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DR-Z 400S for sale, fresh motor, low mileage – $4200

2003, with just under 13,000 km on the odometer.

I tore the motor down and replaced most of the bearings in the crankcase (crankshaft, balancer, input and output shaft bearings). All brand new valves, valve seals, and the valve seats were just done. Newish piston rings. Nearly new tires (MT43 front, D606 rear). New chain, front and rear sprockets. New manual cam chain tensioner (the bike came to me because the previous automatic tensioner appears to have failed). New throttle cables. New bearings in the rear wheel. New swing-arm pivot bearings. New pro-X gaskets used in the rebuild. Looking at my budget, I put about $1300 in parts into this bike.

The bike has a nice aftermarket FMF powercore muffler, sounds good, looks good, and saves a few pounds (and yes, is a bit louder than stock).

Outstanding issues: Kill / start switch. Kill switch doesn’t work. I have a replacement, but I still have to swap the wiring or the wiring connector. The exhaust header / heat shield is not mounted. The FMF pipe doesn’t have mount for the back of the heat shield. Given time I’ll build a fix. The front wheel needs balancing (I’m out of wheel weights), and to be honest, it has hit its share of rocks. I have new front brake pads on order. It occassionally dies when idling… starts right back up though… might be a leaking o-ring around the float valve seat.

The bike is surprisingly “un-molested” for a 17 year old bike. The exhaust and turn signals are about the only mods the (single) owner made. The carb has not been jetted, the airbox snorkel is still there, and the 3×3 mod has not been done. That is a mixed blessing, no-one botched any work. But these bikes are known to come running “lean” from the factory. There is a little popping/backfiring on deceleration, and an idle that can take a second or two to fully slow down.

Yes, the previous owner appears to be have liked his stickers : ) I could even go register the azzkikr.ca domain if someone wanted it.
It’s a DRZ, and has the fully adjustable suspension, I did run through the clickers and set them back to aproximate factory defaults.
It came to me with an aftermarket headlight shield, but my experience with aftermarket lights has been that they look good, and but don’t work worth beans, so I used some of my spare parts to restore it to OEM.
The Suzuki reflector with a cheap LED bulb in it throws a fair amount of light and is quite visible on the road, unlike the factory incandescent bulb.
To my knowledge, the bike was mainly used as a trail bike, and some of the plastics show the resulting scratches/abuse. These radiator shrouds are relatively cheap and easy to replace.
Gratuitous engine shot, while it is clean. Completely stock.
Right side. Note how little wear there is on the frame paint.
Aftermarket turn signals (it does flash fast / hyper-flash — came that way). Full S subframe with helmet lock.
Like I said, new valves. Was supposed to be four kibble-whites, but the exhausts were going to be slow to get, so they are hot cams instead.
Some of the replaced parts. Still finding bits I didn’t include, like a bent brake lever, and the piston. If you’ve got half an our to listen to me rant, ask me why there’s only two bearings there with the blue seals.
Main crank bearings, counter-balancer bearings, input/output shaft bearings, and probably one end of the shift drum. I didn’t replace the needle bearings as they are hard to remove, and they only move when you actually shift gears. (rear wheel bearings in the back, only two came out, three went back in !?)
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2020/07/12 – Oliphant with Dylan and Rob

“quick” run through Oliphant with Rob H and Dylan G. Good track, everyone sweated a bit, and the young guy even got tired. Despite the title, we did not get anywhere near the lake.

Ahh, right, south entrance (by the power lines) has been recently blocked.

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2020/07/05 – “shawnigan east” with Mladen and others.

I still can’t believe we only had four riders show up when Mladen volunteered to lead a big bike ride on a Sunday. I had thought Jeff was going, but he was a no show. The two of them, in my books are kind of “the” local big bike riders… but I’m no racer, so my perceptions are probably whacked. Anyhow, Josh, Scott Mc, Mladen and myself made up the four riders running around Oliphant this day. Scott and Josh tired fairly early, and Mladen’s partner (Bobbi) was leading a “girls'” group aroound, so he and I let Scott and Josh run for home while we joined with the girls group.

While few would have called Josh or Scott fast, the girls group was _way_ slower. Still, I had fun and did get to see a new viewpoint I hadn’t seen (mid lake), and which is worth knowing. And as always, you get to work on different skills when forced to a different pace. Malahat was _slow_ with southbound (homeward) traffic, and so was Finlayson/Munn Rd. Spent time chasing cars while riding on the shoulder looking for ramps (sshh).

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2020/07/01 – 13km in 4 hours with Chris and Brad

Started off easy enough…

But Chris wanted to try a trail that looked pretty hellish on the topo. Even the level parts were pretty techical, but once it started to climb we were pretty f*cked. Brad made it up on his 450EXC with good tires. The guys used the rope on my bike at one point, and quite a bit on Chris’.

Anyhow, the “13km in 4 hours” comment was Chris’ … I haven’t verified it, but we were two hours later than desired getting out, and we headed straight out from the trail head (after a stop to get our breath back).

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2020/06/30 – greasy fingers – +1 pivot works swingarm bearing kit – DRZ-400

Just wanted to make a note that the pivotworks bearing kit kicks the all-balls kit. It comes with a real thrust washer instead of just a teflon ring, and the shoulder washers are similar to Suzuki’s instead of the confusing big flat washer and spacer ring in the all-balls kit.

Oh, and I tried to cut one of the “collars” (inner race) down (on the lathe) to use as a bearing driver… not going to happen with HSS cutters. That’s HARD metal… despite the fact they always come out rusted all the heck. However, with either an old bearing or a bit of tube, the collar DOES make a good driver for getting the old bearings out (and LOTS of heat).