Well now the cat is out of the bag and everyone knows I got a KLR650, it’s time to mod it!
The first thing I noticed is it needs a phone mount. Since I want to do a bit of touring (and I don’t really know where I’m going around here!), I need Google maps at the least. I ducked down to Walmart and picked up a phone mount that they had there. TBH, it looks pretty decent and it was $15. I hooked it up to the left hand side of the handle bar and it works pretty well. It’s not perfect though, my phones power button gets knocked every now and again, activating the camera. I’ll do a review on the holder after I’ve done some more miles with it.
In order to run my phone, I needed some power. While I was at Walmart I grabbed a dual socket, 12 volt power outlet so I can charge my phone or a GPS down the track. The plan was to plug it straight into the KLR’s accessories wiring, but things didn’t go exactly to plan. Ahh, but where there are problems, there are solutions.
Turns out for whatever reason, the accessory wires just don’t work. After a couple of hours of tinkering, I decided I had to take a different path. The solution? Running new wiring direct from the battery. I purchased a 12v on/off switch, some wiring, an inline fuse, electrical clips, a soldering iron and got to work. It was all pretty easy to hook up, but fiddly and annoying considering I wanted to hook it straight up to the accessories. It did however give me a chance to learn how to take the bike apart. I also saw a couple of little other things along the way that needed fixing.
I stuck both the power outlet and switch on the dash with some industrial velcro. So far it works great and looks neat and tidy.
I took the bike out for a run and discovered that the licence plate holder gets caught on the rear tyre. I relocated it higher up onto the rear guard. I’ve got bugger all tools ATM (I did everything with the KLR toolkit!), so I used the soldering iron to melt a couple of bolt holes in the guard. Worked a treat!
Now time to get riding!
Keep it OnTheBackWheel people.
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