lecap
Bachelor Dog
Relax, not another KLR issue :mwink:
I came back from town Friday afternoon and as I turned into Edgemead drive the bike just refused to change any gears.
The bike was in second and fortunately no strange noises emanated from the engines bottom end. Also fortunately it is only a kilometre from Bosmansdam to my shop.
After limping home a quick check revealed nothing wrong with the gearshift lever. (It's a KL650C)
Moving the lever also felt ok and normal the box just stubbornly refused to come out of second.
Since I had a certain suspicion I decided to spend the remainder of Friday afternoon with turning my KLR's clutch side into an explosion drawing.
(Instead of going to Kriges and having a well deserved beer)
Necessary steps are drain oil, drain coolant, remove rear brake lever and footpeg and disconnect clutch cable and coolant feed hoses from the pump housing.
Next you take the coolant pump cover off and remove the nut off the impeller. Then turn the impeller off the shaft carefully. Don't just rip it off since you don't want to thrash the delicate and tricky to replace o-ring inside the impeller.
Also be careful not to mess up the coolant seal or to loose the shim under the impeller.
Once the impeller was off and packed away the clutch cover came off in no time and the gasket survived the procedure too - thanks to having beeen soaked in oil before fitment some 10,000km ago.
This revealed the culprit of my melee: The little leaf spring marked 92081 in the piccie had lost its tension and failed to lift the shifter claw up to engage with the selector drum :-\
Lucky me I had another one in one of the boxes full of KLR stuff :thumleft: not that it's expensive but I did not like the idea to try and find out if KMSA has stock.
While I was in there I decided to also check my clutch basket & replace my clutch which felt a bit worn and tired recently: I compared my spare clutch basket to the one fitted, found both to be worn to an equal extent and fitted the "known good" one.
I also finally used the full set of clutch steel discs, friction plates and springs which had graced my spares shelf for the last ten years :
Everything was back together at 19h00 including cutting a new pump cover gasket from a snippet of gasket paper and filling the cooling system and engine oil. 2 hours 30 - not bad.
Very nice to have a bike which is easy to work on :thumleft: and the new clutch feels lekker too :biggrin:
Chances to experience the same problem are rather slim unless you've got a rather high mileage KLR.
Mine's on about 100,000km
There are certain and actually fairly obvious warning signs:
Gearshifts get lumpy, mosty when changing up. Sometimes I did not manage to get down to first or neutral on slowing down too. The last few days before the spring packed up all together I missed gears on a few occasions and the bike would just remain in the lower gear selected before instead of shifting up.
Of course I did not pay attention but thought I must be less sloppy with the lever :-[
In the future I'll probably replace the spring whenever I do water pump seals. While you're in there already the water pump seals typically last some 70,000km and the spring probably does not cost more than 50 bucks.
I came back from town Friday afternoon and as I turned into Edgemead drive the bike just refused to change any gears.
The bike was in second and fortunately no strange noises emanated from the engines bottom end. Also fortunately it is only a kilometre from Bosmansdam to my shop.
After limping home a quick check revealed nothing wrong with the gearshift lever. (It's a KL650C)
Moving the lever also felt ok and normal the box just stubbornly refused to come out of second.
Since I had a certain suspicion I decided to spend the remainder of Friday afternoon with turning my KLR's clutch side into an explosion drawing.
(Instead of going to Kriges and having a well deserved beer)
Necessary steps are drain oil, drain coolant, remove rear brake lever and footpeg and disconnect clutch cable and coolant feed hoses from the pump housing.
Next you take the coolant pump cover off and remove the nut off the impeller. Then turn the impeller off the shaft carefully. Don't just rip it off since you don't want to thrash the delicate and tricky to replace o-ring inside the impeller.
Also be careful not to mess up the coolant seal or to loose the shim under the impeller.
Once the impeller was off and packed away the clutch cover came off in no time and the gasket survived the procedure too - thanks to having beeen soaked in oil before fitment some 10,000km ago.
This revealed the culprit of my melee: The little leaf spring marked 92081 in the piccie had lost its tension and failed to lift the shifter claw up to engage with the selector drum :-\
Lucky me I had another one in one of the boxes full of KLR stuff :thumleft: not that it's expensive but I did not like the idea to try and find out if KMSA has stock.
While I was in there I decided to also check my clutch basket & replace my clutch which felt a bit worn and tired recently: I compared my spare clutch basket to the one fitted, found both to be worn to an equal extent and fitted the "known good" one.
I also finally used the full set of clutch steel discs, friction plates and springs which had graced my spares shelf for the last ten years :
Everything was back together at 19h00 including cutting a new pump cover gasket from a snippet of gasket paper and filling the cooling system and engine oil. 2 hours 30 - not bad.
Very nice to have a bike which is easy to work on :thumleft: and the new clutch feels lekker too :biggrin:
Chances to experience the same problem are rather slim unless you've got a rather high mileage KLR.
Mine's on about 100,000km
There are certain and actually fairly obvious warning signs:
Gearshifts get lumpy, mosty when changing up. Sometimes I did not manage to get down to first or neutral on slowing down too. The last few days before the spring packed up all together I missed gears on a few occasions and the bike would just remain in the lower gear selected before instead of shifting up.
Of course I did not pay attention but thought I must be less sloppy with the lever :-[
In the future I'll probably replace the spring whenever I do water pump seals. While you're in there already
the water pump seals typically last some 70,000km and the spring probably does not cost more than 50 bucks.
