May 9, 2012

Back to Basics

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day
When I got back from Alaska, I'd had enough of riding a touring bike on dirt roads. Going upside down and backwards at 50mph with 500 pounds of motorcycle and gear grinding up the roadway in front of you will change you that way. I had regretted selling my XT350 Yamaha from the day I sold it and had been watching for something like that bike ever since. I got more serious about that search in July of 2007.  One of the guys in the local dual purpose motorcycle group advertised a 2001 Kawasaki KL250 Super Sherpa on the list and I took it, sight unseen. The price was right, the size was right, and I knew this guy's word was good, so if he said it was in good condition, it would be in good condition.




The picture at left is of my 2000 KL250 Super Sherpa just before I sold it. The picture at right is the Australian version, called the "Stockman." Aussies get a lot of the coolest stuff from Japan and I think we should give up on getting anything useful out of Iraq and Afghanistan and immediately invade Australia to get their motorcycles. Everything about the Stockman is what I hoped to get with my own Super Sherpa. I was a little disappointed.

A friend drove me across town to pick up the bike. I took it for a test drive, swapped money for motorcycle, and drove it home through city streets to get a feel for the bike's character and problems. It turned out to have plenty of problems. It had been ridden hard and put up bent a few times and some of the bent bits bothered me more than others. When I got it home, I took it apart and began to straighten out the things I though desperately needed fixing. A couple of levers, a new front fender, new handlebars, new grips, new tires (yanked the knobbies and replaced them with street-oriented Bridgestone Trail Wings), a new chain and sprockets, a new air filter, a serious carb cleaning, and the bike was ready to ride.

I rode often it for three solid years; to work, on errands, on meandering trips into the countryside, and anywhere I would ride a bigger bike as long as the trip total doesn't exceed a few hundred miles. The bike is comfortable, insanely fuel efficient (70-90mpg!), fun to ride around town, lightweight, mostly easy to work on, and an absolute blast off road. The Sherpa is no motocrosser, but it's a fun trail bike. It's not powerful, but it can get out of its own way. I've even played trials with it, going up a staircase at work and hopping logs in my back yard. The 10" of ground clearance makes for a pretty versatile off-roader. 

As a local commuter, the KL250 was a pleasure and real budget saver. When I was careful with the throttle, I could squeeze around 90mpg from a 1.4 gallon tank of fuel. If I was hammer-handed, the little guy still gave me 65-75mpg and a lot of fun. The bike is easy to park and, if you can't find a normal parking space, the Sherpa is enough of a Sherpa (you Bultaco fans know what I mean) to climb some stairs and park where the bicycles park. Top speed is about 70mph, according to the speedo. I mounted a GPS  but didn't get enough time with the touring rig to double check either the speedo or the mileage accuracy, but the bike seemed to keep up with normal freeway traffic. It's wailing at top speed, though. If there were a tach, it would probably be near redline.

My used bike came with a KLR's high fender in front. On the highway, I noticed some front end weirdness that seemed to be linked to that big fender flailing around in the wind. I dumped the high fender for an old, ugly red Acerbis low fender that I had lying idle in my garage for 15 years. The bike became more stable at speed and I lost a little mud clearance off-road. For my purposes, the trade-off was a good move. I had the Kawasaki low fender, but never bothered to try to make the KL look pretty while I was riding it. I prettied it up just before I sold it. 

Replacing the knobbies with street-aimed "trials tires" was a good move. The knobbies made the bike absolutely terrifying on grated bridges and rain grooves. The Trail Wings are a great improvement, but real street tires would improve mileage, highway stability, and street traction. I may keep looking for the perfect DP tire for this bike. Since the KL is so light, I'm unconvinced that I need knobbies to get me out of the kinds of dirt and mud situations I'm likely to experience. So far, this has been true in deep sand, muddy dirt roads, and all sorts of rock and gravel single-tracks. If trials tires do the job for Dougie Lampkin, they would probably work for me and they did fine for as long as I owned the Sherpa.

The Sherpa was a work in process. To make the Sherpa a decent touring bike, I expanded the range of the 1.4 gallon fuel capacity to about 3 gallons. I added Acerbis Rally Guards, a tail rack, Eclipse bags, a small MotoFizz tailbag, and a GPS mount and electrics.  The bike was ready to go on a long North Dakota tour when it blew the countershaft oil seal and dumped all of the engine oil in a few feet. It took a season to put it back together, but my confidence in the bike was too low to trust the little guy for anything seriously adventurous. Before I sold it, I pulled off all of my mods and sold them independently. 

The seal seat design is retarded, at best, and the oil seal problem is a well-known issue with the 2000 Super Sherpa. Kawasaki used a seal that, apparently, doesn't grip to the cases and is easily pushed out. It's possible there was a breather problem, but I found no evidence of that. After replacing the seal, it still leaked; slowly, but surely. I replaced the seal, again, and it still leaked. I couldn't figure out the carb problem from the last time it gummed up and I gave it to a friend who discovered the oil seal seat stops just before a beveled bit of the case housing. If he tapped the seal flush to the outer case, the seal got bound on that bevel and leaked. -Not an intuitive or impressively secure design. It turned out that I managed to lose the anti-backfire spring during the last cleaning and that's why it gave me so much trouble starting and running smoothly. I gotta get a bike lift. Seeing all of that stuff would have been a lot easier if I wasn't crawling around on my garage floor to do maintenance. I'm too old for lying on concrete.

The Super Sherpa is about the only modern DP bike with a reasonable seat height. However, that low seat height has a cost. One price paid is the slight difference between the bottom of the fuel tank and the carb fuel inlet. This close relationship means the fuel pressure is barely enough to push fuel past the float needle. Add a fuel filter and you might not be able to get the last half-gallon out of the tank. When I put a small ceramic fuel filter on my stock tank, I lost about 30 miles of range due to this problem. The gas was there, I just couldn't get it into the carburetor. Even worse, the reserve petcock position wouldn't give me much more than a 1/4 mile before the bike sputtered to a stop. With all of the tiny anti-pollution jets and air passages, the tank filter isn't enough to keep particles from stopping up the carb and an accessory filter isn't a possibility. That means regular carb cleaning is part of owning a Sherpa.

After a year  of messing with the Sherpa, I decided to return it to mostly stock form. I went back to the stock low fender, not as effective as the Acerbis fender, but less color-jarring. I re-installed the stock tank, removed the handguards, and cleaned it up to sell. After all that, I rediscovered how much fun this little bike is to ride. For its intended purpose, urban commuting and light weight off-roading, the Kawasaki Super Sherpa KL250 is a decent, well-behaved motorcycle.  Since I replaced  it with a fuel-injected Yamaha WR250X most everything I liked about the Sherpa will still be in my stable. The one thing I will be losing is that great mileage. The WRX squeezes 60-65 miles from a really carefully managed gallon, but more typically turns in 55mpg consumption.

Since I didn't need it anymore, I kept a little hope alive that my grandson might want to go off-roading with me. He expressed exactly zero interest in motorcycling last summer and, again, this summer. So, I put the Sherpa on Craig's List and it went in a week to the first caller.

KL250 Specifications

Engine
Four-stroke, DOHC, 4-valve single cylinder
Bore x Stroke
72.0 x 61.2mm
Fuel System
Single 34mm Mikuni BST34 carburetor
Transmission
Six-speed
Frame Type
Semi-double cradle, high-tensile steel
Front suspension/wheel travel
36mm telescopic fork / 9.1 in.
Front Tire Size
2.75 x 21
Front brakes / rear brakes
Single hydraulic disc / Single hydraulic disc
Overall width
30.7 in.
Seat height
32.7 in.
Ground clearance
10.6 in.
Curb weight
282.1 lbs.

Kawasaki KL250 Accessories

Air Filter
From my experience, this is a no-brainer. I replaced the stock filter with a K&N. I have had K&N filters in every vehicle I have owned since my 1973 Rickman 125 ISDT and my 1973 Toyota Hilux pickup. Call me "superstitious," but I think those filters have added something to the incredible reliability I've experienced in my vehicles. I don't consider a K&N filter an aftermarket "accessory." I think the lack of a K&N filter is simply an incompetent motorcycle design that has to be rectified before the bike is a reliable vehicle.

Kawasaki's Rear Luggage Rack
This is a middle-of-the-road piece of equipment that isn't great but is far from bad. Like many factory racks, the Kawasaki piece has a 5 pound recommended max load capacity. Obviously, that is close to useless, so I'll be exceeding their recommended capacity by 2-4x. I plan to take the Sherpa on a trip or two, so the ability to carry some luggage is going to be critical.

Eclipse P38 Saddle Bags
I've had these bags since my 1st Yamaha TDM. On the Sherpa, they work well, minimally affect handling, and hold a fair amount of junk. Like a Colorado neighbor who'd used his P38's for years of commuting, my bags are severely bleached out but they still work flawlessly. I had to build a heat shield to keep the exhaust from baking the right side bag, but it was fairly simple and seems to work fine.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish they would put decent-sized stock tanks on offroad oriented and DS bikes. I think a bunch of them would make much better commuters than most of the bikes people actually use for commuting. But, a commuter needs to be able to go at least a couple of days without filling up, IMHO. I prefer bikes with 200-mile ranges, without going into reserve.

T.W. Day said...

That is an absolutely valid point. It's hard to imagine that this is less of a problem for the Stockman in Australia. My WR250X is a case-in-point. With the stock tank, the bike was good for about 100 miles to reserve. Even with the 3.1gal IMF tank, I am looking for fuel at 150 miles and out at 180. I don't think there is much market research going into Japanese motorcycle design. They don't seem to have a clue who their customers are or could be.

Anonymous said...

Even for offroad or backroad touring use it is handy having more gas. I go some places where even on the highway gas might be 50 miles apart. With only a 100-mile range you have to be careful, and I'd rather carry gas in the tank than strapped on the back in some jug.

Anonymous said...

I've got an Aussie Sherpa.

Unfortunately the Stockman doesn't have a Australian Design Rules compliance plate, so it can't be registered for road use in Australia, but the special parts are readily available at rural bike wreckers since farm bikes tend to have fairly short brutal lives.

I've got a Stockman rear rack which is rated 20kg (44lbs) and is well built. I'd love to get a clutch lock and the swingarm with a right side stand, but I've never got around to it.

An IMS 4 gallon tank for an XR650L, $100 on ebay, delivered from California, solved fuel range issues. It basically doubled range to reserve and left me with about 80km on reserve.

The one thing the Sherpa doesn't do reasonably well is highways; the one thing I don't ask it to do for me is highways. The urban speed limits I encounter are strictly enforced with cameras and no more than 80kph (50mph) and I trailer it to the bush for trail riding, so 110kph flat out and 90kph comfortably is plenty for me.

Graham in Melbourne

T.W. Day said...

All good to know. After struggling with my WRX tires in deep sand Saturday, I'm missing my Sherpa in a couple of ways; seat height and 21" front wheel. I could own one again, for the right price and a newer model with the seal issue corrected. I'd put both Stockman racks on a Sherpa, if I could find them for a reasonable price. I don't know what the "clutch lock" is, but it sounds interesting.

I did a lot of highway/freeway miles with my Sherpa, but no long distance stuff; just commuting. My North Dakota trip would have been an LD test, but the oil seal changed that plan.

angelocardoc said...

I just picked up an 07" Sherpa.
It's a Canadian model with 3,500km on the clock.

I'll have to agree with the other comments, the fuel tank is too small, and over 90km/hr the engine is just buzzing.
I don't find the seat all that comfortable, but it is better than a lot of small dual sports out there.

On my bike the carb was set too lean, but that was an easy fix. I changed the main jet to 132.5 and the pilot jet to 22.5

I'm currently adjusting the exhaust valves.
Somehow they came too tight from the factory.
Hope I didn't prematurely burn out the exhaust valves.

Hopefully I won't encounter the oil seal problem mentioned.
Another weak spot on these bikes is the wiring coming out of the front left engine case. In some off road situations, small bushes and tree branches can rip those wires out and leave you stranded.