Posts Tagged ‘klr650’

Wow, its been quite a while since I posted anything, and to be honest its because there really hasn’t been anything meaningful to post. I haven’t been on any exciting trips and other than the daily grind of my job nothing has happened. However, over memorial day weekend I’ll be taking another motorcycle trip, this time to Colorado for some weekend adventures with a few friends. I’ll be posting a few more details in the coming months, and hopefully I’ll get something up about some recent maintenance on my KLR including valve clearance checks (which went horribly wrong), and “doing the Doo“.

FAILED!

Before I venture off for my trip to China, I decided I would take a much needed break this 4th of July weekend and ride up north to Grand Marais on the North Shore to visit a friend. However after leaving on July 3rd I ran into traffic on 35W about a half hour out of the city near Forest Lake. I figured things would get better once I got further out, however the situation only got worse. My hand was so cramped from clutching and by the time traffic would let up I would get into Grand Marais late that night. I decided it was best to turn around and call it off. I spend enough time in traffic during the week there was no way I was going to sit in traffic and waste my life on the weekend.

In any case, I installed a new pair of Michelin Anakee tiers on my bike earlier the week before in preparation. After doing some research I found these had some of the best reviews, with excellent tread life as well. As I ride my KLR mostly on the road, I was looking for a touring tire for 90% road and 10% dirt/gravel, the Anakees seemed to fit well. My plan was to order the tiers on-line and take the wheels off myself to save some money, then take the tiers in to get mounted/balanced. Both tiers came off with relative ease, although I would recommend getting the KLR50 manual which has step by step instructions on basically any maintenance you’ll ever do on your bike. I first took my wheels to the Hitching Post, however they wanted to charge $45 a tier to mount and balance, which I thought was insane. Instead I took my tiers to a local shop where I live, the next day I had my tiers mounted and perfectly balanced.

After getting my wheels back on, my first impressions of the new tiers were great. I feel like I can really grind my pegs in the corners, although I think the bike does turn in a bit easier then before. Mind you my old tiers were nicely squared off, so the difference was expected. I haven’t tried them in wet weather conditions, however I was able to take them on some fine gravel roads which was a bit iffy, but nothing they are not capable of handling. As far as dirt and mud goes, I’m not sure I would venture too far off into the woods with these.

I probably won’t write a whole lot since I’m getting ready for China and work is busy as usual. However I can say that I’ve already begun planning my next trip after China, which will be San Fransisco in late October! Anyways, hopefully NWA figures out their pitot tube issues before I leave, since I’ll be on an A330 the entire way over and back!

After getting my KLR650, and reading numerous reports on riders traveling all over the world on their KLRs, and have an amazing time, I really wanted to get out and try it myself. Sadly, right now I don’t have the time or the finances to travel South America or Japan, so instead I decided to take my first long distance trip to Oklahoma City to visit a friend. I rode down Memorial Day weekend, stopping in Kansas City both to and from overnight for a total trip of about 1,600 miles.

The ride down went as expected, I left MSP around 2:30 and hit the 35 slab as I wanted to get to Kansas City before 11pm. I had known this before, but the KLR really doesn’t enjoy being at speed above 70mph, or at least I don’t like to take her above 5,000 RPM. Above 5,000 RPM the bike begins to vibrate more (as it is a single 650cc) and it just doesn’t feel right to me at least. I did exceed 5,000rmp a few times to overtake a few semi-trucks, but for the majority of the time I stayed between 4,500 RPM and 4,900 RPM. This meant I was passed many timed by other cars flying down the freeway at +85mph, if I had more time I would have taken the back roads to avoid this. My Magellan Sports Track GPS also seemed to fail from the excessive vibration. Initially, I got a message about the battery being low which was expected since I had the same batteries since I was in Europe. However after I put a fresh set of batteries in the screen began to act funny until finally the unit no longer powered on. I was stuck with my Garmin Nuvi, which had limited battery life and subsequently wanted to save for my return journey or if I got lost. Instead I just used my printed directions and arrived in Kansas City around 10:30pm, with a very sore butt.

Since it was dark when I arrived, I didn’t bother to check anything on the bike. I took off my panniers, covered the bike, and checked into the hotel. The next morning I checked the oil level in the sight glass and to my dismay it was very low. However they bike was cold and the parking lot was at a steep slant, so I hoped for the best, geared up and road to Perkins to breakfast. After I ate, I rode out of Kansas City where I stopped to fill up with gas and check my oil level. Again, the oil level was still low in the sight glass. I’ve never had a problem with oil burning before, however its a known issue debate with 2008 KLR650 which is why I was keeping such a close watch on the oil level. The bike was still running normally and cool, but I bought a quart of Rotella and filled it back up to the top of the sight glass (about 3/4 of a quart). As I had changed the oil without changing the oil filter perhaps I had not initially re-filled it sufficiently. Instead of riding the slab on the way to Oklahoma City, I took mostly back roads as I had time to ride and subsequently kept my speed slower to around 60-65mph. Once I arrived in Oklahoma City, I checked the oil level again and everything seemed in line.

Oklahoma City was nice, although smaller than Minneapolis, I enjoyed my stay MUCH more than Miami. People were very nice, not mean (as in Miami). I was able to go onto the Tinker AFB and see a bunch of KC-135s getting updated which was interesting, along with their jet workshop which worked on engines from the F-22 among others.

Riding back was slightly more of a pain, mainly because of rain going through Iowa. One aspect of the trip I hadn’t expected was the smells I experienced while riding. Even though Iowa smelled like poo, and the occasional road kill I encountered made me want to puke, the other smells were quite pleasant and changed from mile to mile. While riding through Kansas City, I smelled roasted coffee which caused me to ride in circles downtown until I found a coffee factory which had a adjacent coffee show which was sadly closed due to labor day. The ride from Des Moines to Minneapolis seemed to take forever, the scenery wasn’t that great and the road was painfully straight. A bird crapped on me, and everyone else seemed hell bent on getting out of Iowa as fast as they could. I arrived back in Minneapolis after about an 8 hour ride from Kansas City, with a very sore butt and wrist despite my throttle rocker. My rear tire just barley made it, and my oil once again needed to be topped off. For those of you wondering, I used about 1/2 a quart for about 1,600 miles.

Although this wasn’t anywhere near an adventure "tour" by any means, I had a great time and am hooked. If I had kept on riding south instead of coming back home I’d be in Mexico right now, if only. Next on my list is the North Shore (hopefully) and who knows what after. Despite the oil burning I still love my KLR, I’ll have to experiment with some other oils and see if she continues drinking oil during the daily commute, perhaps this means a BMW in my future . . .

Below are the few other random pictures I took. Sadly, I don’t have a mount for my camera yet on my motorcycle, and trying to take pictures and ride at the same time with a 50mph cross wind isn’t a good idea.

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My ’08 KLR with PCV installed. Yes I know this picture sucks, it was taken with my iPhone.

Hopefully now that my life is somewhat returning to normal blog activity will begin to pick up post Japan, hope is the key word. Anyhow, in preparation for my Oklahoma trip I decided to go ahead and install a PCV on my KLR50 crank breather hose. A better description on what the mod entails can be found here, basically the theory is it will reduce oil consumption by creating negative pressure in the crankcase, thus preventing oil from being forced into the cylinder. Some also claim there is a gain in horse power and torque, since in theory the piston would move easier through cycles. My ’08 KLR is not an oil burner yet, however I have noticed slight oil consumption from my last change about 500-600 miles ago. To be honest, its hard to even measure how much oil is there with the sight glass and this could all be my imagination. Every KLR forum I’ve ever read mentions oil consumption being an issue, and the only real way to solve the problem is to replace the piston rings, which I have neither the time, money, or talent to pull off. This seemed like a cheap simple install that would at the very least put my mind at ease as a ride the slab down to Oklahoma City.

I took the bike out for a spin after I got everything hooked up. I really didn’t feel any increase in performance, however I did seem to notice a better response from the throttle and smoother acceleration on the lower RPMs. Again, this could be the placebo affect, however so far it seems worth the $3 or so dollars it cost. If I return from my trip with minimal oil consumption I’ll consider this a success.