Matt's New Toy!

[doyoulikeithere]

ya, when I went to these really low 14/47 gears, I really had to force myself to get over that mental barrier of only revving it up to like 5000 rpms or so.
Once I realized I could easily run it all the time at 6500 rpms or more on the highway, I found that I can still ride 85 mph on the highway and have a super low set of gears for the tough trails in the woods.
I commute every day on a 60 mph speed limited highway, and I pass people no prob. the ol bike has 32000 miles on it so far, and on the highway at that speed, it Sounds really good too ;)
I do a lot of miles though. 40 miles of highway commuting everyday almost and then a few more tanks of gas for fun in the woods almost every weekend too
And as you know a tank of gas goes beyond 200 miles So, I ride my klrs at least 15000 miles a year.
My poor old vans dont see much active duty anymore.

Awesome Pictures Matt !!
Get out there and post up some more, and if you get up this way, come for a rip !
https://youtu.be/oZ-nlkP4VcM
[youtube]https://youtu.be/oZ-nlkP4VcM[/youtube]

[mdmead]

Although I've barely ridden it all year, I did make a couple of upgrades just recently.

I realized last year right after I bought it my speedometer was WAY SLOW. New tires improved things a bit, but it was still off. I figured since I usually have my GPS with me, I'd just use it for a speedometer too.

First I found a handlebar mount for my Oregon GPS.



A little research revealed I could purchase a 12v power cord that would power the GPS and not run my internal batteries down. But this meant I needed a place to plug it in. I was going to install a 12v power port and Googled KLR dashboards to see what other people had built. In doing that, I found a great unit for sale on Ebay at the right price. It is actually made locally here in WA and one option is to have a 12v outlet in it. It even comes with wiring and directions on where to plug it in behind the headlight. (You can see the pigtail in the photo above.)



And here it is ready to hit the road.

[doyoulikeithere]

Thats cool Matt. Those KLR speedos are way way off.
I need to mount my smart phone like that, for a gps speedometer like you.

right now, I always refer to my speed in "KLR-o-meters" per hour, lol.

Like, it said I was doin 145 "KLR-o-meters" per hour at 6750 rpms
I think it was really probably more like 130. KM/H.

But I changed my front wheel size and run really low gears too.

keep riding and posting pics Matt. its Lookin good.

[mdmead]

Had a chance to try out my new speedometer on Tuesday.

A nice day, so I took a quick 87 mile ride out to the Ahtanum State Forest west of Yakima (WA) and back. Would have been longer but I underestimated the windchill and found myself underdressed on my upper body.

GPS speedomter and dash board worked perfectly!

[doyoulikeithere]

Looks like you had a great ride Matt. Nice pics.
How do you like the Shinko 244 tires?
I got my bike out again this spring, heres a few shots.

[mdmead]

No complaints with the tires. Couldn't beat the price.

We have had a couple of days *almost* nice enough to go for a ride. (Well, we had a couple of days where it was warm enough but I was busy doing other stuff.) Won't be long if these temps continue.

In the mean time, I've been keeping busy doing other stuff...

Last Saturday my daughter and I were doing this:





But we've mostly been doing this:

[mdmead]

Phuck Photobucket! Bastards.

Anyway, the KLR hasn't been getting the love it deserves the last couple of summers. A few weeks back I took it with me when I went to our cabin and did a great 100+ mile ride. It was probably 65% dirt/gravel and 35% pavement. I much prefer the dirt/gravel!

Right off the bat I noticed at slow speeds the temp gauge was climbing pretty high. Wasn't going into the danger zone, but I didn't recall it ever running this hot. I took a bit of an alternate route back to the cabin and was running pretty slow and noticed the temp gauge had gone into the red; I picked up the pace (to push air through the radiator) the last 1/4 mile and shut it down as soon as I could. After shutting it off, I noticed the electric fan was making a funny noise; turned out the plastic fan had separated from the center mounting bolt and wasn't spinning; the noise was from the fan motor spindle spinning and rattling against the broken fan blade.

So on to Google I went... first to find a replacement fan assembly. Kawi wants nearly $400 for a replacement motor and fan! YIKES! Turns out the problem is somewhat common and an alternate solution is to use a fan from a 500 Ninja which is easy to find on Ebay. (Mine was $20ish shipped.) I ordered it and when it came I just unbolted the fan blade and mounted it up to my old motor. (The new fan is actually a bit different and has an extra blade but everything I read says it works fine.)

As I was reassembling everything, I noticed the hose going from the radiator to the recovery tank was hanging loose at the recovery tank. Upon closer inspection I saw the nipple on the recovery tank was gone/melted. No clue when this happened, but it didn't appear to be recent; hard to tell. Back to Ebay and I found a nice recovery tank for $50 shipped.

I put the bike back together yesterday and all seems well. I ran the bike at idle and let the fan cycle several times while watching the temp gauge stay right in the middle. (It was about 95 degrees outside too.)

Can't wait to get out and ride it again. We have numerous forest fires around here and the smoke has been really thick. Unfortunately the places I want to go and ride are either in or near the fire areas. I'll figure something out.

[astrozam]

Yes. photobucket has ruined many forums with their buy or else demands, hope those fires keep there distance from ya

[mdmead]

Yes. photobucket has ruined many forums with their buy or else demands, hope those fires keep there distance from ya

No way would I pay Photobucket their $400 ransom. Shitty thing for them to do. (I understand the business side, but I've got to believe their way of 'solving' it will end them.)

Dealing with a lot of smoke. Fires are an hour or more west and north and can't get here; we are safe.

[AstroWill]

With the way that they handled it, it seems like they were going for a huge money grab, kinda like they want to boost their price to sell or something by saying "look at the money we made last year".

Personally, I would never trust them with anything in the future.

[mdmead]

Just read this on Overland Expedition:

"If your using Chrome it takes about two minutes to add a plug-in called "Fix Embedded Photobucket Images" and all the dead links across all the different forums you frequent will magically reappear!"

I searched it and downloaded it and it works! (Of course that is until Photobucket decides to do something else I suppose...)