Greetings From Seattle

[quote="mrstsang"]

saha6818 wrote:

I've lately found myself lugging the engine when taking off from a start when the engine is cold. In particular, this is annoying when making a sharp turn - I lose my balance. It's okay once warmed up or if I go easy (what fun is that?).

Probably need to richen the mixture. Mine set at +15.

Really. :( You'd think the computer would adapt. I guess I need to look into that now. Thanks!

hey, I am getting my WR today, we should meet and go ride. I live in Kirkland. I am new to dirt bikes, but I ride street bikes and do track days. PM if you want meet sometime, maybe you can show me where to ride dirt around here.

I've been commuting 37 miles per day, 5 days per week on the WR for about six months. The traffic is heavy - it's at least 90 minutes per day. The WR is doing fantastic. I did blow a fork seal jumping a curb and dancing through a huge vacant lot to go around a congested neighborhood... But the bike has been comfortable and fun.

The front-end dive on braking makes it hard to see traffic in the mirrors, so I wonder if I'm more likely to avoid being rear-ended on my sport bike. At least I'll go out with a stupid smile on my face.

You can adjust the compression-damping on the bottom on each forks. In = makes it harder.

That's a great feature. But I like it soft.

welcome!

I'm still commuting hard on the WR, and it still rocks. I'm moving closer to work soon, so the abuse will let up. I might buy a Zero MX too. But I did a bunch of work on it recently:

* Installed heated grips to accompany the heated vest. Amazing.
* Rebuilt both forks after blowing a seal. They seem a little sticky up top now, but they're not leaking.
* Replaced the chain. The old one was stretched in places and not in others - confusing when trying to tension it.
* Added a big LED flood light to the front forks. This seems to have reduced how much I get cut off. It's not brighter than the headlight except from the sides. It's on all the time.
* Cleaned the air filter. It wasn't bad, but I noticed getting power back.
* Replaced the front brake fluid. I don't know why I thought it was bad - looked fine. Maybe another bike needs a flush?
* Pulled out the "dash cam" I had mounted behind the fairing. Bought some doo-dads to remount it. Soon.

* Bought/mounted a dual-sport rear tire. Kenda K761.
* Bought/installed a Shinko 705 front tire, had serious wheel hop between 47 and 53ish mph. Checked everything, read the forum hard. Tire seems out of round while rim is not. Maybe I stretched part of it out by having a fold in the tube or something? Ordered a Continental Escape that is in the garage waiting for a break from the commute to be installed.

The tires make cornering much more solid. But the breaking point is less predictable. I had my first lowside at 10mph in the parking garage a couple weeks ago. (In my defense, the de-icer was slippery. The only damage was to the pavement.) The rear tire also sometimes spins on the paint at freeway speeds when I change lanes in the rain, but I think that happened with the knobbies too.

Still longing for a snow kit!

Still loving the WR. My other bikes barely get a chance in the commuter rotation. I moved closer to work, so the commute is much shorter. I'm still catching up on the maintenance from the long-commute quagmire.

Also, we did a long trip around British Columbia a few weeks ago, and it was rainy and gritty most of the time. Plus I did a very muddy off-road ride. The chain stretched (and I didn't tighten it in time) and jumped teeth on the front sprocket, which became trash. So I replaced both sprockets and chain last night. Easy stuff.

I admit if I'd been alone (my wife rides very slowly), I would have really missed the sport bike. The roads up there were awesome. But for riding slow enough to not get arrested, the WR is the ideal tool for the job. It handles just fine on the highway, cruising at 85 mph indicated (probably 77 actual). It's comfortable, even if the wind blows me around a bit (if you can't handle that, maybe take a car; frankly, I might prefer a car over the R1200GS I rode across the country). And I can stand up to take stretch breaks, which frustrates my wife who can't do that on her bike. And 65 mpg? Insane. My range, even with the larger tank, is still shorter than hers, but there's room for extra gas on board, plus she's usually ready for a stretch break at fuel time. And I'm still loving the durability. I had my first decent-speed low-side (off road), and slid quite a ways, but there was no damage to bike or (geared-up) rider.

I had this moment when I was sitting in traffic on my commute today. The grips were all heated up, and the WR was just being its awesome self. The folks around me were just mindlessly surfing the net on their phones while driving their Range Rovers. This is a pretty good deal, riding WRs.