Over the Easter long weekend I’ve rebuilt four carbs and put them back together again. Unfortunately they won’t go back on nicely thanks to two decade old rubber boots, so they’re on order. It’s nice to have a forced day off. If you’re ever rebuilding carbs on a ZG1000, and the airbox on it is more than ten years old, it’s a good idea to get some airbox ducts (that connect the airbox to the carbs). Supple, soft rubber is important when connecting these up. I tried for a frustrating couple of hours to get them to join properly. This is especially difficult when the inner boots are rock hard, even when warmed up. Steve suggests new carb boots to cut down on swearing, he ain’t kidding:
Sixty bucks and should be here by Wednesday.
I contacted my local dealer and they can have boots here by Wednesday. They’re charging less than they are going for on ebay or online retailers. Score one for my local. Sixty bucks means less swearing and an easy install. Wayne, the Yoda-like parts guy at Two Wheel, says you’re lucky to get two decades out of a set as they harden over time and eventually split. With the weather going sideways again, there won’t be much of a chance to ride any time soon. Hopefully this means I can get this odyssey finished and the bike back on the road by the time the weather clears again.
The airbox ducts/boots that need replacing – the old ones are not only beaten up, but they’ve gone hard. Even putting heat on them doesn’t soften them up. Note the flat spots up by the airbox that show you which way to turn the boots.
Heating up the airbox boots – but they’re too old!
A big empty where the airbox and carbs usually go
This ordeal has me rethinking things. My wife suggested I unload everything except the old XS1100 and buy a regular motorbike that is more dependable. When I started riding I got a dependable bike that just needed some cosmetic work. It was so dependable it was tedious. Since then I’ve gone back in time and enjoyed the world of carburetion and two decade old rubber, perhaps a bit more than I wanted to. I genuinely enjoy mechanics, but never when there is a time demand on it. I’ve already missed three riding opportunities because of the stuttering Concours, and this irks me. The idea of wiping the slate clean and moving forward appeals. I started riding late and moving through a number of bikes seems like a way to catch up on my lack of experience. Maybe it is time to put sentiment down and move on. I didn’t start riding to watch the few lovely days we have in a too-short riding season pass me by.
The little Yamaha and the KLX are gone now, netting me about $3000. As it happens, a 2003 Triumph Tiger is available just over an hour away for about that much. Come the end of the week I might be able to say, “a tiger? In my garage? Must have escaped from a zoo!”
It doesn’t matter where you live, this one is a start anywhere, finish anywhere timed rally on Friday, July 23, Saturday, July 24th or Sunday, July 25th. You need to cover at minimum of 400kms to be considered a finisher but otherwise it’s an open event.
Our Mini Rallies give riders the chance to get involved in Scavenger Hunt events without having to travel to the start lines. You can start these ANYWHERE; we’ve had riders from all over the world do them each time! You can also choose when to start your 12 hour ride clock, so you can adjust the event around your own work schedule and the local weather.
This event will have you looking for the Super Hero themed locations…
along with other Villainous twists & turns that Lobo Loco Rallies likes to throw your way!
If you’re looking for a reason to put some miles on your bike and see places you wouldn’t usually go during a strange summer where the rules of travel aren’t very clear, do this! You’ve still got a week to sign up.
I came across Overland Journal in Indigo that other day and the combination of reasonable price ($12CAD) and very high quality (it compared favourably with magazine-book combos asking $25+) had me picking it up. It isn’t motorcycle specific but does include off road and adventure bikes along with pretty much any vehicle you might go off the beaten path with.
I usually do that kind of off-roading with completely inappropriate vehicles. In the early noughties my wife and I beat a rented Toyota Camry to within an inch of its life on the the logging roads in the interior of Vancouver Island. Another time we were in a rented Citroen mini-van in Iceland watching arctic foxes run across the empty landscape. In both cases we got deep into the wilderness in rental 2wd vehicles, but then we got a Jeep Wrangler as a rental car last year and it started giving me ideas.
I put myself through university working as a service manager for Quaker State’s Q-Lube and whenever a Jeep came in you needed an umbrella when you walked under it for all the fluids leaking down on you. That negative experience put me off the brand for years but last year we got a Wrangler as an insurance rental after and accident and it changed my perception.
It was a 2019 Jeep Wrangler four dour with about 20k kilometres on the clock and it was tight! Everything worked and felt quality and it did something that no car has done for me in the past decade; it felt like an event driving it.
Since bikes set in I’ve fallen out of love with cars (trucks, whatever), but the Jeep made driving feel special again. Performance cars seem kind of pointless when I have two bikes in the garage that are faster than anything but apex million-dollar plus super-cars, but the Jeep came at it from another angle. The big tires made it a challenge to manage on pavement and the big V6 in this one was a stark contrast to the sub-two-litre mileage focused appliances I’ve been driving but maybe that’s what made it feel special.
There was a point where we could have taken the other car (a Mazda2) down to Toronto but took the Jeep instead and it made the whole experience less like a long, difficult winter drive and more like an event. Being higher up off the road meant I wasn’t looking through other people’s road spray all the time and if I wasn’t heavy on the gas the thing was getting mid-high-twenties mpg.
Another time we were out in it and my brother-in-law (a former Jeep owner) and our sons went out for a ride and I shifted it into 4wd and drove right over the snow mound in the Canadian Tire parking lot, much to everyone in the car’s amazement. This was a ten-foot plus high mound of snow and the Jeep went right over it – with road tires on! Deeply impressed with the vehicle’s capabilities and character is where I was when we handed it back after our car got returned.
I also used it to take a thousand plus pound of ewaste to recycling from work and the heavy duty suspension and utility of the thing made this an easy job when the little hatchback would have been blowing shocks and wallowing under the weight. Having a vehicle that takes on larger utility tasks makes sense when you do a lot of it.
I’m getting to the age now where things seem strangely expensive. My first car cost me $400 and took me a hundred thousand kilometres. A Honda Civic hatchback I had in the early noughties took me over a quarter of a million kilometres for less than seven grand. The only new car I’ve ever purchased (that Mazda2 that has been flawless for over 120k over ten years of ownership) cost me $17k new, all in. My wife’s Buick Encore cost an eye-watering forty-grand back in 2016 new and I’m not interested in double car payments so won’t be looking until we finally pay that one off (which seems like it’s taking forever with our strange new world of 7-9 year finance schemes). When that debt finally gets cleared I’ll be looking at a Jeep Wrangler.
From an ‘overlander’ point of view, a dependable long distance vehicle capable of going off the beaten path means my wife and I can do what we’ve always done, but more so. In the pre-covid times we drove from Ontario to the West Coast in 2018:
In 2019 we took the same tiny Buick Encore to the East Coast of Canada, but the vehicle we drove limited our ability to go off the beaten path (or even off pavement). What a Jeep would do is enable us to do the things we defer to (in rental cars) in something designed for that kind of nonsense.
This has me encouraging my lovely wife to join us at SMART Adventures this year to learn some off road driving in a side-by-side while we dirt bike. Which brings the overlanding vehicle back to bikes again. You can go deep in a Jeep but you can get places on a dirt bike that you can’t in any other way. The Jeep would be a fantastic platform for all manner of biking shenanigans.
Whether it’s taking a dirt bike to a trail or a trials bike to an event, the Jeep would be capable of doing it efficiently. With some canny rear mounted racks it wouldn’t even require a trailer.
The cost-no-object green option would be to pick up a KTM Freeride and an Jeep Wrangler 4xe and then work out how to charge the bike from the hybrid Jeep’s electrical system.
Overland Journal has a lot of advertisers who specialize in making vehicles long distance ready, including many that specialize in prepping Jeeps for the long haul. A Wrangler 4xe with a roof mounted camping option, KTM on the back and the ability to go self-contained into the wilderness for days at a time would make for a thrilling combination.
The Jeep Wrangler 4xe is the most powerful Wrangler yet, has astonishing mileage and would also offer some interesting electrical generation options when off the beaten track.
The bike and the fanciest Wrangler would cost less than a base model BMW mid-sized SUV, so it isn’t even crazy expensive (well it is, but that’s just because I’m old – everything’s expensive!).
KTM and Jeep should join up on this. Two legendary off-road manufacturers combining to create a futuristic zero emissions expedition!
I came across Overland Journal in Indigo that other day and the combination of reasonable price ($12CAD) and very high quality (it compared favourably with magazine-book combos asking $25+) had me picking it up. It isn’t motorcycle specific but does include off road and adventure bikes along with pretty much any vehicle you might go off the beaten path with.
I usually do that kind of off-roading with completely inappropriate vehicles. In the early noughties my wife and I beat a rented Toyota Camry to within an inch of its life on the the logging roads in the interior of Vancouver Island. Another time we were in a rented Citroen mini-van in Iceland watching arctic foxes run across the empty landscape. In both cases we got deep into the wilderness in rental 2wd vehicles, but then we got a Jeep Wrangler as a rental car last year and it started giving me ideas.
I put myself through university working as a service manager for Quaker State’s Q-Lube and whenever a Jeep came in you needed an umbrella when you walked under it for all the fluids leaking down on you. That negative experience put me off the brand for years but last year we got a Wrangler as an insurance rental after and accident and it changed my perception.
It was a 2019 Jeep Wrangler four dour with about 20k kilometres on the clock and it was tight! Everything worked and felt quality and it did something that no car has done for me in the past decade; it felt like an event driving it.
Since bikes set in I’ve fallen out of love with cars (trucks, whatever), but the Jeep made driving feel special again. Performance cars seem kind of pointless when I have two bikes in the garage that are faster than anything but apex million-dollar plus super-cars, but the Jeep came at it from another angle. The big tires made it a challenge to manage on pavement and the big V6 in this one was a stark contrast to the sub-two-litre mileage focused appliances I’ve been driving but maybe that’s what made it feel special.
There was a point where we could have taken the other car (a Mazda2) down to Toronto but took the Jeep instead and it made the whole experience less like a long, difficult winter drive and more like an event. Being higher up off the road meant I wasn’t looking through other people’s road spray all the time and if I wasn’t heavy on the gas the thing was getting mid-high-twenties mpg.
Another time we were out in it and my brother-in-law (a former Jeep owner) and our sons went out for a ride and I shifted it into 4wd and drove right over the snow mound in the Canadian Tire parking lot, much to everyone in the car’s amazement. This was a ten-foot plus high mound of snow and the Jeep went right over it – with road tires on! Deeply impressed with the vehicle’s capabilities and character is where I was when we handed it back after our car got returned.
I also used it to take a thousand plus pound of ewaste to recycling from work and the heavy duty suspension and utility of the thing made this an easy job when the little hatchback would have been blowing shocks and wallowing under the weight. Having a vehicle that takes on larger utility tasks makes sense when you do a lot of it.
I’m getting to the age now where things seem strangely expensive. My first car cost me $400 and took me a hundred thousand kilometres. A Honda Civic hatchback I had in the early noughties took me over a quarter of a million kilometres for less than seven grand. The only new car I’ve ever purchased (that Mazda2 that has been flawless for over 120k over ten years of ownership) cost me $17k new, all in. My wife’s Buick Encore cost an eye-watering forty-grand back in 2016 new and I’m not interested in double car payments so won’t be looking until we finally pay that one off (which seems like it’s taking forever with our strange new world of 7-9 year finance schemes). When that debt finally gets cleared I’ll be looking at a Jeep Wrangler.
From an ‘overlander’ point of view, a dependable long distance vehicle capable of going off the beaten path means my wife and I can do what we’ve always done, but more so. In the pre-covid times we drove from Ontario to the West Coast in 2018:
In 2019 we took the same tiny Buick Encore to the East Coast of Canada, but the vehicle we drove limited our ability to go off the beaten path (or even off pavement). What a Jeep would do is enable us to do the things we defer to (in rental cars) in something designed for that kind of nonsense.
This has me encouraging my lovely wife to join us at SMART Adventures this year to learn some off road driving in a side-by-side while we dirt bike. Which brings the overlanding vehicle back to bikes again. You can go deep in a Jeep but you can get places on a dirt bike that you can’t in any other way. The Jeep would be a fantastic platform for all manner of biking shenanigans.
Whether it’s taking a dirt bike to a trail or a trials bike to an event, the Jeep would be capable of doing it efficiently. With some canny rear mounted racks it wouldn’t even require a trailer.
The cost-no-object green option would be to pick up a KTM Freeride and an Jeep Wrangler 4xe and then work out how to charge the bike from the hybrid Jeep’s electrical system.
Overland Journal has a lot of advertisers who specialize in making vehicles long distance ready, including many that specialize in prepping Jeeps for the long haul. A Wrangler 4xe with a roof mounted camping option, KTM on the back and the ability to go self-contained into the wilderness for days at a time would make for a thrilling combination.
The Jeep Wrangler 4xe is the most powerful Wrangler yet, has astonishing mileage and would also offer some interesting electrical generation options when off the beaten track.
The bike and the fanciest Wrangler would cost less than a base model BMW mid-sized SUV, so it isn’t even crazy expensive (well it is, but that’s just because I’m old – everything’s expensive!).
Ontario has hundreds of miles of ocean coast line but being Ontario there is no way to ride there. Quebec hasn’t been so lackadaisical in connecting its northern communities by road. If I cut out of Ontario just east of New Liskeard I could then make use of Quebec’s better northern infrastructure and actually ride to the coast of James Bay almost to the point where it opens out into Hudson’s Bay:
…though apparently only (new) BMW riders make the trek. Bet my old Tiger could do it.
It’s remote but the vast majority of the 1600+ kms north are on paved roads. North of Hotel Matagami (just over half way up) services get thin. It looks like there are road side truck-stop type accommodations on the James Bay Road but most of what’s on offer is camp grounds and sparsely spaced gas stations. Sounds like a perfect adventure bike thing to do!
Lots of good advice for riding motorbikes in the remote north around James Bay can be found on the James Bay Road website. The challenge here isn’t twisty roads and nights in the bar, it’s the extreme isolation of the far north. You need to be able to keep your machine moving or it will end expensively, or worse. Getting a tow out would cost thousands. Worst case would be getting stuck without any means of getting out, then it could quickly get dangerous.
For people who have only ever travelled between other people this’ll be hard to wrap their heads around. On a ride like this you’d find yourself hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest people and even further away from infrastructure that could help you. Self-sufficiency would be central to a successful run up to James Bay.
