I saw a thread on another forum that mentioned thumpers with a low oil capacity and holding up on long stretches of highway. Something to that effect. It got me to thinking about how the KLX will hold up in the long run for people that do alot of highway riding. I have about a 60+ mile round trip commute to work and I tend to be taking my bike more and more often. I know the overdrive 6th gear keeps the rpms low with the stock gearing but I have had to use fifth as well to maintain 70 mph going into a head wind which puts the rpms up at 8000. What are your thoughts on the long term effects of this kind of riding? Do you think our 250 can handle it?

Thanks.

 

I don't know the oil capacity of the Ninja 250 but at highway speed its running in excess of 8500 rpm, I would think buzzing along at 6500 would be fine for our bike, so long as you aren't holding it wide open to maintain speed anyway.

 

I don't think oil capacity is the issue here. The real issue is heat. Your one way commute appears to be around 30 miles. This appears to me to actually be easier on the motor than dirt riding, because the highway speeds for such a relatively short period of time will be helping keep the engine cooler than slow going climbing at the same RPMs. Synthetic oil can also help. It has superior lubricating properties, and doesn't goo up when exposed to extreme heat. My daughter had a water leak in her car. She drove it until it got so hot it quit running. By the time I got to it, it had cooled off. I put some water in it and it started right up. Aluminum block and heads, no damage; I credit that to the synthetic oil.

 

I've been worried about these issues myself a bit. I have about 1,500 miles on my KLX so far and most of my time is spent traveling anywhere from 30-100 miles to get to awesome grounds for riding, which is spent riding with bigger dual sports as well as the fact that I'm used to riding sport bikes.

The result.., I'm often found humming along at 80-85 on my speedometer which means a good portion of my time is spent nearly or at full throttle and above 8,000 RPMS in 6th for extended periods of time.

At the rate things are going.., I will be surprised if this little KLX engine has much of a life in the long run, but its just terribly difficult for me to deal with the thing on concrete.., offroad its great if underpowered... But running it so hard, giving it everything it has just to maintain what to me is a cruising speed is bound to have some long term affects.

 

I've been thinking about using synthetic oil when the bike is broke in enough. I had planned on doing an oil change tomorrow. Do you think 1400 miles is enough to switch to synthetic?

 

I actually ran a sythetic blend and was recommended that from the dealership from day-1. Once I hit 1,000 miles I went to a full sythetic oil and have'nt had any issues at all, its worked great.

But then I'm pretty picky about using high quality oils and would'nt recommend anything less then full sythetic to anyone if its an option at all, its just expensive, but it makes to big of a difference in long term engine health to ignore in my eyes.

 

I think I'm going to go ahead and switch over to synthetic. ReaperFox, have you done any mods to your bike? I can do 80 on mine in sixth gear but only if the wind is at my back. My first mod will probably be to lower the gearing but I haven't decided how low yet. Sixth gear is too high and fifth seems a little too low. I'm hoping that a 14-45 or 46 gearing change will get me somewhere in the middle and give the bike enough torque to maintain about 75mph.

 

I'm still running the factory displacement, but I'm running a full Muzzy exhaust, a Uni air filter with the airbox lid left off, 128-main jet and a 40-pilot jet with a drilled slide. Still running factory gearing, so thats all I've really done for power mods.

With the bike in that condition it seems to run real comfortable at 70-75, but gets slow as it climbs to 80 and beyond. The fastest I've ever had on the guage was 92 on flat ground with no wind, but I was really pushing it to see what it would do at peak and she would'nt budge anymore. Once I get beyond 85 it creeps very slow, but I don't need it to go that fast, I just wanted to see what it would do.

As long as it will take 75-80 ok, I'm quite content with that from a bike thats intended for the dirt.., but its still running hard enough I don't know how long things will last... I plan to do the 330/331 conversion at some point and the torque should ease that strain a bit, but I'll still be churning higher RPMS then I would like for an engine with such little RPM overhead.

 

Wow, 80-85 mph? I don't have a KLX, but I put over 10,000 miles on a 2001 KLR250-most of it commuting between Puyallup and Seattle, Wa. I often took the freeways at maybe 60-65 mph with no detrimental effects.Changed oil every 1000-2000 miles.

Jon

 

One of the reasons I went with the PCV on my KLX is that the person that did the original development on a KLR650, noted a decrease in oil consumption. Seems as though moving all that air back and forth tends to send some of the crankcase fumes (oil) up into the airbox.

Only further testing will let us know if this is another benefit on the KLX.