I've no interest in off-road riding but like the grunt of a big single and the pseudo trail looks. The KLX seemed to fit the bill, the dealer offered a large wedge in part exchange for my old Superdream and the sun was shining so brightly that I couldn't resist the temptation of a brand new bike. At £3500 list the KLX was reasonably priced, the dealer somehow reckoning my CB400N was worth a £600 discount.
The KLX has a stonking great 651cc DOHC, four valve watercooled engine that develops 45 horses at 6500rpm. It's a development of earlier 600 and 650cc motors that is both more powerful and compact. Starting, with an electric boot and auto-decompressor, was easy enough. The engine chuffed pleasantly through the stainless steel exhaust and the gear driven balancer damped out the primary vibration. Earlier models had more temperamental chain driven balancers.
The first surprise was that even first gear was on the tall side, needing a bit of slip from the light, sensitive clutch. Both the chassis and engine felt very tight, the gearbox harsh with a lot of chain thrashing at low revs in third gear upwards. The second surprise was that despite the 35 inch seat height there was none of the top heavy feel I'd feared. The KLX uses road biased tyres and firm suspension, only weighs 350lbs and feels more firmly planted on the tarmac than many a road bike.
The first 500 miles was limited to 3000rpm, which equated to 45mph in top gear. The change became better as the miles rolled by. In town, the Kawasaki was easier to use than the Superdream, could be ridden through pot-holes without any worries and snapped through gaps in traffic at a furious rate. Here, its trail biased attributes came to the fore, the same characteristics that would make it ideal for riding through difficult off-road sections make it perfect for doing right-angled turns through tiny holes between cars.
The high seat also afforded a brilliant forward view, though obviously those short of leg were at risk of falling over in a heap at the lights. It wasn't as bad as it sounds because both the seat and tank were very narrow, allowing the most to be made of one's inside leg. A consequence of this minimal seat is that the KLX became very painful after a mere 50 miles.
Insulation from road shocks was maintained by the long travel suspension, the upside down front forks being especially impressive in their fluid reaction to bumps. The only problem with the Unitrak back end was that there were no grease nipples on the bearings, promising all kind of hassles down the line.
After the 500 mile service I was all set for some serious abuse. The front wheel always felt planted on the tarmac however hard the throttle was opened. It wasn't the kind of trailie that could easily leap over logs, pavements or roundabouts, or perhaps my road trained techniques were not up to the job. Even riding the bike hard I could not find much wrong with the chassis.
At least in the dry. Wet roads were a different matter, the Dunlop tyres being all too willing to slide from under the bike. They did it, the first time, so rapidly that I almost lost the KLX. I managed to wrench the bars, dab a boot down and skid off the road, ending up facing the wrong direction. Had the bike been heavier or less controllable it would've been tarmac thrashing time.
Even with 1500 miles on the clock the transmission was far from perfect. At low revs the engine would occasionally stall, which was a minor annoyance rather than a major heart surgery job as it only took a dab at the button to get the motor running again. The tall gearing meant that speeds below 35mph couldn't be countenanced in fifth and trying hard to accelerate from that speed caused the chain to go into a dervish dance on the sprockets. It wasn't difficult to ride around these problems but they seemed a bit iffy for a 1993 machine.
At the other end of the spectrum the motor ran out of steam at dead on the ton, but vibration started to intrude after only 75mph, which was a mere 5000 revs. This was fine for town and country lane work but rather limiting on motorway excursions. Not that the riding position encouraged high speeds - 75mph was about the most I could take for more than a few minutes.
With a single disc at each end and not much by way of mass, the brakes were more than up to stopping the KLX. I found them especially good in town on damp roads where their sensitivity (presumably developed for trail work) brought the big thumper to a rapid but safe halt. The last thing I wanted to do was lock up a front wheel shod with a dodgy tyre on wet roads. The tyres, by the way, have yet to show any signs of wearing out.
The frame is a weird and wonderful mixture of different section tubes with a fairly direct connection between the steering head and swinging arm mounts. It doesn't have an ounce of art in its design or execution but does the job of holding everything in line. A bit of paint falling off at some of weld joints was not exactly reassuring, neither was rust breaking out on some of the fasteners after the first month of winter. I couldn't be bothered claiming on the guarantee and got the bike up to scratch myself.
To recompense, reasonably fast riding gave 55 to 60mpg, the flat out stuff still turning in 50mpg. For a mildly tuned engine housed in a light chassis this seems about right. The tank holds over two gallons so there's a range of over 100 mile before frantically searching for a petrol station.
One quirk of a big single is that the engine goes completely dead without any warning when it runs out of fuel. That has left me sitting in the middle of fast flowing traffic with a dead engine that refuses to fire for half a minute. With the clutch pulled in I had to freewheel, horn blaring, to the roadside. After the first time, I always tried to fill up after 70 to 80 miles, just to be on the safe side.
The bike now has 2200 miles on the clock. The chain is about a third worn, needing quite frequent adjustments, the result of the great thudding single cylinder power pulses and the long travel suspension. Apart from those already mentioned, the cosmetics are still as the Kawasaki came out of the showroom, despite being ridden through some very wet and blustery weather.
This showed up a nasty bit of design in the tank/seat interface. Water pours down the steeply angled back of the tank, along the integral seat into my groin. Staggering off the bike after the five mile commute, I look just like I've pissed myself. The water is so well concentrated that it even gets through the waterproofs! On the positive side, the hand-guards give good protection in the wet, though they haven't stopped my fingers freezing off.
Perhaps because the bike is used in town a lot, and the engine never really has a chance to achieve a proper working temperature, there was a lot of white sludge in the sight-glass at about 1800 miles. Flushing out the oil and putting some new Castrol in cleared it up but it made of mockery of the 6000 mile oil changes suggested by Kawasaki. I'll do mine every 1500 miles from now on.
With electronic ignition, auto camchain tensioner and a single carb the only other engine maintenance is checking the four valves every 6000 miles, something my Kawasaki dealer claimed was far too complex for me to attempt (he was a bit miffed when I did the oil change myself, muttering about invalidating the warranty) but if it's out of the guarantee then I'll have a go.
There are quite a few minor faults with the KLX but as a fast town commuter and occasional back lane hustler there's not much to complain of. Over time, I'll make some mods to improve long distance comfort and fit a better set of tyres. I'm impressed enough with the engine and chassis to want to keep the KLX for the next several years.
Larry
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Glorious is the only way I can describe the noise of this big thumper on an open can. I went along to see this '94 model with only six thou on the clock, the moment I heard her running she was sold. The 'silencer' was stock but gutted, the owner reckoning this minor mod had smoothed out the flow of the 40hp watercooled mill, removed a previous hesitation around four grand. And who was I to disagree with him? Less than a year old, mine for £2675.
I rode home in a state of rare happiness. If the seat was a bit too high the rest of the 350lb machine felt just right. Easy handling, a flood of useful power as soon as I tapped into the throttle, a slick gearchange and what seemed like bags of character after my rather anaemic Honda CB500/4, whose main positive point turned out to be that I sold it for twice what I'd originally paid.
The knobby tyres were surprisingly grippy, only about half worn and despite long travel suspension it didn't have a loose, or hinged in the middle, feel...I was delighted with the emanation of overall quality, making me think of those seventies Kawasaki adverts - Let The Good Times Roll. Though supposedly aimed at serious off-road work, the KLX seems much more suited for modern warfare - riding on the Queen's Highway, to you and me.
I thought it brilliant in town, for instance. Potholes, manhole covers and dead dogs no longer inspired any fear or loathing, the Kawa just rode over them, the long travel suspension soaking up their irregularities. The combination of a disc at either end made sure that any stupid ped's (who must've been deaf not to hear us coming) were easily avoided - and the squeal the brakes made when slammed on made them jump out of their skin. Ho, ho.
Weirdly enough, the Kawasaki wasn't a dead loss out of town. The relaxing beat of its thumper motor meant I was quite happy and contented to cruise along at 70 to 80mph, though the bike would have benefited from taller gearing as I was always trying to boot up out of top. Approaching 80mph also led to some vibration getting through, its balancer system doing a valiant if not perfect job. 80 to 90mph couldn't be held for a long time for fear of something breaking off, if only my fingers. There was a relatively smooth spot between 95 and 100mph, but after that the mirrors tried to shake out of their fittings and my feet were reluctant to stay on the pegs.
Those of a perverse and mechanically insensitive nature might manage to put all of 110mph on the clock but the engine certainly wouldn't be happy about it and it'd take a very long road to wind up to such speeds. The main limitation on performance above 80mph being the sit-in-the-wind-and-suffer riding position. The motor has so much potential that it's a crying shame Kawasaki don't do a more road orientated version.
The aerodynamics were so bad that speed did nasty things to economy. Razzing through town gave a reasonable 55mpg but anything above 70mph got that down to 40mpg; 80mph equalling 35mpg. As well as the aerodynamics there's the power sapping balancer system, though for a 650 thumper, 350lbs isn't an excessive amount of mass - if it didn't have the balancer it would have to carry a lot more chassis bulk to absorb and withstand the vibration. Having said all that, the old British thumpers did 70 to 90mpg, with a similar turn of speed, though unable to match the Kawa's rate of acceleration nor its absolute reliability.
But still, forty years of progress has seen us going backwards in many areas, now that motorcycling is officially a leisure pursuit rather than a practical means of commuting. I was tempted to dismember the airfilter assembly in the hope of improving induction efficiency, maybe even stick on an old Amal carb and see if it really was just a case of emission and noise laws holding back modern designs.
Before I had the chance to do that, being chucked out of a nice cushy job with BT meant I had to hit London's despatch circuit. Well, it seemed a good idea at the time, the Kawa was sitting there looking all innocent and fresh, and the idea of making six hundred sovs a week had a certain appeal. I brushed up on my A-Z, made the rounds of the despatch companies. They all insisted I eat humble pie by starting out as a trainee, ignoring my vast experience of bikes and several years residence in the capital. The money was pitiful but better than sharing space with the degenerates at the DHSS.
In most ways the KLX was the perfect tool for despatch riding. Light and narrow, with loads of power in the right places, it could be kept on the pace, and didn't really object to mad, sudden changes of direction when I realised I was going the wrong way, was halfway down a one-way street with all the traffic coming at me, or the lights changed suddenly and I had to do a speedway style slide to avoid running down a crowd of ped's.
There were two major problems that spoilt this idyll. The first was that after a couple of hours of town riding the engine started to overheat and would suddenly stall, refuse to start for at least ten minutes. It may have been the straight thru exhaust causing it to run a touch lean and hence hot. Whatever, the cooling system had a hard time of it and seemed ready to burst at the seams at times. It always started up eventually and ran fine once given a half hour break every couple of hours - if my money and sanity didn't depend on it then I could have written this off as part of its quaint character.
A couple of hours of abuse was also a bit enervating, insofar as my fingers went numb at the controls and my backside felt like it had been borrowed by a bus-load of drunken public school louts. The vibration was insidious over time and the saddle turned into a bed of nails.
Don't let this put you off the KLX, under normal riding these flaws didn't intrude at all, it was just the heavy-duty despatching that brought the worst out of the machine. In about a year I put 29000 miles on the clock - the only thing I did to the engine was the oil every 1000 miles. It still runs like clockwork despite the lack of maintenance and hasn't lost any of its power.
Some chassis corrosion, crap screws that rust in the rain and hard to clean spoke wheels took some effort but the bike still looks good and I'd have no problem selling her for over two grand. Luckily, it's back to the easy life for me as I got a job with one of these new cell phone companies, and the KLX now does the minor commuting chores as well as weekend runs. I finally had the valves checked but they were within limits! Impressive enough for me not to want to trade it for anything else. More than adequate go, lots of fun and not too expensive.
L.L.