KLR Mods - Kickstart from Chris





Hi Mark

My name is Chris and i live in Inverness in Scotland, UK. I rode a KLR650 round Australia for a year and then imported it back here because I love it. KLR650's arent very common here, the Yamaha XT600 Tenere and Honda Dominator/XR600 based bikes are popular dirt machines.

Anyway, My KLR 650 is a 1989 A3 model. I fitted the kickstart from a KLR600 and it works perfectly.

The KLR650 is electric start only, but it grew out of the KLR 600 (was this ever imported to the states?) which has a kickstart and no electric start. When kawasaki built the 650 they used the bottom end of the 600, modified it to take the electric start, and just blanked off the holesin the cases where the 600's kickstart components used to be.

I destroyed my clutch by pulling wheelies across Melbourne with my buddy on the back, so I did all this whilst I was replacing th eclutch. If you can have a look in a workshop manual for a 600 you'll see what you need, but basically the bits you need are: kickstart lever Its return spring the splined shaft the kickstart bolts onto, which also has a pinion quadrant (the quarter round bit with teeth that meshes into the clutch basket and spins the engine when you jump on the kickstart) there are two small plates of metal about 25mm long which act as the stop for the return spring.

I bought all of these from a used bike wreckers/dismantlers.

Fitting is dead easy, take off the right engine cover (the one with the oil sightglass). From the inside push the oil seal outwards until it pops out of the cover. Next follow your instruction manual to take off your clutch basket. Now you need to remove the blanking seal in the crankcase itself, stab it with a sharpened screwdriver and lever it out. Fit the shaft you have bought from the wreckers, fit the small retaining plates (referring to the manual to see which way round they go), replace clutch and engine cover, bolt kickstart lever onto the shaft. Job done.

My Bike starts from the kickstart but remember the 650 doesnt have the same decompression facility as the 600 had. This means that you have to give one helluva mighty kick to spin the engine fast enough. I weigh 16 stone and used to own a Triumph 750 Bonneville, so I am used to kickstarting awkward bikes. To tell the truth I hardly use the Kickstart when there's an electric start there, but last autumn (fall to you guys over the water) my electric start failed, and the kickstart allowed me to keep using the bike for another 2 months until the winter snow arrived. Bike got fixed in my heated garage over winter time.

There you go, The whole operation took me 2 hours and I'm not a mechanic, I work in an office. If you need to you can contact me on this email address but please dont distribute it to other people as my boss wont be pleased. Put this mod onto your site if you want, if you need more details or pictures from the manuals then contact me.
good site, well done

Chris

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^

Back to KLR-Mods page

Click here for My KiLleR Links Page.

Back To Homepage