After roughing it out we’ve finalized plans to ride down to Indianapolis to see the practice day of the Indianapolis MotoGP race. It’ll be a chance to see a legend like Valentino Rossi in the flesh doing what he does. It’ll also be an opportunity to wander the paddock and watch everyone setting up their machines. I’m aiming to come away with a Sam Lowes t-shirt and some Rossi paraphernalia. We couldn’t do the whole weekend due to other commitments, but hitting Indy on the Friday means it isn’t as busy and costs almost nothing (twenty bucks to get in!). We’re going to ride down Wednesday and Thursday and then stay in a Hampton Inn by the track on the Thursday and Friday nights before heading back on Saturday. We should be home Sunday afternoon.
Since we’re in town Thursday and Friday night we’ll be looking for some bike related magic happening around the day at the track. Downtown Indy’s Motorcycles on Meridian is happening on Friday night and we’ll be there. I’m looking forward to a brief wallow in American motorbike culture before heading out on Saturday morning. I’ll watch the qualifying and the race when I’m home the week after, but I’ll also know what these bikes sound and smell like, which is magic!
The 2014 Indy highlight reel
My son Max and I are all set to go on my ’94 Kawasaki Concours, but it got me wondering about what I’d take out of the new batch of Kawasakis, so here’s a list!
Old Concours New Concours
I have a ’94 ZG1000 Concours. The new ones are monsters by comparison, but it’d be interesting to ride a team-green bike down to the MotoGP race, even if they aren’t involved any more. The new Connie is a massive 1354cc machine. It would be interesting to see what Kawasaki has done with my beloved Concours over the past twenty years. What do you say Kawasaki Canada, got a new Concours you’d like ridden?
Ninja Redux
A small part of me misses my Ninja. Riding two up down to Indianapolis means looking for a Ninja that can handle Max and I, fortunately Kawasaki makes just such a Ninja! The Ninja 1000 is a capable long distance sport touring bike with the emphasis on sport. It would have no trouble getting Max and I down to the Speedway, and it would do it in MotoGP fashion.
Versys Variations
Last year I test road the old version of the Versys 1000 and really enjoyed it. The new Versys is supposed to be better in every way. My buddy Jeff (a Yamaha Super Ténéré rider coming down with us) would take to this bike like a duck to water. If Kawasaki Canada were to set us up with a pair of these they might convert a Yamaha faithful! We’re more than ready to head south on my trusty Concours, but it’d be interesting to ride something green and new into the MotoGP at Indy and make the place a little greener. T-minus one week until we’re on our way south!
New Mobil 1, everything checked and cleaned up. Connie is ready to do some miles down to Indy
I put the Concours ZG1K project bike up for sale just to see how it would do. I didn’t expect a reply but got someone who is smitten with it and immediately offered me a trade worth about $2000 (a Phantom3 drone with a pile of expensive peripherals). I took a drone training course last year and have been looking for a way to get some flight time in accordance with the Transport Canada flight planning we practiced in the course. This would do that and also let me explore the aerial photography market first hand. This is a trade that could end up paying for itself many times over.
Finding a trade that fits this well seems too good to be true. In my experience, something that is too good to be true usually is.
I’m fighting that skepticism, but what I’m also fighting is some classism, morality and loyalty. The young guy interested in the bike has the kind of online profile that makes you roll your eyes. Every photo of him is half dressed and flipping the bird. Which leads me to the moral quandary. Handing this bike off to some yobbo who is likely to kill himself on it isn’t something I can wash my hands of. Then there is the loyalty. I brought the Concours back from the dead. We’ve done many long trips, including a once in a lifetime ride down the back straight of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Had the carbs not shit the bed on the worst possible day (the first day of a new riding season after a long winter off), I would have still been happily riding it today. Had they died the autumn before, I’d have had the winter to sort them out. Bygones, but I love that my hands brought this old thing back to life.
So here I am, with a great opportunity to make some space in the garage while pursuing a trade that could end up being quite lucrative. That space could be filled with a new project bike and I’d be back doing aerial photography again. There is a lot to recommend moving on this, but I’ve got some issues to work through first.
The classism I can get past, but the selling a weapon to someone without the sense to handle it is nagging at me. I’d feel responsible if something happened. As heavy as that is, what really bugs me is feeling like I’m sending Connie on to an unworthy home where she’ll be abused, broken and forgotten. The mechanical sympathy that I apply to technical work often breaks out into full on mechanical empathy. This is one of those times. Maybe now isn’t the right time to pass on the Concours. Maybe what I should be doing is re-energizing this project and finishing it to the point where I can eventually pass it on to a more deserving home. (Hmm, the classism crept back in again).
It’s the time of year again. My next chance to go for a ride is months away. As the dark descends I need to get my head out of the idea that I’m stuck in a box for the next four months. I wonder what it would cost to set up a series of self-storage nodes across the southern US to enable year round riding. With some clever placement I’d be able to fly in and access a wide variety of riding opportunities all year ’round. Looking at companies that provide self storage I like the look of Cubesmart. They get great reviews, offer good sized storage units with electricity and lighting and look to be well maintained. They also offer parking and other services that would make picking up and dropping off a bike easy. Storage with the same company means I’ll also get looked after better. Setting up all three nodes in the south near airports means I could fly in and be on two wheels in no time. WEST COAST NODE: a storage unit in San Francisco The Cubesmart I’d aim for is in Freemont, about 40 minutes from the Airport. $140US a month gets you a 90 square foot storage area that could easily swallow a bike or two and some gear. There are dozens of best rides around the city, so this makes for a target rich centre for motorbiking. A winter ride doing the PCH north of SanFran and through the mountains back to the city would be a lovely idea…
If San Francisco were my West Coast base I’d have access too all of California and could still reach out to the South West even in the winter months. That’d be the nicest time to ride the deserts anyway.
EAST COAST NODE: a storage unit near Knoxville, TN Cubesmart has a 10×10 foot storage unit just north of Knoxville for under ninety bucks US a month (about half what San Francisco is?). It’s about an eleven hour drive from where I am now out of the snow and into the Smokey Mountains, or a couple of hours by plane. I could proceed south to the Tail of the Dragon and further on into Georgia, the Atlantic coast and Florida or west towards New Orleans. The run south into the Smokey Mountains is a quick one: Austin, Texas and the lone MotoGP appearance left in North America is only a couple of long days west. Then again, Austin would make another good network node… Central/South West Node: a storage unit near Austin, TX
There’a another Cubesmart less than 20 minutes away from the Austin airport. Like the Knoxville one it’s less than a hundred bucks a month for secure, lit and electrified storage (which will be handy for getting the bikes ready to go).
Outfitting Each Node
I’d build up a package to keep with the bikes in each storage depot. A duffel bag with basic tools, fluids, an extension cord and a battery jumper just in case I have to give things a spark to get them going. I’d make a point of putting the bikes away well, but you never know how long it might be until someone is back to exercise them, so having the kit on hand would be helpful, especially if I’m getting there at 4am after a red-eye for some much-needed two wheeled therapy.
Licensing bikes in Ontario for riding elsewhere would be a stupid idea as Ontario is one of the worst places to own a motorcycle. If I could find a reasonable place to make a residence (like BC or Alberta), I could license a number of bikes and leave them scattered around North America. If I hadn’t been there in a while all I’d need to bring along is maybe a new plate sticker if needed.
Off hand, my 3 remote stables would look like this:
West Coast Kawasaki Z1000R: my favourite super naked motorbike. With a look like something out of Pacific Rim it would keep up with the image conscious West Coast. As a canyon carver little comes close. It’s a bit extreme, but isn’t that what riding the West Coast calls for?
I’d have an SW-Mototech EVO cargo bag that would let me turn the big Zed (and the Suzuki below) into a tourer for those longer trips.
East Coast
With the Tail of the Dragon right around the corner, Knoxville calls for a bike that can handle the corners but can also cover distances if I wanted to ride to the Florida Keys or New Orleans. Most sports bikes look small under me, but not the mighty Hayabusa. It isn’t as skinny and dynamic as a sports bike, but it’s still more than able to handle twisties while also being a surprisingly capable distance muncher. BIKE Magazine just took one across the USA.
Central For long distance reach and also the chance to ride into the desert when needed, I’d go for the new Triumph Tiger for the Austin depot. A good two up machine that’ll do everything well, it also has good cool weather capabilities for riding in mountains in the winter.
That’s three very different machines for each storage point down south. Swapping machines between depots would also be a cool idea, so riding the Triumph to San Francisco and then riding the big Zed back to Austin if I felt like changing up the options. Setting up each bike drop would also make for a good end of season ride down south.
***
California Dreaming
The snow is blowing sideways in the dark, only visible as it passes through the dull orange of the sodium parking lot lights. The car crunches to a stop in knee deep drifts. I shut it off and the cold immediately begins to creep in through the cracks. Grabbing the duffel bag on the seat next to me I make a mad dash for the monorail entrance at the end of the long term parking lot, the car is already being buried in snow. A big Boeing thunders overhead, lights invisible in the swirling darkness.
The monorail slips silently through the night into the terminal. The airport is dead, barely a soul in sight. With a printed e-ticket I walk straight to security and US customs and pass through quickly. Two hours later the Airbus is thundering down the runway and I’m watching snow vortex off the wings as we slip into the night. Its a five hour and forty minute red-eye flight ahead of the coming dawn; we land in San Francisco at 4am local time.
With no luggage to wait on I’m out of the airport in minutes and in one of many waiting cabs heading to Freemont. It’s a foggy nine degree night as the cab quickly makes its way down empty streets to the storage lockup. Sunrise is beginning to hint in the east as I unlock the roll up door to reveal a covered motorbike in the shadows. The bike underneath gleams black and green in the predawn light as I pull the blanket off. If I was tired before, I’m less so now. I transfer a few clothes from the duffel to the hangover soft panniers and belt them to the bike. I give it the once over and make sure everything is ready to fly. With the key in the ignition I turn it and watch LEDs play across the dash. The breeze outside smells of sea salt and the fog is beginning to lift; I feel like I’ve landed on another planet.
The big Zed fires up on the touch of the starter so I roll it forward out of the container and let it settle down into an idle. I check everything again and make sure the panniers are secure on the back.
While the bike warms up I change out of travel clothes and leave them in the duffel hanging on the wall. A few minutes later I’m in boots, riding pants and leather jacket and feeling warm in the cool morning air. It’s mid-winter here too, but a Northern Californian mid-winter is a very different thing from Ontario. The forecast is calling for fifteen degree days, no nights under five and mostly crisp, sunny weather. This would be ideal fall riding weather back home and this Canadian riding gear is built for cool days like these.
The PCH is calling so I throw on my helmet and saddle up as the sky brightens. The 880 is still quiet as Oakland is just beginning to wake up around me. I’m through Oakland and over the Bay Bridge before rush hour builds. Traffic is just beginning to build in town as I roll through San Francisco and out through The Presidio and onto the Golden Gate Bridge.
I pull into the Shoreline Coffee Shop in Mill Valley just north of the bridge for a big plate of eggs and bacon and some good coffee; it’s just past 7am. I’ve got six days ahead of me to explore the coast and mountain roads around here before I’ve got to go back to the land of ice and snow.
Thanks to the kindness of CoG, some much needed bits and pieces from Murphs Kits, parts from my local Kawi dealer Two Wheel Motorsport and an awesome Givi box and windshield from A Vicious Cycle, the Connie is finally back on her feet! The parts I needed consisted of your basic filters and fluids, some clutch lever bits, a number of rusty connectors, a speedo gear housing (the cable got replaced too), and replacement levers for the rusted out old ones. At a CoG suggestion I looked at Murph’s and found a full set of stainless replacement fasteners. The bike was missing a number of them and the rest were in various states of disrepair. I now have a pile of spares and new ones on the bike. They look great and the whole deluxe set was less than seventy bucks. Murph also had stainless replacement clutch and brake levers for only twenty bucks each, so I picked those up too.
The nicest surprise was the Concours Owners Group (best membership fee I’ve ever paid for!). When asking about aftermarket options for the master cylinder covers I broke getting rusted bolts out, one of the moderators offered to mail me up a spare set from Florida in exchange for an adult beverage at some future time. If you own a Connie, COG is a must do. I get the sense that even if you don’t have a Concours, COG is still something special. With everything back together she hummed around our cul-de-sac in fine form. No leaks, controls feel sharp, I think she’s ready for a run at a safety. If she passes I’m going to semi-retire the Ninja and put it up for sale and spend the rest of the season seeing what the Connie can do. Once the snow closes in I’ll break it down again and do the body work so next spring it looks as good as it runs.
To be able to carry the basics and keep them dry while out and about.
To offer a backrest to make it easier for my passenger.
FZ-series Monorack is designed to add a Givi Monokey or Monolock topcase to your existing tailsection. Rugged black finish.
All hardware needed to mount the Givi rack is included. Installs quickly using simple hand tools. No welding or cutting of existing frame or body parts required. Tough black enamel finish with some gray fittings or hardware as applicable.
Select a Monolock(M5M) or Monokey(M5) top case mounting plate that will be used on the FZ445 when ordering for the related products. No Plate is included you need to add it to the cart. The Givi FZ445 toprack may be used alone or with the Givi PLX445 side rack (for PLX sidecases ONLY). $80 http://aviciouscycle.ca/MainPages/productpage.aspx?productid=1211
Designed for scooters and low-powered motorcycles.
Capacity of 30 liters, enough to hold a full face helmet.
While in Arizona we went out horseback riding for a couple of hours. I hadn’t ridden a horse since I was a kid (almost forty years ago – back then they were tiny prehistoric horses). I got Butch, who liked to eat a lot and thought it a good idea to stick his nose up the horse in front’s ass to get it back to the paddock early for lunch. He managed to piss off half a dozen horses doing this. I ended up with mighty sore knees because I kept weight on the stirrups for the entire ride. Partly because it was suggested and partly because it took weight off the horse’s back. Working with an animal is a very different process than inhabiting a machine. I imagine that developing a longer term relationship with the creature eases the guilt I was feeling over using the animal. If I knew that Butch enjoyed taking people out and going for a walk I’d have been a lot happier with bothering him with it. His habit of rushing the other horses suggested that he wasn’t enjoying hauling my heaviness around though. How different is riding a horse from asking a taxi to drive you somewhere? In both cases you’re paying an organization to provide an animal that will transport you (one a horse, the other a machine assisted human). In the case of the taxi driver you can at least communicate with them and get a sense of their willingness to do the work. You can probably do that with the horse too, but the non-verbal communication takes longer to figure out.
I don’t worry about my largeness (6’3″ 240lbs) hurting a motorcycle but it was on my mind with the horse, even though they gave me one of the biggest ones they had. My animal empathy is overdeveloped, no doubt, but even with a machine I still sympathize with its situation, it’s one of the reasons I take care of mine so diligently. With an animal I’m unfamiliar with I’m not clear on our relationship. If the animal doesn’t want to be there it sours the experience. Put another way, I’ve never met a motorcycle that wasn’t eager to be ridden – it’s their purpose. We might have domesticated horses but their reason for being isn’t to carry people around. While machines may have their problems they have also offered us an opportunity to stop using many animals as chattel for our own ends. I enjoyed the horse ride and I’d do it again, but it would be nice to better understand the horse and their situation. Knowing that a horse was excited to see me and go out would go a long way toward enjoying the ride more in the same way that taking out an excited dog for a walk is a positive process. Two days before our rental horse ride I took a rental motorcycle out for the day and didn’t have anything like the same moral quandary, though perhaps I should have.
It’s wonderfully quiet out on a horse in the desert.
I’ve enjoyed machines since I was a child. My father is a mechanic and engineer and his fearless approach to maintaining, repairing and operating machines amazed and intrigued me. With that fascination I always found it easy to empathize with machines, not necessarily in the anthropomorphic give them a name and talk to them kind of way many people do, but to suggest a machine has personality expressed in how it operates isn’t strange to me. In the last post I talked about how a MotoGP rider was a much larger piece of the equation than a Formula 1 driver is. That expression of skill through machinery is what interests me about motorsport, the high tech frills are just that, frills. What I want to do this morning (it’s 5am and the world is silent and dark, the people are all asleep and the mental static is at a minimum) is to unpack what machines are and why they are worthy of empathy. Machines are our thoughts given substance. When I get on the Ninja and go for a ride I’m experiencing a confluence of thinking, dozens of engineers and designers who pieced together a rolling sculpture that best expresses their ideas of efficiency, beauty and inter-connectivity. You seldom get to experience the mind of another person is so intimate a way as you do when operating a machine that they have created. It’s little wonder that many engineers and designers feel that the mechanical devices they produce are like their children.
You can approach this from a couple of interesting reads. Matt Crawford’s Shop Class As Soulcraft focuses on the understanding you develop from laying hands on your machine yourself. As a treatise on the value of hands-on mechanical experience and the development of that mechanical sympathy Guy Martin mentions above, it is priceless. Melissa Holbrook-Pierson’s The Man Who Would Stop At Nothing comes at it from the riding experience and how motorcycles in particular can reach into you and animate you in a way that many other machines cannot.
There is a virtue in motorcycles that is also why so many people don’t partake of them. They demand so many inputs from the rider that they make driving a car seem like running a washing machine; merely the operation of an appliance. This is so endemic to driving a car that every opportunity to interact with the vehicle is being diminished, from manual transmissions to parking. In a few years many will flock to self driven vehicles and become forever passengers. The vast majority of people have little interest in how a machine works or how to express themselves through it – perhaps because they have nothing to express.
That motorcycles are so demanding is a virtue from the point of view of a mechanical empath. The more interaction you have with the machine, the more possible it is to inhabit it with human expression. There is something pure in the mechanical simplicity of the motorcycle, it is bare, naked, not covered in sheet metal designed to conceal and contrive; its function is obvious. That this naked machine demands so much from its rider creates a giddy kind of connection in those willing and able to make it. This machine connects to your hands, feet and whole body. It demands inputs from every one of your limbs as well as your entire mass. Being naked on the road, the rider’s mind isn’t isolated from their activity and is as engaged as their physical body. Inhabiting a machine this completely is an intoxifying experience. The thrill of inhabiting a machine isn’t limited to motorcycles, though they are one of the purest expressions I’ve found. The satisfaction in fixing, maintaining or operating any machine well offers some degree of satisfaction. In inhabiting the machine it empowers us, giving us abilities that would seem magical to non-technological people. We can cover ground at great speed, communicate across the world with the push of a button, fly, even slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the sky, but not if we don’t inhabit the machines that enable us.
If we remove ourselves from this equation machines become limitations rather than a means of expression. The thought of a human being interacting with a responsive, demanding and complex machine offers us a future that is bursting with opportunity for growth. The alternative is stagnation and ignorance. You can guess which approach appeals to a consumerist culture intent on selling to as many people as possible. That a machine should place demands on us isn’t a bad thing, especially if it leads to a nuanced awareness of our own limitations. The machine that can overextend you, challenge you, stress you, is a machine that can teach you something. We fool ourselves into stagnation when we design machines that do more and ask less from us. When I see human expression through a machine, the machine becomes a magnifying glass for their achievement, how can that not deserve empathy? The only time it wouldn’t is when the human is a pointless addition to the equation. When this happens machines become oppressive rather than enabling forces in our lives.
I went for a ride with Jeff the motorcycle Jedi and Wayne, the parts guy from our local dealer, the other week. It was a 250km round trip out to the shores of Lake Huron and back. Since we were all on multi-purpose bikes we multi-purposed some of it:
Taking some winding back roads through the countryside we came across such natural wonders as deep mud holes and a lady sun bathing topless on her front lawn; it was a nice ride.
We stopped at one point and Wayne noticed the rear tire on the Tiger wasn’t doing very well. Coming from cars I’m used to using depth gauges on tread to determine a tire’s remaining life. Car tires burn through tread fairly evenly due to equally delivered lateral forces. Bike tires are undergoing a whole different kind of physics. You can expect to see fairly even tread wear on a car tire because of those lateral forces. Bike tires tend to wear from the middle out because the crown of the tire takes the brunt of the wear, especially in flat and straight South Western Ontario.
Wayne pointed out tears down the middle of the rear tire on the Tiger that I hadn’t even thought to look for. As you can see, the tread on the edges of the tire is still quite deep, but the wear in the centre is so deep it’s turning up the metal bands in the tires:
Those are some expensive pieces of wire poking through…
This prompted a call to my local dealer to try and get the bike in – they told me it’s over a month wait! I offered to remove the tires and they said they’d try and squeeze them in. Fortunately it rained a flood the next couple of days and with some cancellations I got a call a day later saying the tires were done. The bill was a staggering six hundred and ninety three dollars – for two motorcycle tires on rims that had been removed from the bike (so minimal shop work involved). I’m looking over the bill now. Looking up the Michelin Anakees I purchased online, the dealer prices aren’t crazy – about twenty bucks more than the online cost for the front and fifteen bucks more for the rear. There is a cost associated with a local dealer keeping this sort of thing in stock and I’ve got no problem with that. With that being the case these two tires came to a staggering five hundred bucks. By comparison, Corvette ZR1 Michelin tires – very high tech, huge rubber for a faster than light car – cost about three hundred bucks a pop (and include road hazard warranty). Motorcycle tires must be made out of platinum and unicorn horns – they are wickedly expensive!
The dealer prices on labour were also perfectly reasonable – about a hundred bucks to install and balance both new tires (with inner tubes). So the lesson learned here is that motorcycle tires are wickedly expensive. Even with perfectly reasonable labour costs at my local dealer I’m still out nearly seven hundred bucks for a set of new tires.
Fortunately the Anakees seem to be a very long wearing tire, so hopefully I won’t be looking to replace them again for a while. They ride great – much quieter than the Metzelers that they replaced, and the grip in dry has been very trust inducing. They might have cost me a mint, but they look like they might be worth it.
NOTES Anakee Review: it’s a road biased ADV tire (I’m ok with that – they feel great), it is long lasting, and it can handle light off road work, which is all I’d do on the big Tiger anyway.
The other day I was once again going over the details on the Tiger after taking the tank of for the billionth time. Even though the stock pipes for the vacuum controlled idle system for the electronic fuel injection hold vacuum when I test them, I can’t test that when they’re on the bike, so they might be leaking where they join. I happened to have some fuel line in the right size, so I’ve taken out the Triumph hoses and put these clear ones on instead to isolate another possible point of failure.
Once I got them in I fired up the TUNEBOY software and figured I’d run the idle control system test since it would move the plunger up and down and with everything off I could check to see that it’s all working as it should, except the ECU wouldn’t connect to the computer. I’ve done dozens of TUNEBOY adjustments now and know how the bike syncs with the PC over the serial port, but it wasn’t connecting. While trying some variations I turned the ignition on on the bike and the ECU made unfamiliar popping noise, and then none of the dash lights would come on (the running lights still do though). The ECU no longer clicks off when the ignition is switched off either, which suggests it’s not coming on either.
The intermittent nature of this failure always made my ass twitch in terms of it being electronic rather than mechanical. Mechanical failures tend to be more consistent and easier to diagnose, and I’ve replaced everything around the idle control system now, so unless Triumph sold me a dickey idle control motor, which seems unlikely since the first one lasted 17 years and did over seventy-six thousand hard, Canadian kilometres and survived seventeen -40°C Canadian winters. Assuming all the new parts are working as they should, an ECU that was losing the plot is as likely a culprit as anything else I’ve been chasing, and now it seems to have popped entirely.
So what do you do when your old Triumph’s bike brain loses the plot? Get another, I guess. Used ones seems to be extraordinarily expensive and look to be in rough shape out of US used parts suppliers on eBay. And for some reason they’re charging twice what European suppliers are for shipping. With that and the fact that The States seem like they’re on the edge of a civil war, I think I’ll be looking to the dependable Germans who have COVID19 well managed for a replacement Tiger brain. If I’m thinking that, I wonder how many other people are avoiding business with the US right now.
But before I go that far, I’m a G.D. computer engineering teacher, so I’m hardly going to let an ECU go in the bin without having a go at it first. If this is a short or something simple, I can solve that easily enough. If nothing else I can see how the ECU is set up architecturally, but more often than not I’m able to get electronics I have to open up working again. Time to flex my soldering prowess.
The most frustrating part about this is that I may well have solved the idle problem with replacement hoses, or maybe I didn’t. Maybe I chased down all of these hoses and parts for nothing and it was the ECU losing the plot all along. Electronic Fuel Injection (EFI) is a wonderful thing, but the early systems were fragile. There a lots of posts online about early Triumph EFI headaches, and I’ve added to them.
Guy Martin does a good special called The Last Flight of the Vulcan Bomber. They grounded the last of these nuclear bombers in 2015 because they no longer had the expertise and technology too keep them safely air worthy. In the show Guy talks about why there are plenty of older planes like Spitfires still flying when the Vulcan has to be grounded. He says the Spitfire was made from bicycle parts you could fabricate in a shed, so they’re relatively easy to maintain. The Vulcan was an industrial machine with early electrical and electronic systems that were many times more complicated. He goes on to talk about how the Vulcan looked like it came from another planet when only seven years earlier an Avro Lancaster was the state of the art. There are performance advantages in these leaps forward, but there are also maintenance headaches that mean these early jets will never fly again.
Early fuel injected bikes are a lot like that Vulcan – they can do things earlier bikes can’t like get better mileage, not need parts changed to ride at altitude and generally require less maintenance. I just fixed up one of the last carbureted bikes, a 1997 Honda Fireblade, over the winter. EFI was around then, but Honda wisely went for highly evolved carburettors rather than new, fragile and poor performing EFI systems. I rebuilt the carbs, which are a complex but highly evolved four-carb set, and the bike runs like a Swiss (or rather Japanese) watch. The EFI on the Tiger did the job without any attention for 17 years and seventy-six thousand kilometres including two rides into the Rockies – something no carburetor could do, but when it finally broke, boy did it break. It’s things like this that will make these first generation EFI bikes rare in the future. Like the Vulcan, they’re so complicated and difficult to maintain when they go wrong that they’ll get retired from service where an older, simpler bike might still be fixable.
RESOURCES FOR CHASING DOWN ECU PROBLEMS ON A TRIUMPH 955i MOTORBIKE:
I’m a big fan of Top Gear, and I especially enjoy their travel/challenges. I’ve always dreamed of planning one, getting people silly enough to commit to it and then making it happen. In the summer of COVID I’m finding myself daydreaming of possible adventures, so I started poking around on the internet trying to find how far north roads go in Ontario. Bafflingly, Ontario has never connected to its own north sea shore by road. For a province that has thousands of kilometers of ocean shoreline, Ontario seems intent on convincing its citizens that it’s land locked. I’d love to ride 1000kms north to the sea, but it’s not an option. James Bay is roughly in line with Scotland, so its not like it’s in the arctic. In the meantime, it looks like Windigo Lake north west of Thunder Bay is as far north as you can ride in Ontario on your own wheels:
…which offers us a great thematic riding challenge! It’s time to go to Windigo (instead of Bendigo), Morty! Here’s the inspiration in case you’re not hip to Rick & Morty:
Here’s the Top Gear style WE’RE GOIN TO WINDIGO, MORTY! Moto Travel Challenge:
Each participant gets a $3000 budget for a bike and any farkles that must include a safety certificate. Ownership is by WG2W Productions, pending the bikes return to Elora within 10 days of the event, at which point ownership is signed over to the rider. Safety and taxes should be about $400, so that leaves about $2600 for a bike and farkles
Insurance and ownership is managed by the event
All riders must have a valid Ontario M class license
Camping equipment is provided to each rider individually based on a sponsored selection of gear (rider’s choice) Each rider will be provided with bear gear.
Each participant has to do any repair or maintenance on their own bike. Only other competitors can assist.
Google maps says it’s a 27 hour ride to Windigo. Riders can only be on the road between 7am and 7pm, so the most efficient (and luckiest) should arrive in Windigo on day three in the morning. At 12 hours per day of possible riding, 27 hours = 2..25 days of riding. The earliest rider with a perfectly timed ride would arrive at Windigo at 10am on day three of the event.
Timing for the event takes into account speed limits. Any rider caught speeding is disqualified.
Any overnight stops while riding to Windigo must be wild camping following leave-no-trace rules. Proof of camp site cleanup must be included on rider GoPro footage or a time penalty is applied.
The rider who gets to Windigo (getting to Windigo means arriving at the lake on your bike and dipping a toe in) as close to 27 hours of riding after leaving the start line as possible, wins!
Riders can choose how to use their daylight hours to ride. In the case of a tie, the rider to get to Windigo the soonest and closest to 27 hours of riding after race start wins
Winner gets a We’re going to Windigo, Morty gold medal. There will be silver and bronze finalist medals too. Smallest displacement and oldest bikes who finish also get awards
Any participant who finishes this long distance riding rally and is able to ride back to the start line within a week of the competition end can keep their bike!
…followed by 469kms of challenging unpaved roads to the end of all roads.
A paved odyssey…
This isn’t an easy ride. It starts with almost 1700kms of riding on paved roads ranging from the biggest freeway you can imagine to single lane tar patched, northern frost heaved back-road. You’ve then got almost 500kms of riding gravel up to where all roads end at Windigo. Trying to do this on a one trick pony like a cruiser would be entertaining, but likely unsuccessful. This is a challenge for a multi-purpose motorcycle!
The 599 highway isn’t Google car photoed once you get on the gravel, and you’re constantly dodging lakes this deep into the Canadian Shield. The closest I could get was this photo of the Mishkeegogamang Band Office, which shows a graded gravel road out front. Fuel stops are few and far between, some cunning planning will be required!
BIKES
There are some interesting choices at the bottom end of the bike market in Ontario:
A bike that’ll handle the off-road part of this trip, though it isn’t built for the thousands of kilometres of paved road leading to the hundreds of miles of gravel fire roads. Capable of handling the camping gear too. Should come in on budget on the road.
Low mileage, in good shape and comes safetied, so you’d have a bit left over for farkles. It’d chew up the pavement side of WG2W effortlessly, but that windshield might never see Windigo (Morty).
Big Honda touring bike, high miles, but it’s a Honda. It’d be a handful on nearly a thousand kilometres of gravel, but some people like that. Should come in under budget and ready to make miles. The paves stuff would flash by on this and it could carry camping gear with ease!
Low miles, Kawasaki dependable, in great shape. The Versys is short for versatile bike system, just what you’d need to get to Windigo (Morty). The 650 is a lightweight bike that’ll handle gravel, and it has luggage and mounting points for some soft bags. I’d probably be able to get it for $2300 certified, which gives me a bit for some soft saddle bags, then I’m off to the races! This’d be my choice. Might spill my extra cash on some 70/30 semi-off road tires.
There are lots of other interesting choices that you could get road ready for under three grand in Ontario. Seeing what people choose and how they prep the bike for long distance, multi-surface, remote riding would be half the fun. To stretch the choices there would also be trophies for the oldest bike and smallest displacement bike to finish the ride, so some people might go after those rather than the timed competition.
PRODUCING IT FOR TV
All bikes have GoPros to capture footage and all riders agree to provide at least 15 minutes of speaking to camera dialogue per day while in the rally. All competitors have to document their camp build and take down. There will be a production/sweeper vehicle with a trailer in case of any bike failures. The vehicle will be able to provide technical support in remote areas and be designed for the gravel portion of the event as well as offer a central point for production and media management.
Competition begins when all riders have their bikes delivered to a shared garage space in Elora.
Film Schedule:
Day 1: All bikes have arrived. Bike familiarity and maintenance, bike paperwork taken care of, all riders and production crew doing piece to camera introducing themselves and talking about the event and prep
Day 2: Bike familiarity and preparation, filming continues
Day 3: Bike familiarity and preparation, finalizing ride planning, filming continues. All bikes in park ferme at the end of the day ready for the morning’s off.
Day 4: 7am Race start in Elora. Filmed by production vehicle crew and GoPros on bikes.
Production vehicle stopping in Thunder Bay on Day 1.
Day 5: 7am start. Production vehicle stopping at Windigo to await arrival of riders (riders who arrive early will have a major penalty, so no one should be there until day 3)
Day 6: Production vehicle at Windigo Lake awaiting arrivals. End of day 6: close of event party on Windigo
Day 7: All rider camping gear to be taken in by the support vehicle for a lighter ride back. Sweeping the road south to Silver Dollar (the beginning of pavement). All competitors camping at Silver Dollar Campsite that night. Confirm end of event with all riders.
Day 8: Retrace/sweep route to Thunder Bay. End of rally event in Thunder Bay. Riders who want to keep their bikes have 3 days to return to the workspace in Elora in order to claim ownership. Riders who want to find their own way home can do so and bikes will be transported in the trailer.
Day 9: Production vehicle sweeps south clearing any bikes that have been parked.
Day 11: Any bikes that have returned to the workspace in Elora have their ownership turned over to their riders.
Episodes: 45 minute edited
1) Introducing riders, bike selection and preparation – possibly include off-road training at SMART Adventures?
2) Rally Start: day one on the road
3) Rally Continued: day two on the road
4) Rally Conclusion: day three on the road and rally winners and finishers highlighted
5) where did they go missing riders review, post rally interviews while returning to Thunder Bay, final presentations in TB, sweeping up, who got to keep their bikes
Total production time: 3.75 hours of edited footage
Other opportunities: Work with SMART Adventures out of Horseshoe Valley – include bits on how to ride off road, what riders can expect, how to manage bikes on loose surfaces.
Rough costing:
8 Competitors @ $3000 per bike = $24,000
Production Vehicle Cost (rental & gasoline): $3000
Insurance & Paperwork costs at $1000 each competitor = $8,000
Production equipment (cameras, drone, on bike GoPros): $5000
Production team hotels: 4 people x 2 nights Thunder Bay, 1 night on the road back, 2 nights camping in the north = $2000
Camping gear: $1000/competitor + production crew = $10,000 (mitigated by sponsorship?)
Total rough budget: $52,000. Estimated budget: $60,000 (mitigated by sponsorship)
Sponsorship opportunities:
– workshop/repair centre where bike setup takes place
After roughing it out we’ve finalized plans to ride down to Indianapolis to see the practice day of the Indianapolis MotoGP race. It’ll be a chance to see a legend like Valentino Rossi in the flesh doing what he does. It’ll also be an opportunity to wander the paddock and watch everyone setting up their machines. I’m aiming to come away with a Sam Lowes t-shirt and some Rossi paraphernalia.
Old Concours New Concours
Ninja Redux
Versys Variations
