Trail Rider Magazine

April 2014 31 Water entering the engine isn't the only way for water to derail your day. Sometimes water can short out electrical connections and leave you scratching your head as to what went wrong. As a precautionary measure, apply a little dielectric grease to each electrical connection. So what do you do when water breaks through your defensive layers? The first thing to do is pull the air filter out and wring it out. Get all of the water out if it. I have seen someone start the engine and use the exhaust to blow all the water out – kind of ingenious, I guess. Sometimes you can just get away with hav- ing a buddy lift the front of the bike up high, perpendicular to the ground and kick it over. This will force the water to exit via the pipe. When all else fails, remove the spark plug and flip the bike over so it's resting on its seat and handlebars. Then crank down on the kick starter until all of the water blows through the top of the cylinder. It may take you several minutes but once all of the water is out and the spark plug has been dried, the bike should fire up. Then go home and flush the engine with fresh oil sev- eral times. Front Axle installation Ever have one of those rides where your forks feel a little harsher than normal for no apparent reason? Have you ever in- stalled your front wheel, pushed up and down on the forks and felt like they were a little sticky? Chances are, in both instances your front axle was installed incorrectly and was binding up the forks. This happens quite a bit, and yes, there is a technique for properly installing the front axle and avoiding this. Where most people go wrong is not loosening the far left pinch bolt after tightening down the axel nut. When the axel nut is tightened, it pushes the forks closer together and instead of being parallel to one another they are an- gled and look like a V. Here's the proper way to install the axle. The first step is to make sure the axle is clean and polished. I tend to wipe the axle down with an emery cloth and then apply a light coat of grease. Once clean, slide the axle through the hub and tighten down the far left pinch bolt to keep the axle from spinning when tightening the axle nut. Once the axle nut is tight, loosen the pinch bolt that you previously tightened down. You may hear a "pop" as the forks straighten out. Next go to the front of the bike and push up and down on the forks. This aligns everything properly. Now tighten the pinch bolts to the specified torque and enjoy properly functioning suspension. KTM power Valve Adjustments We are always touting the magnificence of adjusting the exter- nal power valve. It's obvious that we love it as it makes it so easy to tune your bike for almost any condition. KTM makes things especially easy by providing you three power valve springs to choose from - a red, yellow and green. What the different springs do is apply pressure to the power valve and allow it to open at a certain RPM. When the power valve opens, the bike revs faster. So, the sooner it opens, the sooner the bike revs. The red spring applies the least amount pressure to the power valve and allows it to open sooner, somewhere around 7200 RPM, which makes the motor more aggressive. The yellow spring allows the power valve to open around 7900 while the green spring applies the most pressure and doesn't allow it to open until 8400 RMP, mak- ing the bike feel less aggres- sive. Even better is that you can adjust each spring by turning the power valve adjuster in or out, which applies more or less pressure. For this we use the Enduro Engineering power valve key. Turning the key clockwise applies pressure to the spring and forces the power valve to open later, making the engine feel less aggressive. Turning it counterclockwise allows the power valve to open sooner, mak- ing the engine feel more aggressive. To replace a power valve spring, just remove the bolts as shown. Then remove the cap, along with the adjusting spring (either red, yellow green), the auxiliary spring (the smaller one), and the spring insert from the clutch cover. Pull both springs off the spring insert and reinstall the preferred adjusting spring op- posite to removal. Be sure to loosen the pinch bolts aer ghtening down the axle nut. You can control when the power valve opens by using the power valve adjusng tool.

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