are you interested

[game_warden2]

Just wondering if anyone has a spare handle bar forsale? I was involved in a hit run by a deer in Middlebury, VT this past weekend. Fortunately, I am only sore and little bruised. Bike was saved by side panniers, except for handle bars, brake lever, and kill switch. Appreciate any help, MIke

[takes2serious]

--- In DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com, "game_warden2" wrote:

> Just wondering if anyone has a spare handle bar forsale? I was > involved in a hit run by a deer in Middlebury, VT this past weekend.

--- I certainly hope you hit him back. Mike. I threw out my stock bars after I bent them while installing aftermarket hand guards. Based on how easy they were to bend, I replaced them with a Renthal bar. Unless you can find a donor for next to nothing, I would recommend you go to an aftermarket aluminum bar like the Renthal or Pro Taper.

[Pat Schmid]

Last month I helped in the pits for a friend that ran the BITD Vegas to Reno race in the ironman class. One of the offshots has been a dicsussion of approaching Casey Folkes with the idea of running a class for KLRs. We are looking to see if there is enough interest for Casey to consider. Here is what we have outlined as the proposal: The KLR class would be along the lines of the SCORE Class 11 for stock dune buggies, a motorcycle version of the Rhino UHV Class Casey offered this year. Victory in this class would be getting to the finish before timing out. Bikes would be stock but for Race Tech Valves, PS Springs, Fork Braces, after market shock, lowering links (no rising links), seat, rims, spokes, gas tank and exhaust. Once again the idea is not to be on racing machines but to be doing this on pretty much a stock bike for the challenge of trying to beat a time limit. Might consider requireing MT21s or Dunlop 606s - stick to DOT knobbies to stay with the spirit of the class. It would be strictly an amateur class. Most likely breakdown would be for teams and ironman. On the typical BITD race the trucks and buggies start 3 hours after the last motorcycle/quad and the last motorcycle finishes well in front of the first truck/buggy so if the KLRs can hold to a 30 mph average they should be able to complete the race before being overtaken by the BIG boys - my buddy who just turned 40 finished outside the top ten in his class on the Terrible Town 250. He was riding a KTM525 and took about 5.5 hours to do the 250 miles so we think a 30 mph average is reasonable idea of what a not necessarily great, but a 'solid' rider could do on a KLR, making for about an 8 hour ride. Your typical BITD course is mostly run open what we all would call fast fire roads. Sometimes the roads are soft sand, sometimes they are nasty silt beds and sometimes they are very rocky, but overall there is much more more 'easy' stuff than nasty - these guys are into overall speed so what is technically nasty is very short so as not to drag the overall average down. For our class, the deep sand and silt beds would be ugly stuff. Our mushy suspension would make the rocky stuff not so bad. Sand would be a matter of stamina but the silt beds I expect the KLRs would have to back off and roll through them or work side routes. Nothing worse than what guys are running down in Baja on their rides, so I think this would be something a lot of you could do. And if Casey were to go for it, I think it would something fantastic for the KLR community to jump into. While I expect folks will discuss this, improve on the ideas we've come up with so far - just keep the improvements within the spirit of doing it with a fairly stock KLR. And if you would seriously consider doing this series (its mostly in southern Nevada) send me an email. When we have an idea of what might be the interest my buddy will talk with Casey. BTW, the seed for this idea came from the V-t-R pre-run. From Lunning north they used roads I've ridden many times on my KLR, that's my winter riding area. We got to comparing notes and this idea sort of grew on us. Pat G'ville, NV