Jon and Pete stop in at Suzuki HQ in Brea, CA to freshen up their DRZs and give us the video lowdown. Awesome guys on an awesome adventure – ’round the world sans film crews (Suzuki HQ visit excepted) and support SUVs. Get the rest of the story at toughmiles.com.
Getting ready for a surf somewhere between Punta Canoas and the Seven Sisters.
As it turns out, I didn’t go alone on my May/June surfmoto trip to Baja. GaryUnguided went too. I just didn’t know it until now. He rode the same bike model – Suzuki DR650 – with many of the same mods. He did a much better job, though. Like mounting spare cables for a quick fix. Anyhow, check out his trip blog here: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/ride-tales/baja-motosurf-2012-a-64360
Great stuff!
I loaded up a 6’8″ in a canvas Julie Bag for a test ride. I cruised on up the the newly opened Deus Ex Machina on Venice and Lincoln to show the crew there what they had helped inspire. (There was an article on Deus in The Surfers Journal that showed one of their surf rack modified bikes.) I was surprised at the reaction. The moment I pulled up they all piled out to check it out. I showed them around the bike, making lame excuses for my prototype PVC mount for the front, but they seemed pretty stoked. They took some photos. Much better than this one of the DR back in my little garage, board in rack. How did it work. Excellent-ly. 😉
Yes, bad photo. But this isn't the right board bag, so the good shots will come later. You can see the PVC poking out under the nose. That's been painted black. The bungie up front attached to a tie wrap that goes through a small but convenient hole in the frame behind the triple clamp.
A big concern has been how to support the front of the board and to keep it from hitting the front wheel or fender when turning, and to make sure it doesn’t get caught on the front brake cable. Since the racks are on the rear, they are only holding the back third of the surfboard, so wind and bumps will cause the front of the board to move around. Probably a lot. The DR650es has an oil cooler with a frame extension for protection. It’s a perfect place to mount some sort of stabilizer. For now, and maybe forever, I cobbled together a support piece out of PVC. Here’s the piece for mounting to the frame.
What's difficult to see here is how I cut the PVC to mount onto the frame tube.
Yes, working at night. I ended up putting a piece of neoprene between the PVC and the frame tube to keep the PVC from cracking and to give some shock absorption. Hose clamps are used to secure.
Mounting the Carver surf rack to the Manracks tail rack was almost straightforward. As you can see in this pic, one bolt looks different from the other. The Carver rack mounting bolts are LONG, and would drill into the fender, so I replaced the left side bolt with a shorter one, about 3″. Not seen here is that I put a third bolt in the center. That one is even shorter. It’s a solid mount.
You can see that the Carver surf racks clear the DBz luggage racks nicely. That was a relief.
OK, down to the good stuff: Surf racks on a motorcycle. I checked Deus Ex Machina rack, but you can’t buy it without buying the motorcycle attached to it, and at this point they’re only doing street bikes. I also checked out the Surfer Peg rack, but again, it’s street oriented, and needs to attach to the frame. That’s not inherently bad, but it would require fabrication that I’m not quite interested in. Primarily, though, it’s the street focus that steered me away. I settled on the Carver Racks, even though they’re not for motorcycles – bicycles and scooters, but not motorcycles. What I liked, though, is that it could be bolted to the rear rack.
When putting the racks together I encountered a small problem: The rubber tubes were too long, so the pieces wouldn’t fit together without a bit of cutting. I called the guys at Carver in Hawaii. They were a bit surprised, but were good with the mod.
The new, 4th edition of The Surfer’s Guide to Baja is finally back in print. It’s been out of print for nearly a year while the update for the 4th edition has been under way. Available at core surf shops everywhere, or it can be ordered direct from Amazon, Createspace and other online vendors.
UPDATE: The Kindle version now available too…here.
