TWO-STROKE PROJECT: CARSON BROWN’S 2005 KAWASAKI KX125

CARSON BROWN VS. ADAM CIANCIARULO: APRIL 2025 ISSUE

Have bike, will travel to race

Dirt Bike Magazine test rider and Red Bull Motorsports athlete Carson Brown will race anyone, anywhere, anytime on just about anything with two wheels! Carson has teamed up with Red Bull to produce the “ERA” video series where he races some of the sport’s most iconic racers on some interesting two-strokes.
We caught up with Carson to talk about how his KX125-fueled grudge match with recently retired Kawasaki factory rider Adam Cianciarulo.

This 2005 was purchased by Carson’s wife, Claire, off Facebook Marketplace. And like most bikes bought off Marketplace, he took it out and blew it up immediately! Right after that, Carson got a call from Adam Cianciarulo saying he wanted to do an “ERA” episode on a KX125. So, he and his crew went into action to make magic happen. 

The suspension went off to Pro Circuit, where Luke Boyk gave it a lot of internal upgrades, the chassis received some much-needed TLC, and a new Athena KX144 big-bore top-end kit was acquired from MotoSport and installed. Another Dirt Bike Magazine test rider, Jared Hicks from Backyard Designs USA, designed a Chevy Trucks-style graphics, giving it some early 2000s factory-team vibes. With the bike completed, it journeyed across the country from Washington to the famous Florida sand of Pax Trax MX. 

Race-matchup-wise, on paper, Adam Cianciarulo is clearly the more decorated rider when it comes to AMA championships. But, it might come as a surprise to everyone that, even though Cianciarulo was on Kawasakis almost his entire life, he had limited amounts of seat time on a KX125, going straight to a 250 four-stroke after his Supermini two-stroke racing days. Carson, on the other hand, has probably logged more hours on the KX125 two-stroke platform than most people, and still actively rides one today and can make anything with two wheels go fast. Each rider threw down three hot laps with only the fastest lap counting towards the overall victory. In the end, only three seconds separated Adam’s and Carson’s times! If you want to see who won, head over to Carson Brown MX’s and Dirt Bike Magazine’s YouTube channels for more action of this KX125 two-stroke.

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