KLR 250 Project: Part IV

No pictures this time around.

There hasn’t been much progress on the KLR 250 Project as of late. This is partly due to the weather, and partly due to me waiting for parts.

At the present time, the frame is all stripped, and ready for cleaning and paint preparation. I ran into some rusted threads while removing the forks from the triple tree, and now have to look for a few replacement bolts. Other than that, things went smoothly.

The bike sits in a large cardboard box, tucked in the far corner of the garage. Sometime this week, I should be receiving a new Athena complete gasket kit, which will come handy when I set to rebuild the engine. While the motor started and ran, I found some metal shavings in the oil strainer, so rather than hoping that everything is fine, I’ll take it apart and make sure. Even though the engine has only 14k miles on it, it is twenty years old, so new gaskets and seals may be in order.

Along with the gasket kit, I should be getting new fork seals – a must, since the current forks have absolutely zero dampening ability. I’m hoping that new seals along with fork oil and some compressed air will bring the forks back to life.

I took the kickstart assembly off, and discovered that the spring was, indeed, broken. A new one should be here tomorrow as well.

While this project is going to be more time-consuming that what I thought initially, there aren’t many parts that will need replacing, so the cost to value ratio should remain reasonable. Thanks to Ebay, I scored a clutch cover from a 2005 bike, for only $13.99. The original one has been welded and re-welded, so at this price, I did not have to think twice about acquiring a replacement cover. As an added bonus, I will be able to see the oil level again, as the original had a pretty messy oil window.

 
Since, once all is fixed, the bike will have to be repainted, I’m having fun contemplating different color schemes. Part of me wants to do an all-flat black, but I have to keep in mind the visibility disadvantage, especially in the woods. There has to be some bright color in there somewhere. Feel free to post color scheme recommendations here.