It’s been quite a while since I last posted. But I have been making some progress on the KLR. I’ve mostly been focusing on dissasembling the new engine in order to do the 685 kit on it. I’m using the Schnitz Racing kit. I bought this engine stand off of Revzilla in hopes that it would be able to hold the new KLR engine on my workbench and it actually works perfectly:

Last weekend I went on a couple Triumph demo rides at Erico Motorsports in Denver. They had four different bikes to ride although I only had time to ride two of them. The dealership is in a very urban part of Denver and the demo ride itself was kind of hairy–Lots of dodging cars and navigating through traffic. But, all in all it was a fun time. The first bike I rode was a 2023 Triumph Tiger 850:

The rebuild of the KLR continues. Or, perhaps I should say, the teardown of the KLR continues. This post will be focusing on the replacing of various bits and bobs that have broken while I was doing the teardown (mostly due to user error). First up is the fan switch for the radiator, which as you can see in the picture below, got quite mangled when I was trying to just unplug it from the radiator.

It’s been a while since I last posted but I haven’t been sitting idle! A few months ago I purchased this 2008 Kawasaki KLR with a blown up engine off of craigslist. And when I say blown up, I mean blown up! This was what the previous owner shared with me from his mechanic who looked at it: When removing the cylinder head he noted that both intake valves are bent from hitting the piston When flywheel mounting hardware was removed the flywheel fell out of position The cylinder head has a lot of metal/debris and is rendered unusable Exhaust camshaft is rendered unusable He noted there are many steel and aluminum chunks of metal in the bottom end Magneto is damaged and not usable So, all that being said I decided to buy a replacement engine instead of trying to rebuild the old one.

I drive a 2016 Chevy Colorado pickup truck and when I bought it used it didn’t have any sideboards on it. My three year old, despite being tall for his age, can’t climb into the back seat on his own because the truck is too tall. I was looking arond for sideboards and found a lot of expensive options but ultimately decided to try out some cheap ebay nerf bars from “Off Road Truck Mart” after reading in the forums that people had had good luck with them.