Commutard

Moved to Perth. Needed a commuter.



and now that's sorted as well.

DR-Z400e. Wanted the E model as they have better and bigger cams and a bigger carb, though that's also non stock on this particular example.

Good Excel rims, plus it has the dirt rims. Came with a spare set of forks, so I can actually spring and valve for road and offroad really easily. Also has 1-1/8" fatbars fitted, another mod I would have done anyway.

Needs a gear rack since this will be my only transport when on this side of the country, and a few other tweaks, but it's a good option and I don't have to worry about changing oil weekly unlike if I got a CRF etc.

 

Well, luggage just fucks up the wheelies.

B&B make a gear rack. I have ordered this, it matches the bash plate presently unfitted to the bike.

There's some pannier options, but not after that.

For work I'm a waterproof backpack kind of person no matter the bike (even when I have a real gear rack); for play, well, the B&B one will be enough to strap a 1 person backpacking tent and stuff to for weekends.

 

So, progress. Many steps back before I get forwards, so we'll start there.

I knew when I got the bike that it would need wheel bearings sooner rather than later. No biggie, doable at home with a drift and a hammer, both cheap things to buy in Perth at the moment. Also was going to need a tyre: 2011 made supercorsa in the soft compound isn't ideal - once you got the tyres hot, it just wanted to understeer with a medium compound front.

Go to sort the tyre and... rear axle ain't budging. Reason the wheel bearings were a bit suspect? No sprocket carrier spacer!

Ah, you wonder, how is that, given that DRZ don't have a cush drive? Well, these aren't ordinary DRZ400SM wheels - they're laced up off a DR650 rear hub, running smaller RGV250 cush drive rubbers, a Husky cush drive hub, and a VJ22 RGV250 rear sprocket. (Keeping up yet)? Anyway, previous to previous owner hadn't realised a sprocket carrier bearing spacer was needed (nor that it needed to be sleeved down from an ID of 25mm to 20mm to match the DRZ400 axle).

Had a shop here try to sort it for me, no dice, too complex. Since I needed to be in Canberra for a week, I just spun up what I needed out of some steel. 25mm to 20mm reducing spacer, thickness of one end to match the thickness of the sprocket bearing, and the spacing to the wheel bearing on the other. Bit of a challenge to measure but with metal rulers and cunning, anything is possible.

I made up 3 different depths in case I cocked up the measurement, but the one as per measured is perfect so that's good. Also made up an outer spacer from aluminium that better matched the stock dimensions so that solved that issue.



(and note flights back to Canberra and then back to Perth were still cheaper than some machine shops quoted me to make up the two spacers!)

With that, fancy new rubber could be fitted.



Supercorsa SC2s in 150/60-17.

This nicely non squared off and grippy tyre highlights just how sticky the head stem bearings are so I will tackle them sometime this week. There's also some other treats to go onto the front end at the same time; more on that when I get around to doing stuff.

This morning I also threw on the B&B luggage rack I had delivered a couple of weeks back:


I have the luggage plate that will take a top box as well, but I need to find the top box I want before going down this path. Also it's a bit of a bear to fit so I want to think up a quickish release mechanism to take the plate and the top box off when I want to look less cardigan.

So, immediate stuff to come will be headstem bearings and brake stuff all around, and a front tyre. And offroad tyres for the other rims - but that last bit kinda has to wait till I work out if I'm a) driving the ute over here later in the year and therefore b) if I am more likely to ute it to somewhere good in the dirt -- ergo uber dirt tyres are the go -- or if I am gonna ride it on the freeway to the dirt -- ergo more adventure style dirt tyres will be the go.

Oh and I really got to order two chains and proper motard gearing; it's on dirt gearing at the moment and jeez it's busy on the freeway to work. Plus you reaaaaally can get by using 3rd and 5th gears only.

 

Last week:

Swapped out headstem bearings


Put on a more appropriate sized front disc (up from the weedy 245mm dirt sized one to a full 320mm beast)

This week:

Fitted pillion pegs from a USA spec DRZ400S. Subframe tabs are a little different so I whipped up relocation brackets using a $20 angle grinder and $15 drill and some steel bought at Bunnings.

Waiting on the paint to dry on the peg brackets before I bolt it all back together.

Some more purchases on their way, but will reveal when they arrive.

 

Full adventuretard now.

 

Done plenty of hiking out of a 50L backpack, so, naaaaaah.

Waiting for a window in the work trips to get out and do the Holland Track as a starter, and I do have opportunities to get me out to get to the Surveyors Corner between WA/SA/NT, too.

At some point in the next 3 years I'd also like to do the Anne Beadell track to get me over to Woomera but that's a longer term goal.

Finally, jeez I'm sick of only having a bike here and having to backpack home food from the supermarket. Not a problem if you can go to the supermarket every couple of days, but when their opening hours are not much different from work hours.... yeah.



Stock case saver doesn't fit with a 15T front sprocket (stock is 14T) which is what I'm using on the road, B&B one with the quick change cover does though. Will just have to clean the bloody thing more often. Also makes it much easier to ride out on dirt wheels to somewhere then swap 15T to 13 or 12T to actually be tolerable in proper offroad sections.

(Stock dirt wheel gearing is 14/47; motard gearing when I bought it was 14/41, is now 15/41, and probably will drop that even further to 15/38. Dirt wise for highway transport 15/43 would be good, dropping to 13/43 for offroad stuff or 12 if it's gonna be super tight). S'all about compromise to have just the one vehicle over here, really.

 

Did not go to plan.

Swapped rear shock spring from the stock 5.2kg/mm to 6.0kg/mm which will suit my weight and riding and all that jazz. Nice. Actually quite easy to do, you just need to get the airbox to carb hose out, pop a side cover off, pop the exhaust off, undo top and bottom shock mounts, boom, shock comes out of the side.

That wasn't the drama though. Drama was rear shock mount bearing was pretty danged unhappy, the needle roller cage was totally rooted, so I gotta swap it. Zero play or anything, and the shock moved nicely, but super crunchy rotating it by hand. Might as well do it now in the crap weather.

Will need to ring some places and sort out getting the linkage rebuilt, which is why the swingarm is out - I just couldn't undo the linkage to frame bolt with the swingarm in the way.

Probably never saw any lube in 16 years of life, so now's a good time to rectify that level of maintenance and then go hit the trails with a bike that has a chance of working correctly. Should feel amazing with all these niggles sorted; plus, despite the frustrations, it's been pretty cheap to get stuff sorted since it's 99.99% DIY.

 

Sounds like a fun project, do you have another get around for the time being?

 

Housemate's 1.6L auto golf of dooooooooooooom. 5 years in Mt Isa has not been kind to this Golf.

Or public transport, I'm not far from anything in Perth. Is fine, will have bearings waiting for me at the front door step of my house tonight.

 

heheh, I look forward to more rebuild pictures soon then, hopefully nothing else pops up!

 

Alright, let's resume this. She's now back together and washed all the greasey fingerprints off the bike.


Did a lot over the weekend, but most of the mods are hidden or very subtle so let's go through them.

Spring swap
Don't have a heap of photos, but went up from 5.2 kg/mm to 6.0 kg/mm. Fronts are pretty close for me, but the back really wasn't.


Surprisingly enough, no spring compressor or anything needed. If you pull the exhaust side off the bike, and back the preload off to minimum, the shock comes out the side of the bike pretty easily (despite what suspension places over here said). Spring seat is retained with a circlip, just a case of popping that off and then putting the new spring on. Easy.


Blue doesn't really go with the styling but hey, couldn't be arsed swapping it and you really can't see it in the bike.



Still had to go closeish to max preload to get the sag somewhere sensible, especially with the top box on the bike. Rider and static sag are both in the ballpark of what I want, so the spring rate is probably right (ish). Maybe 6.3kg/mm would have been better, but that's going to be way harsh offroad.

Suspension linkage rebuild
Impossible to get photos of this as it was so manky with 16 year old grease and rust and stuff. In short, fixed it all up, moves much more smoothly now. Swingarm bearings and most of the linkage bearings came good with a total cleanout of the grease and a regrease, so that was nice.



The only bit to really worry about now is there's still a tiny bit of play in the brass bushings in the dogbones. May just buy new OEM dogbones to remove that, but it's much nicer with suspension that wants to work up and down more freely.

Looks like there's oil leaks and stuff under there, that's mostly a trick of the flash and some various lubes sprayed around. Had to respray part of the frame down there; it was fine covered in grease but had been sandblasted through years of offroad use. Wire brush and a lick of spraypaint and it'll be fine.

Chain and rear sprocket change

When I got the bike, it had 14/41 gearing. (Stock is 14/47, but motard means a smaller back wheel). It was way too short. I went to 15/41 and it was pretty good, but it turns out I could also get my hands on a 38T rear off a Husky 630 SMR (which shares sprocket pitch etc with this hub, which is also shared with RGV250). No 39T option (would have been my preference), though. Anyway, this is probably the first bike where you can just keep throwing gear at it and it's just better and better. Only difference is now I have to carry 4th at 60 rather than top.

Swapped to a non o-ring chain as the o-ring chain on it was too wide and was cutting into the sides of the chain lower guard. Also makes it less of a chore swapping between dirt and motard chains (which I will be doing, I want to run a bigger rear sprocket on the dirt gearing & just swap fronts if I need to do long distance to get to a good bit of dirt).

I can see why people go the wide ratio box for these bikes for adventure use... I don't think I will, as I'd like to get it onto a circuit at some stage. Which nicely segues into the next mod.

Motard axle and peg sliders
With the main race track here shut to bikes due to a bunch of deaths at both race meetings and track days, and Collie being a bit far away, I'd like to have a crack at some of the motard races which are run on gokart tracks around Perth. This means a bunch of prep, primarily around axle and peg sliders so you don't trash the tracks when you bin it.

There's a multitude of aftermarket options but, actually, buying genuine Suzuki sliders off a DRZ400SM and using threaded rod to secure them (factory retention mechanisms are shit) works great and is cheaper. I bought these when I ordered a bunch of OEM bits for a few other upcoming tasks.





Would have preferred black, probably needed to order different part numbers for that.

For anyone playing along at home, you need to order:
2x 54755-29F00 (LH front, RH rear, 24mm hex cutout)
1x 54745-29F00 (RH front, 19mm hex external on one end of slider)
1x 64755-29F00 (LH rear, has a small diameter bit that goes into the axle).

Then drill out the centre holes of these to 6.5mm and use M6 threaded rod cut to length and some nyloc nuts to secure. Works great.




Pegs with integrated nylon sliders are also required for motard racing, so here's a set of higher rise motard pegs with replaceable sliders.

Lockwiring begins
Again for racing, there's a surprising amount of shit that needs lockwiring on these bikes. Lots of oil drain plugs. Started off with replacing the timing cover inspection holes with Yoshi plugs because bling... also, some numpty previous to me had completely chowdered the inspection cover 10mm hex key that meant I had to brutalise and destroy it to get it off.



Exhaust
Bought the bike with a completely hogged out standard muffler and OEM header. Thanks to the magic of scumtree, I found a bloke in Tassie with just the right pipe for me, so I brought it back as luggage to Canberra from Hobart when I went down there a couple of weeks ago, and then got it back over here to Perth.


(This is how much you have to strip the bike down to do the shock, with then the muffler added. Really not at all bad).



Despite the years of abuse, the muffler itself is happy and just needs a polish to get rid of a bunch of scratches. You can't read the nameplate, but it's a Pro-circuit T4 and it's... well, I bought it 2nd hand and it was cheap, so there is that.



It tucks away underneath the side cover better than the stock one, and it's not much louder than the completely bashed out stock one (but sounds nicer). Goes better too.

Rear pads
Still paying attention after all of this documentation? Phew. Well, I also threw in some rear pads when I had the back end apart. The rear caliper hadn't had the slide pins greased in a while so one pad was worn a lot more than the other. Figured new pads wouldn't be too pricey when I had it apart to fix this.



The bike did not turn left when I applied either the brake, despite the sticking slide pins front and rear.

Dirt tyres
Finally got around to getting dirt tyres sorted. Since there's long distances to the fun dirt around here, I haven't gone full knobby... I'll save that till I have a car here so I can get it to the fun stuff without riding it. Michelin T63s, they get a good wrap on the road and are still pretty alright for the stuff I wanna do with it.



I need to do some thinking about the right compromise gearing wise for the dirt; the quick change front sprocket cover is so I can swap over front sprockets pretty quickly if I want to get into super gnarly stuff having ridden a few hours of highway to get there first... this probably implies NOT going with stock 14/47, but probably a compromise between something good on the highway with a 15T front, and something that'll work in the dirt with a 13 or 12T front.

So there we go. There's still a bunch of other stuff to do, like replacing the dash and putting on a headlight that's more effective than the current one which is about as good as a candle... but progress is being made, despite being here less than the half of the time & having access only to the tools I've dragged over in a suitcase.

 

Awesome write up, looks like a big and fun project with a good reward at the end.

Hopefully the bike serves you well and keeps you entertained, hope your're not missing the Monster too much.

 

There is an additional complication I didn't mention with the post earlier... one of the main reasons to swap from 15-41 with the motard wheels is it's an awkward size combo for the chain. Either 104 or 106 links, can't remember, but then a new chain is totally all the way forwards on the adjusters and still a smidge too tight (14-41 is just doable with a new chain with those links, but, it's the correct tension with a new chain).

If you add 2 links, no problems, but then the adjuster is far enough back that you struggle to get enough tension on a 13T front especially when the chain wears a bit.

Am not concerned about having 2 chains, one for motard and one for the dirt... bike came with one replacement chain, and I have another spare from a different project.

The final constraint is: no case saver/front sprocket cover will work with a 16T front, and I suspect there are swingarm clearance issues with a 12T front.

So based on that, and wanting to avoid awkward chain lengths/adjustment, I think I'm at 15/43 to get out to the dirt sections if on dirt wheels (close to 15/41 for the motard wheels), and then 13/43 for something that'll be easier on the bike in the dirt where I won't be bombing along at stupid speeds anyway. Then you've got a fighting chance in technical stuff too with the narrow ratio gearbox in these.

... otherwise, fuck it, wide ratio box here we come .

 

Won't have time to fit it before I fly out tomorrow, but last major piece of the puzzle is here.