Day before scrutineering

Today was the day before the scrutineering and I spent a couple of hours doing some last minute checkups on my bike to make sure that nothing has been damaged during the transport down to Spain. Went over my riding gear and made sure I had all the neccessary stuff needed for the mandatory emergency kit. Each motorcycle driver needs to carry emergency rockets, a map of Morocco, a lighter, a compass, a rescue blanket, 4 litres of water, a cell phone, a set of tools for your bike and, of course, a helmet. If you happen to miss one of those items during any of the unannounced checks you will get heavy time penalties so you better have your gear sorted.

The riders checking their bikes one last time

Everything looked good on the bike and after a short shakedown ride to make sure everything worked properly and that nothing was coming off the bike I packed my gear and am now looking forward to relaxing the rest of the day. Björn Nygren, another rider in Team Rally Raid Sweden discovered some weird engine noices and is nervous about an imminent engine problem. Hope everything works out for him.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rally and the whole day will be spent in the port of Almeria with scrutineering. Getting all your paperwork done, getting the bike through inspections, and preparing everything before boarding the ferry that will take us over to Nador in Morocco. The ferry usually leaves at about 2300hrs so I'm expecting to spend at least 10-12 hours at the port. Fun times. Hopefully we will have a smooth crossing over to Africa and then the actual racing will start in Morocco on Monday morning.

Managing IT in the wild

If you want to stay in touch with your family and friends and share your adventures during a rally there is quite a bit of IT involved. In Morocco, where I'm going now, the cellular networks are pretty good and there is actually some WIFI available too at one of the base camps.
I am combining texting, a smartphone and a mini-PC to cover my information needs. Posting updates to various sites, uploading pictures, calling home, etc. Apart from that I also bring two GPS's, one for backup, and they need to be connected to the mini-PC for uploading routes and waypoints used for navigating the stages. The mini-PC also serves as a storage for unloading images and videos from cameras and helmet cams that we bring with us.

Of course all these units needs to be recharged every night. In the past I've been running around with a bunch of cables that connects everything and then plugging in the whole mess in a power socket. It works but it's messy and it leaves all the units visible to anyone who might be interested in stealing them. So this year I put together an "IT-case". It's a small tool case that I've fitted with various velcro straps that secures all units and everything is neatly connected in the case. I placed a power socket on the side of the case so when I need to charge everything I just place the case near a power source and I plug the case in with a power cord. No more messy cables and a lot more easy to handle and less eye catching.

Enough space for GPS's, a camera, a smartphone and
a mini-PC. 

On the picture you can see the mini-PC and the two GPS units. After the pic was taken a I also fitted connectors for my camera and smartphone. And anything that uses an USB plug can be connected as well.
Hopefully this solution will be a lot easier to handle than having everything in a mess with loose cords.

The rally bike of 2011

I thought I would try to sum up what I have done to the bike to prepare it for the rally this year and also to take the opportunity to show it off for all you petrol heads out there.

KTM 530 EXC SixDays Rally Lite Edition

The bike is a KTM 530 EXC SixDays 2010 with about 55hrs on it. My goal has been to build a "rally lite" bike just as I did last year. That is, I try to do as little modifications as possible and I try to keep the bike as light and slim as I can by not putting on to much stuff on it. Rather taking things away to keep the weight down. The reasons for building a lite version are mainly these:

140/80 Michelin Desert is
one wide tire...

• Keep everything you do as simple as possible. The less complicated the less chance it will break and the easier it will be to repair in the field.
• Every custom part you put on must be field tested before the rally. And by field testing I mean a lot of tough riding not just riding down a dirt road for a while. Preferably you should do a race with the part on your bike before you can trust it.
• If you build your own parts instead of buying parts of a well known brand you need to test it even more.
• The more stuff you put on, the more stuff that can break. And things do break. The most effective way to prevent something from breaking is not to put it on.

The non-standard components on chassis and engine are:

• Rebuilt front suspension (springs, shims)
• Rebuilt rear suspension (springs, bladder)
• Cylinder head ported
• Carburator (jets, etc) adjusted on bench
• Akrapovic exhaust

A degreased chain will last longer in the desert

All these mods were made by the previous owner and since the bike has done one previous rally I consider these mods to be well tested.

Here is a list of the preparations I have done to the bike just before this rally:

New plastic and decals just
for good looks

• New wheel bearings
• New grips (soft to reduce vibrations)
• New motor oil and oil filter
• New gear box oil
• New fork oil (thicker)
• Checked and greased steering head bearings
• New brake fluid
• Checked all electric wiring for wear and function
• Mounted electric wiring for the roadbook holder
• Mounted navigaton tower
• Mounted roadbook holder (MD with backlight and remote)
• Mounted GPS mount (I'm using a Garmin Foretrex 201)
• Mounted remote control for the trip computer
• New (dry) chain and sprockets
• New Michelin Desert tires and Michelin Desert mousse (front, rear and second rear wheel)
• Cleaned the carburetor
• Changed cooling fluid to Engine Ice
• Mounted large 13L tank
• Mounted rear fender bag
• Put thread lock on pretty much every single bolt on the bike
• Checked brake pads (they were almost new so I didn't change them)
• New plastic and new decals (absolutely no function, just for good looks :)
• Charged the battery
• Mounted custom skidplate with water tank

Aluminum skidplate with water tank

Apart from that I have pretty much checked everything else on the bike for wear and function. Spokes, handlebar controls, gas wire etc. Every part of the bike needs to be in mint condition if  you want it to run smoothly through an eight day race without any major problems.

Roadbook holder, GPS, trip computer and remote controls

As per usual when preparing a bike for a race, most of the work is not visible so you will not get any credit for it from someone who doesn't understand how much work that goes into something like this. But thats just how it is. :)

Now its only two days left before I'm leaving for Spain and I can't wait to get on the bike and head out to the dunes!

Spare levers strapped to the skidplate

Both front and rear suspension has been modified

Ready to jump over those Sahara dunes!

The bikes are ready to go

So it's finally time for the bikes to start their journey through Europe down to Almeria in southern Spain where the Tuareg Rally starts. That means no more time for fiddling with my bike. And I just finished everything on it. The night before the bikes are to be loaded on the truck.

It is kind of funny that no matter how far in advance you start planning a race it always comes down to the last minute. And it's not just me you know. Everyone is doing the same thing and it doesn't matter if it's a small race or the Dakar. You're always going to do last minute changes and be deprived of sleep when the deadline is getting closer. If you got more time you will just do more stuff but you will keep going until there is no more time. That's just the way it is I guess.

Tomorrow we are heading down to the city of Örebro, in Sweden, where we will meet up with the rest of the guys and load the bikes and all the gear on the service truck. I'll be sure to get some pics of all the bikes and the truck.

Carburetor cleaning

One of the less exiting but absolutely necessary bike prep you need to do before going on a desert race is cleaning your carburetor. Even if you don't do races you should clean it once every year anyway just to save you trouble. A carburetor is an ancient piece of technology for combustion engines as compared to injection. But it has its pros and cons. On the plus side is that since the construction of a carburetor is so simple it is mostly possible to fix it, should a problem occur, when you are out in the middle of nowhere far away from your sterilized garage. You basically cannot fix an injection. Most people will carry an entire injection kit (or several) as a spare when doing rallies.

Removing and cleaning jets

My cleaning procedure consists of taking apart most of the carburetor. Cleaning each part and checking for wear and tear. All jets, the mixture screw, needle, float, float needle, the throttle valve, the accelerator pump etc etc. And when everything is nice and clean I put it back together again.

When I put it together again I usually put just a little bit of thread lock on the screws to make sure the stay fastened. I also put some thread lock on the mixture screw so it won't come lose. (I actually lost my mixture screw in a rally in 2008)

As I said, not the most exiting bike prep but a carburetor problem can possibly ruin an entire race so it is definitely a must.

Revamping my skid plate

I have a skid plate made out of aluminum that also holds 2 liters of water. Those two liters are the emergency water that every rider must carry and having them in the skid plate rather than in your backpack or somewhere else on your bike has its advantages. First off I would really recommend trying to put as much stuff as possible on your bike instead of carrying them on yourself. Having extra weight to carry will be tiresome when riding long days. The skid plate is about as low as you can get on your bike and it is good to try to put any extra weight on your bike as low as possible to keep the center of gravitation low. So having those 2 extra kilograms on the skid plate is perfect.

Johan doing his TIG magic

I was down at my friend Johan at Pro2 and his shop the other day to get some help to modify my skid plate since I can not weld aluminum myself. I drilled a hole through the water tank and put in a tube that I can use to get better access to the bolts when mounting and demounting the plate when servicing the bike. Everything to save a couple of minutes each day when servicing is worth doing.

Johan did a superb job and all it cost me was a couple of brews. Since Johan is also going to the Tuareg rally I will repay him in the Sahara. :)

Cook it, peel it or leave it

Cook it, peel it or leave it; is a pretty well know slogan among world travelers and it holds equally true for how you should approach food served during rallies. Most often desert rallies take place in countries where the type of bacterias that are found in food can be quite different to what your body is used to. And it is not unusual that the handling of food is done under conditions that are far from ideal when it comes to hygiene. Thats why I always bring my own food and if I am to eat any of the local food it has to be really hot and newly cooked. If its luke warm or has been kept warm for a long time I wont touch it. Same goes for salads and stuff.

Lunch break in a canyon in Morocco

The food I bring is mostly dehydrated food that come in ration packs. All you need to do in order to cook them is to fill the bag they come in with boiling water and wait a couple of minutes and then they are ready to be eaten. During the day when I'm riding I will eat various energy bars and I always try to throw in some canned food to mix it up since only eating energy bars can be quite tough on your stomach.

This is how my typical food intake would look like, and will look like this year too.

• Breakfast: Dehydrated breakfast ration pack (cold)
• During the day when racing: Various bars (Flapjacks/protein bars), canned tuna or similar
• Dinner 1: Dehydrated dinner ration pack (hot)
• Dinner 2: Dehydrated dinner ration pack (hot), and some small pieces of what I find eatable from what is served by the rally organization.

Apart from that, I just try to constantly eat while I am at base camp in order to get as much energy back into my body as possible. A friend of mine wore one of those heart monitors during a race and it showed he had burned 7,000 calories during one race day so you really need to eat as much as you possibly can.

Dehydrated breakfast

Bringing your own food and being really picky with what you eat of the local stuff is an easy way to avoid getting ill during a rally. Getting the shits during rallies in Africa is so common it's not even funny. Just ask anyone who's been to a rally and they'll tell you.

Wheel bearings

So, it's about three weeks until the bikes are loaded on the service truck and begins the journey down to Spain so its time to start doing bike preps. I've mentioned the steering dampers I will be using in an earlier post and today I  want to say a word about wheel bearings. Or actually two words: Change Them!

During the years I have made it a habit of changing the wheel bearings every year on all my bikes no matter if I got them brand new or used. I have had a rear wheel bearing fail on me once and it totally destroyed the entire hub. Costing me several hours of work to replace the hub. When it happened I had checked the bearings when I changed tires just a couple of riding hours before it happened and they all seemed fine. So I learned the hard way that when bearings fail they can fail so fast that you will not notice it until it's too late. And I might add that that particular bike was less than a year old and with me as the first and only owner.

Fill the gap with grease and your bearings will live longer

While I'm at it I might as well share a tip about wheel bearings. Once you fit the new ones on there will be a gap between the bearing and the sealing. Make sure you fill that gap up entirely with grease (also do this if your bike is brand new from the factory). The bearings themselves are sealed so the grease will not lube the bearings but it will act as a barrier and prevent water and dirt to get in and reach the bearings. And water and dirt is what will kill your wheel bearings. I've done this for a couple of years and it really does make a huge difference.

If we go back to fact that bearings can fail fast it should be obvious that I will never go to a rally without having brand new wheel bearings on. Most manufacturers have wheel repair kits that contains all bearings, seals and spacers that you'll need and they are relatively cheap and it's quite an easy operation to change them. So changing my wheel bearings is an easy insurance that my bike will take me through deserts and rivers for thousands of kilometers without any troubles.

Got a decent 180 km of riding this weekend

I'm getting more and more comfortable on the new bike and I think we will be pretty good friends by the time we get to Africa. The handlebars feels a bit lower compared to my 400 even though I have risers on but maybe thats just imagination. Anyhow, I don't want to put any higher risers on than I already have so I'll just have to get used to it.

They told me to use
engine ice in the desert...

My plan is to continue to focus on riding all throughout February and then I will service and modify the bike and pack my rallybox in March. The truck with all the bikes and luggage leaves for Spain on March 20 so I have about three weeks to get everything sorted. The rally box contains everything I need for my bike during the rally. Filters, oil, spares etc. I also need to fit all my food and sleeping bag in there as well. That combined with a weight limit on the box means the packing of the box is a project in its own and it will probably get its own blog post later.

Training for the desert in subzero temperatures

Its at the end of January and there is still quite a lot of snow left here in Sweden in and around Stockholm. I need some time in the saddle so my plan is to get as much riding time as possible up until the rally in March so since it was a beautiful winter day today I took the opportunity to get some good riding on snow covered dirt roads.

Pogies keeps your hands out of the wind

Riding with spike tires on snow covered roads is actually quite fun and I can really recommend it if you never tried it before. The only real differences compared to riding in the summer is that you need to put on a lot more clothes and if it's really cold you might need to cover up the radiators with some duct tape or cardboard so the engine gets warm enough.

It was about -7°C today with a clear blue sky and nice, dry snow. I had to stop every now and then and warm up my fingers but apart from that it was great and I got a couple of hours of riding. This was my second ride with the new KTM 530 and I'm starting to get used to it now. It's heavier and got different motor characteristics compared to my KTM 400. I think I need to adjust the gear selector a little and I also need to experiment with some different size sprockets to find out what I will be using in Morocko. I spoke to my riding partner Carl and we are currently thinking of using 14/45, with the possibility of switching to a 13 front sprocket if we need to in the dunes. The plan is for us to have as identical bikes as possible so we can share each others spare parts.

Clear skies, beautiful sun and cold temperatures

The rally is getting closer but when there is snow everywhere and you are standing with your hands in your underwear trying to get the feeling back in your frozen fingers the dunes in Sahara feels very distant...

Steering damper or big biceps?

One bike modification that I will be doing differently this year compared to my earlier desert races is the use of a steering damper. I have never used a steering damper on any of my bikes before. Not at home when riding enduro or offroad and not in the two previous desert rallies either. Mostly because I have never really felt the need for it.
In 2008 in Morocco I rode a KTM 625 which is a pretty heavy bike that more or less behaves like a freight train plowing through any obstacles and sandy courses so I didn't have any problems with driving without a steering damper. And when I'm at home I usually never ride for long enough periods of time that I will feel any fatigue caused by a nervous front wheel. But in 2010 I rode a KTM 400 during the Tuareg rally. The 400 is a much lighter bike that becomes quite nervous when riding at high speed in tough terrains. For the first time I actually noticed how much the front wheel was bouncing back and forth and during some stages when I was going flat out on loose sand roads I actually had to slow down because I simply couldn't hold on to the handle bars anymore. A friend of mine who was riding with me later described the situation as: "Ronnie has a steering damper, Danny has arms the size of my thighs, and I have nothing but pain". Ok, granted that I'm in fairly good physical shape but I was also getting tired at that stage so after last year's rally I promised myself that I would never race again without a steering damper.

Öhlins steering damper

So, said and done. My new KTM 530 has been equipped with a Öhlins steering damper. For you who don't know, a steering damper works by dampening the movements of the handlebars. But it does so in a way that it only dampens fast movements. This means that when you are turning the handlebars during normal riding no dampening takes place and you will not notice it at all. But when fast and sudden movements occur, say for example when you hit a rock with your front wheel, the movement is heavily dampened. So instead of sending the front wheel, and you, off in a random direction the front wheel will keep straight and you can continue riding in the direction you intended.

Now this will of course help you avoid some situations that might otherwise lead to a crash, but it will also save you a lot of energy since you don't have to do all the dampening yourself as you otherwise would when you are using your arms as steering dampers.

So this year I am not going to slow down on those loose fast tracks or in those tricky dried out river beds. I'm going flat out all the way... ;) And hopefully I can avoid crashes like the one last year when I hit a rock in the middle of a curve that lead to a face plant and a sprained ankle.

Or if nothing else, it will at least be a cool looking piece of gear on my bike.

The story behind Rally Raid Sweden

...or how to help yourself by helping others.

Even though its about 5 months left until the Tuareg Rally 2011, everybody in Team Rally Raid Sweden are well into their planning and preparations. We started Rally Raid Sweden in 2009 for the Tuareg rally 2010. Rally Raid Sweden can shortly be described as a concept for promoting rally raid events on motorcycles. It's non-profit and its main purpose is to help anyone interested in racing in rally raid events through collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Team Rally Raid Sweden 2010

A lot of motorcycle riders have a dream to be able to at least once in their life time take part of a desert race. Be it in Africa, Latin America, Australia or somewhere else. But unfortunately, because of the relatively large amount of work that has to be done before one even gets to the starting line, for many, the dream will just remain a dream. And for a first-time-wannabe-desert-racer, taking the step and actually submitting your entry form to your very first rally can be a daunting task. I had my dream for many years and it finally grew so strong that I took that leap of faith and entered my first ever desert race in 2008. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.

So a year later, in 2009, my friend Carl Hagenblad and I thought that wouldn't it be really fun to do this whole rally thing again. We had done it once before so this time it would be a whole lot easier but how would we cut costs? If you live in Sweden you need to haul your bikes, gears, service trucks and what nots a whole lot of miles before you reach Africa. And hauling costs time and money. And if there was a way we could save some money we wanted to figure it out. The first rally, we drove our own service trucks down through Europe and did our own service during the rally. It worked, but driving 3000 km non-stop, and then racing 3000 km on a bike, and then driving 3000 km back home wears you out. So we figured that since the cost of transportation and bringing your own service truck is pretty much fixed. Get as many as you can to split that cost and each person will need to pay less. Basic economies of scale. And we'll also be able to bring some mechanics and split the cost for those too since you don't need one mechanic per bike anyway.

So how would we find all those people to come race with us. We knew there were tons of people with dreams but how do you make them take that first leap to realize their dreams? The solution was simple: offer them a complete package. Tell them you have a prepared plan to take everybody down to Africa and back at no extra cost. Make them part of a team and all the work that has to be done for the team, such as finding service trucks, hotel bookings, and all the other stuff, is evenly distributed among the members. So we all pitch in for the team and the benefits for the individual are lower costs, less work compared to doing it all by yourself, the advice and knowledge from those more experienced than yourself, and of course the pure fun of being part of a team rather than going solo. And having peers to help you out and support you along the way will make that leap of yours less daunting.

Team Rally Raid Sweden 2010

Said and done. Rally Raid Sweden was born and the team for 2010 became the biggest Swedish Rally Raid team in history with its 14 riders. Very cool. 13 riders made it to the finish line, the fourteenth had to quit the last day due to engine failure, three finished in the top 8 positions, and all four mechanics survived and made it back to Sweden. :) Pretty good track record in my opinion. Check out the final standings.

Retrospectively, the concept was so successful and so fun that we're doing it all over again for 2011. How big the team will be remains to be seen but there are so many great people involved that I'm sure it can't turn out to be anything but a success.