Extending the Canadian Motorcycle Riding Season: Snow Bikes!

The idea of a snowmobile conversion for a motorcycle keeps popping up everywhere this winter.  Timbersled makes just such a thing.  It's seven grand Canadian for the system plus another fifteen hundred for the fitting kit.  The Husqvarna FE501S is a road legal dual sport bike that the kit fits.  They can be found for about twelve grand.  It's a rich man's game but that doesn't stop me from dreaming about it.  For about twenty grand Canadian ($14,900 US) I'd have a year 'round off road specialist that would also get down the road when needed.  The thought of pulling up to a RIDE spotcheck in a blizzard on a plated version of one of these makes me quite happy.  Officer: 'Uh, what's that?'

The KLX250 I tried a while back was so slow with me on it that I felt unsafe on roads.  I couldn't coax it to 100km/hr which meant I had a row of traffic behind me even on country back roads.  The Husky weighs less and has almost three times more horsepower.  Keeping up with traffic on back roads would not be a problem.  Those capabilities mean it'd carry me and some camping gear deep into the countryside in the summer while also being snow-bike convertible in the winter, all for twenty five hundred bucks less than a BMW GS.

A new snowmobile costs sixteen grand or more and only works for a few months of year if you're lucky.  From that point of view a road ready enduro bike with a Timbersled system looks like a more useful and cost effective approach to riding in the snow (and everything else). 

Timbersled Snow Conversion System
http://www.timbersled.com/en-ca/snow-bike/short-track

The Husqvarna FE 501S Dual Sport Motorcycle
http://www.husqvarna-motorcycles.com/ca/off-road/four-stroke/fe-501-1/
http://www.cyclecanadaweb.com/articles/36150/
http://www.cycleworld.com/2015/03/23/beta-500-rs-vs-husqvarna-fe-501-s-vs-ktm-500-exc-dual-sport-motorcycles-comparison-test-motorcycle-review
http://www.blackfootdirect.com/p-11174-2016-husqvarna-fe-501s.aspx

In the snow!

In the desert!

On forest trails!  All on the same bike.

Busy Winter Garage & Kawasaki Industrial Art

I never intended to become hooked on Kawasakis.  The motorcycle fixation of my younger self was always Hondas, but when I finally got into motorcycling it was Kawasakis that kept appearing in the right place at the right time, and they've generally been good to me.  To date I've owned three Kawasakis, two Yamahas and a Triumph; not a Honda in sight.

After selling the Yamaha XS1100 custom project bike last summer I decided to double down on the wounded Concours which, in spite of a lot of work and money spent, wasn't sellable.  When I can ride I ride but when the snow flies I tend to get busy in the garage, and this winter is no different.

The winter garage is a busy garage.  The Tiger's having a rest while I work on the Concours custom.  Before the spring season begins the Tiger'll have new fork oil, spark plugs and a coolant flush.

The Concours is in an unprecedented state of undress.  With the rear end removed and the plastics off it looks like a completely different machine.  Yesterday I removed the coolant reservoir located under the oil cooler behind the front wheel.  It's going to get relocated to the back of the battery box so it's out of the way of rocks being kicked up from the road.  There are a lot of after market options for a coolant reservoir, so finding an alternative that fits well in the new location shouldn't be hard.

The 7 inch round headlight with built in LED indicators showed up from Amazon but I'm still waiting on the tail light.  I'd initially thought of doing some kind of front fairing but now I'm going bare bones with only metal framing to mount the light and minimal instruments.  

I purchased some stainless steel framing and I've been cutting it into muffler mounts and the rear light fairing bracket.  That rear fairing piece is going to be as minimal as possible as well.  Perhaps even a box for the rear light in bare frame.  Visible girder frame pieces are going to become a part of what this will look like when it's finished.

I took the instrument cluster apart to see if any of it was salvageable (it wasn't), but the insides look like something out of the DaVinci Code!

Some 90° brackets on the upper fork clamps has me ready to try some headlight mounting ideas.

Pigeon Forge Motorcycle Base Camp Trip Planning

The Smokey Mountains are a motorcycle Mecca for a reason.

Using a combination of motorcycleroads.com and Furkot.com I've been planning day trips from Pigeon Forge, which seems a sensible place to explore the Smokey Mountains from.  The process can serve as escapism on a foggy, freezing drizzle Boxing Day, or it could be  pre-planning for an inevitable trip.

I've variously daydreamed about driving the Tiger down in a van over the Christmas break to New Orleans and Key West, as well as riding down to The Tail of the Dragon next August for a complete solar eclipse.  There are a lot of good reasons to figure out possible rides for when I'm eventually in the area.

Pigeon Forge is located just south east of Knoxville and offers a great launching point into the Smokey Mountains.  The area around there is covered in desirable roads:



The only trick with a winter trip is changeable weather.  It looks like next week in Pigeon Forge would have been a bit challenging:



It's a roll of the dice going south in the winter but the summer's a sure thing.  Maybe I'll find myself in the Smokey Mountains next summer when the moon hides the sun.

200 KM East Loop

230KM Pigeon Forge low land loop

Pigeon Forge 300km South Smokey Mtn loop

240 KM loopback Dragon's Tail

Stripping a BMW Airhead

On the shortest day of the year, as the sun set in the middle of the afternoon, I found myself driving into the country to help Jeff the motorcycle Jedi lift the engine out of his BMW airhead cafe racer project.

Since it came out of the shed it had been hibernating in for over a decade, the old R100 has been stripped down to its bits and pieces.  Jeff is going to get the frame powder coated which was why I was there to help get that big air cooled lump out.

A BMW R100RT stripped down to its component parts emphasizes just what a simple and elegant machine this is.  We were both able to easily lift the boxer engine out of the frame.  I doubt it weighed much more than a hundred pounds.  Even with all the pieces laid out on tables, the BMW seems to be made of less parts than you'd need to put together a working motorcycle, let alone a touring model.

So far the only new piece purchased is the cafe racer seat in the photo.  Jeff intends to take a sawzall to the frame over the holiday break and then industrially clean all of the components before reassembling the cafe resurrected R100RT.

With the parts laid out it doesn't look like there's enough there to build a motorbike.  The R100 is an elegantly simple machine.

The home-made motorcycle stand is doing a fine job on its first big project.

That air cooled boxer engine is a piece of industrial art!

A naked R100RT frame prior to some modification.

A New Roof

My favorite helmet company has come out with a new evolution of their unique helmet.  Lots of companies make a lifting visor helmet but what they don't tell you is that your swinging chin guard doesn't pass any safety standards; most of those modular motorcycle helmets only pass open face testing (as though there were no chin guard at all).  The Roof passes stringent safety tests as both an open AND closed face helmet making it a rarity in convertible lids.

I've been the happy owner of a Desmo for over a year now and it has surpassed expectations.  It's much better than any other helmet I've tried at handling turbulence in a straight-line and especially when you turn your head (it barely registers side winds at all).  It's as quiet as most closed faced helmets but can also be opened up when not travelling at high speed.  The visor lets you go from open face to jet to fully closed a second, one handed.

Roof has updated the Desmo to the RO32 Desmo with a variety of updates and improvements.  If I can find a retailer I'm in for the upgrade.