On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Johnny wrote:
> My 1st post here , I just bought a brand new 2004 KLR650 on Saturday .
>
> Love the bike , but i'm not too fond of Red , is there any way to
> maybe paint the plastic ? I don't mind the red on the tank , just the
> bike being red as a whole bothers me . Any suggestions would be great .
I just painted a small part of my front fender with Krylon Fusion out of a
rattlecan. It appears to work as advertised, though I'm trying to decide
whether the color I scored at Wal-mart (a brilliant grass-green) is what I
want my KLR to be.
Note that surface preparation is very important. While the Krylon folks
say you don't need to sand and prep your plastic in order to use their
product, my own experience says that you need to first give it a good
washing with a good detergent then rinse and dry, then you need to at
least give it a light sanding to get rid of any rough areas, then wipe it
down with alcohol (the denatured kind is cheap but drugstore isopropyl
works too) and once that's done, go over it with a sticky cloth to get any
sanding residue off. On the small area of the fender I painted, I followed
the directions on the can (except I rinsed the area with alcohol first)
and you can see some rough areas where the plastic had eroded more than
the Krylon will fill, and there's a place where a speck of sand or dirt
caused a bump. So surface prep is important. Tomorrow I'm going to go out
and look at my fender again in the light of day and decide whether I'm
going to paint all my plastic that bright green color, or go find a more
subdued green in the Krylon pallete.
> and another question does anyone know if the KLR650 has a fuse box
> that allows auxiliary wiring ? I'm considering adding an LED light kit
> to the engine .
The KLR has no "fuse box" as such, just random fuse holders in random
places (two under the seat, and one under the right front shroud).
However, Tammy at
http://www.totallywiredcycle.com has a kit that adds
one.
Also, Radio Shack has ATO-type fuse holders. I added a cigarette outlet to
my KLR by getting a weathertight outlet from Wal-Mart, some 16ga wire,
some weatherproof crimp-on connectors, and one of these fuse holders wired
straight to the battery. I use this to drive my air pump thus did not want
to have it switched by the ignition switch.
-E