I think this is the last of the maintenance videos for this riding season. Although I am considering some new tires. Maybe one more maintenance video. There will be some travel coming soon though!
In this video I ditch the stock DR650 air filter and secondary breather filter for reusable K & N style filters. I use a standard K & N air filter for the regular air filter and a UNI filter for the breather or secondary filter.
I was really surprised at the difference these air filters made. I've used K & N products in the past and you can actually here the difference after you install them. The bike just breaths better. The performance increase IMHO was simply incredible.
One of the first things I noticed was now that the bike was breathing properly, I needed to use the choke to get it started. It also seemed to bring the idle down a bit on both the choke and normal idle and also when it's running warm. I had a slight popping or very mild backfiring when the bike would decelerate, and that is all but gone now! That alone IMHO was worth the extra money spent on the K & N style products.
I did quite a bit of research before selecting the K & N and UNI filters for the Suzuki DR650. I don't have any other air box modifications and with the exception of the manual choke the carburetor is completely stock. One of the things a lot of people talked about in the forums was if the High Flow K & N style filters adequately filtered for a dual sport or off road vehicle. I think that's a legitimate question too. For me, I'm riding mostly on road these days. ProCycle has a foam air filter cover that is comparable to the stock filter. This filter simply slips over the K & N filter. My thinking is the high flow air filter will be more than adequate and if I head out to the desert or take a trip out west during the dryer months, I'll just order the air filter cover from ProCycle and slip it on. I could always put it on when doing desert riding, and slip it off when not. Honestly though, I've used these products on a lot of other projects and they've always worked fabulous for me.
The bottom line is the improvement in performance is a fair trade off IMHO. The bike no longer pops and backfires during deceleration. It rides MUCH much smoother. It seemed to improve the smoothness going through the gears at low RPM's as well. Anyone that has riden a DR knows that the bike is a true thumper especially when going through 3rd or 4th gear at low RPM's. The high flow filters really made the engine run much smoother in my humble opinion.
Final thoughts. Money well spent. I'm really happy with this mod. This is actually the first video I edited too that I'm actually satisfied with. Sure there's room for improvement, but I'm really happy with the way this one came out. I'll have some future vlogs about what's working and what's not working for me as far as vlogging equipment and software goes.
Thanks for watching!
▶️ 3Speak