dashmoto

Plan B? C? Make it up as you go along?

This update feels long overdue, although in reality it's only just over a week since I was trundling back towards New Jersey in a U-Haul truck, with my dreams of crossing America by motorcycle in tatters. I've been quite busy and covered a lot of miles since then - I'm writing this in a campsite on the shore of Eagle Lake, in north-east California, although I'll have moved on again by the time I find a WiFi connection with which to post it.

After a lot of contemplation, and some hasty internet research, I decided I wanted to get out to the West Coast - it was a big part of my original plan for when I'd finished the TAT, and featured a few cities which would still be quite appealing in 'backpacker mode'. So last Tuesday morning, after a few hours walking around New York City, I boarded a big silver Amtrak train at Penn Station. Something like 20 hours later, on Wednesday morning, it deposited me in Chicago, where again I had just enough time to take a trip up the Willis (or as it was formerly, and better known, Sears) Tower and walk down to the edge of Lake Michigan before returning to board another train. I spent about 45 hours and two nights aboard this second train, passing through Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and finally Washington, where on Friday morning it rolled into Seattle.

I quite like what I've read about Seattle, and would like to spend a few days there, but that will have to come later in the trip - I was itching for the open road. While I was heading back with the bike I'd reserved a hire car for a month from Enterprise in Seattle, with the intent of driving all the way down the Pacific Coast, then returning via anything further inland that looked interesting. The coast road had always appealed to me and in the original plan I would have ridden it on the bike after finishing the TAT.

The $80 motel bill on Friday night made me instantly regret sending my camping gear back with the bike - although in reality it wasn't really practical to do anything else. However with my budget stretched to the limit by vehicle hire costs, I decided that a cheap camping setup would more than pay for itself. So on Saturday morning took a trip to Walmart and equipped myself with tent, rollmat, sleeping bag, gas stove, and a stainless mug which could double as a pot - all for about $150. Cheap enough to abandon in a months time if it should prove impractical to carry onwards, and with a cheap motel at $50 and an expensive campsite at $20 it doesn't take many nights to come out ahead of the game - I've probably recovered half the cost already. Plus of course that I enjoy camping. Fully equipped (well, I forgot I'd need something to light the stove, but remembered before I needed it) I set off around the Olympic Peninsula, having a nice walk around the lovely town of Port Townsend before getting my first view of the Pacific Ocean (accompanied by torrential rain) at La Push. I tested out my new camping gear, again in the rain, at a site between La Push and Forks.

While sheltering from the deluge on Saturday night (and remembering that I've heard the area referred to as the 'Pacific North Wet'), I had a sudden flash of inspiration. The Overland Expo, in Flagstaff, AZ, is next weekend. I'm all booked and paid up to attend, and had been looking forward to it, but I'd written the idea off when the bike broke, having neither the means to get there, nor the expectation of being able to camp. Suddenly, it occurred to me that I now had both those things once more. Sure, it would mean a few long days getting down there, but I'd been expecting to take a leisurely trundle down the coast followed by a quick run back, so why not reverse things and do the coast road from bottom to top, after the Expo weekend? Also, the weather's probably nicer.

Two days later, I'm a good 700 miles south having passed right through Oregon and into California. I expect the next two days (Tuesday and Wednesday) to keep me in California before the final run into Arizona and the Expo site on Thursday. It's not all been about covering the miles though, I've managed to pick a fairly scenic route through the Cascade Range, and visit the (mind-blowing) Crater Lake on the way. Bye for now!

There goes Plan A

So I ought to be somewhere in Arkansas right now, getting close to Oklahoma on the Trans-Am Trail. I'm actually - as anyone who is following my Spot Tracker updates may have noticed - in Hurricane, West Virginia, which isn't exactly the way I was planning to go. I guess there's a bit of explaining to do.

I worked my way through the Tennessee section of the trail in three days, accelerating as the weather improved, and ending up in Corinth, Mississippi on Monday night. On Tuesday morning I got off to an early start, and was back to the start of the Mississippi section by half eight. I then had a great day's riding, covering 180 miles, with a lot more dirt than Tennessee and an amazing mix of roads and landscapes under a baking hot sun.

Then at about three o'clock this happened:

A 200 yard long section of track that had been churned up by logging machinery. It took me about an hour to get the bike out, after which I looked like this:

That turned out to be a relatively small problem. The big issue was this:

The mud had pushed the chain off while I was still trying to drive the bike out, and had got wound up around the front sprocket. It was wedged so tightly I couldn't free it.

After pushing the bike clear of the muddy section, I walked the half mile or so down to a tarmac road - I'd checked before committing to the muddy section that I wasn't too far from something which might actually see some passing traffic. Actually, I only saw one other car in an hour or so sat there, but it was a road, and I had phone signal, so after an entertaining phone conversation with someone whose mapping software was more geared up to people stranded on the interstate, I was told that a breakdown truck would be on its way.

In the mean time, a local guy showed upon a quad, and we towed the bike up to the road, thus avoiding the question of getting the recovery truck to where I left it. Shortly after, the truck and trailer materialised, and the bike was loaded aboard. It being quite late by this point, I got them to take me to a motel in Grenada, MS,where I had been assured by the breakdown dispatcher that there were a couple of motorcycle shops.

After another futile attempt at freeing the chain the next morning, Google turned up a number for 'All-Seasons Power Sports', a bike and quad repair shop a couple of miles away. They came and picked me up, and we went to their workshop, where finally, by a combination of undoing the sprocket and taking the swingarm pivot out, we were able to untangle the chain and get it back on the rear sprocket. Wheeled it out of the workshop and fired it up for a test run around the yard. Or not, as letting the clutch out resulted in a lot of horrible grinding noises, and little in the way of forward motion.

Something in the gearbox has broken when the output shaft was stopped dead by the chain. Might be the dogs on first gear, a bent selector fork, or something along those lines. Now what? Just to find out exactly what's broken, the engine would need to come out and the cases split. Then I'd need to go shopping. In the UK, because Yamaha don't sell the XT range in the US or Canada. For parts which are almost certainly special order and a few weeks delivery time. Plus delivery across the Atlantic. Plus rebuilding and refitting the motor. I do, of course have another complete motor sat on the bench in Derby, but the reason I changed it is that it needed some work doing. Slightly less invasive work than the engine in the bike now requires, but nevertheless, it's not a quick fix, even ignoring the shipping issues. Either way, it would involve a lot of sitting around in Grenada, and after just a day there I wasn't particularly convinced that was how I wanted to spend my time.

Time to get on and salvage the situation, so yesterday I picked this up:

The bike is tucked up in the back, and I'm now about 700 miles north of Grenada. I'll be doing another 600-odd miles over the weekend back to Irvington, NJ, from where the bike will be taking an early trip back home.

It's hard to describe how gutted I am, how much of what I'd hoped to do is now off the table, and how many "what if I'd walked it first/ridden five feet to the right/gone another way/dug it out by hand/etc" scenarios have been playing on my mind. But this is where I am. I've still got time, and I've still got some money to spend.

There is a Plan B, and it starts at 3.40pm on Tuesday, at New York Penn Station.

One week in.

So I recorded another audio update, then decided I'd managed to make an incredible few days sound really boring. In place of that, here's the edited highlights of the thousand miles or so since my last update.

- Carried on down the coast of Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, and into the Outer Banks of North Carolina where I visited the Wright Brothers National Memorial a Kitty Hawk. I was there right at the end of the day and had the place all to myself. Incredibly moving to sit and think about the significance of what happened there over a century ago.

- Had my first night under canvas on the Outer Banks.

- Did a marathon 450 mile day from the coast to Asheville, at the western end of North Carolina.

- Rode the bottom end of the Blue Ridge Parkway, followed by the Tail of the Dragon through the mountains into Tennessee.

- Stumbled across a biker-run campsite in Tellico plains and spent an evening swapping stories around the campfire with the owners and a couple of other guys.

- Ridden the first 74 miles of the Trans-Am Trail in torrential rain.

Welcome to America

So here I am, in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, as the song goes.

Thought I'd go crazy and try and post an update in audio form. Turns out that, erm, it is, erm, quite crazy because I'm not, erm, that great at delivering off-the-cuff, erm, monologues, but if you feel like listening to me for ten minutes, here you go:

Download DR0000_0001.mp3

See you on the other side

There is no more time. With some last minute wiring of navigation gear, changing of oil, oil filter, tyres, and cleaning of air filter, the three months of bike preparation is at an end, because if I want it to be on the other side of the Atlantic in ten days time it needs a bit of time to actually get there. There's a few things I'm not 100% happy with, but I think it will be OK.

My day began by going to pick up a big white van.

Then I put a big black and white bike in it.

In with the bike went the panniers, along with my helmet and boots. One of the panniers contains the rest of my riding gear. The stuff that should be in that pannier - largely clothes, toiletries, and the inevitable assortment of electronic bits and bobs - will be coming with me next weekend, along with anything else I suddenly remember in the meantime.

All loaded up, it was time to get on the road. The destination, James Cargo in Altrincham, Manchester.

Rolling up to their warehouse, I was met by David Wyborn, who has spent the last few months patiently answering emails full of stupid questions from me, and between us we took the front wheel out of the bike and strapped it down to a pallet.

The next time I see it will be in Newark, NJ, USA. As for me, I'm back to work for the next week, before flying out next Sunday.

Making Control Cables

I thought this merited a post on its own, as the subject of throttle cables comes up fairly frequently on the XT660.com forum.

If like me, you are fairly tall (6'3"/1.94m in my case), and you ride off-tarmac, you'll inevitably need to modify the riding position of your bike by fitting taller handlebars and bar risers. Almost as inevitably, you will find that there isn't really enough length in the original throttle cables to cope with this change.

When I originally changed the front end on the Tenere, I let the professionals take the strain, and sent my original throttle cables off to Venhill, who remade them 120mm longer for me. It cost about £70 and took a couple of weeks. That was all very well until the plastic adjuster (part of the original cable which Venhill reused as they couldn't replicate it) broke, probably in some sort of rallying incident. Didn't stop me riding the bike, but made it awkward to adjust, and could potentially let dirt into the cable.

Possibly not the best situation when you're about to head off to some fairly remote places, but I didn't really fancy having to send cables off to Venhill again, so I decided to make myself another 'pull'/opening cable, and keep the current one as a spare.

The original (lengthened) cable is in the middle. Below it is a pattern replacement from Wemoto - as you can see, considerably shorter. Above (coiled up) is a Venhill universal cable kit. I bought mine from an eBay shop, but you can also get them direct from Venhill for less than £10. The kit contains a wire core, sleeve, and an assortment of end fittings.

Start by cutting one end off the pattern cable, which allows you to pull the inner wire out, and the top end fitting/adjuster (which is the only bit you actually need) off the sleeve.

Moving on to the Venhill kit, the new inner has a little stud on one end. Pick out a suitably sized nipple for the top (twistgrip end) of the cable, and slide it onto the inner wire. You don't strictly need to solder this on, and I didn't, but with hindsight I would have put a bit on just to stop it sliding about while you are trying to assemble the twistgrip.

Next, you need to cut the outer to the right length. Easy for me, as I just copied the previously lengthened one, but if you are extending from stock you'll need to measure carefully on the bike. Cycling-enthusiast friends tell me you can get special devices for cutting cable sleeves. I just use a hacksaw and cut gently enough not to crush or otherwise damage it.

Thread the inner cable through the adjuster and the inner cable.

Then fit a rubber boot to the outer (I found I had to stretch it a bit first), pick out a suitable ferrule and bottom adjuster from the kit. An important note at this point - there ought to be two nuts on the adjuster for the Tenere. I didn't spot this, and of course you can't get one on once the nipple is on the lower end. I got away without remaking it because the length was right so I could get it adjusted properly with just the top adjuster, but that's more luck than judgement.

Now for the important bit. The critical bit of the cable is the difference in length between the inner and outer. If this isn't right, you may not be able to adjust it properly. Measure the original cable by pulling the inner as far as it will go in one direction. Needless to say, if you are dismantling your original cable rather than making another, take this measurement first!

(apologies for the rubbish photo)

You need to make sure the nipple on the new cable ends up in the same place.

At this point, I clamped the inner cable (very gently) in a vice, so that with the nipple sat on top of the vice jaws, it was in the correct place (measure, measure, and measure again).

Having cut the inner off about 15mm beyond the nipple, unravel the cable, and squash the loose strands down into the recess in the nipple. The messier the better, as you are trying to make sure it can't pull back out once soldered.

Get the nipple/cable end nice and hot with a soldering iron, then feed solder in until it fills the recess.

The solder turns that nice tangle of wire strands into a solid ball, preventing it from pulling back out of the nipple. You'll probably need to sand/file down any excess solder to get the nipple to fit into the carb/throttle body, and of course oil the cable before fitting.

I didn't make a closing cable, only the opening one, but the process would be the same. Incidentally, Venhill also do an emergency cable kit which doesn't require solder. Again it costs about a tenner. I'll be carrying one with me in the US, just in case.

Baggage Handling

Not long after starting to plan for the US, an obvious challenge reared its head - how to carry everything I would need for nearly three months on the road, without making the (already fairly substantial) Tenere too awkward to ride on dirt.

The Yamaha hard panniers didn't even get a look in. Convenient as they have proven for tarmac-based excursions in the UK and Europe, I didn't really fancy testing the plastic attachment points over thousands of miles of dirt roads, or in any sort of tumble. It also gives the temptation of carrying way too much stuff...

Fancy trail riding with this lot on the back? I didn't think so.

In truth, apart from maybe one trip a year where I've been travelling with Sarah and carrying most of two people's stuff, I've hardly been using the Yamaha panniers, and I've now sold them on. My typical solo travelling/'weekend away' luggage setup over the last couple of years has been the combination of Yamaha top-box and waterproof roll bag, as per the picture below.

It's a pretty convenient, compact arrangement, keeping the bike narrow, and giving a bit of secure storage in the top box, but it also puts everything high up, and right behind your backside when standing, preventing you getting your weight back. Again, fine on paved roads, but not right for this trip.

This lead me down the road of soft panniers, backed up by reading the experiences of several motorcycle travellers considerably more seasoned than I am. Soft bags get the weight down low, but because they have a bit of flex, they give the bags, mounts, and contents an easier time over rough ground. They're also a bit less threatening to the backs of your shins, and are inherently lighter than a plastic or metal box of the same capacity. The trade-off is, of course security (although there is the counter-argument that any nefarious types will assume that anything locked in a shiny metal box must be worth stealing).

As a long term fan (addict?) of Kriega bags, I took a long look at their new Overlander-60 setup. Initially as a potential purchase, then (after seeing the price) wondering if I could improvise something similar with the considerable assortment of US-xx dry bags that I already have.

However I'd also been reading good things about Adventure Spec's new Magadan panniers, not least in the assorted Siberian exploits of Walter Colebatch, who worked with Adv-Spec to bring them to production.

Walter's most recent thread on ADVrider.com

(I was also aided in this decision by a very thorough comparison of the various soft pannier options by Chris Scott, here).

With the decision made, and a set of Magadan panniers ordered and received from Adventure Spec, there just remained the small matter of making a frame to mount them on the bike. Mounting bosses were turned up on the lathe at my parents over Christmas (see post here) from steel bar and the rest of the frames were fabricated from 16mm dia x1mm wall thickness round tube - about five metres in total. This is the first (non-exhaust) side being tacked together. It's spaced quite a way out from the bike, partly because the other side needs to keep the bag away from the exhaust, but also to allow for another neat feature which will become apparent later.

The tube is all bent using a plumber's pipe bender - intended for use on copper pipe, but will do steel if it's thin wall and you're feeling strong. With the exception of the rear brace, I only did one bend in any piece of tube. To join the bends together, I used an inch or two of the next size tube down, rather than try and make a simple butt joint.

There was a lot of measuring and tweaking involved in getting the second side to match the first.

But eventually it all came together and was fully welded up.

Since I felt at this point I'd actually produced something quite nice, I decided to refrain from my usual trick of ruining things by painting them with Hammerite, and had the rack powdercoated (along with the engine bars mentioned in a previous post).

As for that extra feature I mentioned...

Intrigued by the Rotopax setup offered with the Kriega Overlander kit, but (again) less convinced by the price and loss of a quarter of the bag space, I decided to improvise. In the picture are a pair of 'Ocean Slim' five litre containers, for fuel (grey) and water (white). I'd seen them used in a couple of other overland luggage setups, and while they lack the ingenious mounting arrangement of the Rotopax containers, at about £25 for the pair they're somewhat less of an investment. I've not 100% decided whether to take the fuel container with me, as the 250+ mile range of the standard Tenere tank should be more than adequate in the land of plentiful gasoline. The water container is definitely coming though, as there's a few places en-route where the ability to carry eight litres of water (including three litres in a hydration pack) will be A Very Good Idea.

Post-haste post-Posterous posting

You may have noticed a slight change of appearance lately. This is because, rather helpfully, less than a year after deciding to use Posterous for all my rambling-on-the-internet needs, owners Twitter have decided to close it down. Rather inconvenient when I'm only a few weeks away from departing for the US - although it would have been a bit worse if I'd failed to notice, and it had just disappeared a week into my trip!

After some very hasty evaluation of the options, and the hassle involved in switching, I settled on Posthaven, largely because, being run by a couple of the founders of Posterous, they are able to offer a faultless import service. As a paid service, they ought to be somewhat less likely to suffer from a whimsical disappearing act. Plus I actually liked using Posterous, and although it's early days, Posthaven promises to have a similar look and feel.

In the mean time, I'd best get on with writing up the rest of the bike build, because in a mere three weeks I'll be starting to write about the trips itself!

Back in the Game

I'm spoiling the narrative a bit here since there's still a few bits of the build to be documented, but I'm quite excited (and relieved), so what the hell - a couple of hours ago, I rode the Tenere for the first time in two months, to the local MOT test centre, and returned with a pass certificate.

Of course, given I've not ridden for a while, the bike's been rebuilt from a bare frame, there's brand new brake pads, tyres, and various other bits that need bedding in, and it's now something like two and a half inches taller than a standard Tenere, I was glad that I had a nice warm Spring morning to ease myself back into it.

Ahem...

Still, I managed to make the journey there and back with no great drama, and for possibly the first time in my entire vehicle owning history passed an MOT test without even a single advisory. In an amusing twist, I actually participated in the test myself, as the tester decided he wasn't tall enough to sit on it for the brake test.

The MOT certificate also reveals that I've done a mere 7,615 miles since the first of March last year, which is a bit disappointing, although unsurprising given the amount of time I've spent preparing it for the rallies last year, and lately for the US trip. I expect the next twelve months (and indeed the twelve weeks that I'm in the US) to cover significantly more distance.

I'm now hoping the weather clears up a bit so I can put a decent shakedown mileage on it before, a mere three weeks from yesterday, it gets dropped off with the shipping agents to be boxed up and flown across the Atlantic.

The Big Bike Buildup (part 4)

That brings us up to Friday. With a day of work, the first stop was the powdercoater's to pick up the engine bars and luggage rack. They've been done in a really nice gloss black finish, which is a great improvement on the original flaky Yamaha finish.

Engine bars and bashplate back on. The bashplate has obviously got a bit bent at some point, because I had to put a jack under it to get the last mounting bolt to line up.

Engine bars on means the last engine bolt is torqued up, and the exhaust can be fitted properly.

Between the exhaust headers you can see the blanking plate where the AIS plumbing used to be.

Back on with the radiator, and fill the cooling system.

Back to the engine breather. Here's a shot from just after the engine went back in.

The original baffle chamber used to be mounted on the rubber grommet at the bottom of the frame, below the intake. The new hose which I fitted runs up past the left hand side of the intake, and between the cylinder head and the frame rail. It then passes through the forks and does a U-turn around the (modified) front sub-frame:

Before heading back down the right hand side of the bike. You can just about see it coming down past the oil filler, then along the top of the coolant expansion tank.

Because I've removed the AIS system, I've been left with a hole in the airbox. Rather than try and seal it up, I put a 'Y' piece in the breather and connected it to both the AIS port and the original breather port. The plastic 'Y' piece was originally part of the inlet system on a ZZR1100.

The point of doing this is that it's no longer 'downhill' from the airbox into the crankcases. So although the depth of water the bike can be ridden through with the engine running doesn't change, it could, in theory, be pushed (with the engine off) through water up to the headstock, and all you'd have to do on the other side is drain the airbox and possibly the cylinder. More realistically, in the event of a fall in more modest water crossings, water can only get into the oil if the bike more or less completely disappears under the surface. Even then, as long as I pick the bike up again fairly quickly, the amount of water that can flow is minimal.

I have now lost the baffle chamber, but I'm hoping the much longer hose will have a similar effect in encouraging the oil to condense out on the walls. I'll be keeping an eye on the amount of oil which finds its way into the airbox.