Run to Freemantle

[steptoe]

No book, sorry 😢 just an experience lived 👍👍

[Christian Raith]

Maybe a short story book is on the way???
Like a short version XS1100 Heaven by Bob Jones ??

[Jonesy :-)]

Good write up mate, must have taken a while to put that together. Thanks

[steptoe]

TheLongRideHome with Wally, Luke & Lotzy is done and dusted, we’re all home safe and sound,
Can’t believe we’ve just ridden 10537 klm across this enormous endless country and back in a fortnight,
As any trip goes, there were huge highlights and a few disappointments. To spend the trip with these lads was a huge highlight, they all went above and beyond with helping organise our side of the ride, there was always a supply of red frogs or snakes at our stops,
and helping poor old Maggie Mae when we were struggling with 80 klm head winds, gusting to who knows what, (more for fuel reach than lack of power) or flat batteries and sourcing stuff/flagging complete strangers down,
Anton lent us a set of jumper leads in Central WA which will be replaced and returned with brand new ones.
#wheatlandmotel in Dalwallinu WA gave us free of charge and wouldn’t accept any $ for a battery charger that we used every night on our return trip, both the leads and the charger will become part of the ride tool kit from now on,
And the #Dalwallinuhotel for a free round of drinks after hearing our Story of the Blackdog ride, they took a couple of pictures and were going to put a little story together for the pub,
And 3 1/2 litres of oil was used
              The wash up
The 18 inch wheel experiment was a fail in as much as fuel consumption goes,
the fact that the wheel will fit, albeit a little redneck, (although with a machine shop and tools it could be made to fit correctly) so there’s gearing options available .
 the motor was always in working mode, at 3100 rpm and 100 kph I’m thinking because of the load, the vacuum advance was always on, so the carbs would’ve been running on mains not idle, even at 4500 rpm whistling along, the load compared with the 17 inch original was still heavier,
Where it would come into its own would be on the Autobarn’s of Europe where fuel isn’t really an issue for the speeds being travelled, I wouldn’t like to actually hazard a guess at what top speed would be, far quicker than the speed rating on the tyre is for certain,
The charging system issues are in the harness or the plugs connecting everything, after stopping in Perth for the replacement parts, 1 part of 1 day was the only charging that happened, it’s quite stressful trying to manage riding 1000 klms a day on 1 charge, every time you touch the brake the voltage drops, the coils obviously used most of the power. The initial morning start used up to 1.5 volts straight off, We were roll or push starting it during the day , no headlights, blinkers or phone charging and a lot of gear change breaking, the one most noticeable thing was when the charge system is down, on deceleration the motor backfires really bad, as opposed to when the system is charging, there was none, so I don’t know whether that means the coils are hooked into the system somehow , as 1 person on our trip suggested,
What’s the country like? Bloody enormous is what it is, the great southern wheatbelt lived up to it’s name, 000’s of square kilometres of wheat, and the storage capacity of the many silo sites was on another level, the small sites would’ve catered for many 10’s of thousands of tonnes of grain let alone the huge sites
The Australian bite was pretty cool, to be able to stand on the cliffs and look south made a person feel quite insignificant in the scheme of things,
The roads and the road system are not even comparable to the crap here in Qld, I was expecting a lot more larger truck combinations to be on the roads than what there was,
You can have the headwinds to yourself, that’s one thing that was starting to wear you down, it didn’t matter what direction you were going, it seemed to always be a headwind, there was probably 2 days out of the 14 that were tail winds
Relive decided it didn’t need to keep the ride , so there’s no record, so maybe it didn’t happen
Maggie Mae will be fixed,
I can feel a video building with Errol pulling a wiring harness apart

[excess.11]

Any further updates ?

[steptoe]

TheLongRideHome for Winston was an enormous success with the best part of $144 k raised ,
Freo is a nice place with lots of early history
After  a day and a bit off the bike, staying in a pretty swanky spot we start heading home,
Hindsight will say we should’ve changed the stator in Freo, then we would’ve known it wasn’t the right size, instead of finding out 300 klm up the road,
Maggie Mae has succumbed to the issues, from her electrical problems completely throwing her toys out of the cot,
I thought it was basically the stator to start with because of the way the tacho would come and go, even at 4500 rpm, after checking with the multi meter it’s readings were a bit all over the show like a plug cap does when it’s knaffed, the guys seemed to think they could smell electrical burning as we ride, which makes me think it’s more than likely reg/rec ,
After a couple of calls Peter Pendlebury near Perth, has parts I’ll replace the whole system so we aren’t farting around with it anymore and fix it at home,
so the return trip across the top will have wait,
Everyone is feeling deflated about the situation, but we’re all good and it’s part of the adventure perhaps,












upload pictures to website

[steptoe]

Day 6 ,
the chase down was a success, we actually caught the main group this morning after our few big days in Northam 1.5 hrs out of Perth
It started out a very touch chilly, with the thermal liners going into the suites, the beemers had heated everything’s , poor old Maggie, well all she had was heated stator wires, causing a short time delay after the tacho stopped working showing that the charging system was down. Even with the relatively new deutch plug installed one of the phases has gone hard and brown at the plug, so with a quick yank and a twitch and leccy tape we were back on the road, a stop at the next repco saw some spare plugs bought and connections redone, a phone call to Mal for a supplier over here was made , they couldn’t help but put us onto a wrecker that had a working stator on shelf, 
And the brand new only done the VJMC Adelaide run speedo cable decided to fall out of the nut holding it up and lost the inner somewhere on the road, thankfully I have the GPS on relive running for a speedo , so we’ll be right
But a lovely quick catchup brekkie with a couple of the group and a short run out to catch the BDR legend and his lady saw us on the bike and heading into Perth for a spare stator winding before heading to Fremantle,
Then the next thing was to head as far west as the road would take us to the beach, and watch the sun set over the ocean, something I’ve never seen before,
1 1/2 days off the bike before an even bigger trip home

[steptoe]

Bloody hell Australia is a big place we’re now in Esperance
4 enormous days and we’re still going,
Day 3 was pretty awesome crossing the “bite” and the Nullarbor, it’s a whole lot of nothing but interesting in the same time, the cliffs of the bite make you feel tiny,
The 970 to Eucla on the WA border was done with a cross tail wind which disappeared and turned into a hellish headwind for the next day
Day 4
After Maggie Mae didn’t want to start for whatever reason, the best part of 2 hours with phone calls to XSiverrol and Christian with a multi-meter showed nothing really and she just decided to start , must’ve been a loose connection in a plug, which morphed into a starter circuit issue and now having to cross the poles on the solenoid to make her run
The scenery seemed to change with the soil type, trees and grasses changed with the going over of the next rise, temperatures were surprisingly cool considering we were riding on the same longitude-ish line as Sydney ,  between 12 and 32 by the BMWs ,
The head wind was punishing, 60 kph gusting to who’d know 🤷‍♂️ ,
The Beemers have power programs in them to deliver more power with less fuel, all Maggie has is a gear box, so down a gear we went, because of the tall diff and 18 wheel the load on the engine is greater even with less revs, all I could do was go down into 4 th which was still only 4500 rpm travelling at our speed, the revs obviously went up but the throttle closed to under 1/4 throttle, haven’t fueled since so it’ll be interesting to see how that works.
A morning off here to have a bit of a rest and bo-peep, then off to Wave Rock for tonight
From this point I think the experiment doesn’t work, the load on the motor burns any idea of the fuel savings I thought might happen, although we are only 4000 klm into a 12000 k trip, it might come into its own north through WA and the NT but it’ll only be the 4 days,
An interesting thing I did find though, even with that gearing I still tapped the gear shift to make sure I was in top, so it’s not so much the gearing we’re looking to replace but the sound of the higher revving engine

[Jonesy :-)]

Sounds like your having a ball mate.

[steptoe]

Day 3 Cobar to Port Augusta
A great cruising day for the 870ish klm , let her have the fuel today for a very short stint , omg , I have no idea what top speed is, but we took it to 6500 rpm and it had almost reached the original end of legs but still had 2500 left before redline to run, the lads said the puff of smoke as it went through the power range was huge🤣
A great brekkie in Willcania cafe and a pic in Broken Hill, then a beer in Manna hill, told us about a really old tree and a rail bridge to stop at
I’m running a Michelin Road Classic on the rear and at 2300 klm still is not squaring off yet, so I’m super happy with that.
If you get a chance to, Horrocks Pass down into Port Augusta is a brilliant short set of corners to finish off a good day, so good we went back and had another run
Probably the biggest day tomorrow at 984 klm to Eucla on the SA/WA border

[steptoe]

Toowoomba to Cobar, 963 klm of I am never selling my bike,,
Fair dinkum this machine just keeps purring, charging at $1 and twenty cents she’s ticking over at 3850-75rpm still on the idle circuit and over 300 klm using 800 ml more fuel than the 2022 1250 GS that is running with, and owing $1 and thirty five  cents she used 2 .a bit ltrs more, absolutely stoked with these numbers as the BMW’s have variable timing and sundries,
Charging at the rate of $1 and thirty five cents she’s running at 4100 just in the mains circuit ,
It’s been a pretty uneventful day,  except for the car overtaking a road train on broken lines but on a right hand bend with 4 motorcycles on it, he was shown several birds but I dare say it’s water off a ducks back to the driver,
even though it’s dry out here, it holds its own scenery, so many places along the way without a single object to obscure the view, you could follow the earth’s curve in any direction you looked, hundreds of emus, mostly behind/inside the vermin fencing, it must be a good season for them because the number of chicks was high,
and of course all the goats south of Bourke,
Another 870 tomorrow aiming for Port Augusta

[AussiXS11G]

hey mate - great to hear that the mods are working to your expectations
 

[Steve D]

Hi Steptoe, the trip sounds epic and makes a 3,000km trip down to and around and around the French Alps in a week look a bit tame - although I doubt your trip will involve quite as many hairpins.... Will you be changing the oil in Freo?

[steptoe]

Day 1 was an easy 430 klm to Toowoomba to a many years family friend where the 4 of met for tea and a couple of grown up beverages,
Leaving home around 8 heading over for a coffee to another dear friend who we all know and love in Ev, the whole run was nearly over before it began with an exceptionally close call with a feral pig that came out of a cane field, hard under brakes and missing it by cm’s, I could clearly hear him squealing as he realised at that moment he may have lived his last day as he accelerated over the centre line, disappearing into the blind spot under my knee,
     Tell me about the bike I hear you ask, I actually don’t think it has run as smooth as it is that I can remember, wether it’s the fact it’s literally just ticking over, and not running at the usual 4000 rpm, I’m not sure, I also have 90 grams of balance weights rolling around inside the tyre, that’s definitely doing something
The very first 106 klms used 7 ltrs which I wasn’t expecting, running at around 15.8 kpl, making the tank range around 420 which is a little worse than the 17 inch, I started thinking that even with it running at 3100rpm at 100 the torque curve was actually going to be using more fuel than I expected.
    The second fill after cruising steadily for 360 klm only used 17.8 ltr which bought the tank range up to the 500 I was expecting to start with. Once we’re on the open flat plains tomorrow I would expect the fuel range will increase a little more, the pipes are running black, so a plug check will happen in Cobar tomorrow night and maybe a tweak of the fuel screws, time will tell

[Jonesy :-)]

Travel safe mate