The brush guards will serve you just fine for riding in brush and keeping bugs from splatting on your nice clean gloves. Toss them in favor of an aftermarket set of hand guards if you really like your fingers. And since it's two separate components, the likelihood of having to replace both in a crash is reduced. Stopping the thumper are the same high quality Nissan units used on the CR motocrossers. There is no shortage of braking power here.
Action is light and resistant to fade at both ends.
Our rear brake took a vacation only once when the wheel became submerged in a goopy mess of mud. Once rolling again, a few taps on the pedal is all it took to bring things back to normal. Suspending the XR up front is a fat 43mm catridge fork with 11 inches of front wheel travel. Honda claims the unit is very similar in construction to the fork design used on their CBR900RR street bike. A Showa shock featuring standard spring preload adjustment, as well as 16 position compression and rebound damping adjustability, offers 11.8 inches of rear wheel travel.