I live at 1000m (3300ft), but I get myself into terrain up to about 2000m (6600ft).

 

Im at 2200ft. You have the sf version roght?

 

Yup, SF with 13T, Uni-filter, 2br slip on, and jetted accordingly.

 

Dear go cytocis: Your description of your bike is perfect. Before I bought my 2012 kls250s my plan was to build a 250cc "crescent wrench". It had to do almost everything reasonably well. It is now very close but it has taken a year of work and a lot of money.

 

DB, the ironic thing is that I am fortunate enough to have my choice of a few other much more powerful bikes in the garage, but I usually end up taking the KLX because it's just such a fun & easy bike to ride. I don't have to plan ahead too much about where I might end up, or what I might do when I get there.

 

I have a normally aspirated 09.

Half my riding is ***** to the wall...half smoothing about town flying close to the road.

I weigh in at a mere 170 lbs.

New it got 70 mpg no matter what I did.
Bore to 351 it gets 61 mpg

A couple observations....

How did you get the idea to take off down the road under full choke ? That's just so wrong and explains alot.

Pulling 300+ lbs on a little 250 by keeping it WOT is just trying to destroy the bike....so why do you care about fuel cost ?

Just sayin'....

 

Argh I don't care about fuel cost, its just inconsistencies I care about, and the bike isn't being destroyed, it runs just fine. AND the because of the bike's carb, from what I have read and understand, the engine is meant to warm up under load, so sitting there spinning 4k rpm idling does little to warm up the engine properly vs. running with choke for a minute or two under load

 

go cytocis: I'm lucky enough to have a well developed SV650 as my other bike. Well developed means that that it does everything well. I do find myself choosing the KLX much more often than the SV for the same reasons you do. So now that my KLX has raised the standards for what bikes do, I guess it's time to dive into the SV and try to make it a bit more like the KLX. An SV650 that is as much fun to toss around as my KLX ? That sounds like fun.

 

I'm with Rich, no riding with choke engaged. It's not meant to work that way. At least on our CV carbs it's just an enrichener circuit and not an actual choke butterfly so the damage is mostly limited to thedamage caused by the overrich mixture.

 

Oh and I just ran a tank with the now super accurate vapor speedo/odo and got a real actual honest to goodness 55 which is crap. These bikes are fuel hogs.

I never verified that the odometer was bogus but the speedometer is certainly bogus on the OEM KLX.

Again, these bikes are fuel hogs. With their small displacement, advanced technology water cooling, dual cams, and our low restriction intakes and exhausts these bikes should be capable of 100 mpg when driven nicely.