Long highway rides vs stress on engine

Hi guys ,

I mainly got my wr250r converted to X for commute to work 16miles round trip and I mostly ride street . I have attempted to ride freeway one time and felt like engine was over stressing just the way engine sound . I was roughly traveling about 65-72 mph . Stock front gear and +1 rear.
Lately I been wanting to ride local twisites , which is in few cities away about 35miles away ( highway ride ) and wondering if it's OK for our smaller engine . I've read few threads here about guys running on highway for hours without an issue . Are they running different gears setup for highway speed ? I'm thinking about purchasing hitch motorcycle carrier just to be on safe side and just trail it there. But i thought maybe I can get some veterans inputs here . Thanks in advance

I've run mine at 9000 RPMs (80 MPH on GPS) for hours without any problems.

I was in my 40's when I found out it was ok to own more than one bike

johnkol wrote:

I've run mine at 9000 RPMs (80 MPH on GPS) for hours without any problems.

If you don't mind .. how would I able to display RPM on my gauge ? It only shows speed .

Osok65 wrote:

If you don't mind .. how would I able to display RPM on my gauge ? It only shows speed .

I have installed a separate RPM meter.

I use 14/48 gearing, which is about 2% shorter than yours, so at 9k RPM you would be doing about 83 MPH.

Osok65 wrote:

johnkol wrote:

I've run mine at 9000 RPMs (80 MPH on GPS) for hours without any problems.

If you don't mind .. how would I able to display RPM on my gauge ? It only shows speed .

I regularly do gravel road rides that exit onto the slab about 100 - 150 miles from home.  And (in normal times) do a two and a half hour commute back and forth once a week on the highway slab.  I've been doing that with my WR since I bought it new in 2008.  The engine finds it's happy place on the highway and I'm most comfortable purring along at 73 mph on my speedo corrected to read properly with my setup and tires.

It will go faster if I really want to, and I have run faster when short on time, but on a relatively light dual sport bike with dual sport tires, pushing it up another 5 or 6 mph makes the ride annoying.  The additional juice just ain't worth the squeeze.  Or to be more accurate, even more annoying: highway speed commutes on the slab aren't my idea of what's fun on a light 250cc dual sport bike.

If lots of running for hours at high speeds will damage this engine, nobody has informed my WR of that. During the decade plus this forum has existed, the number of "My motor blew up" posts could probably be counted on one hand, with one or two fingers left over.  Maybe more.  With the number of users we have, there's more than a few WR owners that run their bikes regularly at 70+ mph.  If this was damaging, we'd have been hearing about it after well over a decade.

It's your bike of course, but unless you're a techie minded mechanic like johnkol or an accessory slut, why be obsessed with RPM?  

It reminds me of when chronographs became available to us in the competitive shooting/varmint shooting world way back then.  Before then, muzzle velocity for basing your come ups on was all estimated best guess based on extrapolated manufacturer data.  When we finally sprung for one of those spendy original chronographs, the wails of disbelief could be heard across the country as the majority of shooters discovered that their barn burner high velocity loads that they had been so happy with BC (Before Chronograph) were usually going a few hundred feet per second slower than they thought they had been.  The chronograph giving them exact speeds didn't make them a better shooter, and it didn't make them happier with their rifles and their loads.  BUT... if you were a shooting techie like guys like johnkol are mechanic techies, yes, the chronograph that's the equivalent of an RPM gauge on a WR can be a useful tool for analysis and tweaking things here and there.

So I think I can confidently say there's no risk that an RPM gauge will address.

There's a rev limiter if you try and pick a low gear and decide how high the engine will rev before blowing up on the highway.  As a small bike, if you're running at higher speeds on the highway, wind resistance and inclines in the highway will probably have you sorting between your top two gears to get/maintain the highest speed, rather than the rev limiter.  I believe you'd have to be knowingly trying to abuse the engine and somehow or other defeat the rev limiter before you could damage the engine with high speeds/high RPM.

Not sure I'd drive my WR at 80mph for hours on end...
- Doing +/- the speed limit, the engine already sounds like a out-of-control coffee grinder
- Than again, the wife and I had ours doing the speed limits for hours on end, to seemingly no ill effect... other than a tired rider, the WR in its stock form isn't exactly a highway/touring bike.

I've had my WRR flat out at 94 indicated on a slight downhill run. I think the GPS said about 86 actual. It ran out of HP before it ran out of RPMs. I'm running 14/49 sprockets, BTW. I didn't hold it there for long but these motors LOVE RPM.

For what it's worth, a Lynx fairing does make a world of difference
- Not only does 65mph feels ok... I think our MPG actually went up.

We're now wondering why we waited so long... Ho well.

sillymike wrote:

For what it's worth, a Lynx fairing does make a world of difference
- Not only does 65mph feels ok... I think our MPG actually went up.

We're now wondering why we waited so long... Ho well.

I have a small handlebar-mount windscreen. I bent up some aluminum mounts to hold the bottom and keep it from vibrating. This has been on my WRR almost from the beginning. It definitely helps at highway speeds.