900 Dollars and 40 Foot Pounds of Torque

The way I see it, the KLR is to blame. This week is the one year anniversary of my KLR650 purchase and subsequent entrée into the world of back roads, off road, and low maintenance roads. The KLR renewed my love of motorcycling. I picked up on the KLR where I left off on the ZRX...on unpaved roads.

But then I immediately wanted to share these back roads treasures with my girlfriend, Wendi. Whenever we're out driving around, I'll see a great side road and just groan that I can just turn off like I would on my KLR. We've taken her Ford Fusion and my Pontiac Vibe to some of the best spots I've scouted in the Flint Hills, the California Trail and even some back roads in Arkansas. But the Vibe is about as off road worthy as the ZRX. I quickly ran into ground clearance issues, scraped up my oil and trans fluid pans and realized I needed a better solution. I considered renting a vehicle, but we like taking "Sunday drives" on the spur of the moment. For a whole host of reasons, I finally just decided to buy an off road toy. I wasn't looking for a rock crawler, muddin' truck, or trail rig. I just wanted something for back roads touring, something with decent ground clearance, bias ply tires and four-wheel drive wouldn't hurt. I had my eye on a Suzuki Sidekick or Geo Tracker for a while, but there aren't lots of those around and their 1.6L engines aren't quite suited for highway speeds. When I called my mechanic inquiring about a lift kit for the Vibe, when he finished laughing, he suggested an old Cherokee. "Not a Grand," he made clear. "Get an old regular Cherokee with the inline six."

The hunt was on and I was like a dog with a bone. I spent way too much time obsessively scouring Craigslist and other dealer sites for old Cherokees. I got pretty sick of the hunt actually. But I developed a good idea about price and value and what was available. Wendi and I drove 3 hours to Lincoln, NE one weekend to test drive a low mileage '95 that overheated the first ten minutes of the test drive. I probably test drove about 8 or 10 Cherokees; I lost count. Some were downright awful, woefully neglected turds. Looking for a good used "survivor" of a vehicle that Jeep stopped producing in 2001 ('99 was the last "good" year) was quite discouraging. You can find nice examples with 100k miles on the clock, but folks want $5k for them. I had $3k in cash in hand. I didn't really want to spend quite that much, but I was prepared to if the right one came along.

Then I came across this red '93 two-door Cherokee about an hour west near Topeka, Kansas. Asking price was $1,000. Odometer reading wasn't listed in the ad, which usually means the number is so high it'll scare you off. I inquired about miles. 125k was the response. The only catch was the owner freely admitted the Jeep had the dreaded Death Wobble. It ticked off all the right boxes: two-door, low miles, hand cranked windows, 4.0L inline six with 4WD, decent condition, two-inch lift already installed, floorboards not rusted out, actual gauges instead of dummy lights for temp and oil pressure, and all at a reasonable asking price. I figured at that price I could take it to my mechanic and have them sort out the death wobble as they had assured me they were up to the task. I test drove it and liked it a lot. It got me excited and fired up and it passed my careful inspection, so I pulled the trigger. I got it for $900. With Wendi's help, we drove it home on a Wednesday evening taking back roads from Topeka. I kept it around 45mph (never over 50mph) and it never death wobbled on me. On the drive home, I discovered it even has working cruise control!!!

I dropped it off straight at my mechanic as soon as I got back into town. That was Wednesday (9-14-16). They called on Friday with the bad news. They had a list as long as their arm of all the things wrong with the Jeep and they recommended me not putting another penny into it. I told them I left the title open for that reason. It's a repair shop I trust implicitly as they have served me well for over ten years. I was very disappointed, but I immediately resolved to sell the Cherokee on Craigslist and I assured everyone I would even turn a profit on it since I bought it for such a good price. A couple of days passed. I washed the Jeep that weekend so I could take pics for the Craigslist ad I would post. But I drove it to the car wash, I thought. It runs STRONG. I studied the list from the mechanic closer and closer. I decided to keep it! Then I tinkered with it a little on a Monday night after work and I said FUCK IT! I'm selling it. This thing is too old and I don't need another project, I thought. I listed it on Craigslist with a weepy water pump and all the other issues. It sat for a few days with lukewarm interest. But it didn't sit right with me...that Jeep sitting in my garage pissing all over the floor. I decided to keep the jeep (again)...or at least to replace the water pump so I wouldn't feel so defeated. A water pump from O'Reilly costs $25 and I probably should go ahead and do that before I sell it anyways...for the next guy who wants to test drive it. And I figured if I found another Jeep to buy, I'd have a whole new list of things to fix on that 20-year old vehicle. And I STILL wanted a back roads touring scoot. That desire hadn't changed.

So Saturday (9-24) I went to O'Reilly and bought a whole box of new parts for a hundred bucks. All parts were in-stock even. Can’t beat that. I spent 3 or 4 hours on Friday night after Scrabble tearing everything apart. That's the part of the job I had most dreaded - removing bolts on a 27 year old Jeep. I won't bore anyone with the details, but I had to remove the air box and the whole power steering assembly to gain access to the water pump. But, the good news is that I had unobstructed access to the broken motor mount when I removed those ancillary bits. I had no intention of tackling the motor mount this weekend, but I couldn't help notice it and remembered it was on the list from my mechanic. That added only a couple of hours and it was pretty high on my priority list anyways. I would guess I worked on the jeep 8 hours total on Friday and Saturday. I replaced the motor mount, water pump, thermostat, lower radiator hose, and all corresponding fluids and gaskets. I test drove it Saturday night and all seems right with the world! I was happy as a pig in shit! Off the charts happy!

There are a lot of unknowns. The previous owner could have let it get hot and blown the head gasket and / or fried the rings. Only time will tell. But for now she runs and drives real nice. Lots of power and she stays cool. I've got a lot more to do on Lil' Red. It desperately needs new tires and I've got an unexplained "pop" in the steering that I need to diagnose. But John was over yesterday just to take a look and he crawled underneath to inspect the steering and suspension. He said there's nothing under there that looks like it's in dangerous condition. I may wind up discovering a deal breaker still yet, but in the meantime I'm learning and having fun. And I'm ten kinds of excited about getting out and bouncing around in the Flint Hills with Wendi in my new Jeep. And getting a running and driving off road toy for 900 bucks....how fun is that! That really is a big part of it. The notion of buying a vehicle for under a thousand bucks and being able to drive around and have fun in it. That’s awesome! Working on things, shining on things and making them better than the way I found them, bringing things back to life....all that is right up my alley.

Update: So I did all that work this past weekend. Replacing the leaking radiator cap seems to be the final link in getting the cooling system completed sorted out (for now at least). I've put another 30 miles or so on it (still under 47mph) and it's staying cool and running strong. On Monday I went over to my buddy's house and we figured out that the "pop" sound coming from the steering is coming from where the new track bar attaches to the axle. The previous owner replaced the track bar trying to fix the death wobble; that's the one thing they tried. I removed that bolt to see if it was wallered out, but it isn't. But then I torqued the bolt back down to spec (40ft lbs). I had read that sometimes suspension components that aren't torqued down to spec can contribute to the death wobble. That awful "pop" noise in the steering that used to make me cringe every time I turned the Cherokee is now GONE. That sound had bothered me from the very first test drive. The pop may come back, but at least I know where it's coming from. I also fixed the heater, defroster, interior dome lights and radio by simply replacing two blown fuses. I've been in this fabulously familiar spot a few times in my life where I'm coming in behind someone fixing a whole slew of things that someone else overlooked or neglected – a cornucopia of low-hanging fruit. It is an absolute blast. This Cherokee is getting better by the day. I insured it yesterday and I hope to get it tagged in the next couple of days. I'm on the hunt for tires now. Once I get new tires (or good used ones), I'm going to go out and really put some miles on it. Updates to follow.

"Where you at?"

Back in 2007 or 2008, I bought a wrecked Suzuki SV650 and spent several months trying to fix it. When I finally admitted defeat, I put the bike up on Craigslist. John showed up on an old Honda Silverwing. A deal was struck for the basket case and he gave me $20 to hold the bike. When he came to haul the bike away and realized I hadn't titled the bike in my name, the deal was off. But John and I resolved things amicably and we seemed to get along...just a couple of guys who like motorbikes. Soon after that, I invited John along on a group ride, to which he rode his gorgeous, white, six-cylinder Honda CBX. I remember being on that group ride with all these lethargic cruisers and being underwhelmed. At some point I got a little antsy and just whacked the throttle like I was at the local drag strip on a Friday night. I looked in my mirror and there was John on his CBX keeping pace like we were out for a Sunday drive. I think that's probably what sealed the friendship; he had passed the final test. Over the years, John has attended a couple of Arkansas ZRX rallies with me. John has helped me with numerous wrenching jobs over the years in what has amounted to an unofficial apprenticeship. He got me into racing pocket bikes. In 2011, when I punted a deer with the ZRX and spent two nights in the Eureka Springs hospital, John was the fella who came down to Arkansas to get me. He actually brought a friend who lives in the area just to help him load the bike into the van because he knew I would be useless in my banged up condition. When shit goes down, I call John.



A couple of months ago, on one of the last days in January, the forecast was for a sunny, 60 degree Saturday. Perfect KLR weather, I thought. I got an early start that morning and was up near the California Trail by around 10am. Things were going great until I came to the first low maintenance road. "Low Maintenance" up in that area usually means no gravel. I hadn't even considered mud being an issue because there hadn't been significant rain in weeks. But do remember this was late January in Kansas. There was still a little snow packed on some of the roads that had isolated northern exposure. The first low maintenance road saw me drop the bike at least 3 or 4 times. I had been telling everyone how the KLR isn't such a heavy bike....until you have to pick it up a few times...in the mud. I would lose momentum, then lose traction in the rear, and then it would just turn and fall. And picking it up when you're having a hard time standing is even more difficult. Without planted traction in the feet, you're working that much harder. I got off into a cut corn field thinking that would be a way out, but that was only marginally better because I was getting mud and corn stalks jammed in around the rear shock. I wasn't doing very well. I spent maybe 45 minutes dropping the bike in an area only a few football fields long.

When I finally got off that road, I thought, let's head to the house. This is not the day to ride off-road. But then I thought, No, fuck it, I'm not gonna pussy out that easily. I'm not going to let a little mud get the best of me. I made a conscious decision to stick with it. I just figured I would stay off the low maintenance roads. And I have to admit, the image of Ewan and Charlie flashed through my mind. No quitting, I thought. In hindsight, I should have channeled my "discretion is the better part of valor" mantra. But that would have made for a less interesting day for sure.

After spending 20 minutes digging corn stalks out from around the rear suspension, I was back in the saddle. I crossed the levy and was going to ride a field road out toward the Missouri River. But about halfway out into this field, I realized I was in some more mud. Somehow I was able to turn the bike around and head back toward the levy. But then I started dropping the bike again. I would pick the bike up, but I couldn't get going. So I thought, No big deal, I'll just hop off and walk it out in first gear. Nothin’ doin'. The bike wouldn't go anywhere. I was mired in mud that behaved more like clay and I was making no progress. I tried digging the mud off the back wheel, but more took its place with each labored rotation. I pushed and pushed the bike, but that was futile. There was NO way I was going to brute strength that big beast out of there, especially not with it loaded down with all that mud. So I kept at it with the bike in first gear. I had to keep the revs up just to keep the bike from stalling because it had all that extra weight turning on the back wheel. I tried and tried – making little to no progress – until eventually the bike gave up. The clutch stopped working. I had burned the clutch out – smoked it completely. It happened pretty quickly...maybe 10 to 15 minutes. But I had been working it like a rented mule.

So I called John. At this point, I wasn't sure I had burned the clutch out. Probably just denial. I was talking clutch adjustment with him and explaining that I had gone through all the cable adjustment and the clutch still wasn't working. We came to the conclusion that I'd probably killed the clutch. Then there was the stone cold realization that even if I could somehow miraculously extract my KLR from this shitty, muddy mess, I still wouldn't be able to ride it home. I was stranded times two – doubly screwed. To which John responded, "Well, where you at?" Luckily, I was near an actual road according to Google Maps – 260th and Randolph Road near Wathena, KS. Google map the location and prepare to be utterly underwhelmed at the completely boring topography in which I was able to render my "adventure bike" useless. John was about 120 miles away. He said he would be there as soon as he could but that he needed to unload the van.

I got stuck at around noon. I called John at around 1pm. He arrived at around 4pm. While I waited for him, I decided I would try to do what I could to have the bike out of the mud by the time he arrived. I didn't want to waste that time while my bike just laid there in the mud. There was a fella on a bulldozer pushing trees down a couple fields away. I'd heard that beep beep beep the whole time I'd been out there. I thought I could walk over there and maybe convince him to pull me out of the muck. Judging distance in wide open spaces like that is a bit deceiving. I wound up doing about an hour of walking through muddy fields that reminded me of the rice patties I've seen in Vietnam War movies. And it was all for naught. The guy on the dozer said he couldn't cross the levy (for whatever reason – maybe he wasn't willing to risk getting stuck). When I got back to the levy to wait for John, I sat and tried to eat the sandwich I had packed. But my nerves were so worked up, I maybe choked down about half the sandwich. So I laid there on the ground and tried to relax. The adrenaline of getting stuck, trying to muscle the bike out and then all the walking had taken it out of me. The icing on the turd cake was that I had cut my hands up pretty bad trying to dig mud off the back wheel. I put on my one pair of nitrile gloves with the hopes that I could prevent any more dirt and grime from getting in the wounds.
When John showed up, there was considerable doubt about whether he could even get close enough to the bike with his van to winch me out. We walked over the partially dry ground to see where best to park and load the bike. Then we walked out to the bike and back. John stood there deliberating for a bit. Then he just shrugged his shoulders real big, smiled, and said, "Well, let's give it a shot." So at that point, I was not only stuck in the mud with a broken down bike – literally "dead in the water", but I was also potentially pulling my buddy John out into that shit mess with me. I had been so relieved to see John drive up that afternoon, but I wasn't out of the woods yet.
John crossed the levy and backed his van down as far as he could without getting into the really muddy stuff. The doors of the van swung open to reveal no fewer than a dozen buckets of chain. I started stringing out chain while John held the bike up. We're talking big, heavy duty chain and many many meters of it. When John got to the van, started pulling with the winch, and the bike started creeping out of that muck at a snail's pace, I'm sure the relief I felt was nothing shy of an angel getting its wings. I was pushing the bike to help out because I was worried the weight of the bike and the mud and the chains might overwork the winch. The bike was so loaded up with mud that the wheels wouldn’t even turn while it was being towed out. But we got it to the van and got it loaded up. And while I was muddy from head to toe and nursing bloodied hands, John was able to do all of this without getting any mud on him as far as I could tell. John isn't one for wasting energy and struggling to accomplish his goal. John always works slowly, deliberately, methodically and with as little effort as necessary to get the job done. I liken it to jujutsu, which is "manipulating the opponent's force against himself rather than confronting it with one's own force." It is an impressive sight to watch the man work.
It was just past sunset when the bike was finally loaded and secured inside the van. But then there was the fear of not being able to get the van out. We were facing the last few hurdles. I held my breath. But true to form, John drove it right out of there. We got on some more snow-packed roads making our way back out to the highway. But we weren't out in a corn field and that's what mattered. John pointed out that we'd be fine now because at least there were some trees out along the road. He was thinking about anchor points for the winch. "A good pilot is always looking for a suitable place to land," I remember reading years ago. I exhaled a definitive sigh of relief when we pulled onto paved roads again. At that point, I figured we'd made it. My body melted into the seat and I could relax for real....for the first time in many tense hours.
On the way home, John and I talked about the mud. We talked about freeze and thaw, freeze and thaw. Rain doesn't matter so much in the winter in this part of the country. Parts of Kansas are essentially tundra during the winter. The ground freezes every single night for months. It maybe occasionally starts to thaw on random warm days. At no point does the ground really dry out in the winter. But John didn't lecture me. He didn't give me a hard time. While I was stringing all that chain out through the mud, he told me "no more apologies". I'm sure I apologized a few dozen times that first hour or so after he arrived. He didn't seem put out and even saw the humor in the situation. "That's why they call it an adventure bike," he pointed out more than once.
When we arrived at my place and got the bike unloaded, I spent at least an hour spraying the bike off with the water hose. I figured the only hope I had of getting the bike clean was to get it washed before the mud dried. With the bike parked safely at home in my garage, I then went upstairs to work on me a little. I pulled the nitrile gloves off and my hands were prunes from being in those gloves for so long. The gloves were soaking wet inside. I opened up a brand new tooth brush, grabbed a bar of Dial antibacterial soap and I started scrubbing my wounds. That's what they do when you go to the hospital ER. I know the drill. The cuts on my fingers were deep and it hurt like hell scrubbing them with an Oral-B. But coming at the end of such a long, tough day, it didn't faze me in the least. I was too consumed with relief to be bothered by a little bit of stinging pain at the finish line. I had to wear bandaids for a week before the cuts would finally stay closed on their own. I wore dish gloves in the shower.

The oil smelled like barbeque sauce when I drained it a couple of weeks later. When I pulled the engine side cover off, it looked like someone had dumped coffee grounds in there. That's no exaggeration at all. New clutch fibers, steels, springs and some other random seals cost me under $150. I had rebuilt the clutch within a month and most of that time was just healing up and waiting for the parts to arrive. Cleaning the clutch basket was the toughest part as the fibers had baked onto the metal. It was a shit mess in there. I did the "doohickey" (balance chain adjuster lever) at the same time. I had both engine side covers off for all that work. It was a little unsettling seeing it in so many pieces in the garage. But it's all back together now and runs better than ever. I enjoyed learning how to rebuild the clutch. Oh yeah, while I waited for the rebuild parts to arrive, I cleaned all of the chain that we used out in the mud. I insisted. I laid it all out and measured it; 154 feet of chain. And then I weighed the buckets; over 200lbs in all.




I take 100% responsibility for that day. My inexperience did me in. My mantra for all of February was, "I'm an idiot and I've learned my lesson." The highlight of that day was John. Seeing him show up knowing what to do, how to do it, and then getting it done with peak efficiency was awe inspiring. I know this whole post is overly reverential toward John. But on that day (as on others in the past), he was nothing short of a hero. I was looking at having to walk out of that shit mess, call for a ride, leaving the bike behind and getting a tow out of there at some later date...provided the bike was still there at some later date. John spared me that whole ordeal. Since the rebuild, I have put another fun five hundred miles on the KLR. All is well that ends well.