Aftermarket Equipment List

Changes I made to my 2007 Kawasaki KLR 650

Aftermarket Equipment List
By Manufacture/Vendor

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Happy Trails Motorcycle Products
Happy-trail.com
Doohickey (Balancer Idler Lever and Spring Upgrade)
Rear Master Cylinder Guard
Aluminum Skid Plate
Pivot Peqz Mark 2
Engine Guard Highway Pegs
Coolant Reservoir – Radiator Guard Combination
Carburetor Vent Kit
Aluminum Top Box
T2 Top Plate
Oversized 320 mm Front Disk Rotor
L.E.D. Tail Light Conversion Kit
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Motorcycle Accessory Supply House
KLR650.com
IMS 6.6 Gallon Fuel Tank
Acerbis Locking Gas Cap
Air Filter Skins
Odyssey – No Maintenance Battery
Spare Brake and Clutch Levers
Maier Aluminum Brush Guards
Maier Faux Carbon Fiber Hand Guards
420 Progressive Fork Springs
420 Progressive Rear Shock
Mirror Vibration Isolators
Front and Rear Heavy Duty Inner Tubes
Axle Wrench
Spare Clutch and Speedometer Cables
Sub-Frame Upgrade Kit
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TPI Motorcycle Wholesalers
TPI@Comcast.Net
Stainless Steel Head Light Guard
Heavy Duty Head Light Harness
New Style European Light Switch
New Mirror and Choke Mount
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Totally Wired Cycles
Totally Wired Cycles.com
DSR – 15 Weather Proof ATO Fuse Upgrade Kit
DSR – 17 Weather Proof ATO Fan Fuse Upgrade Kit
Weather Proof Accessories ATO Fuse Kit
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Dual Star
Order: 1 – 800 – 466 – 7433
Tech: 1 – 425 – 776 – 7433
Billet Oil Filler Cap
Muffler Guard
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Eagle Manufacturing and Engineering
Mike@eagle-m-e.com
Mike Cowlishaw
Shark Fin - Rear Disk Rotor Guard
Billet Aluminum Rear Brake Mount
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Whitehorse Gear
Whitehorsepress.com
KLR 650 Clymer Service Manual
SAE Tank Bag Electrical Kit and Other Electrical Wiring
KLR 650 Big Foot Shift Lever
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Aerostich/Rider Wearhouse
Aerostich.com
Panel Mounted 12V Outlet
BMW Plugs & Sockets
Motofizz Thermo Clock
Moto Compass
Cycle Pump Air Compressor
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Big CEE Engineering
Chris Krok
bigcee@bigcee.com
Manual Petcock Conversion Kit
Mini Dash
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Touratech – USA
Touratech-USA.com
Zumo 450/550 Handlebar Mount Moveable Lock
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Jesse Luggage Systems
Jesseluggage.com
U.S. Distributor of Jesse Luggage Systems
Xplorer Moto, LLC
1-520-743-0638
info@xplorermoto.com
Kawasaki KLR 650
Odyssey II Saddle Bags
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Tires
2 each Front Tires
Bridgestone
Trail Wing TW – 301
3.00 – 21
Mileage before changing for each tire 10,000+ miles/16129+ kilometers
Quality of tire – rating 1 thru 10
9+
Excellent tread wear
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1 each Rear Tire
Bridgestone
Trail Wing TW – 302
4.60 – 17
Mileage/kilometers before changing the tire 1500 or less miles/2419 or less kilometers
Quality of tire – rating 1 thru 10
1
The tire threw the lugs off the tire casing (see the end of May Blog entries and pictures)
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2 each Rear Tires
Michelin
T63 Dual-Sport Knobby Tires
130/80 – 17 65S
Mileage before changing for each tire 8500/9500 miles/13710/15323 kilometers
Quality of tire – rating 1 thru 10
9
Excellent tread wear – If I would travel around the world again under
similar circumstances these would be the tires I would choose.
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1 each Rear Tire
Continental
65T Twin Duro
130/80 – 17
Mileage/kilometers before changing the tire 5000+ miles/8065+ kilometers
Quality of tire – rating 1 thru 10
9
Personally I didn’t want to buy this tire but I was out of options. It’s a soft tire
with a short life expectancy. I was told it should last 3500 miles/5645 kilometers.
That’s the distance from Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA to Anchorage, Alaska, USA.
I felt uncomfortable about taking a chance on getting back to Saint Paul, Minnesota
with this tire because it may wear out before I got home. I would then have to buy
yet another tire. That thought did not make me happy. When I arrived home the
tire still had enough tread on it to ride another 2000 miles/3226 kilometers.
For that reason I gave it a 9 rating.
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3 Manufactured Parts I Created for this 2007 Kawasaki KLR 650
1st part
The changes I made to this motorcycle are not that obvious at first glance. If you look
you’ll see a Happy Trails Motorcycle top box on the luggage rack. I removed the plastic
luggage rack/plate form and manufactured an aluminum one. It was way more involved
than I originally thought. Here is an example: all the drilled holes have to be drilled in at
6 degrees in order for it to mate up with the tapped holes in the side rails. That had me
scratching my head for a while. I then bolted the Happy Trails T2 aluminum plate to the
top of my new aluminum luggage rack. I now had to design method to attach the top
box to the T2 aluminum plate. I wanted it securely attached yet mounted on rubber vibration
isolators. I found rubber vibration isolators in an aftermarket Harley-Davidson catalog.
They were used to support the battery box on the 1960’s, 1970’s and early 1980’s Harleys.
I then created 2 rails with 4 counter bores per side about ½ inch deep. One rail per side
on the luggage rack. I then could screw in 8 vibration isolators and lock them in with a
lock nut. I drilled 8 bolt holes in the box to match the 8 vibration isolators. I bolted the
rails on to the top box and figured out the bolt hole locations I needed to bolt the rails
to the T2 aluminum top plate on the luggage rack. When I figured out the hole locations
to bolt the box down I added an extra hole so that I could slide the box forward 3 inches.
I thought that would be a nice feature if for some reason I needed it. You just never know.
All the fasteners used to mount this box are stainless steel to hold down the rusting in
lengthy wet and rainy conditions. I also added an SAE electrical outlet to the box to provide
electricity to charge my cell phone and laptop batteries.

2nd set of parts I created for this motorcycle
I’m still not sure how Jesse Luggage designed their rear signal light relocation bracket
or how it was to be attached to the motorcycle so I built my own. It took a little
head scratching but I finally came up with a bracket which bolted on to the saddle bag
mounting hardware. I used the original signal lights and extended the wiring and plugged
them back into the original sockets. When I finished they almost looked like the
manufacturer's original equipment.

3rd part
I relocated the license plate. I found some 1/16 thick sheet stainless steel and sawed out a 1 inch wide stripe about 12 inches long just in case I made a mistake. I took some rough measurements, bent up a bracket to fit over the hump on the end of the rear fender and sawed it off to length. I found a small sheet of 1/16 thick aluminum in the aluminum scrap bin and sawed out a backing platefor my license plate. I put wings on it to mount two license plate lights to keep everything legal. I drilled holes in the aluminum backing to match the drilled holes in the stainless steel fender bracket. I bolted the two together with stainless steel fasteners. It was still too flexible for me so I put another spacer between the backing plate and fender at the top. I centered it up at the top, drilled a hole and bolted it down. It was a nice firm backing plate to bolt a license plate to. I wired in the license plate lights and plugged them into the same socket the original license light plugged into. I then went to the Harley-Davidson dealer and
purchased a license plate reflector and double faced taped it to the old license plate
bracket and I was done. I later lost this reflector when I drove thru a pothole in Russia
which was 3 feet long X 2 feet wide and 6 inches deep. I thought I was going to crash
on that pothole. The old KLR drove right on thru it.

1st change
I added a storage tube in front of my front foot pegs.
The first time I saw this storage tube on a KLR 650 was up in Goose Bay, Labrador. I thought it
was a good idea and always remembered it. So when I was building this bike I thought I
would install one on it. I went back to the pictures I took of the guy and his motorcycle to
see how it was installed. I could also see what type of tube to purchase. The tube is black 4 inch
sewer pipe and I bought it down at the ACE hardware store. I bought 24 inches of it, a
cap and a screw on end. I later cut the tube so that it would be shorter than the width
of the foot peg hinge. That’s so if I crashed on the bike the end of the tube would not
be digging in to the road and possibly prevent it from being ripped off the bike. I sawed
the tube to length then glued the ends on and allowed it to cure. I fastened the tube
to foot peg and engine guard using hose clamps that also can be purchased at
the hardware store. I used some of the hose clamps to pull the tube back and others
to pull the tube down. That would keep it in the restraint state and prevent it from moving
around. I used it to store my spare inner tubes and my emergency gas siphoning hoses.
Something about my emergency gas siphoning hoses always brought up a lively conversation.

2nd change
I added screens in front of the Radiator and Coolant Reservoir
I specifically bought the Coolant Reservoir – Radiator Guard Combination from Happy Trails so I could stretch screens across the bars to protect the radiator from insects, flying mud
and stones. The aluminum window screen kept out the insects and slowed down the flying mud.
The ¼ square screen in back of the window screen slowed down the flying stones from
oncoming traffic before they would hit the radiator and do damage. Some of the semi-trucks
and car traffic I met would cause me to pull off to the side of the road, close my visor on my helmet, hold my breath and turn my face away from the flying stones. I held my breath so I didn’t have to breathe in the dust. The only disadvantage to these screens is the difficulty of cleaning the radiator with a low pressure hose or a squirt bottle. I cleaned my radiator daily when I was riding in extremely dusty conditions with a squirt bottle because no high or low pressure hoses were available. I have yet to regret having installed those screens.