FIRST LOOK! NEXT YEAR’S FUEL-INJECTED TM 300FI TWO-STROKE

MXA ran into Ralf Schmidt, the American importer of TM Motorcycles in the pits at Glen Helen last week. He was racing a TM300FI enduro bike in the first moto and a TM300MX in the second moto. We dropped by to look at the enduro bike. It turned out to be the first fuel-injected TM two-stroke in America. Because of the Euro5 emission standards, the only two-strokes that will be legal to ride on trails in Europe in less than two years must be fuel-injected.

In this photo you can see the fuel nozzle going into the two-stroke cylinder’s transfer port. There is no carburetor, but instead a throttle body is used to provide air for combustion. It feeds through a Moto Tassinari VForce3 reed block.

The two-stroke oil is not pre-mixed with the gas in the tank, but instead is poured into an oil tank hidden in the right side frame spar. The oil filler cap on the front of the frame is where you pour 700cc of oil into the frame. It is enough pre-mix oil for 6 or 7 tanks of gas. The fuel/oil ratio is controlled by the ECU and can be as lean as 100:1 for some conditions.

Although this looks like a recessed bolt hole in the frame, it is really where the sight glass for the oil tank is located. You look into this hole to see if you need to add pre-mix oil to the frame.

Ralf Schmidt split motos at REM on the enduro bike and his regular TM 300MX race bike. This is the race bike.

The TM 300i was first shown in prototype form at the EICMA show in the winter of 2018. TM will probably not import very many fuel-injected two-strokes to the United States because they will need as many as they can get to satisfy both the European off-road riders and the Euro5 bureaucrats. This is what KTM did with their first production run of fuel-injected two-strokes.

To learn more about TM Motorcycles go to www.tmracing-usa.com