You read about the WR's stellar performance in the DR 24-Hour (May '07), and since it's been inducted into our Long Haul fleet (July '07), the blue bike keeps on giving. One 24-Hour wasn't enough, so we gave it another...and another! Just the following week we brought the bike to our sister publication's (ATV Rider) 24-hour event and rode the bike most of the time, including hooking up some of the lights for our light buyer's guide (August '07). The WR has a good charging system stock, but we wanted to run even bigger lights. Upon getting the bike back at the shop, we installed a Baja Designs modification to unify the power output of the stator. The mod took a couple of hours and sends all of the juice to the battery so you can run a lot of light, if the need arises. The kit includes a bigger voltage regulator and all the plugs fit together less one locking clip, which later on, fooled with us.
Next stop was the Coalinga National enduro, where Chris Denison lined up in the 250B Class and piloted the Yamaha over 70-plus miles of mud and gunk. "The WR was perfect for the nasty conditions," Chris commented. "It's ridable in tight trails, nimble in the mud and, above all, it's got a button start!" During the race Chris, along with about 330 others, eventually houred out but he ended up sixth in the class without doing any damage to the bike beyond a thick layer of asbestos-laced mud.
We did have an issue when changing the oil, though-we tore the vent right off the oil tank. Lesson learned: Don't torque the bolt too much and a little anti-seize would've helped.
Next was a 30-hour-plus stint on some of our favorite trails alongside our Husaberg, racking up the hours. Here's where the bike started to run funny. It was like it was running out of gas, but why was the battery was going dead, too? We checked the fuel supply which was OK, then looked into the battery, which had been dead when the bike returned from the enduro. We thought the headlight switch was accidentally left on as the battery took a full charge and was fine. It died again just three hours later. We suspected the soldering job I'd done on the stator was the culprit and tore into the motor, but the stator checked out. Remember the plug without the locking clip? Well, we should've checked that first as it had pulled apart and stopped the battery from charging. The bike was running off battery power. The Baja Designs instructions clearly said to tape and secure the wire, which we did, but not good enough. Once the problem was identified, we took the extra measure of wiring the connection shut; it was off and running without even a hiccup, and the bike even charged up its own battery!
After an oil change, valve clearance check (everything was in spec), a clean air filter and a set of new Maxxis tires, we sent the bike off to the Six Hours of Glen Helen to run the Ironman Class-it pulled off a second place. The soft suspension was the biggest issue, so we had K5 Suspension (818.261.8518; www.k5suspension.com) do a service where it stiffened the final third of the shock stroke and added oil to the fork to add bottoming resistance and progression to the stroke.