Tag Archives: dr650

The Ultimate Western Hemisphere Surf Vehicle?

26 May
2005 Ford F150 surfmoto vehicle.

Is this the ultimate vehicle for a motorcycle-loving surf traveler?

 

Is this ultimate western hemisphere surf travel vehicle? In some ways, yes. Cheap, used, high-freeway-miles Ford F150.

Parts everywhere. Easy to work on, especially with 2wd and no power anything.

Only 3 people fit in the cab – 2, really. And we all know that the more people on the trip, the less surfing gets done.

Enough room in the cab for backpacks and today’s food and drink – the essentials that can’t get stolen. Enough room in the long bed for everything else, from a gaggle of mini-Simmonses to that Skip Frye 11-footer you’ve been dying to set free of the crowds. Not to mention that dirt bike. And a bicycle, too.

 

White never looks dirty, not that you care. Actually, the dirtier the better. 

Stock rims that no one will want to steal.

A chipped taillight lens, cracked windshield and 3 small dents awaiting many more.

Baja and Central America, here we come.

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Tough Miles

5 Nov

 

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.

 

 

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What a Coincidence: Not Alone

29 Aug

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!

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Bad Gas

2 Jun

Problemas? Head to Llantera San Borjas in El Rosario.

There’s a nice, busy Pemex station as you enter El Rosario from the north. This is an important gas stop in Baja, as the next Pemex station isn’t for another 200 miles. There’s gas by the can midway, at Catavina, and more in Punta Prieta, although the latter is difficult to find, but those only have “magna sin” (unleaded regular), and the Pemex in El Rosario has premium.

Most are reluctant to get gas from the can. I’ve filled up in pueblas, fishing villages, and everywhere else they’ll sell you gas from the can, and have not had a problem once. I can’t say the same for the Pemex in El Rosario.

Gas from the can. Fishing village Laguna de San Ignacio. Magna sin only.

Less than a mile after filling up on Premium, while still in second gear to avoid getting a ticket in town, the DR started sputtering, then died. It would start, but sputter and die in seconds. It had to be the gas. What else could explain this? Turn around in the direction of the gas station. Start pushing.

After a 100 yards or so I get to the Llantera San Borjas, owned by a guy from LA, which was fortuitous, as I can speak some Spanish, but not enough come breakdown time. We talked it over and decided it was the gas, of course. They figured I hadn’t watched closely enough and filled up on regular instead of premium. I was quite sure I got premium. Regardless, we decided to drain most of the gas and refill. This went for my extra gallon loaded in a bag on my tail rack.

With much gas drained and the tank nearly empty I tried starting the bike hoping I could get it to sputter enough to make it to the gas station and save the boys a trip with the gas can. The DR started, and ran. And ran and ran. I made it to the Pemex without a stutter.

The answer had arrived. Whatever was bad about the gas was at the bottom of the tank. Which means it was water. There was water in the gas.

I pulled up to a different island for a completely different pump, loaded up on premium, again, and was on my way. No problema.

In Catavina I filled the DR up with regular for the first time. She ran fine. And for the next 1,500 miles or so I filled up mostly on regular, as that’s all that was available. Not a stutter.

Next time I won’t drain as much gas. There was probably less than a cup of water in the tank. Also, if you’ve never drained your gas, you need to put the petcock in the Prime position, otherwise it won’t drain.

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Parking, Getting On and Getting Off

2 Jun

From this angle you can probably figure out the challenges of parking, mounting and dismounting.

You may recall that I shortened the kickstand about 1/2″ as the DR650 not only stands too straight up, but it has a soft suspension, so when weighted with the suspension compressed it stands even more straight. Shortening the kickstand increased the lean to the left, keeping the bike from teetering and making mounting and dismounting easier.

Easier may not be the right word. Possible is more like it.

In this shot you can start to see a few of the challenges – the narrow sitting space (not as big of a problem as it seems here), the rear luggage preventing me from mounting the bike by swinging a leg over the rear, and the surfboard further limiting mounting space. What you can’t see is that with the weight of the baggage, the bike is near teetering, so I always had to find parking that sloped slightly downhill to the left, to add lean.

Parked on the right ground, mounting and dismounting can begin. See that duct tape on the seat? That’s not a repair. It’s there to prevent scratching or tearing. To mount, I needed to lift my (heavily booted) right leg onto the seat, then slide it down into the space between the surfboard and the bike, aiming to plant my foot on the ground. I needed to do this in one smooth motion, because as I slipped onto the bike the bike would move more upright, the suspension would compress more, and momentum would push the lean to the right side, so my foot had to get planted quickly. So it was a 2-step deal: Lift right boot onto seat, then slip over and plant right foot solidly on the ground.

(One time I found myself without a landing place for my right foot. I was at the Oasis Motel in Loreto and had parked on the walkway in front of my room, which was narrow and raised, so there was a drop-off where my right foot was to land. Narrowly saved! Had I failed, everything would have toppled onto my surfboard and rack, and that’s for another post.)

Dismounting was just as strange, perhaps stranger. First, stand on pegs, weighting on the left. Second, lift right boot up and onto the seat, so I was now standing with one foot on the left peg and the other on the seat. Third, pull right boot up off the seat and onto the ground. Remove left foot. Why not one smooth motion? The distance between the pegs and the seat combined with the bulk of a solid off-road boot (Moose Racing M1 boot – great value for an excellent, heavy-duty boot) made it near impossible to complete that move in one step without dragging the boot across the seat, risking tears from the boot sole. Also, this was a good test of the stability of the parking spot.

Sounds like a lot of work, and it was at first, but you get the hang of it. The toughest part was the first time I did it, which was when I pulled the fully-loaded bike out of my garage into the alley and fired her up for the trip. No practice run, so I wasn’t even sure if I could get on and off the bike! I was already sweating as I pulled away. The adventure started right then and there.

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UPDATE to Board Support Up Front

1 Jun

Duct tape repair. (Have to look closely.) Temporary, and unnecessary, as it turns out.

It didn’t take long for the PVC contraption (see Board Support Up Front post) to fail, cracking after just 8 hours or so in the saddle. Here we are at the Old Mill in San Quintin applying a duct tape repair. As it turned out, it was never needed. In just another couple of hours the support broke off completely, slipping away from the duct tape. The event went unnoticed, though, as the problem solved itself.

The support was never meant to work on its own. It was there as much as an anchor for the bungie cord as anything else. When the contraption broke off, the hose-clamped piece stayed in place, which was all that was needed anyhow, as the Carver racks in the back fully supported the surfboard. All that was needed up front was the bungie cord to keep the nose in and out of the wind. This photo shows the remaining mess that worked great for the rest of that trip, another 2,000 miles, including hundreds of off-road riding, at speed.

All that was needed in the first place was an anchor for the lower bungie cord hook.

So what started as the biggest concern – keeping the front of the surfboard supported and out of the wind – turned out to be a non-issue. Very good news.

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Final weigh-in before the event

7 Mar

If you’ve been reading this you’ve seen that I’m keeping track of weight gains and losses on the bike. With all the extra parts for protection and lugging, I would like to net out at a zero weight gain to the bike by replacing parts with lighter versions (e.g., exhaust pipe) and just tossing unneeded parts, like passenger pegs. The big things I could weigh individually, but the little stuff just got thrown into a bag to weigh later, like today. So here’s the bag ‘o junk – old turn signals, bar-end weights, passenger pegs, upper chain roller, piece off the clutch lever, etc. – and the weight savings, 5 pounds. As of the February 23 post the bike had gained 1 pound. Not bad considering the tail rack, surf racks, skid plate, luggage rack, etc. But with this savings we were at a 4 pound loss, but.

The DBz Flat Top Duffle tail bag came in today; that’s another 2 pounds. (The DBz stuff is really light.) And I finally weighed the magnetic (heavy) tank bag I already had (and had never used because my Ducatis have either plastic or aluminum tanks); 5 pounds! So the 4 pound loss has turned into a 3 pound gain, and there’s not much more I can do without spending a lot of money, as in hundreds per pound. Better to lose some weight myself!

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Test Run

6 Mar

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.

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Board Support Up Front

6 Mar

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.

 

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Surf Racks Mounted

6 Mar

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.

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