990 Adventure Refresh Part 3

Well, with the world losing its collective mind during the Covid 19 outbreak, I have tons of spare time on my hand. Unfortunately, the weather refuses to cooperate and my bank account won't allow me to throw money at this project like I would prefer, so I am stuck on some days doing very little. Oh well, it's better than my real job and I do have to time to ride my pedal bikes (alone, so as to keep me safe from all you infected people). There was a tiny break in the weather today, so I managed to get a little garage time. Mostly today was just tidying up my workspace and organizing everything. I am not the neatest person when I am working on something, so every few days I have to go through and put things in order.

I thought it would be a good idea to drain the fuel tanks since I have to replace my fuel filters and I wanted to make sure there wasn't any extra crud in there. Then I thought I would take a picture of the old air filters. WOW! They were extremely dirty. That is definitely not good for my motor.

I also took some better pictures of the throttle body and top of the engine. There is a ton more cleaning I need to do before I remove the valve covers and set the valves. I don't want any of this crud falling into the engine. It's dirty enough as things stand.

While looking closer at things, I noticed my vacuum tubing was starting to split. That can cause all sorts of rough running, so I will be ordering up a spool of that. The coolant hoses look fine, but I will have a closer look when things are cleaned up better to see if the arid climate here has dried those out. I certainly don't want a split hose to ruin a ride or a trip.

I am also still getting some small parts delivered. Today it was a new chain slider and mounting hardware along with new shifter mounting hardware. I still need a bunch of stuff, but every little bit puts me closer to getting back on the road. I have some big plans for the bike. Short term I just want to get it cleaned up and then tuned up and running right. From there, I have several ideas about upgrading the bike. One of the nicer things about this particular bike is that the previous owner added some really nice aftermarket parts. It has a custom laced front wheel from Woody's Wheel Works. I will want to add a rear wheel to match it. The bike came with a set of upper triple clamps set up for a Scott's Steering Damper. I need only buy the damper at this point. That will be a huge help off road. There is a Renazco seat on the bike as well as a spare seat that I can send in to have set up by James at Renazco. I will most likely be removing the bikes ABS system and extending the travel of the suspension to S standards. An extra 25-30 mm's of travel will be nice to have offroad. I am thinking of getting the Touratech rear shock at that point as well. It's a pretty cool unit that will be an upgrade over the stock shock.

Finally, I have been giving a lot of thought to the looks of the bike. It currently has a set of graphics that the previous owner had made. They are cool and still look ok, but really not my style. I am giving serious thought to having the tanks and plastics painted to match either Paul Krause's blue 950 Rally from 2004,

or Fabrizio Meoni's 2002 950 Rally that he won Dakar that year on.

Of course that means I will need Rade Garage to send me a rally fairing/light kit, but I'm ok with that.

But there I go spending money I don't have...