Joe Dirt jams a round peg in a square hole.

As with most Twisted tales, this one is underpinned by a very fundamental theme.

"If it ain't fit for purpose, then make it fit your purpose"

This theme seems to be spectacularly relevant in Hard Enduro at the moment. In any form of off-road motorbike racing in fact.

Why?

Because when what you have no longer works for you, you have two choices; either give up and walk away or persist until you find a solution.

Where would we all be if we just walked away?

Elliot Clenton does not really get the concept of "give up and walk away".

So, when faced with the prospect of not progressing in hard enduro, he decided that he would rather (quite literally) jam a square peg in a round hole than have a shit fit, pack up his bat and ball and stomp off home.

Being 168 cm tall and weighing in at only 58kg means the 33-year-old does not exactly carry the ideal physique to be the ultimate Hard Enduro rider.

In hard enduro (unlike in the bedroom) size DOES matter! To make my point, I asked the Bull, Wade Ibrahim, how important size was. His response was pretty unambiguous. "Yeah, it helps. A LOT! Having the strength to manhandle the bike when the going gets tough and a bit of extra length in the legs definitely helps when having to push through some sketchy sections."

That said, having 'ducks' disease' was never going to stop Clenton. Struggling in the early days on a lowered Beta 200 he, clearly, needed to think outside the box if he was ever going to progress to the Gold Class of the W.A. Hard Enduro Series.

"Ever since getting into hard enduro I've always chased a bike that suits me, and I wanted something small. I mentioned, to a few people, I wanted to try an 85 and do a bit of work to it to make it "function " for hard enduro. Everyone, except Pete Mountain (a founding member of WHES), said absolutely no!! They said I'd be stupid to consider it."

"Pete had one that he rips around his tracks on, and he loves it. He offered me his for a month to mess around on - to see if I liked it."

"After riding it a few times I realised this was gunna be a huuuuuge learning curve. But I figured the positives outweighed the negatives and that it was worth a shot on the hard enduro circuits. So, I committed to giving it a crack!"

The lil' bike that did and did....right up to the point where it didn't.

"Electric start was essential for proper hard sketchy shit so I knew this bike was only worthwhile if I could sort that out.  Did a heap of research and found some company in Europe making them for KTM 85s. So, I bought a bike and immediately ordered the Electric start kit that cost almost 3/4 the price of the bike itself!!!"(insert PMSL emoji 'cause that is commitment - Ed). 

"Got the 105cc big bore kit and threw on some flogged out old mousses from the front tyre of an old 300. Straight away I absolutely loved riding it."

"Everything just started to gel and do what I wanted. However........ the electric start kit spent more time broken than working."

Now anyone who knows this sport will know immediately that, with zero torque, there is only one approach to obstacles; send it. So, learning how to get the most out of the 85 AND THEN getting it across the finish line took some talent.

But as Elliot progressed up through the field and on to the podium, he soon began to find the limitations of the bike, and that is about where this story really begins.

"I did the 2023 season on this 85. The final race of the season at Toodyay Terror I prepped the starter motor the best I could, putting mostly new parts in it. I kick-started it all morning to preserve it until I came to a section of the race where I REALLY NEEDED IT. And when I did, guess what? It was broken! The first press of the button gave me nothing!!!!!!!"

"Throughout the race the bike started running worse and worse - rev hanging, missing all bottom end power and seizing up."

Like any good hard enduro rider, Elliot fully cracked the shits at this.

"I powered on as best I could but by the end of the race, I knew something big had to be done. And that day I started looking for another 85 body and a donor 150 donk".

The conversion concept had been birthed.

Cubes count!!! There is no replacement for displacement.

"I actually bought another KTM 85 for pretty cheap that had nice wheels and a few nice parts on it. Then I found a Husky TC85 with heaps of hours on it, a long-range fuel tank and everything I needed. It was insanely cheap because it was rough as guts."

Clearly, the TC85 was the perfect bike to butcher and let's face it, if you are going to jam a round peg in a square hole, you are going to make a mess of that square hole.

"After a few months of hunting for the 150 I heard about a fellow WHES member who sold a Husky TE150 that I knew the history of. He'd sold it to a friend who was selling it again. I managed to snap it up and everything came from there."

Heard of 'basket case' rebuilds? This fast became a case of basket cases.

"That was the very first time the engine was placed in the frame when the original engine mounts had been cut out."

Now the challenge for me is to convey to you the extent of engineering that went into this build.

I'm sure you've heard the saying "necessity is the mother of invention"? Well, wrap your head around this because it certainly was not a simple cut and paste build, let me give you the big, fat, hairy tip.

In the first instance, the frame needed a hole cut into it to accommodate the much-elevated spark plug that was sitting too proud out of the cylinder head.

Next up, Elliot needed to make up a recess for an O-ring on the retro-fitted fuel tap he created from a chunk of alloy. To do that he ground down a socket and cut teeth into it. It worked a treat and easily ate into the 'Clenton Special' billet alloy mount.

If you can't buy the part, make the part!

The Clenton billet alloy fuel tap.

Even something as simple as a front sprocket was no mean feat.

There was no front sprocket available that would seat on the 150's shaft and not chop out the engine case. So, Elliot had to lathe down a 150 center piece to insert into the 85 front sprocket. He made up a bolt 'jig' so that he could centralise it in the lathe.

It is like Play School with lots of shapes and colours: just more swearing and throwing of toys.

When the job is this much work, you rope in anyone that is as mad as you are; no matter how young they are.

Clenton literally made a square peg fit in a round hole.

All those niceities aside, things were bound to get nasty at some point, and they did when it came to getting the back end sorted.

Getting the 85 swingarm to fit the 150 engine required some well-considered savagery. Elliot had to machine down the engine cases within an inch of their life so that the 85 swing arm would fit on.

Thats a close shave: any deeper and it would have become a terminal flesh wound.

With the brutality now under control it was back to a bit of cosmetic surgery and, with that, the pressure was off and the fun began.

"Originally the frame was blue. I had laid some random fluoro green rattle can over some places I had welded; just to stop it rusting."

"I wanted to test if I liked the yellow frame before paying someone to powder coat it, so I just sprayed a shit load of yellow and it turned green...... except for the bits I had sprayed green!! So, I painted the whole frame green as a primer with some green I had laying around the shed."

"Then I sprayed yellow over the top of the green.....but it all stayed green!!! Eventually, I did a bunnings run for some white and went over it again and eventually got what I wanted. But half the shed is still yellow, including the lawnmower."

"I don't understand how absolutely everything in my shed turned the colour I wanted the frame, except the frame itself???"

Not what it was meant to be.

Looks pretty trick though, when it all came together.

Not satisfied with the ride, the suspension was the last thing to get some mods.

"The new ohlins suspension I got for it is a game changer aye. Honestly better suspension is better. It's that simple. That's all that it comes down to. I had kept an eye out for some and found it on some New Zealand buy swap sell local pages. Was cheap as." 

The smiling face of a rider that knows how to 'make it work'. Gold Class rider Elliot Clenton!

When all's said and done, Elliot Clenton is a total Hard Enduriac that, as much on the bike as off, will never give up. He epitomises the attitude of racers and organisers alike that make this rather unique sport possible.

And in some weird kind of way his story captures the essence of what is happening in Hard Enduro right across Australia RIGHT NOW!

With recent changes to racing regulations, the Hard Enduro racing format instantly became unreasonable, unrealistic and unworkable. And, at one point, racing seemed to be all but over.

What were the options? Jam a round peg into a square hole, or walk away?

In the east, Greg Peterson was the first to steer the Hard Enduro scene down a new and not well trodden path. He burned candles at both ends, and in the middle, to find insurance, organisers, landowners and racers that were willing to move forward and away from the control of racing's governing bodies.

The new regulations all but state you can't have a Hard Enduro track with an obstacle on it. You can't race on a track that has a tree within 3-6 meters of the race line. It goes on and on, but the reality is you can't wrap the environment or riders in cotton wool and expect them to have a competitive race environment.

So, when you CAN'T DO you modify and improvise.

With the solutions he created Greg provided a guiding light and a lot of hope for WHES to follow over here in the west, as at the end of 2024 we too were facing few prospects of a '25 season.

Tenacious as they are the WHES committee have worked tirelessly to now bring us a race format for the series that enables us to keep doing what we love. Not only that, but they have added another race circuit to the calendar. See the website for full details.

As I said, way back at the start: "If it (the system) ain't fit for purpose, then make it (the system) fit your purpose" Or you walk away.

Hard Enduro organisers and riders DONT walk away.

WHES 2025 - Lez go!