Wilsons Sandbox

All, Found a source for new microfiche readers for $20.00 (plus $5.00 shipping). Company is called Surplus Shed (www.surplusshed.com) and they sell surplus electronic equipment. Reader is in their closeout section. Unit is listed as being portable but the battery will not take a charge - no matter as it works great plugged into a wall outlet. Comes with spare bulb as well. Size is that on a briefcase. Neat feature is the ability to remove the screen and project the image onto a wall for enlargement purposes. Image can also be seen fine with built in screen. Bill Richardson Salt Lake City, Utah

Hello: Since my house was surrounded by 2-3" of fresh snow with temps in the 20's and 30's this weekend, I decided to do a little PM and stuff on my 99 KLR. One of the items on my list was to eliminate the CA-model stuff which came on my bike. I don't live in CA and therefore am not required to have it. My guess is that the only purpose of this entire system is so that if you overfill your bike the fuel and/or fuel vapor is not vented to the atmosphere. It doesn't appear to do anything else. Several other members have stated that they've done the deed but I have not yet seen a well documented write up. I'm going to state what I did and see if I missed anything. I may mis-state something as I don't have the bike in front of me right now. If you notice a discrepency please let me know. ------------------ A quick look at the KLR-650 supplement will show you all the extra stuff a CA model has. Basically this involves a fuel/vapor separator which looks like a slightly-bigger-than-normal fuel filter that's black in color. It also includes a charcoal cannister and assorted plumbing that sits on the left-rear of the bike up near the rear fender. Plumbing: --------- The gas tank on a KLR has 2 vent lines that come out of it. I'm guessing that on a NON-CA model they just dangle down below the bike and don't connect to anything (true?). On a CA model both go to to the fuel/vapor separator. I pulled these off of the fuel/vapor separator. My tank vent hoses just drop down under the tank and point down towards the shock and lower frame. The fuel-vapor separator has 4 hoses. Two of them come from the tank vent lines. The third comes from a t-fitting off the vacumn line at the fuel petcock on the tank. I disconnected this line at the fuel/separator end and let it also dangle down towards the lower part of the bike. It now vents to nothing. The fourth line goes from the fuel/vapor separator to the charcoal cannister. I removed this as well. There is another larger vent line that goes from the airbox to the charcoal cannister as well. I cut this and plugged it. I can't tell if it's an input or output only. I think it's output only but it goes to the part of the airbox that is already filtered (i.e. the portion of the airbox towards the front of the bike that should have air already filtered by the air filter) so if it did suck air in it would not get filtered. Bike seems to run okay with this plugged. Hardware: --------- Both the fuel/vapor separator and charcoal cannister and it's mounting equipment get removed. The fuel/vapor separator is just attached by a rubber mounting band. I then dremelled off the mounting bracket as well. Again, it has 4 hoses connected: 2 from the gas tank vents, 1 from the fuel petcock vacumn line, and 1 to the charcoal cannister. If you don't want to dremel off the small black frame which hold the separator, you could remove the plastic cover that covers the side-stand cable/switch and do it there. But it looks as if the bracket is integral to providing some structure in there so I decided to just dremel it off and not bother with playing with stuff near the sidestand switch. Your call. The charcoal cannister has two lines to it. One from the fuel/vapor separator and one from the airbox. I removed both of these lines and cut the line from the airbox back about 12" and plugged it with the end from a Bic pen. I safety wired it shut. I weighed the entire bunch of hardware, screws, and plumbing and it comes to 2 1/4 pounds. If there's a place on one of the KLR sites I'd be glad to include pictures and a better writeup if someone wants it. I have no place to do this. Tom Vervaeke A13 (no longer A13-CA) ===== ========================================================= Tom Vervaeke, Colorado, USA |Email: tom_vervaeke@... '99 Kawasaki KLR-650, 5.0K |Ph: 719-495-2152 (home) '96 BMW R1100GS, Black 61.5K|Ph: 719-590-2133 (work) Colorado DualSporters Group |Ph: 719-650-4578 (cell/riding) Try: http://www.egroups.com/group/Colorado-Dualsporters ========================================================= __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/