Suzuki Drz400S

[Watchman]

I have been meaning to share the story of my new toy. This being a ‘car’ forum, it may not get a lot of fans but I know there's a few. And I have been putting this write-up off for so long its no longer 'new' either.

Being a scrambler-man, the 2 obvious and feasible choices for me were the Honda XR400 and the DRZ400 (E or S models). XR4s weren't exactly hard to find. So I went to see quite a few, though each of them had something or the other that put me off (not to mention the kick-start). Then along came this rare DRZ400S. Engine sounded OK and bike seemed to be decent, though 'showroom condition' is not what I would describe it as. So over the next few days a price was negotiated and the deal was closed.

First thing I did was ride it to my mechanic and do a oil and coolant change. Afterwards, a hint of vanity struck me. I went and bought a new set of plastics; fenders tank shrouds and sideboards and all....And that was just the start...

They say never go look at a vehicle in the night, but if I waited till the weekend to go see it I'm sure I would have missed this.

Edited October 22, 2013 by Watchman

[YALA]

nice a bike thread after a very long time...did you take it out of the tar road to enjoy it ?. btw that lady in red on the left 600RR?

[Watchman]

nice a bike thread after a very long time...did you take it out of the tar road to enjoy it ?. btw that lady in red on the left 600RR?

In fact I got this bike in late April, and a number of things have happened to the bike since. I'll start keying in the developments soon.. it's nice to have this thread to see who the bike has changed over the last few months.

And yes, I swapped in a pair of semi off road tyres and took it out on a couple of off road trips.. All that power at the flick of your wrist eating into gravel sure puts a smile on your face

To be honest I wasn't paying attention to the other bikes in the car park. That's a very keen eye you have to be able to recognize it by the seat.

[Hoonigan]

All I saw was you selling off original parts Didn't see the replacements. Good to have a bike thread going. What are your plans for it?

[MasterDon]

My kind of thread!

[Watchman]

The colour scheme on the bike just didn't sit well with me, Yellow, White, Red Black, Blue (seat top) was too messy. The stock colour for the fenders should be yellow and for the side-boards white. And the front fender was from the SM model (smaller), and boy did it look bad.

I bought a full set of plastics, some stickers for the headlight, and went home to start the job. I spent a good 5 hours on cutting and applying the stickers on the white headlight flaring to give it a more suzuki yellow (or banana yellow as the colour is called). I had already done some stickering on my other bike, so I knew what I was getting into. The key is to have an clothes iron and a hair dryer at hand at all times.

The front fender, and the side panels were a direct fit. It was the rear fender that was an issue. The fender was originally meant for a DRZ400E which is the racing (not road-legal) model and hence has no rear subframe like the 400S and 400SM. So the work began with a hacksaw blade in hand. A few hours later the bike looked better, not perfect, but better.

Note the triangular cuts; cutting plastics to a set shape is a tad harder than expected

Then off with the road tyres and on come the Semi off-road tyres. A scrambler really 'pops' with proper knobby tyres but the rule of thumb here is that if your thumb fits in between 2 knobs its illegal for road use. So Dunlop 605 it is.

[Watchman]

And the beauty currently stands like this.

[Watchman]

So after giving into my vanity of making the bike look nice, another party pooper popped up; just a week before I took the DRZ on its virgin dirt trip.. The carburetor ..

<<stay tuned>>

Edited October 22, 2013 by Watchman

[Watchman]

All I saw was you selling off original parts Didn't see the replacements. Good to have a bike thread going. What are your plans for it?

Well, when you put in new parts old parts have to go somewhere.. And living in a tiny room, there isn't a lot of space to store stuff. Besides, there are people out there like me who work on projects looking for cheap parts or to trade.. in face I'm in the process of bartering a used seat in exchange for a pair of hand guards and used footpegs I have lying around

My kind of thread!

Stay tuned for more to come..

[Cyclist]

Awesome work Watchman! Please update all your work here, ! I started to save for a DRZ400 few months back. Enough of 250CC

[Hoonigan]

Not fan of knobby tires myself but since you go offroad (fairly frequently?) it's a must have for you. How does it grip on the road? Had any trouble on rainy days?

@Cyclist machan how's the legal situation in SL now? Can we legally use a 250+ displacement now? I have the hots for a CRF 450 and do a Supermoto conversion.

[YALA]

Not fan of knobby tires myself but since you go offroad (fairly frequently?) it's a must have for you. How does it grip on the road? Had any trouble on rainy days?

@Cyclist machan how's the legal situation in SL now? Can we legally use a 250+ displacement now? I have the hots for a CRF 450 and do a Supermoto conversion.

that ban on engine over 350cc was removed few months back but what i heard few days back was its back on again now...the 1000cc were asking arnd 1.2- 1.5mil

[Hoonigan]

that ban on engine over 350cc was removed few months back but what i heard few days back was its back on again now...the 1000cc were asking arnd 1.2- 1.5mil

I think there was a grace period where bigger bikes were allowed to come in and register at the right capacity. But I don't know what the normal procedure would be going forward.

[xXx]

Dili, solely out of curiosity what made you choose a dirt bike over a sports one or some other category of a bike?

[Watchman]

Dili, solely out of curiosity what made you choose a dirt bike over a sports one or some other category of a bike?

Well, over here you don't just get a license to ride any motorcycle.. First you get one for bikes below 200cc (class 2B).. you ride with it for a year and you're eligible to apply for a license upto 400cc (class 2A). And another year later you apply for the unlimited license (class 2).

So when I was looking for my first bike I did consider a sports bike too. But there weren't any 200cc bikes. Just 125,150cc bikes.. pretty underpowered...but there's a decent selection of 200cc scramblers. Plus I'd done some off-roading before so I was quite keen on doing more of it after I got my own bike.. Same story in the 400cc range, there arent many relatively new bikes/models in in the market. But once I get my Class 2 I would like to buy a R6 or a R1 just to try it out for kicks.

[Watchman]

Warning! A bit of a snooze post ahead, cos its got no photos.....

So after purchase the bike ran fine for about a week till something happened. I started noticing that once the engine reached running temperature, the engine couldn't idle. At every traffic light, the engine would knock a bit and die. I tried increasing the idle speed, but then the engine once revved up wouldn't come back down. So vut tu du. The culprit; the carb.

The previous owner had replaced the stock Mikuni carb (which I was given as a spare by the previous owner) with a 1st gen FCR carb. Now what's FCR? Well, I had the same question. So from what I have gathered the FCR has an additional jet which spits out a bit more petrol into the mixture to give it some extra low end power. The original application for this was to give 4T sports bike a little more kick to be able to keep up with the 2T bikes. Then someone thought, hey why not pop one onto scrambler, and so the FCR craze began. Since then, there has been a 2nd and now a 3rd generation of FCR carbs, each more reliable and powerful than its predecessor.

I was wise enough to know that carb jetting was beyond my curious DIY capabilities, so I went to a FCR specialist. He said that I could rejet it, but this being a FCR1 it will need rejetting again pretty soon. Or; I could go for a refurbished FCR3 with better peace of mind, but that would really hit my wallet hard. I don't know what I told myself at that moment to justify Rs.60,000/= on an upgrade, but before I knew it I was giving the go head for a FCR3. The bike would be ready in 5-6 hours. With everything put in place, I took a small test ride; and that's when I realized that the carb isn't just a box that mixes petrol and air. It really is the heart and soul of the bike. It was like I was driving a different bike. The revs go up in a heart-beat; throttle response is more crisp, the exhaust note is more fierce and the bike, well it just flies and feels so much lighter! Every penny spent felt worth it.

[Watchman]

The bike was now ready to rumble.. and I took it out on its maiden dirt ride..

We had some moderate rain to add some spice. And for me; with more power came less fuel efficiency I'm talking 16kmpl on highway.. So I top up before hitting the trail.

Note the colour difference within just a few KM.. ohh my vanity plastics.....

An overnight trip requires the bare minimum of cloths and camping gear; And yes, about 20 cups of instant noodles for dinner.

It was a beautiful ride indeed.

[Hoonigan]

Dude you're making me jealous! The bike looks absolutely at home covered in mud

I'm curious about FCR carbs...is the application limited to offroad bikes?

[Watchman]

Dude you're making me jealous! The bike looks absolutely at home covered in mud

I'm curious about FCR carbs...is the application limited to offroad bikes?

Like I was saying, they started off with road bikes, so I guess they still use it. They'd have 4 of these snapped next to each other and bolted onto the engine like this;

You'll notice that that the air intake and manifold aren't a perfect right angle; In fact it's just so that when fitted onto a sports bike (where the cylinders are slightly slanted) the body is upright.

[Hoonigan]

My bad, I missed where you mentioned road bikes.

Mine's a V-twin which is a bitch to fiddle with. Not sure i can fit anything else than OEMs in the space. Most people drill holes in the air box and call it a day...oh well :/

edit: a quick search didn't show any options I can use...a PSB thread points out my standard carbs are too big for their own good and I shouldn't be looking at bigger units..

Edited October 28, 2013 by Hoonigan

[Mean Green z28]

nice project!

[Watchman]

My bad, I missed where you mentioned road bikes.

Mine's a V-twin which is a bitch to fiddle with. Not sure i can fit anything else than OEMs in the space. Most people drill holes in the air box and call it a day...oh well :/

edit: a quick search didn't show any options I can use...a PSB thread points out my standard carbs are too big for their own good and I shouldn't be looking at bigger units..

That's a pretty popular mod on DRZs too.. It's called the 3x3 mod (cos they cut out a 3"x3") piece of plastic from the top of the airbox to let more air in. And maybe ad in a good air filter too..

[Watchman]

Had a few updates lately..

I had been contemplating on an auto-chain-oiler. The proper (expensive) way to go would be to use an oiling system like a scottoiler, But that's not exactly

'disaposable cash'. So I tried out a DIY system which cost much less. Under Rs.500/=

I bought the largest syringe i could find (50cc) some cable-ties, some fishtank tubing with a valve and an Atlas chooti-gel pen.

It's a fairly simple mechanism. The syringe is fitted at a slightly elevated location (in my case, the back of the pillion foot-rest) and fill it with engine oil. The tube then takes the oil along the frame, along the swing-arm and upto the rear sprocket. The entire way it's held in place with cable-ties. Make note not to over tighten the cable-ties, else you'll choke the tube. At the end of the tube use the Gel pen's cartridge (or as we called it in school, the 'carbon koora') as the rigid arm like part that makes contact with the sprocket.

So this is how it looks. Not the neatest set up but I was concerned with getting the functionality working before tying up loose ends.

You press the syringe a bit and let some oil enter the tube. Use the valve to control the flow rate (only way to find that sweet spot is trial and error). And the oil that has entered the tube will flow and drip onto the sprocket and spread into the chain links due to the centrifugal force.

I tried it on the last trip I went on, and it was a perfect trial since it was a wet and rainy ride. It works! After the rain stopped i started using it and i could visibly see that the chain was decently lubed. My mistake was in the placement of the syringe. As it was fitted tot he REAR foot-peg, I could press it only when we come to a stop at a traffic light or something like that. So i should look into positioning the syringe somewhere easily reachable when on the move. A squirt every few hours should be more than sufficient to keep things smooth on a long ride.

But after fitting this, I found a used scottoiler selling pretty cheap. Coincidentally the seller used this on a DRZ400sm so all the hoses he cut and the clips he fabricated should fit mine perfectly. I'm yet to fit it though.

Edited November 28, 2013 by Watchman

[Komisiripala]

Ado that is very cool!! We do have an electric infusion pump to drive the syringe in ICU but I guess that's a tad more costlier

[Watchman]

Oh those are the contraptions with a motor driven screw like thing right? Unlike your patients my bike doesn't need that much precision. When in doubt I just give it a bit 'extra', It's not like it can overdose and die (unlike your patients)

Edited November 29, 2013 by Watchman