Solvang CA, or the day the bike was reborn

Greetings from sunny, but windy Solvang CA, the little Danish town you might know from the movie sideways..really freaky town. I thought I'd dropped some Danish acid when I rolled in. I thought there was a strip with a windmill and some quaint houses, but no, the ENTIRE town is a little danish village hawking cheap tourist goods. Even the houses where people live on the outskirts are designed in the same European style. And the people talk funny.

 Excuse the proliferation of panoramic shots that are about to ensue over the next coupe of posts, but I'm geeking out over my new phone camera.

So besides reconnecting with my Danish roots, the real reason I am in Solvang is to meet a KLR guru, Mr Wymann Wynn.  He works exclusively on the top end of the KLR motor and has personally installed over 200 of these, I believe I was something like 248 or so. He is a staff member of KLR650.net, an online forum of help and advice on working on this bike. He is considered to be one of the most knowledgable guys on this engine and specifically the top end. (combustion chamber, valves, carburetor, etc for those who don't know about this crap)  So I was having some issues about oil burning and some sputtering and hesitation on the bike.  It's old, has been a little abused and needed some TLC.  So Wymann offers personal tech days at a fraction of a mechanics wages and insists you come to his house and perform whatever work you want with him. (He's not a mechanic, he just does this on the weekends.) His workshop is just like a mechanics shop with various bikes, engines, air compressors, tools, etc, and a big gun case. A man of few words, we begin at 8 am and tear the engine apart.

This is the camshaft with just the cover removed. Looks good he says. I'm relieved.  It means we don't have to rebuild the pistons or anything.

The whole top end removed.  Note the carbon buildup on the piston head.  

Brand spanking new piston, also an oversized bore meaning my cylinder has gone from a 650 to a 688.  We also cleaned the carb, added a thermostat bypass kit and other juicy stuff.  All in all about a 1/4 of the price a mechanic would charge, since he builds the pistons and shafts himself and does not up charge on other items.  Also being able to do this was a great experience.  I didn't do too much work myself, the man is a machine, knows every bolt, what it does and so on.  He basically tore down and rebuilt the top end in 4 hours. (Mechanics would charge you twice as much for labor and bill you twice as many hours, not counting the up charge on parts that they buy.)  Unbelievable.  And when I was watching I was thinking, yeah I can do that. (not as quickly obviously, but nothing was so technical I couldn't grasp it.)

So long from Solvang, my computer is out of juice

Tak