500 miles in a day on a KLR will leave your hands tingling and unable to unclench. If you conceive any children within a week of such a ride, they will be born dizzy. "Thumper" is an understatement. That opinion is based on my personal experience riding a 2006 KLR from central WV to western Maine.

That said, I loved my KLR. A jack-of-all-trades/master-of-none bike with huge aftermarket support and simple enough to be worked on by a mechanically incompetent moron (i.e., me).

Remember Allen, 2006 is 16 years ago. I know the KLR hasn't changed a ton. But the riding experience is a bit improved over that time I am pretty sure

I have a couple of old bikes. One is a 1970 Honda CB350 which was ridden from Chicago to Washington state and back. Better him than me! In my 70's I have given up on riding public roads because it is the other guy who will get you. Too many people driving distracted. I have a friend who quit riding in his 50's because he said he was on enough medications that they would never be able to stop the leaks if he had an accident.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
Remember Allen, 2006 is 16 years ago. I know the KLR hasn't changed a ton.

Nope, it hasn't and that's not exactly a bad thing. Saw this video a year or two ago and enjoyed it. Hope you do too.

I've got a 2008 KLR650. Upgraded with typical farkle stuff. The original top end had the oil burning issue, so for about $400, I upgraded to a bored Eagle Mike's 685 jug and lightened piston. That made a HUGE difference in not just the fixing the oil burning, but because the lightened piston, the engine was a good 30% smoother running at all RPM's (which means butt and hand comfort on long rides). I dropped the rear 2 inches and the front dropped 1.25" and added a Corbin low cut seat so my short ass can just barely reach the ground.

I use it as 90% street and 10% dirt road bike. I don't take it out on rougher stuff because I have a Yamaha TW200 for that rough stuff. I went away from knobbies on the KLR's tires because I don't need good off-road tires fooling me into thinking I can ride it worth a crap in rougher terrain! It's simply too big for me in regards too off-road capability. I've picked that heavy pig up too many times and I'm only getting older and weaker. While the weight sucks for offroad, the same weight helps quite a lot at highway speeds. It's still tall and gets blown around, but not nearly as bad as a lighter dual sport.

As for long distance riding, it's not the best, even with the engine upgrade. It's the gearing and lack of 6th gear that hurts it most at faster Interstate speeds. About 80-85mph with stock gearing and a good tailwind, and slip streaming another vehicle is the realistic top end cruising speed with 65-75mph far more reasonable/comfortable. It's a big single thumper, it doesn't like sustained super high revs and has little additional power at those high revs. Big single thumpers are for low end torque, not high sustained revs.

My carburetor version gets about 35-38MPG in the city and I heard the new fuel injected models don't do much if any better since all they really did was take the exact same engine and slap on a fuel injector to the same engine. Sure FI is better, but for the KLR, it's really just a bonus, not an essential and since it gained quite a bit of weight with the newer version, the FI might be a wash. Even the new FI models don't have any real HP.

Don't get me wrong. I love it still. I ride it more than any of my 4 motorcycles, because it combines all my other more-specialized bikes into a semi-competent do-everything sort-of OK bike that can take a tumble without any damage beyond scratches or complaining, and is reliable as hell. It's like my wife bike, with the other being my mistresses. Sure the others are more fun with what they will do, but I aint divorcing the wife for them !

Budget for a doohicky around 2500 miles. They didn’t fix the problem on the new bikes.

12 hour day on a KLR? What did you do that needs to be punished that severely?

I have a Gen 1 KLR and I like it but for most “adventure” (lots of bkacktop with occasional gravel roads, fire trails) type riding, staying with the low cost Kawasaki bikes, the Versys would be better.

I knew that but just wanted a KLR anyway for some reason. I like the rugged simplicity.

For a wealth of information on a KLR650 see this. http://www.sgtmarty.com/mc-home.html......If you have time read his trip log..