About
What is PiloteMX?
PiloteMX is a collection of dirt bike guides written the way people talk in the paddock: direct, concrete, no pointless jargon. The goal is simple — help you ride better, maintain your bike and fix what breaks, without digging through contradictory videos or endless forum threads.
Who writes this?
I’m Chriss Rakoot. I’m 51, and I’ve been around off-road bikes for about as long as I’ve been able to hold one up.
It started at ten, on my father’s Yamaha 80. Not a motocross bike — a road bike I took places it had no business going. We lived in the countryside, so I learned off-road riding in the hills and on building sites, working it out as I went. That is a rough school, but an honest one: nobody explains body position to you, you find it because the other way puts you on the ground.
At 17 I was winning my first trophies in competition. Then I stopped — not out of boredom, but for lack of money. Motocross is expensive, and at some point you have to choose. I came back to it since, and today I ride in the veteran class.
My day job is industrial engineering and maintenance. That is where this site gets its second leg: a fault is diagnosed by method, not by hunch. And servicing is something you plan before the part lets go.
A family thing
All three of my sons caught the same bug.
- The eldest rides, but he is mainly a professional photographer — sports events, and motocross in particular. He learned to read a line from the side of the track, which is another way of understanding riding.
- The middle one is Madagascar champion in the amateur class.
- The youngest rides in the junior class. No trophy yet — it will come.
We keep four bikes at home, and we do the servicing and the repairs ourselves. That is where this site’s material comes from: the jobs described here are jobs we have actually done, often more than once, sometimes badly the first time.
I also write about motocross elsewhere, online and in books, under the same name.
The method
Each section is built like a training programme: guides are numbered and follow a teaching order, from fundamentals to advanced. You can follow the path step by step, or grab the guide that solves today’s problem. Every article states its target level — beginner, intermediate or advanced — and ends with the logical next step.
How the guides are written
A guide always starts from a question a rider actually asks, never from a keyword. The content then rests on three supports:
- Practice — what actually happens on a track and in a garage, described gesture by gesture rather than as general principles.
- Manufacturer documentation — workshop manuals and service schedules for anything with a number attached.
- Review through use — procedures are cross-checked before publication, and corrected whenever a reader reports a discrepancy.
One rule never moves: no invented figures. Torque values, jetting, valve clearances, capacities — these change from one model to the next, and a wrong number breaks an engine. When the figure depends on your bike, the guide says so and sends you to its workshop manual. When a job goes beyond a home toolkit or affects safety, it points you to a professional. That is more useful than a tutorial pretending everything can be done at the back of a garage.
What PiloteMX is not
PiloteMX is an editorial site, and nothing else. No on-site service, no sale of parts or gear, no quotes, no bike repairs. For any of that, go to a dealer or a workshop near you.
Corrections, additions, suggestions
An error, a figure that does not match your manual, a missing topic? Tell us. Corrections are handled first, and topic requests feed straight into the publishing calendar.
The programme
The site covers five sections: riding technique, maintenance, mechanics, gear and repairs.
How the site is funded
The guides are free. The site is funded by the advertising shown on its pages. That has no influence on the content: no article is commissioned or reviewed by an advertiser.