a17 upgrades for alaska
Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 6:39 pm
Here is an update on my work preparing my KLR for Alaska this spring.
I started tearing the bike apart a week ago but did not make much
progress this weekend cause my wife broke her collar bone in a
relatively minor crash on her Suzuki RF900. She is in pain, and the
bike has only cosmetic damage, but now my `extra' time is spend on
laundry and cooking. Man, 4 kids is a LOT of work 
I removed the outer left side cover and the rotor assembly. When I
removed the doohickey adjustment bolt, there was no movement of the
mechanism so I thought I had done a good job adjusting it so far.
Well I was wrong. When I removed the inner cover I noticed that the
cir-clip, that holds back the lever that the spring connects to, was
missing. I guess the inner cover held it in place, but when I
started trying to remove the spring, the lever snapped back, and the
spring finally took up the slack. So my conclusion is that whenever
I loosened the adjustment bolt, they lever and spring did not put
tension on the chain mechanism, thus the tension was never adjusted.
I got a cir-clip and put in the longer spring from the Eagle kit. It
was shorter than OEM so I figured that it would put plenty of
tension on the lever for now. Then I reassembled everything except
he outer cover, as I'm waiting on my local dealer to get a
replacement Rotor Bolt.
Then I focused on the right side, and removed the water-pump
impeller. What a mess. Antifreeze everywhere. Cleanup delayed the
side cover removal, and I then found the drain bolt on the water-
pump. Man it sure would have been nice to know about that before I
disconnected the hoses . While removing the right side cover, I
kept saying to myself that I'm probably just paranoid and that I
don't need to be doing this. Well when I finally removed the oil-
screen, I was sure glad I did. The screen had tons of liquid gasket
material, as well as numerous metal shavings/fragments, blocking at
least 50% of the screen. I took some pics, but don't know how to
post them yet.
After re-assembly of the right side, I decided to order a new
impeller o-ring so the pump is not fully assembled yet. So then I
decided to take the valve cover off and check the calve clearances.
The bike was serviced by a dealer @ around 700 miles, so I thought
that this might be a waste of time as well. Wrong again. The intakes
measured 5 and 5 with a 260 shim underneath. The exhaust side
measured 6 on the right and 3 on the left with a 260 and a 265 shim
respectively. So needless to say, I'm sure glad (again) that I
decided to do the valve adjustment even though the bike only has 5K
miles on it. I sure hope that I have not burned the valve seat or
the valve itself. I'd hate to have to take the head off at this
point. So now I have 3 260 and 1 265 shims available if someone
needs them.
I put together a handy shim-calculating Excel spread sheet and
determined that I need 2 255's for the intake, and 2 250 for the
exhaust to bring me to max-spec (slappy = happy . I decided to
get an extra 255 just in case going from a 265 to a 250 resulted in
an overly large gap on the Left exhaust valve.
I also got a good deal on the stainless screw kits from desmoparts
and I have been slowly changing out bolts as I come across them.
My father in-law did some enhancements to his KLR OEM exhaust and
sent it to me to try it out. He swore he got 5+ MPG better with
the `not so aggressive' modifications, so I can't wait to try it out.
Here are some other things that I have done:
Side Stand Big-foot weld-on.
Side stand sensor removal (not just bypass)
T-Mod on the Carb.
Here is a list of the things that are on the docket:
Lite-sub-frame bold upgrade and lock-tite
New Shift lever + weld/upgrade old one for backup.
Magnetic Drain-Plug.
3mm Tubes
Heated Grips
Bar Snake (might skip this one)
Headlight guard
Waterproof ATO fuse kit
ATO Fan fuse replacement
Chain-Adjuster Nuts replacement
New Chain and Sprocket
Corbin Flat seat.
Shroud nuts enhancements
Temp Sensor by-pass kit for backup.
New Tires (Avon Gripsters ??) I currently run dunlop 607's and love
them despite their short life.
That about sums it up. Suggestions and comments are encouraged.
-Bjoggi in PDX
2003 A17
1999 TL1000R (For Balance)
I removed the outer left side cover and the rotor assembly. When I
removed the doohickey adjustment bolt, there was no movement of the
mechanism so I thought I had done a good job adjusting it so far.
Well I was wrong. When I removed the inner cover I noticed that the
cir-clip, that holds back the lever that the spring connects to, was
missing. I guess the inner cover held it in place, but when I
started trying to remove the spring, the lever snapped back, and the
spring finally took up the slack. So my conclusion is that whenever
I loosened the adjustment bolt, they lever and spring did not put
tension on the chain mechanism, thus the tension was never adjusted.
I got a cir-clip and put in the longer spring from the Eagle kit. It
was shorter than OEM so I figured that it would put plenty of
tension on the lever for now. Then I reassembled everything except
he outer cover, as I'm waiting on my local dealer to get a
replacement Rotor Bolt.
Then I focused on the right side, and removed the water-pump
impeller. What a mess. Antifreeze everywhere. Cleanup delayed the
side cover removal, and I then found the drain bolt on the water-
pump. Man it sure would have been nice to know about that before I
disconnected the hoses . While removing the right side cover, I
kept saying to myself that I'm probably just paranoid and that I
don't need to be doing this. Well when I finally removed the oil-
screen, I was sure glad I did. The screen had tons of liquid gasket
material, as well as numerous metal shavings/fragments, blocking at
least 50% of the screen. I took some pics, but don't know how to
post them yet.
After re-assembly of the right side, I decided to order a new
impeller o-ring so the pump is not fully assembled yet. So then I
decided to take the valve cover off and check the calve clearances.
The bike was serviced by a dealer @ around 700 miles, so I thought
that this might be a waste of time as well. Wrong again. The intakes
measured 5 and 5 with a 260 shim underneath. The exhaust side
measured 6 on the right and 3 on the left with a 260 and a 265 shim
respectively. So needless to say, I'm sure glad (again) that I
decided to do the valve adjustment even though the bike only has 5K
miles on it. I sure hope that I have not burned the valve seat or
the valve itself. I'd hate to have to take the head off at this
point. So now I have 3 260 and 1 265 shims available if someone
needs them.
I put together a handy shim-calculating Excel spread sheet and
determined that I need 2 255's for the intake, and 2 250 for the
exhaust to bring me to max-spec (slappy = happy . I decided to
get an extra 255 just in case going from a 265 to a 250 resulted in
an overly large gap on the Left exhaust valve.
I also got a good deal on the stainless screw kits from desmoparts
and I have been slowly changing out bolts as I come across them.
My father in-law did some enhancements to his KLR OEM exhaust and
sent it to me to try it out. He swore he got 5+ MPG better with
the `not so aggressive' modifications, so I can't wait to try it out.
Here are some other things that I have done:
Side Stand Big-foot weld-on.
Side stand sensor removal (not just bypass)
T-Mod on the Carb.
Here is a list of the things that are on the docket:
Lite-sub-frame bold upgrade and lock-tite
New Shift lever + weld/upgrade old one for backup.
Magnetic Drain-Plug.
3mm Tubes
Heated Grips
Bar Snake (might skip this one)
Headlight guard
Waterproof ATO fuse kit
ATO Fan fuse replacement
Chain-Adjuster Nuts replacement
New Chain and Sprocket
Corbin Flat seat.
Shroud nuts enhancements
Temp Sensor by-pass kit for backup.
New Tires (Avon Gripsters ??) I currently run dunlop 607's and love
them despite their short life.
That about sums it up. Suggestions and comments are encouraged.
-Bjoggi in PDX
2003 A17
1999 TL1000R (For Balance)