As I get older, people become more and more irritating, and the urge to go far, far away into the woods becomes overwhelming.
When I was a lonesome teenager, I had a little dirt bike that would take me away on weekend trips. Up forest service roads, old forgotten fire roads and cattle trails, until civilization was long out of sight, and then I would unroll my cheap sleeping sack and make a camp fire. Coyotes howling in the night. Powdered cocoa. The scent of two-stroke exhaust. The knowledge that if my beater Honda wouldn’t start in the morning, I’d be missing school on Monday, which seemed like a pleasant scenario.
At a certain age (about 17), dirt bikes became incredibly uncool and I traded in all things moto for snowboards and mountain bikes. But recently, after a long hiatus, I decided to buy a beaten-down Suzuki DR650 and relive those memories. I scoured Craigslist for the cheapest deal I could find, so I wasn’t surprised to notice that the bike had some problems as I rode it home.
It wasn’t until we got into my garage, however, that I started to realize the full horror of this bike’s history.
It was filthy and neglected. It was weeping a lot of oil out of the right-side engine case. The forks were blown out with fork oil all over the front end. Plus it had been entirely and hideously spray painted, the gas tank was leaking fuel, and many of the bolts had been “replaced” with SAE sizes rather than metric, which meant that not only would my metric tools not work, but many of the bolts had simply been cross-threaded into the frame by some unbelievable shit-bag of a previous owner. I have cursed this person so many times that I actually have a pretty elaborate image in my mind of what he looks like, how he talks, how much cow shit is on his shoes, etc. He is by no means a mechanical husband, and I’ve come to hate this man.
First, the fork overhaul. New springs, oil seals, dust seals, and oil.
In order to remove the damper rod bolt for separating the stanchions from the sliders, you’re supposed to use a special tool. Thanks to guru Ron T. Brown, I found out that an air impact wrench on the bolt and a broom handle pushing inside the stanchion works pretty well.
Also avoided a special seal installer tool with some hardware store stuff.
The DR650′s motor has 36 horsepower in its stock form, but it can be persuaded to put out a whopping 40ish hp with an airbox modification, bigger carburetor jets, and a different exhaust. I found a SuperTrapp muffller for cheap on Craigslist and got to work rigging up a new mid pipe section to attach the new muffler to.
By the way, the JB weld that I used to marry these two pipes together did not work, I’ll have to think of something else. The airbox modification is basically to remove a lid on the side,which had already been done to this poor bike, so I was left with the carburetor stuff. Increased the main jet size to 160, changed the needle position as per DynoJet recommendations, and drilled out the plug to access the air mixture screw.
I patched the fuel tank leaks with JB Weld on the outside of the tank, and “Kreem” coat on the inside. Replaced a gasket for the oil leak, adjusted the chain, and replaced a bunch of fasteners with the correct ones. Ready to ride!
