I got these small boxes awhile ago. I made the order from Estonian motoshop Motokaup. The finnish reseller of SW Motech also has internetshop but this sucks! (R.M. Heino you can do better!!!)
First item:
I never had sidestand extend before, but now I got one. I hope it will help to keep my bike up!
Second item:
This is the ring that you must have if you want to use Bags Connection tank bags. I have one. I also had the ring in my previous bike but it wasn’t the original -it was a little bit modified by me. Bags Connection bags are made by SW Motech.
adventure bike
The Panniers…
In my previous bike I had the BMW original bags but they are quite small (35 litres I think?) so now I was thinking to get bigger ones. These are the bags I got:
Since I don’t have the bike yet I didn’t unpack all from the boxes but I took 1 picture in my carage:
These are 45 litres each. I was very surprised how light they are!! Almost lighter than the plastic BMW-boxes. It will also take some time to be comfortable how these look… The BMW-boxes have some design and shape… These are just boxes!
Then I will also have a new topbox. That I will show you when I have it.
Here is another video about SW Motech Trax adventure boxes installation (This one is in German):
My BMW is for sale in Biketeam (Vantaa).
Mun BMW S1000XR on myynnissä Biketeam Vantaalla. Taitaa olla Suomen halvin!
Tsekkaa tästä. (Myyty!)
And it starts in 7 days. I’ll try to add the text about each day soon after it’s done… But there can be some delays.
This year we’ll visit the Corse island!
The temperature went down for easter! It was something like -5 during the night and didn’t go up more than close to zero in the daytime. But still we desided to take a ride!
This is my first time to the top of the sandpit wall! I’ve tried it maybe two times before in this place, but now finally I made it!
In this same video I almost fell in good speed because the ground is frozen and I loose control of the rear wheel! You can see this in 09:35.
The second video is from Rausjärvi:
This same road I rode a day before and it was much more soft. Now the cold weather and the frozen ground made it quite easy.
Third video is a fast gravelroad from Ahonpää (Nummi-Pusula) to Antiainen (Karkkila):
Next video is 4 bikes going over the stream in Lammassaari:
I also made a short video to IG just a few minutes before:
And for the last I was shooting a video when my battery died, this was in Karkkila:
And finally one of my friends had a helmetcamera too and he desided to make a collection from yesterday. This is fun to watch!
Thanks Ville for the video!!
Yesterday it was local Ducati dealers season start with the possibility to take a ride with new models of 2017. I was interested mainly about this new Desert Sled and its OffRoad possibilities.
But the bike is big! When you sit on it, you’ll not feel it could be an easy ride in a difficult surface. It is also very heavy bike! It’s over 200kg with gasoline in the tank. And with roadsize tyres it could not be enjoyable ride in a rocky or very soft (soil & mud) surface!
Riding in the streets with it the experience is much more nice! The engine has nice power from the low rpm and the suspension is nicely stiff even with the heavy guy like me.
The same suspension feels too tight in the offroad and it has no settings to change.
The bike has tyres that gives you an idea that it would be a nice ride in unpaved roads. And it could be like that as long as the road is in good condition. The worse the surface of the road gets more uncomfortable this bike is (I think). The whole bike is more like a show off to your friends and other riders -so that they could think you’re somekind of real adventure rider. But you’re not.
Engine is soft and it has no soul. Where’s the spirit of Ducati V2???
RallyRaid products makes nice additional tanks for KTM 690 Enduro. I bought one for my bike last autumn but it took too long for me install this to my bike. Now I finally did it!
At first I removed the rear fairing… As you can see my bike is totally dirty!
Then I needed to empty the fueltank, so I needed to lift the airfilter box a little bit up so I could detach the fuelpipe.
Then using the bikes own fuelpump I removed the fuel. I had too much gasoline in my tank (about 8 litres!)
When the tank is empty I could start to remove the fuelpump from the bottom of the tank.
I only needed to take the pump out from the tank, remove the wires and then I could add this fuel connector adapter to the bottom of the fuelpump.
Then I needed to drill the holes to rear fairing (18mm) and start install the rear rack. This rack has the new bolts that will go throught the holes in the fairing for the proper installation.
After the rack is installed it’s time for the additional tank itself.
I was lucky with my miniblinkers that I installed last autumn. They are in perfect position and I didn’t have to change anything!
My bike is missing the passenger footrests so I needed to make an contemporary ironbar to keep the the tank still.
Here the bike is ready:
But still very dirty… So finally I washed the bike!
And finally I got the chance to test my bags I bought last autumn. These are from Poland (check: http://www.xcountry.pl). I will also try these in real action and I will make tours that will take many days!
I can’t wait to hit the gravelroads and tracks!
From Barcelonnette to south we chose D 908 instead of Col de la Cayolle (this would be actual part of the Route des Grandes Alpes). I think it is more interesting to ride Col d’Allos & Col des Champs (like we did)!
But before it starts to climb to the mountain Pass you need ride a long time endlessly twisting road following the valley. The river below you goes further and further while you’re climbing higher and higher.
Finally I had to stop and check if I can see the river anymore??!!
Then starts the actual climb to the Col d’Allos:
In the top of this beautiful mountain pass we saw absolutely stunning views and I took the best picture of the whole trip here!
Wanna see this picture in bigger size? Click here!
When riding down from Col d’Allos I had a very scary moment (03:55 in the video)!! A car came from the opposite direction just behind the blind corner… and the road is very narrow and there are no rails! I think my heart stopped for a second!!! But luckily I didn’t have too much speed.
Then we rode Col des Champs! This was extremely narrow road in the middle of the forest. It felt like a jogging-path or a mountainbike-path! It had bumps and dikes… But luckily no traffic! Also in the top of Col des Champs was very quiet (and beautiful!)
The road down from Col des Champs (to east) is wider and easier to ride.
Then we rode to Valberg tourist- ans skiresort and from there we rode to Col de la Couillole.
(video here)
From there we were all waiting the final climb for this day -Col de Turini! But before we found the right mountain pass we took the wrong turn!! (Or actually we didn’t make the turn!) After missing the turn the GPS told us to climb to Ilonse… and we did!
It was 13 kilometers ride to the wrong direction!! But luckily it was very nice road and we didn’t feel bad to ride it back…
…So we could finally start the way to Col de Turini. It is simply amazing! There are so many tight corners and hairpins that I think I was feeling a little bit dizzy! And also it felt like it’s climbing a lot! Like at least 2500 meters! But actually the summit of the Turini is “only” 1607 meters high!! But gosh! What an amazing ride!!
That red spot is Timo with his Honda VFR!
From the south-end of Turini we still had few nice corners to ride (from Sospel to Menton) -or actually our place to stay was Le Relais de Monti few kilometers noth from the city of Menton. We would spend the next 3 nights here! (Nice place, I recommend it!)
The route for the day 11 was like this!
Ride from the magnificent Chalet Sul Lago back to France was much nicer than the day before when we arrived.
Mt Cenis
In France we started riding the endless amount of hairpin corners and mountain passes! First we had Col du Télégraphe then Col du Galibier, Col d’Izoard and finally Col de Vars.
Here’s video climbing up the Col du Télégraphe from the north:
This climb ends in Valloire village and from the southside of Valloire starts the climb to Col du Galibier which is one of my favorites! It has a short tunnel on the top, but to reach even higher you have to take the alternative route and finally reach the 2645 meters.
Here’s video from the Col du Galibier
Col d’Izoard is more south and it starts from Cervières village (If you ride from north to south). The view on the summit is a little bit different than in many other mountain pass, the mountain walls are mostly gravel and stones! It is a barren sight!
Col d’Izoard is 2360 meters high!
Finally we had Col de Vars (2109m) where we had some ice cream!
We had the accommodation in the middle of Barcelonnette city. Here’s the route for the day 10.
We got 1 more rider to make this tour with us! He’s Timo and he rides Honda VFR 800, and it’s red too!
This days route was called “Lets get the real good look at River Mosel!” -And yes we did!
The route was like this! And we’re following the River Mosel all the way from Koblenz to Trier and then to Luxemburg… It was more than 230 km’s of River Mosel and those grapevine or wine bushes on the both sides of the river! I think that’s enough… Luckily we did ride something else too! In the last part of the route we had nice ride in Eppenbrunn!
And then finally the GPS found a route that it is even hard to find from the map!!!
This must be the MAIN ROAD from Germany to France!
We had accommodation in Obersteinbach, France. It was nice and “bohemian” just in the right way!
GoZa Mite 