What Did Your Evil Twin Do Today?!?

Not quite....

Waaaaaatttttt.... Those discs are from what disc brake.....?????? Looks like clutch disc's and springs to me.....

Rhetorical question... Have seen plenty of cluth packs in Mercedes Benz automatic transmissions

Yellow-be-gone!
Hmmmm... now for that big honkin' shiny can

rode to work...

I think you need some more height on that windscreen.

After years of smashing my F800GS over rocks without an issue, the sidestand switch finally gave out. Fortunately, I had learnt how to fix this on the BMW Adventure Maintenance Course 2 years earlier and had applied the fix to someone else's bike, so it was familiar to me. I did it trailside in under ten minutes. It was pretty satisfying that I successfully diagnosed what the fault was first time (I was just coming out of a very deep river crossing, so could have easily mistaken it for electrics). I even remembered it's white and red you join together so got it right first time. The fix held up for the rest of the trail ride, which included dropping the (still running) bike in a river.

It was weather warnings here in the UK (you know it's good when weather is the main item of news, not just tailing it) and we were going through what is known for being one of the wettest trails in the UK: Even in summer it has 12 crossings (Strata Florida). In November and after our recent flooding, some of the trails were fast enough flowing to be 'white water' in places and had clearly flowing water for hundreds of metres of trail at a time.

It was pretty cold too; ice warning flashing all the time and we were clearly first on the trails this morning, any non-moving water we came to was frozen. It was a very new and cool sensation when I jumped from a small ledge above one pool and as the bike landed, hearing a sound like breaking glass as the ice gave way under 300KG+ of bike and rider.

F800GS performed admirably; a group of lads on proper dirt bikes were staggered we had gotten through that depth of water on our big adventure bikes.

One of the best days trail riding I've had.

Finished mounting my Holan Pros and my new bashplate. I love it even more now

BMW Adventure Maintenance coarse?
That sounds cool. Is that just s UK thing? I would be interested in that. Any links?

You can find links to these repairs on Youtube from Glober Riders.

Here:
http://www.bmw-motorrad.co.uk/world-of-bmw/off-road-skills/adventure-maintenance/

It's particularly good as:
1) They fix a hell of a lot of these bikes (they have a fleet of about 60 of the damned things and the n00bs who attend the courses have a habit of smashing them to bits on a regular basis) so they know better than most what gets broken and how to prevent it from getting damaged and what you can reliably repair in the field.
2) You get to practice on a real bike/tyre/rim/part/whatever (see point 1!), rather than watch the instructor do it. IE one of the engine cases from a GS12 that I fixed on the course is in use on one of their bikes.

On a related note, I would give a general two thumbs up for all the UK BMW ORS' courses; they're superbly well run. The tutors are quite literally world class riders, but crucially, they are all (I've ridden with all of them) very good teachers too. I've ridden with equally good and even arguably better riders at other riding schools and whilst the quality of their riding has been flawless, but their capability to transfer that ability to me as a student was sorely lacking. Every time I've come away from a BMW ORS course my dirt riding has jumped in quality more than it does in 150 hours+ of my own riding/riding with friends.

It's sunny!!

Saturday take the moto for a rip and check snow line


Sunday take the mtb for a rip up in Squamish (and test the bike rack set-up)


Dave

Nice setup! How does it hold? Just another way to show that everyone doesn't need a Land Rover just because they have a bicycle to haul around.

Thanks biodieselandon!!

Oh don't get me started on all those pretty Land Posers!!

It worked well. It's not sturdy enough for some logging road blasting I doubt though which is what I'd want to do too. I'd look at cross bracing this one to do that. Or a different way of doing it. The top rack was taking a lot of force too. All part of the experiment. The wheels are turning...

This one was put together by a friend of mine by using a Thule rain gutter mounts (attached to the handle on the bike), a roof rack cross bar cut down and then a Yakima tray (obviously) with a qr mount. I used Rok Straps on each side of the handlebar to stabilize it more and take some stress off the drop outs. That part is pretty sturdy.

It's amazing how much the bike up there changes the handling though! The bike is only 26lbs. but it feels worse than a passenger and all the boxes!!

Dave

needed a bigger top case for commuting to school / work... el cheapo home depot buy... see how long she holds up

Ben :

I see a KLR in you futuer

And when the 8GS breaks.... put that Zocc. on your bicycle, and let'er rip..... Perfect fit.....

ya ya.... I'm testing the box cause I am thinking about getting a pelican case with roughly the same size... so before I sink the dough I figured I'd try something cheaper...

BUT..... I did buy this today...



my gas cap is falling apart

installed today