Before we get started, I was digging through my smugmug and came across another set of pics of the bikes, from a trip I took to Dumont Dunes in 2006. I'll keep sprinkling them in as appropriate, but here's a few that I thought were neat: As I work on the rebuild, it's been cool to have been around these things pretty much from the moment of conception. Before we can get into the build, the starting point is what we're after. GP and I had discussed this over a <s>long candlelit dinner</s> manly beer, and come to the same conclusion. The strengths of this bike are that it's reliable, lightweight, has a ton of gas without losing it's balance and composure, is comfortable, and cool as hell. Neither of us want a mantlepiece, so we're not after a rebuild to original spec to freeze the bike in time at it's moment of glory. Rather, we both think these things will be outstanding bikes to tour the backcountry with, in all likelyhood south of the border where gas matters. To that end, there were some admitted shortcomings in the original bikes that we aren't going to repeat, probably the biggest of these being the skidplates, which were a last minute "we're out of time so this will have to work" type of affair. The chassis is pretty straightforward- they raced with 660 front ends but those are unobtainable so we're going with stock RFS stuff. Otherwise, they were well sorted and we'll just going to use what's there. The engine presents a lot of options. After extensive research, we both decided that the most desireable option would be a stroked 525, for 552 in displacement. This will make a torquey motor that will happily pull tall gearing and lope along at 70mph, but without the questionmarks that the big bore motors carry with them (which need revs to breathe, which is where RFS motors go to die). Unfortunately, KTM stopped making the cranks needed- More on that later. Our approach is the same, too. Get the thing back together and running, then piece by piece address shortcomings or updates. To that end, here has been my shop for the last month: I had lofty goals of having a running bike when Gaspipe arrived. Clearly, that was not to be.
A brand new bike, all beautiful and shiny, is only potential - and there's nothing worse than wasted potential! You probably have so many resources at yer disposal, and still no stroker cranks... none of the rally blokes like these have em? http://www.scotlandtodakar.com/bike_spec.html http://www.rallymanagementservices.com/motoktmrallypro.html etc.
This is far from dead - in fact, I'm just starting to turn my attention to this project. I'm accumulating bits here and there (and a whole 'nother '05 525EXC bike...) to get this bike going again. I've spent a good deal of time thinking about various aspects of the things I need to fabricate and procure, and I'm beginning to get a handle on it now. And when it's done, it should be a reasonable facsimile of it's former glory, but saddled with rider of significantly less talent than the former pilot of old #98, Mike Krynock. Back to work, but some pics soon.....
I've been THIS close to getting mine running for about 3 weeks now, which I guess means my judgment of what's left is off, but I think I knew that already. Anyway, a funny story from the trenches: I'm really bad at wiring and electrical "stuff". I'm looking at the harness and absolutely can't make heads or tails of it, so I give in and call Niles (team mechanic) for advice. As it happens, we were living in parallel yet opposite worlds- as I called, Neil Diamond was blaring in the background. Niles had the Kinks going, working on a Virago 750 or somesuch, we discussed and agreed that Diamond and a Rallybike was almost perfectly the opposite of his situation. I digress. I asked Niles about the harness and he started laughing. Apparently, the harness is weird to start with becuase the Baja Designs stator runs everything on DC. Then, to make it extra special, Charlie wired everything with only one color wire (I already knew this) and for some wires, ran extras parallel for use if there were a short on the primary (this had me pretty confused). Niles' advice? "Start over". I think I've got it sorted far enough to start it, but I'm going to need help with this. Any electrical gurus in the front range? I pay in Beer and Pizza!
Could you just start with a stock wiring harness?????? Tons of bikes being parted out over on you know where.
Nope it wont fit with the special stator they use. I guess that the bajadesigns DC stator+reg+rec is used. Then it´s quite simple, start by opening all cable wrapping and think. Then first wire ignition which should be easy since nothing should be changed since original. Then wrap all ignition in own tubes separated from lighting, so that you wont mix it up with lighting when you stand in the middle of nowhere trying to locate an electrical problem. Then comes lighting and since it´s a bajadesigns everything is fed to the reg/rec and from there to the battery. From the battery you should feed it to a nice heavy duty fuseblock easily accessible. From there I recommend that you make 6 groups: 1. Front lighting 2. Navigation 3. Backup to navigation 4. E-start 5. Rear light 6. Indicators By this method it´s easy just to remove the fuse from non necessary groups and just limp home with working navigation and perhaps lighting in case that something breaks down.
GP and Ned, Reading about both of you finding and fixing problems could be a great learning experience. Or it could just confuse the mortals....:huh
Hola Ned, The big issue is that the KTM runs the lighting on AC, and the bike is equipped with only a little AC regulator for that. The easy way out that costs $$ is just setting the whole bike up for DC power. If you want to spend money, Baja Designs' wire harness add-ons for the dual sport kit and the DC rectifier/regulator will do it. You need the HD R/R. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it yet. I might just make my own harness. I'm likely going to rewind my stator to get around 200 watts, so it'll be similar to the BD one you have. We probably ought to talk on the phone on some of this, since I'll grow a beard trying to type it all.
I forgot to tell you GP, I already did the DC mod with a TrailTech reg/rect. I've been running a HID lighting setup.
Bear in mind that one of the few weak points of the 05 motors is solder that melts at too low a temperature. The Baja Designs unit addresses that shortcoming as well as providing extra power. I've got the BD R/R already. I think the bike is generally wired like borsiin helpfully suggests (thanks! I may have questions later) except I haven't figured out the exact logic of what goes where, and, I'm going to simplify a bit from true rally format in that I don't need some of the equipment it's currently wired for (Sentinel, ASO GPS, etc). I'd like to look at the BD Fuego HID 4" lights and see if those are an option to replace the stock 640 lights... figuring out lighting is on my list but pretty far down right now, so hopefully you'll beat me to it and I can just copy what you do. :lookingatneighborstestandfillingintheiranswers
