Wrenching

12/06/2016  Tune up  15, 103
Corrected a ground fault from the head temp sensor, replaced the plug with an NGK DR8ES-L, cleaned and oiled the filter and replaced the battery.

 08/02/2016  New Tires, Front and Rear  12,127
Having lost two rear tubes in three days after I replaced the rear tire with a new one, my suspicions weren't satisfied that all was well with the rear tire, and that's not a good feeling on a four hundred mile trip. The front tire was pretty shredded with all the slab miles as well so I though I'd change up the compound to something more pavement friendly and went with Shinko 705s with an 80/20 ratio.

When Rocky Mountain ATV called to tell me my new rubber was mounted, they indicated the rear tube was twisted and pinched and was about to fail. Three tubes. Three different shops. I tried mounting the rear tire when I replaced the third tube but couldn’t get the bead on the rim. Has to be the tire. Cheap POS clone of a Shinko 244. The lugs were already separating with less than a grand on the clock. I’m suspecting load issues. That tire wasn’t made for the load I’m hauling on this KLR.


08/01/2016  Oil Change  12,127 

 06/18/2016  New Rear Tire  10,628
The miles on I-15's rutted concrete along with the load made quick disintegration of the KLR's existing Shinko Trail Master. It's been replaced with a Shinko SR244, a noisy little bastard, but it performs well. You get what you pay for.

06/16/2016  Progressive 465 Monoshock  10,223 
Done with the stock suspension.

06/10/2016  Blue Sea Blade Remote Fuse Box  9,587

 06/08/2016 Progressive Front Springs  9,587
See above.

04/25/2016  Air Filter Clean  8,245

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Progressive 465 Series Monotube Shock

Image
The original plan was to swap out the stock spring and go with a Top Gun 8kg spring upgrade to handle the load. That all changed when a) thinking all along that the adjustable stock spring was at its highest setting, but was in fact bottomed out with a broken pre-load adjuster, and b) when I tried to compress the Top Gun shock with a set of Tusk spring compressors for the install. This is what FUBAR looks like. I figured if the pre-load was busted at its highest setting - 5 - I could live with that being a fixed value, as long as the Top Gun spring compensated that stock spring's shortcomings. But, the Tusk compressors slipped because I didn't tape the spring where they mounted, and because there was no way in bloody hell they were going to compress that spring far enough because they weren't long enough to grab enough spring for the compression in the first place. I was leaving the following afternoon for a 900-mile weekend ride. I ordered a Progressive 465 Series ...
Read more

Naked

Image
Forrest Gump would have something to say about buying a used motorcycle, much like a box of chocolates. Unless you're kicking tires with an 8mm socket in your pocket and the the owner's permission to disrobe the bike, you never know what you've got until you've got it home and have it unclad. I posted earlier about an initial teardown, leaving the headlight/instrument cluster faring still in tact along with the LH radiator shroud. It all came off this past weekend to prep and paint all the plastics. A couple of notes: Large wood screws are no substitute for proper, specified and engineered hardware. There's one instance of these beasts force-threaded into the embedded nuts on the rear frame crossmember to which the rack is attached. This kind of quick and dirty fixing gives me the shivers. And it pisses me off. A trip to the hardware store would have taken care of the problem, even if it were a roadside repair (which, I can't imagine it was). Always a...
Read more

Gone ADV

Image
There's been a motorcycle shaped hole in my life ever since I sold the Blackbird three years ago. It was the last of a string of Hondas, starting with a CL 175, a Nighthawk 450, a CB 750 Custom, a Valkyrie Interstate,  and the CBR1100XX Super Blackbird. I gave up the Blackbird after I snapped off my right biceps tendon, which happened about a year after I snapped off the left one. After ten years of ownership, the Bird was spending more time in the garage than on the road while I was recovering, and somehow I came under the spell of some crazy notion that I was done with motorcycles. So I turned my attention to overlanding. Built a Montero, and an H3 and have been enjoying the adventure ever since. But at 14mpg in the little Hummer, adventuring on my own was overkill and having it as my daily driver was gouging the budget, so about six months ago I started my research on ADVenture motorcycles. Think The Long Way Around. The search was narrowed by a lo...
Read more