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Africa Twin, Bikes, Farkles, Motorbike, Nerdy Details

Mosko Moto Reckless 80 Pannier System

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[Update: Added the unpacking video and post trip review]

I went south of the border to pick up a lot of my stuff for the TAT yesterday and with it was the pannier system that I’m very much looking forward to using. I really love the companies ethos, which is to openly develop their products and make stuff that they personally want to use.

imageOn first impressions I am really chuffed with the system. Everything seems of a high quality with really hard wearing fabrics and straps.

They system is basically a harness in which dry bags slide. The details are superb and you can really see the head scratching that went into the design of all the little details.

Unfortunately the Africa Twin has huge hips in the form of grab handles that cannot be removed because the seat is attached to them, but for now here are some mounted pics. I don’t have time to mess with it before the TAT but hopefully someone will make a more minimal handle system.

Mosko Moto page for the R80.

So how did I find the system after the trip? Read on…

Well my judicious research paid off because I really can’t imagine a luggage concept that would be better. I had no idea but non-motorcyclists can’t really comprehend what is required of a luggage system, illustrated by the slow realisation of my friend Ishita. When showing her my photos from after the trip she asked about waterproofing. I don’t think it occurs to most people that everything you have with you needs to be protected from the worst of weather.

“So was your stuff waterproof” she quizzed.

“er.. yeah” I said with a dumbfounded expression “..of course!”

I suppose that people who ride around in cars don’t have this constant paranoia that when it rains everything you own is going to get drenched. Unless you’ve thought hard about what is in where and how to prevent it getting soaked. The blokes at Mosko had this dilemma that is normally sorted out by having some drybags and strapping, tying or bungying them to the bike. They fixed it because other manufacturers have come up with ideas like Wolfman’s ‘rack and a million irritating clips’ idea and Giant Loop’s ‘stick a zeppelin on and fill it with crap’ solution, but Mosko stopped and designed this saddle. I think they looked at those harnesses you see on donkeys and modelled it on that.

It’s cool. You divide your crap up into the three dry bags and just slide them into the donkey pannier thing. Other more fiddly crap can be put in the flaps that go over the centre bag; stuff like iPhone cables, leatherman, headtorch. Maps go on the corresponding flap, which you can unclip and pretend you are first world war officers around a campaign table. It really worked like that when Adam and I got lost in the Utah desert.

Then there are two pouches on each side donkey pouch. I stuck less accessible stuff in there like inner tubes, tools and chain lube.

Mounting the donkey thing is a bit of a pain because you need to get it centred and in the right position fore and aft but that’s really moot because you only have to do that once in a blue moon. I’d just pull the mount straps once in a while to make sure it was all doing okay.

Security was on my mind a lot at the start of my trip and not at all at the end. I wore a CamelBak which contained all the essentials; passport, cards, cash, which left me a bit more at ease to leave the bike. I think that because the system is so neat creates a psychological barrier to anyone wanting to fiddle with it, a bit like opening a car door, it’s really obvious if anyone has been monkeying with it. Added to that, they would have to be pretty familiar with the straps to undo anything.

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West Coast -All the kit

The whole thing is covered in Molle webbing on which you can attach other pouches or strap random crap. Mosko sell some additional pouches especially for this but I wanted to limit my space so purposely didn’t buy them, of which I was glad. There are also some metal loops sewn into the back flap which was awesome for strapping a fuel can to.

The disadvantage over rack mounted panniers and systems (like the derided Wolfman above) is that you can’t have a passenger on the bike, but really, who wants a passenger when you are riding off-road? The system is designed as an off-road solution so, to me, that doesn’t come into it.

Speaking of which I fell off. Quite a few times. In order it was: Mud, Sand, Dirt, Gravel, Rock and the bags don’t have anything to show for it. They are super durable. There are a few patches on the dry bags where some kind of compound or chemical got on there and the first layer of rubber is coming off, but I have no idea what caused it. For all I know it could have been an alien bug or a truck ejecting acid?

If you’re undecided on a system go and get it; you’ll be delighted.

By the way; I paid the full going price for this thing and have no affiliation with Mosko Moto

 

Here is the rather long video of me unpacking the whole thing…

 

Africa Twin, Nerdy Details

Africa Twin – The War Horse

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Bikers often stop and look at Ginko, most think she’s a BMW but often they look at the graphic on the side and exclaim ‘oooh… an African Twin, how’d you like it?’

‘It’s the best bike in the world’ I exclaim back, in a calm tone.
The thing is, most people who own bikes have this weird loyalty to their bike. I think they need to justify the pain of motorcycle ownership and their particular choice. I chose Ginko for a very specific reason. I needed a bike to ride a thousand miles on road then five thousand off road and another couple of thousand back.
I’ve owned and ridden sports bikes, dirt bikes and adventure bikes and the Africa Twin checks all those boxes. On the road you can cruise at 100mph and have plenty spare, then dart onto a track and be crawling up a 60° rock slope at less than walking speed. It’ll keep up with a sports bike in the twisties and plough through sand and mud. In town it’s quiet and sedate with a subtle thrum which turns people with ‘how big is it?’ They’re always surprised when you tell them.
On the dirt the traction control is magic. Leaning into a dusty corner you only need pin the throttle and she’ll perform the perfect powerslide which is often the only way of aiming to the corner without coming to an awkward stop. With the peach of an engine you can achieve things you would have thought impossible. It’s a tractor and a drag racer in one. Magic. How the engineers managed to map the fueling, cam timing and ignition to make it that flexible I don’t know? A large, low, bow of humbling gratitude to them.
And the suspension?? Ohh. That feeling when you bite into a fresh eclair. It’s incredible what the suspension has had to deal with. I honestly had no idea until I was in Idaho, riding an awful trail through the Craters of the Moon national park; a windy, desolate wasteland of volcanic rock and extremely rutted tracks. I looked down at my shadow and saw the front wheel doing extreme duty, following the terrain like a stalking cat at warp speed. In the Rockies I was leading Adam along a fast undulating dirt road and crested a small rise to see a four foot wide trench. My natural reaction of decades old mountain biking is coast over on the rear wheel (manual) but instead I grabbed some throttle and unweighted the front wheel. The suspension took the brunt and we came out unscathed. Incredible for a 500+lb machine with full luggage, fuel and water aboard. Maybe this is why Adam dubbed it “..like a Japanese War Horse”; a samurai wouldn’t look out of place on it.
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Being a completely average male human (I have sample sized everything) is useful in the ergonomics department. I can stand on the pegs and hover there for hours or sit and be about as comfortable as a tank of fuel lasts. The screen was a major point of annoyance. On the way down to the southern states my head was being buffeted in a major way. Imagine a pair of irritating children, one on each side of your head slapping your helmet in succession. It gets old quickly. The screen also delivered air directly into my face which wasn’t helpful. Luckily Matt in Arkansas solved that problem with a makeshift modification using a brand new chainsaw shield that he butchered. I also added some Sugru to the bottom of the screen because I thought the steel GPS and screen mount would eventually succumb to fatigue stress. It helped a bit, but if you plan on any extended dirt riding with a GPS where it was designed to go then a strengthened screen/GPS mount would be a must. The only other complaint I have is the passenger footrests which have bruised the back of my legs because they stick out at a right angle, but the flip side is they act as rear crash bars.
I gave quite a few people rides. I wanted them, mainly, to experience the incredible gearbox. Most think of it as a car automatic but it’s clearly not after a few hours of riding. The novelty soon wears off and you begin to trust when and where it shifts. It was a complete boon on the super tight switchbacks in the rockies where I often chose the steeper rock line to the outside looser one. The clutch did an unreal job of keeping me trucking, often at sub-walking speeds.
There are five modes:
Drive – on the road it feels like an ancient single cylinder. Chugging is the only way of describing the feeling and sound. Most bikers would want to shift so the engine revs a bit freer, but it has so much torque that you can just throttle around anything. When I was riding long stretches with Adam I could stay in 6th for hours and chug along next to him with astonishing fuel economy
Sport I – Like drive with a little more pep, I used this on most of the Colorado passes and through the Oregon back trails. With the G button it was like riding a slightly more modern 650cc single.
Sport II – For roads where you need power after the apex and really great engine braking this is my preferred. The bike would magically shift down when it sensed an upcoming corner and hold a gear for the next flip flop of a tight ‘s’ bend.
Sport III – If there is some idiot in a sports car who wants to try his luck then hard shifts and neck snapping thrust is at your disposal. I don’t select this much because there is so much torque available low down and the revs aren’t really that nessecary. It makes the bike sound cool on overrun too… If you happen to pass some Harley riders.
A/M – A little button on the right hand bar selects manual mode for mountain bike like shifting. Hit the button and the bike won’t shift, even into the rev limiter. The only real place I found this useful was in deep sand or mud where the rear wheel needed to spin to maintain forward momentum. Even in this mode the bike would shift down automatically to prevent you stalling.
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The clutch engagement is aways spot on when you are in a normal situation but on tight u-turns on dirt it’s a bit of a pain in the ass to be honest. I dropped it once when it was very late and I was a bit buzzed. That very subtle clutch drag you do on a tight turn is impossible to judge, even after seven and a half thousand miles. Also when I was really disturbed (like after the whole ‘oil exploding out of the front of the engine due to an idiot Honda tech’ debacle, I actually still try and grab the invisible clutch lever.
My only real bugbear is the electronics. I would often start and stop the engine on very technical terrain to enjoy the silence, have a wee or chat to jeep drivers. When you turn the key again the dash lights up and the bike acts like a forgetful narcoleptic. All the settings disappear and you are left with full traction control, drive mode, ABS on and gravel mode off. It’s actually dangerous sometimes because trying to climb a steep stony switchback in default could end with the bike going nowhere and you falling to a horrible stony death. So the routine of switching on, drive to sport I, traction control to I, ABS off and gravel mode on became a regular chore. Very boring.
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With this comes the side stand cutout. You can’t engage a gear without raising the stand. Now you’re thinking ‘Jason, that’s stupid, why would you want to do that?’ Well; say, theoretically, you’ve dropped your bike in deep Arkansas sand and you are desperate not to have to pick it up again because it took all your remaining strength to pick it up… theoretically. You really want to walk next to the bike with the stand down so you can motor it along and lean it down when the bike gets away from you. Not possible. By the way this also, theoretically, can happen in New Jersey quicksand…. and Mississippi mud.
Hopefully some clever person will come up with a solution to this problem because, in the end, it’s just software and then we will have the perfect bike.
After over 10 thousand miles on a single trip my opinion is firmly cemented. It would take a lot to surpass this bike, so much so that I am even thinking I’m not worthy of it. I hate to think that Ginko will be sitting in a garage over winter then on my deck in milder weather waiting and waiting for her next big adventure when all I have to offer is a quick blat down a dirt road. She yearns for adventure.
Africa Twin, Bikes, Motorbike

Africa Twin – Opinion

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There is a weird process that you go through with a brand new bike which is very similar do you want to go through with a second hand bike but slightly different because it’s an unproven quantity.
Well, a couple of days ago I took Ginko, my Africa Twin, out on what I would consider to be her first real ride and I was mightily impressed. You might be thinking ‘oh, he’s been waiting ages for this bloody thing, of course he’s going to love it’.

No. I was expecting some kind of slightly more refined thumper that does everything kinda okay, but what I got is something that is pretty darn incredible for 95% of people who will throw their leg over it. I know a few people who can ride a sports bike until it’s pegs are ground to dust and a lot of people who can whip a 40ft motorcross double and I’m not talking about them. They’re the very ends of the bell curve who need a precision tool but for pretty much everyone else, this bike will rule every scenario.

On Deck

Uncovering her, turning round, and rolling off the deck into the garden, I wiggle past the gate into the alley and click the key. The dash lights up displays CRF (just in case you forgot you were riding Hondas primo off road tool). At this point I always get a little thrill from the fuel pump making that weeeeezt noise, then something slightly more unusual happens. The bike clunks the gearbox into neutral. Then I pause and press the other end of the engine kill switch and she’s instantly alive and at a slow idle. With a flick of the throttle an aural treat in the form of a deep v-twin growl meets you. Also odd because the engine has no letters in its configuration.
Once aboard, the stand up you press the gear selector twice, to engage sport2, and the gearbox responds with the normal clunk you’d get from a conventional bike and it very gently rocks forward. With a positive throttle input you are quickly away and bumbling along in second gear before you have even noticed the cats ambling with heads cocked to the weird intrusion on their battlefield. At the end of the alley a slight rise meets the road with a blind view to the pavement. Here you don’t even think as the bike senses your trepidation and slightly firmly engages first gear and you slow to an uphill stop. It’s useful, I think, to point out the subtle nuances of the bike’s brain. I suspect the Honda engineers spent months, years even, not on the blindingly quick headline “it shifts like a formula one car” but rather the delicate situations like gently slowing down uphill and pulling out from an alley with nursery school murals enlivening the walls.

I flip my dark visor down and firmly grab some throttle, sweeping confidently into the yellow morning light. This process, I quickly learned, needs to be positive because with such a tall bike you don’t want the gearbox to be at all hesitant and bleed off power.
Montreal, I’ve said before, has some of the worst paved roads of any city I have traveled over. Yeah, I’ve lived in Switzerland but I’m talking more on the third world end of the scale of pavement. This in itself would be the perfect excuse to own a bike with competition level off-road suspension, but for me it’s just a welcome symptom of the situation. In another world I would have bought a Panagali or a VFR and I’m sure glad I didn’t. Like any vehicle here it would just get ruined.
Through the empty 6am streets there is just that blissful smug feeling of being awake to appreciate the quiet as the bike gently moves from light to light. The real thing I miss, to be honest is being able to make vroom vroom noises with the throttle. I tried when I got the bike, by selecting neutral whilst rolling to a stop, but she (the bike) just made me look like a 16 year old trying to wheelie a 50cc scooter. The gearbox really doesn’t want you to be in neutral whilst moving.

When I bore of bumbling from light to light I press the little manual bottom and, instead entertain myself with the deeply satisfying noises of the two 500cc pistons on overrun. To non car nerds that’s when you decelerate whilst in gear, that very low noise trucks make when slowing down. Satisfying.

Accelerate press + button, press – button; irritate everyone.

Highway

Then comes the magic part of owning any bike past 20HP. Onramps! The Africa Twin has a lot of torque, the advantage of having two large pistons, which one can make full use of on the lead up to a highway. Unless you have owned a bike, or a very fast car, you’ll not know the pleasure of passing motorway speed traffic in such a short distance. The great thing is, with the silicone brained gearbox, you just pin the throttle and the bike decides how many gears to drop then you’re away. At quite some speed.

The rest of the highway experience is fairly conventional. Comfortable, fast overtakes and the ability to cruise at an easy 150km/h (or just under a hundred for you metrically challenged out there). There is some buzz through the bars compared to my VFR800 and the ‘screen is juuuust a tad low for my 5’11” (in cubans) frame. This means adopting a cruiser style slouch for long stints to prevent head buffeting from turbulence. I’m yet to see what fuel consumption really is because of random usage (read: Jason using way too much throttle at very inefficient times) and, of course, the tightness of a new engine.

Dirt


 DirtyThis, I suppose,  I will have a lot to say about in a month’s time but for now all I can tell you is that the bike feels very light when on the pegs, compared to when hefting it around with the engine off. On her second day I decided to forego the usual preening that happens with a new possession and just give her the dirt. I found a gravel road and gave her the beans, covering the poor thing in a layer of fine dust. The traction control really doesn’t like being on III when on the loose and makes the engine sound like a stuttering oaf trying to say ‘dominos’. The weirdest thing is seeing the ‘Navigation Tower’ (the bit with the instruments and screen on it) yawing back and forth as the rear wheel slews around  and the front wheel points where you’re going. After that I ventured out onto some ATV trails and got very muddy. The stock tyres are really quite scary when in the gloop and you really remember you’re aboard a 220kg 1000cc bike when it lunges to the side and you try and dab it upright. In doing this one also encounters the passenger footrests; with your calf muscle. The things stick out a huge amount and now I have a large bruise on my leg. I would have taken them off, except they provide a very good sticky outtie bit at the back for the foregone topple.

IMG_7922Sand is a similar story to the mud. On Scotch Road, about 30min West of Montreal there is a great sandy playground. I powered into it, got on an off-camber part and stopped. Then tried to continue and the tyres refused to provide any traction so I did what any self respecting nerd would do and got off to take a photo.

Twisties

Now exiting a pretty rough road on to one of the finest pieces of twisty back road around here is a weird experience on this machine. One moment you’re whooping through dirt troughs and sliding around gravel corners and the next you seem to be on some kind of street carving monster with such fantastic power delivery that the grin never ceases. I know a lot of people complain about the suspension on the road, but to me it provides the perfect platform for rough back roads. I’m never scared about bottoming the suspension on a fast corner and being high-sided off. That in combination with the DCT gearbox thrusting you out of corners and downshifting aggressively for thight bends as you brake makes for a special back-roads carver. I doubt if a litre sports bike would gain much ground.

Computer

ComputerOne thing I’m really not used to is having such an advanced computer on the bike. It basically has an odometer and two trip computers. The trips are connected to separate MPG readers that show the MPG over the period of the current trip until you reset it. I am keeping one as a kind of fuel meter at the moment and the other for more specific trip related stuff, when I have a specific destination that is. Both these are re-setable by holding the ‘SET’ button clustered in the myriad buttons on the left. I have found that, on occasion, I have been randomly flashing people with the lights rather than cycling up the computer’s functions because the buttons for the high beam are very closely located.

There is also a curious countdown odometer Honda call ‘subtraction trip’ which is a bit of a pain to set. presumably it is a service countdown?

The ‘SET’ function cycles through the clock, weird countdown odometer, whether you want an immobiliser light flashing, units (km/h, mph etc) and really irritatingly. the brightness of the display. I like it to match the GPS so tend to fiddle with this whilst riding. To do that you have to press the ‘SET’ and ‘DOWN’ buttons simultaneously, which is possible but a chore.

Conclusion (for now)

Returning home to the alley I scrape open the rear gate and ride Ginko up the 10″ step to the deck. Sometimes it feels like I’m going to go right through the window into the kitchen but she settles, I kick the stand down rest her for the night.

It’s a great, great bike. I put her cover on whilst thinking I wish I had the income to treat her as a raucous plaything that I could ride like I stole. But I paid what is, to me, an awful lot of money so it will take a bit of time until the responsibility of that massive purchase tarnishes enough for me to treat her like the beast she really is. We’ll see on the TAT?

 

Africa Twin, Bikes, Farkles, Nerdy Details

Garmin Installation

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Garmin 696LM
GPS mounted

The problem with motorbikes is you can’t really drink a latte whilst driving with your knees and texting with the other hand. This general problem is exacerbated by the issue of navigation. It’s all very well sticking your phone in some cheap cradle and jabbing at it between glances up at the irritating cyclist chicane in a car but on a motorcycle you have gloves on and, of course, that $10 mount that keeps falling off the windscreen would be fatal to your device on a motorbike.

Of course Touratech make an amazing solution. Think of a motorbike problem and the inventive Germans have already come up with a shining (stainless steel) doodad that does the job perfectly. Fine for the empty nesters with a savings plan and a house load of cash but I’m not really prepared to spend the same amount of cash on a bracket as the actual magic compass.

In steps my great mate Adam. The man who can make art of marshmallow sticks and hew a very convincing Dread Pirate Roberts sword from some scrap aluminium. In the usual ‘men standing around motorcycle drinking beer’ moment Adam figures a solution and the next day a custom Honda Africa Twin Garmin 695LM bracket is on Ginko, after a little light hacksawing of screws. I just

Custom Mounting Bracket
Adam’s Custom Mounting Bracket

hope that sword isn’t a couple of inches shy of some aluminium! The great thing about the solution is the GPS is pretty much on the same plane as the bike instruments, not jutting out like some giant technological carbuncle or, as Garmin would have, attached to my non-existent clutch lever hovering in the air on a RAM mount.

The other great problem was the bloody massive nest of cables that is on the back of the Garmin mount. I reckon the target market must be those massive Harleys with the HUUUUGE fairings because there was literally two meters of wire and connectors for speakers, microphone, power and a USB connection for the XM radio receiver that I intended to keep. All that was neatly entombed in a rubbery casket at the end of this massive cable. Out came the scalpel and hacking away at the block I went, eventually separating all the tiny hand soldered joints contained within. That was quite some job, but I wasn’t in the humour to re-join all those cables and I wanted to keep the USB length because I planned on putting the XM antenna on the back of Ginko, away from the GPS, so really needed that extra cable length. All the other cables I beheaded because I don’t plan on blasting Purple Rain from my Harley’s external speakers for the world to enjoy. Why do they do that?

I wanted to wire the GPS and the USB socket up to the original accessories socket behind the front fairing. This meant buying a special connector from the excellently named Eastern Beaver in Japan and disrobing Ginko of her front plastics. After which I jammed everything in there and hope like hell that none of the fuses blow because getting the fairing back on is some kind of Japanese logic puzzle that I don’t really want to have a go at in the middle of the desert!

It all seems to work well, but in retrospect I wouldn’t get the Oxford USB socket for the Africa Twin because the cap is a pain in the ass to remove and it really is not at all waterproof when the cap is off. In fact it will probably fill up with water and short out the whole proceedings, leaving me to fend off banjo wielding pig fetishists.

 

 

 

Africa Twin, Bikes, Motorbike

Africa Twin – It Came!

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You know when you’re just into your work on a Monday morning? You’ve looked at all the crappy email and stupid Facebook posts then work tasks and juuuust started past the procrastination? Yeah, I was there and my phone rings. Well.. last week my friend Pierre pranked me on the phone by trying to make out he was the dealership and the bike was here. But this time it was the dealer.

Bike Start
The goofy look you get when you first start your new bike

The work I needed to do seemed to take a solar cycle, then I got hold of my boots, jacket and helmet and headed to the bank for the giant cheque; walking down the street like a vagrant in flip-flops trying to hold a really awkward, heavy leather jacket over one arm and a backpack, boots in a crappy plastic bag and a helmet in the other.

The bank queue was…  … have you seen the situation in Zimbabwe with lines for US Dollars going from the town to the bush? Then I stumble out the bank clutching all this crap and try to hail a cab. I hate taxis. Nearly as much as waiting to pay at restaurants. For some reason the whole interaction really irritates me. Uber is so much of a better service.

BoxI get to Excel Moto was shown the giant box, introduced to the charming, professional, charismatic and incredibly tolerant of idiot customers who want their toys, Franklyn, the chief wrench. Why do they call them ‘techs’ in the ‘States? They aren’t ‘technicians’ they are mechanics. I have to apologise to poor Frank because I asked him about himself then got totally distracted when we approached the box and started ignoring him!

 

The video serves the story, but the TL:DR is:

Opened box, removed frame, forklifted bike to workshop, lifted bike with winch on ceiling, fitted front fender and wheel, fitted screen, laughed about ridiculously small tool set, fitted stupidly difficult to install battery, filled with fuel and started. With glee.

I handed the cheque over, did the paperwork and Ali l asked me if there was anything I didn’t know about the bike as that was normally the point where he would brief customers about the bike. The man knew by then what a total nerd he was dealing with. A nerd who had already read a scanned version of the manual online. I slung my gear on, pushed Ginko out, fired her up and wobbled off whilst trying to work out what the computer was doing with the clutch.

Next time on Jason’s fascinating world of motorbike adventures; a ride!IMG_7775

Africa Twin, Bikes, Motorbike

Africa Twin

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Quebec has really shit roads. Worse could be had when we went to visit my Dad on base in Mom’s MG-B, but that’s because every time we saw a pot-hole we thought we were literally going to die. Landmines do that to you. Rhodesian Army had a vehicle called a Pookie, which was a great testament to our engineering brilliance, but I digress. Quebec has worse roads than most third world countries I have been in. So why would you ride anything other than an off road bike?

There has always been something in me that needs a motorbike and because of the these reasons I chose the Africa Twin: Continue reading Africa Twin →