As promised, here are a few photos of the new dualie. It’s a 2009 Kawasaki KL250 Super Sherpa. I picked it up down a Barneys this morning after the dude who bought my XR500R came and picked that up. Having a little plated dually now, the KL will serve a lot of useful purposes. We’ll also be getting a receiver mount carrier for our Jeep and take it with us on our Jeep excursions for a little off roading.
I took the KL out this afternoon and a little into the Thonotosassa back dirt roads to see how it does. Overall, it’s a gutsy little bike, but it’s still just a 250. The two things that it’s in need of is some gearing adjustment and stiffer fork springs. It’s a six speed but it just doesn’t seem tall enough in the gearing, even for the pavement. First gear is all but useless. It’s running 14/43 sprockets, so perhaps taking the front up one or two teeth will do the trick. The front forks don’t really hold up their end of the deal on rough, rutted surfaces. I found the front end diving quite hard into ruts and holes, where a good dirt bike would have had much better compression and rebound. Oh, btw compression and rebound are not adjustable. I’ve been here before. A good set of higher rated race tech springs will take care of it.
Other than that, I think I just want to get a good luggage rack for the tail and have some fun with it. The kid will be able to use this all he wants after he goes through the MSF and gets his endorsement.
Yeah, my son had to ride it, so I lugged him on the back over to the school parking lot down the road so he could bomb around for awhile.
