SMART Adventures and Off Road Performance Dirtbikes

 Over the long weekend I got out to SMART Adventures again for my yearly knobbly tire exercise. If you've read TMD you'll know I've tried to off road in South Western Ontario, but got stick for riding on hydro cuts and farmland and generally got nimbied right out of dual sport ownership. SMART is my release valve while thinking of ways to escape living in the one part of Canada that doesn't make off road riding easy.

If I lived anywhere else I'd have picked up the DR650 I found on a farm a couple of years ago and that would be my dedicated off road machine. My neighbor picked up a new Tenere 700 and I've long had my eye on Honda's CRF300 Rally - both of those would do the trick, though after this weekend I'm thinking a dirt focused specialist might be the way. 

Last year's SMART was an apex experience for both Max and I as we got advanced individual instruction on the off road vehicles of our choice, I even got to ride an electric machine! This year we'd planned to meet with friends at Horseshoe Resort and that gave us a discount opportunity with SMART, so I signed everyone up for the busy Saturday afternoon on the long weekend.

I initially went out on the Kawasaki I rode last year, but the gear shifter had been banged about by a previous rider and it wouldn't go into gear, so I got to switch to a Yamaha WR250F with upside down forks, high compression and proper brakes. I'd never been bothered with any of that and always thought a trail focused machine would be what I'd get as a pure dirt bike, but this Yamaha changed my mind.

Unlike the 230 I started off on or the Honda and Kawasaki 250s I rode last time, the Yamaha demands more but rewards you for it. If you can appreciate the difference between an appliance car and a sports car you can understand the difference here too. Those upside down shocks will get you across pretty much everything with incredible feel, and the brakes are precision tools, but it was the engine that took me to my next level, and eventually let me slip the surly bonds of earth and fly (!).

Trail bikes tend to be tuned for torque low down without worrying about stalling. This higher compression motor needs more revs, but when it comes on song (the exhaust snarls when you get there), it'll pull you up any hill or over any obstacle. If you're riding over whoops, it'll get both wheels off the ground too.

This turned out to be just the bike I needed just as I needed it because I probably wasn't skilled enough to appreciate it before now.  SMART put me with Adam, the brother of my instructor from last year, who did a great job of testing my limits without overwhelming me. We covered a lot of miles through the fall woods. That's a SMART hack: if you know what you're doing say you're 'expert' on the intake form. If gets you out of the kids-who-think-they-can catagory and lets you focus on improving your craft, usually one-on-one with an instructor.

The Kwak wasn't up for it, but that gave me a chance to explore the competition ready Yamaha...

Passed these guys while out on the trail - that's the dream setup.

Adam and I got deep into the forest - he's the red smudge down the trail that I'm keeping up with (because he kepts slowing to check on me). Every 10-15 minutes we'd stop and talk about technique, and then go exercise the talk.

Everyone had a good day out. The girls got out in a side by side and discovered that off roading in one of these is well within their skillsets and not at all uncomfortable. The only complaint came from Max who wanted a more extreme ATV experience as he's now expert in that. Next time he'll be sure to stress that he wants to be in the advanced group.

That Yam is the bomb! It's on my wishlist now.

Taking a 955i Tiger from Triumph Engineers to Vintage Ownership

 I'm bound and determined to keep the old Tiger in motion. Triumph has abandoned me in
terms of parts support, but there is another way and Classic Bike Magazine shows you how to find it. I used to depend on Practical Sports Bikes for keeping these pre-classics in motion, but they killed it.

Rick Parkington writes a lot about the transition from standard manufacturer supported bike ownership to vintage bike ownership, but what he's really on about is keeping a bike in motion when the plug-and-play relationship with modern bike parts isn't an option any more. For a modern Triumph that happens about 20 years after they build it (I've had older Kawasakis and Hondas that kept providing parts, but I digress).

The biggest thing to get your head around is being ready to find alternatives that meet the needs you're facing rather than following the manual and hoping for parts to arrive that you can swap in. One of my issues on a 90k+ bike is slack in the machine. The throttle stop has worn down over many miles so I've been playing with putting a spacer nut on there.

When I had it apart today I used the grinder to try two different cuts of nut to get my idle back to where it should be. The middle one gives me perhaps a mm of recovered space on the pin that catches the throttle when it returns to idle at a point that doesn't make the engine struggle.

Another one of those vintage approaches is around battling fasteners. You can never assume something will come off as it should. In this case the fastener on the throttle casing on the handlebar creates swear words.

While I had it apart today I put in two new cables (throttle and clutch). Thanks to Rogx in Germany (who are still producing new cables for the 955i Tiger which was popular there), I got two new cables with all the hardware and it arrived early and with no headache (I love dealing with Germans!).

The clutch cable was fraying by the transmission so it was well past time. My thought is that if this one lasts as long as the first one (over 90k), then I'll be happy. I ran both cables next to the existing ones to get the runs right and then removed the old ones afterwards. It was a satisfying rainy Sunday afternoon in the garage.

No complaints (other than Triumph not supporting its own machines when they are less than 20 years old). These cables both did over 90k through brutal Canadian temperature changes.

A satisfying Sunday afternoon getting the Tiger sorted. I think another couple of hours and I'll have it back in motion for the end of the riding season here.

I wrote this as I was catching up on the Indonesian Grand Prix in MotoGP after a crazy (but awesome) week at work. I lost Marc after the Valentino incident back in 2015, but I'm starting to find my Marquez fandom again...