud without losing any overall power.
- For 4-strokes: Most modern MX bikes allow you to change engine maps via a smartphone app (like Yamaha’s Power Tuner). You can instantly upload a “smooth off-road” map to mellow out the bottom end and stop the bike from stalling in tight woods. Again, flywheel weight, rekluse clutch and or gearing mods can help smooth out these bikes and prevent flame outs.
“But what about the gearbox?” I can already hear the keyboards going. Yes, it’s true you aren’t going to split the casings to drop in a wide-ratio enduro transmission. But let’s be honest: for the vast majority of UK hare scrambles, you don’t need to. Traditional enduro gearboxes are designed for the Romanian mountains, featuring an ultra-low first gear meant for crawling up near-vertical rock faces at walking speeds. On a British scramble track, that gear is completely useless. A close-ratio motocross gearbox keeps you directly in the meat of the power, allowing you to snap aggressively out of tight woodland corners and maintain hard momentum through single-track. The real battle isn’t the gear ratios; it’s traction. Your focus shouldn’t be on the transmission, but on softening the hit and altering the power delivery through flywheel weights or fuel mapping to stop the bike from stalling when the going gets greasy.
Example – The EXC-F Wide-Ratio “Gaps” Kill Momentum
The 350 EXC-F uses a wide-ratio 6-speed transmission. To achieve this wide range, the gaps between 2nd, 3rd, and 4th gears are physically larger.
- When you shift up on an EXC-F while accelerating hard down a fast field section or out of a berm, the engine RPM drops significantly into a low zone.
- On a 350 SX-F, the 5-speed transmission features closely spaced ratios – but wide enough for hare scramble. Every upshift lands the engine perfectly back into the sweet spot of its power, allowing you to pull continuously without the motor losing its breath.
2. The EXC-F First Gear is Useless on a Scramble Track
The wide-ratio box on the EXC-F is built for proper enduro—think crawling over wet boulders or scaling vertical banks at walking speed. First gear is so low it was named a “granny gear.”
- On a standard UK hare scramble track, clicking into 1st gear on an EXC-F just results in immediate, useless rear-wheel spin in the mud.
- The 350 SX-F has a taller, more usable 2nd gear. It allows you to carry higher rolling speed through tight single-track and slick woodland ruts without the bike feeling twitchy or forcing you to constantly clutch-override the motor.
3. Fewer Gear Changes Means Less Fatigue
Because the 350 SX-F gears are spaced perfectly for flowing tracks, you can often find one gear (usually 3rd) and stay in it for massive sections of the course. The 350 engine has enough torque to pull out of the corners in 3rd, and enough top-end over-rev to sing your way down the straights without forcing you to constantly click up and down the box like you have to on the wide-ratio EXC-F.
The Ultimate Proof: Look at the Factory KTM 350 XC-F
If you still aren’t convinced that a tighter transmission is better for hare scrambles than a wide-ratio enduro box, look at what KTM does themselves.
In America, where KTM sells the factory cross-country version—the 350 XC-F—they don’t give it the wide-ratio transmission from the EXC-F enduro bike. Instead, KTM engineered a semi-close ratio 6-speed box. While they gave the XC-F a lower 1st gear specifically to handle ultra-tight trail bottlenecks and added a 6th gear for high-speed fire roads, gears 2, 3, and 4 are virtually identical to the 350 SX-F motocross bike.
KTM built the transmission to lean heavily toward the SX-F platform for a reason: they know that on a dedicated cross-country or hare scramble racecourse, large wide-ratio drops kill your momentum. By converting a standard 350 SX-F right here in the UK, you are utilizing that exact same relentless mid-gear pull. You don’t need a 6th gear on a tight British track, and you don’t need a granny gear if you learn to carry proper rolling speed through the corners. You are essentially building a lighter, more aggressive version of the ultimate factory race weapon.
4. The Quality of Life Essentials
Finish the build with a few simple off-road bolt-ons: a wrap-around sump guard, heavy-duty handguards (bark busters) to protect your fingers from tree branches, and a bolt-on kickstand so you aren’t frantically looking for a tree to lean your bike against in the paddock. – Personal opinion: who really cares for a stand if your purely racing hare scramble, use a triangle stand or even a stick it’s only until you start the race!
The Verdict: Stop Following the Crowd.
We have been conditioned in the UK to believe that “off-road” automatically means buying a bike with a headlight. And that ”Enduro club or Enduro race” Automatically means you need a Enduro model, But if your bike only ever sees the inside of a van and the dirt of a dedicated race circuit that has minimal to no actual obstacles, you are carrying around extra weight and riding a bike with suspension that is too soft for your racing style.
The cross-country bike takes the raw, aggressive, lightweight speed and manoeuvrability of a motocross bike and tames it just enough to survive a grueling three-hour race.
Stop scrolling the classifieds for overpriced enduro bikes if you don’t intend on using it for green laning. Pick up a solid, readily available motocross bike, spend a Saturday afternoon bolting on the essentials, and you’ll have the ultimate, purpose-built track weapon ready to dominate the next grid, and what’s even better is that YOU built it, what a great feeling to build your own unique cross country race weapon!
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are purely my own, based on my personal track experience and technical knowledge within the sport. This content is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute formal mechanical instructions, professional advice, or an explicit recommendation to modify or sell your current motorcycle. Dirt bike racing and modification carry inherent risks; always consult your manufacturer’s manual or a certified mechanic before undertaking any structural or mechanical changes to your machine.
Up Next: Want to know which bike makes a great base for this type of build? Check out our next post: The Ultimate Cross-Country Cheat Code: Why the KTM 350 SX-F is the ultimate UK Hare Scrambles bike.