Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

[ROD CURRIE]

Originally Posted by Yamezz

What brand of mousse did you use? I've been running mousses for five years now, and I've never heard of hollow mousses.

Mounting a mousse is far easier than most people think .

I ran mousses in the Sahara a few years ago and whilst they were great in that situation I still think a stiff walled tyre with HD tubes and rimlocks does it for me and you haven't got that godawful slimy shitey mess when you eventually have to take it off. .

When the time came I nearly bent the feckin' rim getting the worn tyre off with the Deserts I was running......there wasn't enough give in the tyrewall to allow it to sit in the well and compress the mousse. Before you all chime in I'm sure it's a question of technique and me being a donkey.
I almost hate to confess ( as someone will jump all over me) I took a hacksaw to it and sawed the feckin' tyre in 2 ..BE NICE TO ME!!

Yamezz...Also loved the sig line about " Knowing your shit or knowing you're shit"

I must shamelessly poach it...

[Twinmike]

a melted mousse in Morocco, a shitty job to get it out from the tire

[Colebatch]

Geir and I found that the rail bridge looked OK. It was time to introduce the guys to rail bridge crossings.


(pic by Steve)


(pic by Steve)

It of course is useful experience, because by the time we get to Tynda at the end of the first half of the BAM Road and where we break off it to head north, we will need to cross a dozen or so more.

After the bridge, we were making good pace along the road to Novy Uoyan when Terry suffered a scary mechanical failure at high speed. One of the bolts holding his bar riser to the top triple clamp snapped, allowing his bars to rotate separately from the front wheel. No steering !!

He managed to get the bike to slow down safely. And we began strapping his bars to his forks. We would have to address this properly in Uoyan.


(pic by Steve)

[FechFech]

Walter,

The semaphore at the other side of the bridge shows a green light. Do you know what signaling system the transsib uses ? Most railroads in continental Europe use "locked-if-idle", i.e. signals are red if no train is running. The one to three blocks immediately ahead of a train turn green. When the train enters a block, the signal protecting it turns red again.

Some railroads in the UK use "open-if-idle", i.e. all semaphors are green if no train is running. The semaphores for the block the train is in and the two or three blocks immediately after the train are red.

If the transsib uses "locked-if-idle" then crossing a bridge with a semaphore showing green is not a good idea - a train will approach soon. If they use "open-if-idle", then a green semaphore doesn't tell you anything. It will turn red when a train has entered the block it protects, but at this time you have already seen (or have been run over by) the train... ;-)

Cheers,

FechFech

[Pamirski]

Hi FechFech

trains on the BAM are not such a big problem, they are not so fast and you hear them usually far enough or see them.
I had only two encounters on a bridge, one was a kind of railbus (I saw him, but wanted to cross before him):


On bigger bridges you have some kind of balcony, where you can wait (as in the picture).
The lights didn't help me a lot for estimating the time to the next train, but I don't know their system.

[Yamezz]

Originally Posted by Colebatch

Michelin M14s ... the benchmark mousses

This is not a pic of my mousse that split open cause I didnt get any pics of it (but Terry was there when we took it out the filthy slimy greasy sucker and discovered it was ripped and hollow), but its another brand of rear mousse I found on the internet to illustrate the point .. its hollow.

Fronts are solid ... like the illustration you posted. I am certainly no expert on mousses, but I do know the rears that I have used have air pressure in them and been hollow - I guess they do that to save weight ... Mousses certainly arent light ... saving 35-40% of the weight (unsprung weight) of the rear mousse will be a notable benefit to handling vs a solid rear mousse. But when the mousse wall rips allowing the air pressure out, its suddenly like riding on a 3/4 flat tyre. My ripped michelin didnt have the tongue of material like the mousse in the picture inside the hollow bit. It was just a hollow tube inside ... cross section of a donut.

That pic is from Dirtbikeworld. It's actually a pic of a failed mousse. The mousse was solid when it was installed. As far as I know, the TechnoMousse supplier replaced two failures like that FOC because it was unusual. Without a picture of your mousse, I can only speculate, but a mousse can't really 'rip' when it's in place. What you probably saw were either melted sections (which is what caused the hollow in the pic above) or the result of butchery by an installer being rough on the levers - using brute force to get the tyre on, rather than technique. My guess is that the mousse was damaged in installation and was not lubricated well enough. Too much heat will melt a mousse and the melted area appears in pockets, rather than a general overall degradation of the entire mousse. These melted spots give the illusion of hollows.

Mousses are certainly heavier than a standard tube. They are lighter than an UHD tube though. There's also a little more to the handling equation than just unsprung weight. Riding on mousses can have a 'dead' feel; which is actually a positive. While the valving in your suspension can moderate the action of the springs, it can do nothing for the 'air spring' that is in your tyres. Mousses don't bounce much compared to air tubes, so you get better traction, along with better suspension action.

Originally Posted by ROD CURRIE

I ran mousses in the Sahara a few years ago and whilst they were great in that situation I still think a stiff walled tyre with HD tubes and rimlocks does it for me and you haven't got that godawful slimy shitey mess when you eventually have to take it off. .

When the time came I nearly bent the feckin' rim getting the worn tyre off with the Deserts I was running......there wasn't enough give in the tyrewall to allow it to sit in the well and compress the mousse. Before you all chime in I'm sure it's a question of technique and me being a donkey.
I almost hate to confess ( as someone will jump all over me) I took a hacksaw to it and sawed the feckin' tyre in 2 ..BE NICE TO ME!!

It sounds like you didn't have anything holding the tyre into the well. It's not a case of the tyre being too stiff - every tyre I've ever used has needed something to hold the tyre down into the well. It doesn't have to be anything specific - just what ever you can fit in there - tyre lever, chisel, screwdriver, bit of angle iron.

Originally Posted by ROD CURRIE

Yamezz...Also loved the sig line about " Knowing your shit or knowing you're shit"

I must shamelessly poach it...

Go ahead... I did!

[Tony P]

Originally Posted by FechFech

The semaphore at the other side of the bridge shows a green light. Do you know what signaling system the transsib uses ? Most railroads in continental Europe use "locked-if-idle", i.e. signals are red if no train is running. The one to three blocks immediately ahead of a train turn green. When the train enters a block, the signal protecting it turns red again.

Some railroads in the UK use "open-if-idle", i.e. all semaphors are green if no train is running. The semaphores for the block the train is in and the two or three blocks immediately after the train are red.

If the transsib uses "locked-if-idle" then crossing a bridge with a semaphore showing green is not a good idea - a train will approach soon. If they use "open-if-idle", then a green semaphore doesn't tell you anything. It will turn red when a train has entered the block it protects, but at this time you have already seen (or have been run over by) the train...

This is not the TransSiberian Railway but the BAM railway - constructed much more recently. The BAM was single track and the lights appeared to show green one way and red the other. I never saw any showing the same (or none)as in the system you described.
We found no time or frequency pattern or warning of approaching trains (except horns - but that was another ride report!). All we knew was which direction to expect it from.

Originally Posted by Pamirski

Hi FechFech
trains on the BAM are not such a big problem, they are not so fast and you hear them usually far enough or see them.
I had only two encounters on a bridge, one was a kind of railbus (I saw him, but wanted to cross before him):

On bigger bridges you have some kind of balcony, where you can wait (as in the picture).

The train in your picture is indeed a small local passenger one. The bulk freight trains along all of the BAM (west and east sections) are far larger. We worked out that their body overhang was to the end of the standard wood sleepers. There was not enough space for a moto between the train and the railing - other than in the short balconies that occurred every third or so section of the longer 'modular' bridges.

Believe me, those freight trains filled the space, width and height.
I know, in a manner very few do!

[Schmyr]

[QUOTE=CosmicWally;20600631]My kind of crash bars! Protecting the obvious...





I see where Terry carries his emergency beer.

[DyrWolf]

Terry Did the bolt break or threads strip? And was it a stock bolt. I worry about the bolts on my XC because they don`t
thread in very far and my fairing brackets are between the top clamp and riser. Just a few mm but I have though of lengthening the bolts 5 to 10 mm. Yours or Walter`s thoughts appreciated.

[25jack]

Do not see any Steering Dampners. These machines do not need it? Would think it could help reduce arm fatigue but maybe not.

[Aarrff]

Originally Posted by Colebatch

While we are talking of tyres ... The tyres (Heidenau K74) Terry and I picked up in Irkutsk and had now fitted, sucked big time.

The K74 is a motocross racing specific tire, to propel a light weight bike, no luggage, etc...It will not work well in this application. Not designed to carry a load at all. The K76 or more aggressive K60's will handle the weight and have served me well through about 3 sets of each so far. I am getting unbelievable "mileage" on the larger K-60s with the center rib type pattern. I try to mount a tire that is suitable for 80-90 percent of what I am riding which is not easy ( I know its easy to find what you want if you are not out on a trip like you guys!) There is a lot of different mud out there and as seen earlier in this great report, some of it just chokes a bike up. Sometimes, a really good mud tire will get you further in the mud, but maybe not through it, then you need a longer winch line than anyone else to get your muddy ass out.

[Lornce]

Originally Posted by InTheMuck

Please disregard if this is too much of a hijack, but in this fellow's India post he talks about getting hassled by the locals when he stopped at the scene of an accident and reflects that "If you witness an accident in a country that isn't European or doesn't speak English......don't stop, just keep on riding, it's more trouble than it's worth."

Curious what all you other worldly travelers think about that...

Watched his Nepal segement and he's openly rude and abusive to Nepalis on three seperate occasions.

Sorry, I don't have any time for the guy.

[Colebatch]

With Terry's bars all strapped on, we continued to Novy Uoyan


(pic by Steve)

I wanted to ask locals to recommend us a mechanic. We stumbled across these guys celebrating what turned out to be paratroopers day in Russia:


(pic by Steve)

Judging by the state of the guys beer belly I figured he wasnt a paratrooper. or at least not an active one. They offered to take us to the mechanic, so long as we posed for a pic or two first.


(pic by Steve)

Then Terry could extract out the snapped bolt.


(pic by Steve)

[Colebatch]

While Terry was doing that, Steve and Erik were eating melon with the revellers, and Geir and I were cutting up an old plastic oil container to extend our mudguards for the roads ahead.


(pic by Steve)

[Colebatch]

With Terry's bike back on the road, we continued on our ride to Taksimo ...

With only one road to follow, and the road reasonably simple, the group often spread out, with Terry, Geir and myself racing each other at the front of the pack. Sometimes there was an alternative track in the rail ballast beside the track ... and often some riders would stick on the main road while someone seeking to sneak ahead would shoot up to the rail track to try and scoot ahead unseen.

I spent more time up on the rail embankment than anyone else so missed a few of the funky bridges like this one:


(pic by Steve)

But Geir, Terry and I pulled over to wait for the other guys at the foot of the Severomuisk range. A 16 km rail tunnel goes thru the mountain but we were going over it.


(pic by Steve)

Terry grabbed another chicken samsa, a snack we had stocked up with that morning in Severobaikalsk