Dirt wheels are pretty easy to source, you can use your SM hubs and just lace 21" & 18" rims, or buy a complete set of dirt wheels for around 15,000 bht.
I like as much fuel range as is sensibly possible. When poking around in the middle of no-where, once you're down to less half tank on a standard fuel tank,i dont care what anyone says everyone starts thinking about fuel.
I've put a Clarke 3.9 gallon (14.7 litre) plastic fuel tank on this bike. The standard fuel tank is 2.64 gallons, so this is a 44% increase in capacity. Trail riding you can use an estimate of around 170-180 km of riding range from a standard DRZ 400 fuel tank, the larger tank should then bring the range up to around 265km under inefficient riding conditions. (NOTE THE KICK START LEVER JUST UNDER THE FUEL TANK)
I do have a 18 litre safari fuel tank also. For trail riding what i don't like about the safari tank is that the tank molding replaces the radiator shrouds. If you crash on rocks even the the polypropylene is tough, there's still a chance of holing the tank in the middle of nowhere, the clarke 3.9 gal (14.7 litre) tank uses the existing radiator shrouds.
After the last jungle trip to Laos, getting caught in the dark, it was found that the DRZ 400's headlight was terrible, so a HID headlight has been installed. I want to test this to make sure the change does not result in a charging issue with the additional current draw.
With the DRZ 400SM model having the wrong suspension, race tech rear shock valving & new spring have been installed, this will take some playing with to get setup correctly.
Kick start has been added - being stuck in the mud through restarting the bike continually from falls & flattening the battery is pretty dumb. Interestingly the DRZ 400SM model cylinder head casting is not drilled to accept the decompression lever to aid kick starting. We installed this without the decompression aiding arrangement and it is not hard to kick start at all so not needed.
GPS power lead has been wired to the battery.
I wanted to change to a manual cam chain tensioner, Lan at C&P talked me out of it. I still think its good to have, if the auto hydralically driven cam chain tensioner fails, you could have some serious problems. It seems the cam chain tensioner problem was only on the very early DRZ 400 models and was rectified.
Sprocket gearing has been changed to 13T front keeping the 41T rear. Going down 2 teeth on the front equates roughly to adding 8 teeth on the back. I'm told reducing the front sprocket will reduce the chain life as its turning over a much smaller radius, so this will need to be monitored.
On sprockets, it's worth mentioning that many people including myself have had problems sourcing the rear sprockets. Standard DRZ 400 rear sprockets from the USA or UK have different fixing and center hole configurations. A friend has researched this and has discovered that rear sprockets from 2000 - 2004 Suzuki DR650's are what fits the Japanese imported DRZ 400's.
