one more doohickey bites the dust
Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 5:47 pm
Last summer I rode my new (2007) KLR across North America and shipped
it from New York to Europe. There (and in North Africa), I rambled
around for several months, trying to evade the incessant cold winds,
rain and snow which followed me everywhere I went. In January I left
the bike in Andalusia, in the care of a Horizons Unlimited participant
who also happens to be a mechanic (and all-around Nice Guy). He is
doing some work on the bike in preparation for my return, using parts
sourced locally as well as some which I shipped over.
On my way across Canada last summer at about 9000 miles the bike died
without warning or preamble: late at night, on a lonely highway, in
the cold, just as it started raining, without cellphone coverage. You
can imagine the rest: a good samaritan, hundreds of dollars worth of
towing, hotel bills, car rentals, revised vacation plans......etc.
etc. etc.
Details of exactly what happened mechanically are sketchy. Repairs
were done under warranty in a small town in North Ontario, and the
service writer there described a doohickey failure which caused the
timing chain to jump and break, trashing valves, guides, piston, the
cylinder head itself, and various ancillary parts. Repairs took a
long time: parts were declared unavailable (though they were easily
found across the border in the States) and had to be ordered from
Japan. I was dismayed, but resigned, to find that the dealership
doing the repairs refused to install aftermarket parts; they replaced
the destroyed doohickey and spring with identical Kawasaki parts,
zipped everything shut again and had me sign off on the (free) repair.
This took about 4 weeks altogether, but it was 8 weeks before I
finally got the bike to Munich and began riding again.
So .following a month or two of waylaid plans, I retrieved my bike and
carried on with my trip. In another ten thousand miles, more or less,
the bike performed reasonably well, with only a few instances of
transitory (and still mysterious) electrical and mechanical failures.
Of course, that brand new doohickey was never far from my
consciousness. Every 2000 miles I changed my oil and adjusted the
balancer mechanism per Kawasaki instructions, and every time I did so
I wondered about the absence of any indication that anything was
happening inside the engine case when I did so. I tried not to think
about this too carefully, particularly when far afield.
Fast forward to mid-June. My friend in Spain has just replaced the
doohickey the one installed last fall in North Ontario with the Eagle
Mike upgrade kit I sent over. The Kawasaki part was broken, and he
had to open the right case to fish the missing piece out of the engine
sump. In so doing, he was also able to retrieve a washer mysteriously
also present in the sump, which had been too big to fish out from the
left side. Photos (linked, or cut and paste):
http://autos.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/DSN_KLR650/photos/view/a044?b=1
and
http://autos.ph.groups.yahoo.com/group/DSN_KLR650/photos/view/a044?b=2 .
He wonders whether someone recognizes the washer in the second photo,
or would like to speculate about its history: an artifact of the
warranty repairs? Of the original assembly? I know it didn't fall
down the cam tunnel during the valve adjustment, because I did this
myself (I'm not much of a mechanic, but I'm very attentive). I'll
post separately asking more succinctly if anyone can identify the washer.
Add my voice to the chorus encouraging all and sundry to deal with
their doohickey before it deals with you!
FWIW, I'm returning to Europe in another month or two to resume my tour.
Enjoy,
Mark