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.

Some info about the Tuareg Rally

The Tuareg Rallye has been around since 1999. Last year it gathered more than 200 motorcycles and 30 cars. It starts in Almeria, Spain and continues down through Morocco and then turns around and finishes in Mojacar in Spain.

The rally track stretches over more than 3000 kilometers and the competitors will have to navigate their way from the port of Nador in the north, through the impressive Atlas Mountains and the city of Missour, and then continues down to the massive sand dunes in Erg Chebbi in the vicinity of Merzouga in the south close to the border to Algeria. Once in Erg Chebbi, which is part of the Sahara desert, the competitors will have to face long days with nothing but sand and dunes that can reach up to 200 meters high.
After conquering the desert, the competitors finds their way back to the northern parts of Morocco through ravines, river crossings, and rocky donkey trails to finally reach Nador again where a ferry awaits to take them back to Europe where the rally ends with a final special stage between Almeria and Mojacar.

Early morning at pre-start

I personally think that the Tuareg rally is the most affordable desert rally that is currently out there. It is relatively low cost and the organization is very good. Plus, the regulations are very forgiving in the sense that if you fail to finish one day, say you have some mechanical problems for example, you can still start the next day. Of course you will get the appropriate time penalties (which can be quite heavy) but they will not kick you out. So you can still have a lot of fun and get a lot of riding and experience even if your chances of a top position is gone.

Another good thing about the rally is that they don't require you to put on a lot of required extra stuff on your bike, like sentinels and iritracks and whatnots, which also helps in keeping the costs down for the individual rider.