March 24th, 2010 | Filed under: Motorcycles | RSS Feed
Another Baja trip was looming and in preparation for the ride I wanted to add a few new bits on to my KTM. Unfortunately for me work sucked up more time than expected leading up to the ride leaving the mod work until the last minute before the planned departure, and while the modifications were simple enough on paper the reality of it all proved a bit more frustrating. Read on and you’ll learn about the mini-drama that played out in my garage in the last few days while preparing for another ride in Baja California, Mexico.
Superlaced Excel Rims With Galfer Wave Rotors & Fresh Knobbies
The stock rims that come on KTM LC8s (both the 950s and the current 990s) are known to be a bit on the soft side for such a heavy bike and sure enough, on my first trip to Baja (ride report) I managed to dent my front rim in a few different places. Luckily for me and the success of that first ride none of the dents were big enough to end the trip, but the largest was severe enough to make me worry about taking it down for another Baja ride. So what was my solution? In early December I ordered myself a set of custom rims from Woody’s Wheel Works out in Colorado! The new rims were a set of superlaced Excels with Galfer wave rotors front and rear, and of course a fresh set of Pirelli Deserts to cap things off nicely. So now that I sat on the rims for a few months, shaggin’ out the tires on the stock set, it was time to mounting them up, should be a bolt on affair, right? Wrong…
My new rims right after they arrived in San Francisco last December (yes, I waited until now to install them)
My Honda generator came in handy to weight the rear of the bike so I could remove the stock front rim
Easy enough the stock front rim came off and the new superlaced Excel went on, but then as soon as I tried to do something crazy, like spin the wheel for a single revolution I ran into trouble. It turns out that not only is the central hub (beefier than stock) a millimeter or so wider than the stock one, but the mounting bolts for the brake discs don’t recess in very much on the Galfer wave rotors (on the stock rotors the bolts recess in a good 4-5mm, on the Galfers it’s maybe 1-2mm or so) and when I gave the newly mounted Excel a spin I could tell it was rubbing on something, so much so that I didn’t dare give it another try. I pulled the front back off again and could immediately see where the contact was being made, the bolts were rubbing on the speedo sensor as shown in the photo below.
You can easily see where the rotor mounting bolt rubbed the speedo sensor, ugh
After checking and double-checking various items like checking for mounting bolt recession depths, whether swapping caliper mounting bolts would help (not, same bolts both set-ups), etc., I decided that the simplest thing would be to revert back to the stock brake discs up front and get on with things. Ok, swapping the brake discs was easy enough but then like layers of an onion peeling back the first problem revealed a second one now that I was able to actually spin the rim when remounted. As I mentioned above the new hub seems ever so slightly wider than the stock one and it was just enough to now have the stock discs rub on the end of the caliper mounting bolts (caliper bolts now, no longer the disc mounting bolts). The caliper mounting bolts poked out the back of the calipers by a millimeter or two and so the fix here was simple, I slipped a washer on each of the caliper mounting bolts thus allowing the front rim to finally mount and spin freely as expected. Way too much hassle for what was supposed to be a simply front swap, and it left me without my blingin’ wave rotors. Oh well, style points don’t count for much in Baja anyway.
With the front rim situation sorted it was time to focus on the rear rim swap, a task I approached with bold confidence thinking “ok, now this one should be easy!”. Wrong, but at least it was easier than the front! I pulled the stock rear rim off and mounted up the new superlaced Excel and it all went on easy and dreamy. What’s more is that while mounting the new rim it was clear that the disc mounting bolts on the rear would have no problem with clearance, I thought I was home free. I got everything mounted up and chain slack adjusted and went to spin the rear with a smug smile on my face, the wheel spun a tiny bit and I was immediately made aware of the fact that I had problems once again. This time it wasn’t the disc mounting bolts that were rubbing, it was the disc carriers (non-existent on the stock rear brake rotor) that weren’t clearing the rear brake caliper assembly. Ugh. I immediately jumped to the same solution as I used up front, I swapped out the fancy new wave rotor for the stock rear disc rotor and everything bolted back on just fine.
You can easily see that the rear disc carriers wouldn’t clear the caliper assembly
With both the front and rear rims mounted up I checked the tire pressures and went out for a test ride, all went well and after a bit too much hassle over something that should have been an easy swap I was ready to move on to two other tasks. Luckily, both of those would turn out to be exactly as easy as I hoped and so my preparation troubles were now behind me (although I didn’t know it at that time).
My KTM 950, with superlaced Excels and fresh knobbies after my successful test ride
Remounting the Right Mirror
I truly love my KTM but there are a few curious engineering decisions/efforts that went into this bike that puzzle me a bit. One example of this is the fact that they decided to mount the right mirror directly to the front brake reservoir housing, on a dirt bike. Why is that odd? Well, while riding off-road it’s not uncommon to have the occasional tip over or quick dirt nap, in most cases you just pick up your bike and keep going along your merry way. With the stock mirror set-up a minor tip over on the right hand side just might result in the mirror hitting the ground or a rock and if done hard enough it can damage/destroy the front brake reservoir leaving you with no front brakes until you get home and repair things! Duh. The fix here is easy and cheap, Scuderia West/KTM Twins sell a small bracket that moves the mirror mount so it’s not directly attached to the front brake reservoir. With the bracket in hand the remounting of the right mirror was over and done with in just a few minutes, no hassles, no drama.
In the yellow circle you can see the stock mirror mount attached to the front brake reservoir
Now in the yellow circle you can see that the mirror mount has been relocated to a safer (and correct) location
Installing a European Headlight Assembly
The final modification I wanted to make before Baja was to replace the stock USA-spec headlight assembly with the European one instead (also purchased from the guys at Scuderia West/KTM Twins), the premise being that the Euro rig was plug-and-play and would offer a lot more light. I loosened the left/right side upper fairings and removed the windscreen, at that point it was easy to pop out the assembly holding the headlight in place and remove the four screws holding the light in place and pull the plug from the wiring harness. In no time flat the stock headlight was out and the new Euro-spec headlight assembly was in, it truly was a plug-and-play affair and in less than 30 minutes I’d managed to install a much improved and much brighter new headlight assembly.
The new Euro-spec headlight (left) and the stock USA-spec headlight side-by-side
The front-end opened up with the stock headlight in hand
Post-install with the new Euro-spec headlight assembly ready for use
The prep work is done and now it’s time to do the last packing of bags and then soon enough I’ll be on the road bound for Baja once again!
[...] (bad!). That was then compounded by mechanical hassles in getting that preparation work completed (read more), thus delaying our departure by a few days. Finally both of those were trumped by personal issues [...]