V-strom weaknesses

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crossy67

Original Poster:

1,570 posts

180 months

Tuesday 19th August 2014
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Planning our road trip to and around Greece for a month at the end of September and I got to thinking about spares to take with us. We're probably going to be doing around 3k miles on a 2007 DL1000 with 32,000 miles on.

So far I have plugs for tyres, bulbs, fuses and a few other bit and pieces. Any other thoughts about what I could take and are there any relatively common weaknesses on these engines that would be likely to break leaving us stranded, the sort of things we could carry with us? Things like ignition coils or the likes.

Whilst I might be getting the attention of people in the know regarding this engine. My engine is looking a bit tatty, any one know a colour code for touch up paint? long shot I know but the water pump looks crap and I'd like to repaint it.

Ta all.

crossy67

Original Poster:

1,570 posts

180 months

Wednesday 15th October 2014
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Well got back today from a 3 week 5000km trip.

Only one small problem after the most torrential rain I have ever experienced. We had ridden across Greece from east back west in rain, thunder and lightening and fog getting progressively worse until we arrived at Lefkada when it stopped. We got to the room and left to bike outside. After about 10 minutes we'd just got out of our soaked clothes (water proofs aren't that water proof after 5 hours in heavy rain it seams) the heavens opened and stayed open for about 18 hours. The poor bike was out in it all night. When we awoke it was still raining so we stayed put. I did a bit of investigating but before I got to the bottom it started as I was checking for a spark with one plug out. Put the plug back in and off we popped. The bike ran perfectly all day but we had an issue a couple more times with it refusing to start but once running doing so perfectly.

Personally I think water had got into the ignition switch.



There is a whole town out there in the rain.

crossy67

Original Poster:

1,570 posts

180 months

Thursday 16th October 2014
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The bike was fantastic, I would have struggled with some of the steep tracks I ended up having to take without all that torque.

The only thing I found hard to live with was the clutch, it's very difficult to slip and the biting point seems to move about making low speed maneuvering with all that weight (iro400kg) difficult at times. I'm going to renew the clutch and investigate changing it over to cable rather than hydraulic so I have more control over where it bites.