- Joined
- Feb 6, 2006
- Messages
- 10,577
- Reaction score
- 4,187
- Location
- Cape Town, deep in the lentils
- Bike
- KTM 990 Adventure
I refreshed my bike in December, 2004 950 Refresh putting a 990 Super Duke engine into a 2004 950 frame. Since then I’ve ridden it in a heap of technical stuff, done a 2 day rally and recently been on a 3000km ride. Maybe 7000k’s in total?
In slower stuff, the engine was great. Very snappy, loads of torque, refuses to stall and lots of control. The downside is that with a road bike gearbox the spacing of the gears is not great for dual sport. In the faster stuff it’s like riding around in 5th all the time. It’s very bearable but with the price of fuel rocketing it is getting old quick. On the recent trip I had to do 1200km’s in a day. The entire day was with a terrible headwind. At one stage I put a 42 litres through the bike doing about 170kph. That got me 350kms at 7.41 km/l. This is Landcruiser territory. Ok, so I have Keihin FCR pumper carbs, but still, it is a little over the top.
Riding offroad with the SD gears takes some recalibration. The rev distance between the gears for the same speed is small, so down changing is a two cog affair to get usable engine braking. Accelerating, I started to ride revs instead of torque. Or rowing the gearbox to get to where I needed to be. Nothing game breaking but all this got me to wondering about getting a change of gearbox.
As KTM doesn’t have a technical help desk for plebes, conventional wisdom on the internet is that the gerarboxes are not swappable. All the parts numbers are different and the cases have been changed slightly from the earlier to later years. I have a 2008 SD engine. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find out if it was possible and came up with a big fat zero. I was keen at the least to just change 6th gear. Sort of like an overdrive. If I could just do that then I could easily live with the rest. Buying a new gear is not cheap.
One evening, I got fed up and thought, “let’s just see if at least 6th gear in my old 950 engine is ok?”. So I headed into the garage to dig out my old 950 engine looking very sorry for itself to find out.
Getting the baked on sand off was a bit of a mission.
It was still very clean with little sign of a good 65 000km of fun.
There was however, the evidence of where my oil had been weeping on the rear cylinder and the original reason I changed the engine.
Still, not bad for a heavily used engine!
This is what I came for;
4 hours later, one gearbox harvested. It looked mint! All the gears and dogs have little or no wear!. Impressive designing these Austrians.
Well….
Taking inspiration from Pyndon, Sakurama, Flanny and the boys all doing great projects, I thought there is only one way to find out if these adventure gears will work. So lying to myself that as the engine needed a service, I might as well take a look see, a few nights later I took the plunge.
It is amazing how fast a bike can be taken apart compared to putting it back together again.
Still not too late to turn back…
Too late…
As we say in the vernacular, Mooi!
Trying to keep it all tidy and not lose or mix stuff, zip locks are excellent.
My solution to the cam chain bolt issue
This looks familiar
Next, “I wonder if I can use more than just 6th?”
In slower stuff, the engine was great. Very snappy, loads of torque, refuses to stall and lots of control. The downside is that with a road bike gearbox the spacing of the gears is not great for dual sport. In the faster stuff it’s like riding around in 5th all the time. It’s very bearable but with the price of fuel rocketing it is getting old quick. On the recent trip I had to do 1200km’s in a day. The entire day was with a terrible headwind. At one stage I put a 42 litres through the bike doing about 170kph. That got me 350kms at 7.41 km/l. This is Landcruiser territory. Ok, so I have Keihin FCR pumper carbs, but still, it is a little over the top.
Riding offroad with the SD gears takes some recalibration. The rev distance between the gears for the same speed is small, so down changing is a two cog affair to get usable engine braking. Accelerating, I started to ride revs instead of torque. Or rowing the gearbox to get to where I needed to be. Nothing game breaking but all this got me to wondering about getting a change of gearbox.
As KTM doesn’t have a technical help desk for plebes, conventional wisdom on the internet is that the gerarboxes are not swappable. All the parts numbers are different and the cases have been changed slightly from the earlier to later years. I have a 2008 SD engine. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find out if it was possible and came up with a big fat zero. I was keen at the least to just change 6th gear. Sort of like an overdrive. If I could just do that then I could easily live with the rest. Buying a new gear is not cheap.
One evening, I got fed up and thought, “let’s just see if at least 6th gear in my old 950 engine is ok?”. So I headed into the garage to dig out my old 950 engine looking very sorry for itself to find out.
Getting the baked on sand off was a bit of a mission.
It was still very clean with little sign of a good 65 000km of fun.
There was however, the evidence of where my oil had been weeping on the rear cylinder and the original reason I changed the engine.
Still, not bad for a heavily used engine!
This is what I came for;
4 hours later, one gearbox harvested. It looked mint! All the gears and dogs have little or no wear!. Impressive designing these Austrians.
Well….
Taking inspiration from Pyndon, Sakurama, Flanny and the boys all doing great projects, I thought there is only one way to find out if these adventure gears will work. So lying to myself that as the engine needed a service, I might as well take a look see, a few nights later I took the plunge.
It is amazing how fast a bike can be taken apart compared to putting it back together again.
Still not too late to turn back…
Too late…
As we say in the vernacular, Mooi!
Trying to keep it all tidy and not lose or mix stuff, zip locks are excellent.
My solution to the cam chain bolt issue
This looks familiar
Next, “I wonder if I can use more than just 6th?”
