rear brake bracket upgrade/install question

[mike_brown78250]

Question: How quickly will a KLR do the quarter mile? Answer: Not Very. Tonight, I took my KLR to the local dragstrip and did some testing. I forgot to take along my camera, so there's no pics of the nitro- burning action I grabbed my newly cleaned and oiled K&N filter, put my son on the back of the bike and headed for the track. My son's 11 and always up for a trip to the track, even if we weren't taking the Pontiac this time. Luckily we were the only bike there tonight, so there were no 'Busas or Gixxer boys there to laugh at us. Turnout was pretty sparse for a Friday test-n-tune night, with several import-car drivers attending and not too many of my usual 11-13 second race buddies. I kept my helmet on most of the time, just in case. The bike is a stock 1993 KLR650 with just 10,100 miles on the clock. Carb pilot screw is 2.25 turns out, unknown main jetting, but previous owner had a K&N filter on it when I bought it. It might be jetted, as it blackens the rear fender when running a stock air filter. Exhaust is stock.Tires are newish Kenda K270's with 30psi front, 36psi rear, needless to say I didn't do any burnouts with these tires. The night was overcast with a steady temperature of 74 degrees the entire time. Track elevation is 650 ft above sea level. The poor bike had to lug my 6'0", 240 lb butt down the track. As far as the runs go, I'm no motorcycle drag wizard, my specialty is musclecars. I launched as hard as I could without lofting the front wheel, laid down on the tankbag, put my nose on the tach and shifted at 7,000 rpm on every run, to keep things consistent. I didn't play around with different shift points, etc as I mainly wanted to do some comparison testing between the stock air filter and the K&N. First run was right after I arrived at the track, no changes to anything: 60 ft: 2.333 (BIG wheelie on launch, had to back off throttle) 1/8 ET: 10.063 1/8 mph: 71.43 1/4 ET: 16.055 1/4 mph: 80.75 Slower than I imagined, but the bike seemed to be running well and pulling fine. Second run was same as the first, to establish a baseline for filter testing, nothing was changed this run: 60 ft: 2.688 1/8 ET: 10.276 1/8 mph: 71.90 1/4 ET: 16.250 1/4 mph: 81.08 Faster mph, slower ET, yawn. Time to make some changes. For the next two runs, I changed out the stock air filter for the K&N: 60 ft: 2.193 (Another wheelie, rode it out) 1/8 ET: 9.834 1/8 mph: 71.43 1/4 ET: 15.830 1/4 mph: 80.93 Woohoo! into the 15's! Another run to back it up: 60 ft: 2.208 1/8 ET: 9.785 1/8 mph: 72.10 1/4 ET: 15.721 1/4 mph: 81.83 OK, so it appears the K&N is good for at least a couple of tenths in the quarter mile! Then I got greedy and wanted even more of this fast and furious action, so I removed the air box door and right side cover and ran a couple of runs with the K&N exposed. This made the KLR sound incredibly nasty and cool, with a nice snarly intake sound when revved. The kids in their Civics pheared me as I rolled into the staging lanes: 60 ft: 2.348 (Wheeeeeelie time!) 1/8 ET: 9.831 1/8 mph: 74.02 1/4 ET: 15.622 1/4 mph: 83.96 Yee Haw! another couple of tenths gained! Made another run just to be sure: 60 ft: 2.355 1/8 ET: 9.735 1/8 mph: 74.39 1/4 ET: 15.493 1/4 mph: 84.44 Between the performance gains and the snarl, I'm tempted to leave the airbox door off all the time unless I'm going into water. Maybe I'll just open up the top of the box with a holesaw. All in all, I had a lot of fun at the track tonight, even though I went slower than I've ever gone before. I tried to stay awake throughout the runs, but felt myself dozing off a bit at the 1/8 mile point a few times To sum up: The KLR is no drag bike (duh, like we didn't know that already). A fresh clean K&N filter is worth a couple tenths, as is an open airbox, at least on this particular bike. I might order a dynojet kit and go back to the track one day to tune for peak power, also play with shift points, etc.

[KLR Rider - Scott Adams]

----- Original Message ----- From: "mike_brown78250" > To sum up: The KLR is no drag bike (duh, like we didn't know that > already). A fresh clean K&N filter is worth a couple tenths, as is an > open airbox, at least on this particular bike. I might order a > dynojet kit and go back to the track one day to tune for peak power, > also play with shift points, etc. Mike - I wonder, and am going to be based on Dyno results on a BMW k75 and K&N (though every engine is different), if the increase was your experience and comfort level?!?!?! My money would say that if you put the stock back on and did a 7th and 8th run you would have stayed in the mid 15's? -Scott

[kdxkawboy@aol.com]

In a message dated 2003-10-10 10:13:46 PM Pacific Daylight Time, mikebrown@... writes:

> First run was right after I arrived at the track, no changes to > anything: > > 60 ft: 2.333 (BIG wheelie on launch, had to back off throttle) > 1/8 ET: 10.063 > 1/8 mph: 71.43 > 1/4 ET: 16.055 > 1/4 mph: 80.75 > >

Not bad. MCN test riders didn't do much better than the high 14s for their 1/4 time. Pat G'ville, Nv [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

[mike_brown78250]

--- In DSN_klr650@yahoogroups.com, "KLR Rider - Scott Adams" wrote:

> >My money would say that if you put the stock back > on and did a 7th and 8th run you would have stayed in the mid 15's? > > -Scott

You're probably very right, Scott. I meant to do a run with everything back to stock, but ran out of time. I know that with practice and lots of runs, experience counts for a lot at the strip.

[Mark St.Hilaire, Sr]

> brake arm is a little loose on the shaft. Can anyone provide insight > on this? How does this ring fit back into this setup? It seems like > it shoould be providing some tension.

Mark, I've just uploaded a picture of the spring in place on my bike. As you'll see, one end hooks onto the tab, and the straight end goes up against the frame tube: http://klr6500.tripod.com/rearbrakespring.jpg Mark Glitter is coined to meet the moment's rage; Genuine lives on from age to age. - Goethe's "Faust" KLR650 Motorcycle Pages: http://klr6500.tripod.com/ HomePage: http://users.adelphia.net/~msaint/index.html My Adelphia Email can be "iffy." If you don't get a response, please try: KLR6500@...