But none of them are insurmountable.
I've spent some time getting to grips with the new KLR 250 and it's a bit of a mixed bag. At first glance it looks like a complete horror-show. It has a pretty hideous blue and white rattle-can paint-job and what isn't blue and white has been sprayed black and all that black is flaking and peeling off.
Lots of bits have been smashed up including the rear tail-light and the mudguard it sits on, the clocks, the front brake master cylinder, the handlebars, the throttle-tube, the left-hand switch-gear and bizarrely, the airbox! And the choke cable has been torn out of the carb, damaging the carb body in the process. This all makes me a bit sad 'cos most of that shit really needs to be replaced if the thing is to perform off-road and also be road legal.
In addition to this the wiring is in a bit of a state and the carburetor is all over the shop.
On the other hand, looking at the wheels and forks suggests that the bike has relatively low mileage and was probably stored indoors for most of its life. The wheels aren't showroom, but they aren't bad at all. Apart from the fucking enormous ding in the rear rim. The brakes look pretty good too.
The engine looks okay from what I've seen. There is some very minor pitting on the cam lobes but I don't think it's a problem and the inside of the motor is pretty clean and there's no sign of bodging on the engine - y'know, gutter bolts, blue gasket, plumbers tape, chemical metal etc.
So I adjusted the valves, cleaned the corrosion off the coil, fitted a new HT lead, HT cap and spark plug, filled it with fresh petrol and it started on the second kick! It's a bit smokey. The pure and innocent child in me believes this is petrol smoke from the out-of-adjustment carb. The cynical grown-up suspects that it may well need a top-end rebuild (the compression test was inconclusive - there is compression, but its at the low end of the acceptable range, but there is also some kind of automatic decompressor on the kick start, so I don't know...)
I think the wiring loom is salvageable. There's a fault in the lighting circuit but I'm confident I can find it and I'll probably replace all the old connector blocks with new waterproof ones rather than build a new loom from scratch.
So I've ordered some service parts and some replacement parts from ebay - including a carburetor, a KMX front master cylinder and a genuine Kawasaki NOS left-hand switch-gear unit that I managed to snag for less than the cost of a second-hand item from a breaker.
It remains to be seen if this is going to be a quick tidy-up or another project, to add to my list of money and time eating projects.
Watch this space...
#KLR250 #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
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| Ninety nine problems, blue and white paint being one... |
I've spent some time getting to grips with the new KLR 250 and it's a bit of a mixed bag. At first glance it looks like a complete horror-show. It has a pretty hideous blue and white rattle-can paint-job and what isn't blue and white has been sprayed black and all that black is flaking and peeling off.
Lots of bits have been smashed up including the rear tail-light and the mudguard it sits on, the clocks, the front brake master cylinder, the handlebars, the throttle-tube, the left-hand switch-gear and bizarrely, the airbox! And the choke cable has been torn out of the carb, damaging the carb body in the process. This all makes me a bit sad 'cos most of that shit really needs to be replaced if the thing is to perform off-road and also be road legal.
In addition to this the wiring is in a bit of a state and the carburetor is all over the shop.
On the other hand, looking at the wheels and forks suggests that the bike has relatively low mileage and was probably stored indoors for most of its life. The wheels aren't showroom, but they aren't bad at all. Apart from the fucking enormous ding in the rear rim. The brakes look pretty good too.
The engine looks okay from what I've seen. There is some very minor pitting on the cam lobes but I don't think it's a problem and the inside of the motor is pretty clean and there's no sign of bodging on the engine - y'know, gutter bolts, blue gasket, plumbers tape, chemical metal etc.
So I adjusted the valves, cleaned the corrosion off the coil, fitted a new HT lead, HT cap and spark plug, filled it with fresh petrol and it started on the second kick! It's a bit smokey. The pure and innocent child in me believes this is petrol smoke from the out-of-adjustment carb. The cynical grown-up suspects that it may well need a top-end rebuild (the compression test was inconclusive - there is compression, but its at the low end of the acceptable range, but there is also some kind of automatic decompressor on the kick start, so I don't know...)
I think the wiring loom is salvageable. There's a fault in the lighting circuit but I'm confident I can find it and I'll probably replace all the old connector blocks with new waterproof ones rather than build a new loom from scratch.
So I've ordered some service parts and some replacement parts from ebay - including a carburetor, a KMX front master cylinder and a genuine Kawasaki NOS left-hand switch-gear unit that I managed to snag for less than the cost of a second-hand item from a breaker.
It remains to be seen if this is going to be a quick tidy-up or another project, to add to my list of money and time eating projects.
Watch this space...
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| Cams are showing very slight marking on the lobes, but I've run bikes with much worse! |
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| The wiring is nearly twenty five years old. There are some problems and some poorly executed repairs but nothing scary. |
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| The clocks, along with most of the rest of the stuff that lived near the handlebars, have been murdered. |
#KLR250 #Mercenary #MercenaryGarage
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