Welcome to the forum! You've come to the right place to find a wealth of knowledge and archived knowledge on these bikes.
I don't see your location listed, but I do see a suspension tuner called House of horsepower in oregon, so I assume you are in the PNW region?
I'd highly recommend a shock revalve and would strongly recommend a fork swap or at minimum putting some money into the fork with proper springs for your weight, unless you weigh 130 lbs and are okay with the stock springs, as well as revolving the fork. These forks are fairly heavy, KLX 300 forks and triples will swap right into there, at least 1996 to 2009 and maybe more recent. They are the quickest bolt on, but still are suited only for 140-185 lb riders. You'll drop well over 4 lb of weight off of the front end by swapping to the KLX forks, and you lose most of the underhanging tube below the axle and gain some rigidity from the inverted configuration. My other favorite simple fork swap is Honda XR 400 fork legs and front wheel and axle. They are slightly lighter fork with less underhand, adjustable rebound externally, more firm spring suitable for about 155 - 195 lb riders, and use a 17mm axle instead of 15 mm, still not quite to the modern standard, but adding more rigidity and flex resistance to the front end. They also benefit from a revalving, but some basic shim shuffling can get you a long ways for a little or no money if you already have them apart and want to file off the peened over threads and remove the base valve shim stack retaining nut (look this up online or just have your suspension tuner do it).
These are excellent bikes, and paired with upgraded suspension valving and or a fork swap, proper jetting and preferably for me and aftermarket exhaust or at least an aftermarket spark arrestor to drop a little bit of weight off the top of the bike, they make incredible trail bikes.
For the KDX 200H, I would highly recommend sending it out to Pro Circuit, Tom Morgan Racing, Boyko Racing, or Millennium Technologies for a more power everywhere porting job and boring out to 220 stick bore (69mm 216.8cc) or "225" (223.2cc 70mm) & having the head modified. This completely changes the bike and gives it significantly more bottom and and a more modern porting configuration. With yours being sleeved, that might complicate things a bit, but it's still quite doable. Or just pick up a spare 200H cylinder & head and have that done to it whenever that one is getting lower on compression, that way you can do a hot swap.
With those mods, there is no need for any other bike unless you are in big bore desert racing territory or wide open Motocross tracks.
There's a reason these were called the best woods bikes of all time for many years, so I'm still call them that, although the modern age has surpassed the stock configuration of these bikes a bit, but they are very easily modified to stay completely irrelevant.
Chuck78 wrote: 01:56 pm Nov 06 2025
Welcome to the club!
Hey Chuck thanks for the warm welcome and the wealth of info on forks/ motor mods. I'm definitely looking into my options for fork swaps and the klx option looks great.
I'll likely have the rear revalved while it's being worked on. I'm lucky enough to be in the right range for the front fork springs at 160lbs fully geared so I'll be saving/ looking on marketplace for a front end to swap when the time comes.
Truth be told I just want to get on this bike and start riding it. I feel like it'll serve me a while as I'm not a speed demon but want something I can practice good technique/ good habits on. It's my first dedicated dirt bike, moving on from a DRZ400 which is great but too heavy for a learner like me.
