The KLR 650 Build

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 ...

The most vulnerable bits on the KLR are the radiator and engine case. There's no factory protection for the cooling system and the plastic skid plate that ships with the bike is more cosmetic than anything armored.  And while the factory hand guards do well to deflect air, there's little more protection offered since they're open at the bar ends.  There are a number of aftermarket alternatives out there to remedy these issues and after considerable research I decided to go with SW-Motech products.  Much was said about their fit and finish, and the installations required no last-minute alterations or engineering to get everything to match up. And they were right.  The crash bars are powder coated 26.9 mm mild steel tubing engineered to mount at the top frame/subframe junction, the front engine mount aft of the skid plate and then on the bottom of the main frame forward the foot pegs. The accompanying hardware insulates the cage very well ...