high clearance DL650
 

I have this dl650 for 3 years now after travelling 45000 miles with I can say the bike is pretty much what I am looking for but the ground clearance sucks , I ripped my center stand in Canyon del Pato last year and while desert riding between chile and Argentina the skid plate suffered a lot of injury ( but didn't break) I am now running a smaller dog bone and lower the tube to the max ( longer spacer in tube ) now the bike have over 71/2 inch clearance . I will be testing two up loaded for the next few month and will tell you how is the handling (mostly sand riding and normal road in my area) I am also planning to buy DR650 fork tube to put inside the DL bottom ( already seen it on the web), I may also put a longer shock . I was going to reroute the exhaust but it seems really costly to just get so little. I will also do a naked version of the DL650 ( no fairing and single headlight.

I'll be interested to hear and see your results

dl650
 

I did a quick try on dirt and some sand today and the handling is way nicer as far as road driving its very similar but the turning ratio seems a little be longer than before .

Sometimes I´ve thought about this, but haven´t even gotten far enough to figure out, which way to re-route the exhaust (so that you could still keep your feet on the pegs)?.. if it doesn´t go under the engine, I guess it must then go by the side of it, but where? Even if you could solve that you´re looking at having one-off parts made for the exhaust, so will probably cost quite a bit.

Being able to pull it off could, on the other hand, gain you at least an inch, and then I would find an extremely sturdy bashplate, that I would feel secure to mount quite close to the engine as you don´t have the exhaust there to worry about any more (ok, it still would need some space there, but at least Suzuki´s own bashplate for the 2004-2011 model mounts ridiculously low).

dl650
 

the only way I saw to do it its under the brake lever and that will only give you 1/4 inch , not enough clearance when you see the work you need to do to achieve this.

I wonder if this could work?

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/...psdd7eb713.jpg

(But I must add, that since I don´t have the bike with me right now, I have no idea, if it´s possible – primarily, is there enough space on the frame backside for the exhaust to go through (and especially on my -07, the ABS unit is located right there, could well be the stumbling block). But just checked out an RM-Z250, which has the pipe routed like this.)

dl650
 

Hi Pecha
The exhaust can only be past under the brake to gain very litle clearance , there is no room between the engine and the frame to pass it there :( .
at the end of the month I will be doing a trip two up loaded to see how the bike react with my present set up. If this work well I guess I will continue in the same direction and buy a longer shock. So far the bike react very well one up during road and sandy trail test , even during strong braking the bike react like before .

I am also working on taking the front fairing off