Looking to replace my beloved KLR (sold due to contracting orange fever) however much the KLR was a pig in the sand & unhappy @ highway speeds I still miss it, but I would like to improve on it, so I'm considering a Frankenstein build. I have a DR650 with a shot motor & an EX500 left over from my road racing days, it appears that with some fabrication the two could merge, any inmates undertaken such a project?
I never have but I have been thinking about a ninja 650 engine in a KLR. Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2
The Ninja 650 is a great little power plant, light, powerful, compact & reliable, it was actually my first consideration for this project. But there are a couple of drawbacks, the EX650 is fuel injected with down draught intake & high volume air box, neither the KLR or DR can accommodate that layout without major modification, also the EX650 uses a submerged fuel pump ( in the tank) & the 650 hangs in its frame as a stressed member so the mounts are not in an ideal position. I am going forward with the EX500 my plan is to utilize the lower cradle of the EX500 chassis & merge it with the DR main frame. I will post pics soon meanwhile I need to sell my old DT1 to help finance this project.
sanjoh built a dirt ninja from a wrecked 650 ninja. He didn't swap chassis but made a pretty nice rig. There's a lot of such projects under "some assembly required."
Switching from fuel injection to carbs can be done relatively easily but there is still the packaging issue, the EX650 intake is a downdraft which requires alot of room directly above it that would be quite difficult to accommodate on a back bone type chassis used by the KLR & DR. Of course the intake could be altered but I don't have the time or resources to run that to ground, quite simply the EX650 would be a more desirable power plant to use but the EX500 is easier to work with, not to mention less expensive & I already have one. I will be stripping down the DR today anyone looking for a 93 DR650 lump with bad cam let me know.