Wonderfully Mad Max! Or Pure Innovative Genius?

[MotoNews]

Published in: Bikes

“There might be times when you’ll struggle. You may have to concede defeat in some places, and stick the bike on a truck or train. That doesn’t matter because this will just lead you down the path of another adventure and there is no shame in knowing your limitations. The key is to have fun and to enjoy the adventure, however it turns out.”

Dreaming of an adventure on the open roads of far-flung lands? Are your feet itching over what could be an achievable dream? Perhaps thoughts of exotic beaches, mountain trails and jungle tracks are drawing you ever closer to the great escape. Does the thought of challenging yourself to a full on adventure put a smile on your face... or even scare you a bit?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be at the heart-stopping stage when you’ve handed in your notice and you are full-on into preparing your trip? It’s the point when you have said to yourself, “Stuff real life. The career can wait, I’m off.”

Where on earth would you start though? And how much notice should you take of what the experts say? How much should you prepare? Or should you just grab the knowledge you do have and go for it?

How do you deal with the doubts? Shouldn’t you learn how to handle your bike in the sand and mud? And I mean, surely it makes infinite sense to plan and to organise; to attempt to think about every aspect of a potentially arduous journey, and to do all you can to prepare for each possibility.

Now me, well I’m a bit more of a go for it before I scare myself into not going, type of person. After all, if I think about all the things that can go wrong for too long, then the risk is that I’ll chicken out.

But thank goodness the world is made up of completely different people, all of whom have their own quirks, traits, dreams and ambitions.

The very likeable Kevin and Karen Browne are just two of those people. They are unique in their own right and they, quite rightly, have prepared for their round the world trip meticulously.

They’ve used their imaginations and have come up with a bike that looks as if it belongs more on the set of a Mad Max movie than on the open roads of the world. But don’t be fooled by anything so simple as a brief glance at it. Their motorcycle is like no other overlanders bike I’ve ever seen, and it’s a gem to explore.

There’s a clichéd saying, “Think outside the box.”

Well this is what the two of them have done and as a result they are going to make a million friends as they travel around the world. They look as if they have hugely ignored what the experts say... but have they? Actually, it’s far more as if they have listened very carefully, and have then made their own decisions on what info they wish to take onboard, and what simply doesn’t fit in with how they see their adventure.

“A million friends”? They will have people stopping them to talk all the time. Kevin and Karen are going to fire people’s imaginations. They will start heated discussions in at least 15 languages. They will enthral border guards, policemen, village people and motorcycle enthusiasts alike. Oh and yes, there are going to be those who want to take a negative stab at their chosen steed, after all, would you choose to go around the world on an ancient Moto Guzzi? These two are doing just that, and why? Because they say, “It seems like a great idea.” Their trip is going to be completely unique. Don’t you just love people who are so happy to stand as complete individuals?

I sometimes hear the words muttered, “I don’t see the point of overlanding. It’s all been done before.” Here, ladies and gentlemen, is an around-the-world adventure that has never been done this way before.

So what mods have been done to this once basic 30-year-old Moto Guzzi Spada? Actually a huge amount, and I think that “Q” would have been proud of this duo. But first a little background as to why this bike was chosen by Kevin and Karen. They like to ride two up, though both of them ride their own bikes on a regular basis. The four-stroke 948cc V-twin is powerful enough to cope with them both and their kit, though I rather doubt that it’ll ever reach its claimed top speed of 112 mph with their load.

If a Spada is allowed to bumble along at 65–70 mph, then it’ll give a comfortable 55 mpg which is quite okay. If you work on needing to have 300 miles minimum range then that means Kev and Karen will only need to have a capacity of 25 litres. Planning to take advantage of every opportunity the open road offers, they have upped their capacity from the 24 litres the standard tank on the bike holds. An additional tank holds another 9 litres.

The aging Spada is quite simple to work on, and Kevin has been riding Guzzis for around 20 years, so he’s rightly thinking along the lines of better the devil you know. There are several big time bonuses too. Kevin already has a spare bike on hand, which he plans will be used for parts when they are out on the road, if that’s needed. The bike has a shaft drive which could save them shed loads of hassle, but a key issue is the cost of a carnet.

This document is what you need to enter the countries along the way without paying import duties. Kevin and Julia Sanders have talked about it in their column and you can contact Paul Gowan at the RAC for the full gen. In brief, the cost of this temporary importation document depends on the level of import duties of the countries you are planning to enter, and equally critically, the state of your bike. Egypt, for example, is a heady 800%, but an elderly Spada isn’t actually worth very much. You can pick one up, with reasonable mileage and in okay condition for around $2,500, less still if you are either lucky or good at bargaining. Kevin and Karen paid around $2,000 for theirs, so....

Onto the mods. Think about the luxuries you’d like to have on a really long trip, and then ask yourself if there is a reason you shouldn’t have them. On a filthy rainy day it would be rather nice to have a windscreen wiper on your windscreen wouldn’t it? Windscreen? Well yes, why not? And if you are going to have one, why not have a big one that’ll really protect you? It’s not such a daft idea. As I’m writing this my mind is flicking back to my RTW trip and to the many occasions when a screen to keep the cold wind and the rain off me would have been worth its weight in gold. And how about a roof? There is no reason why you can’t put a roof on your bike.

At least Kev and Karen don’t think there’s one. Their bike is like a two-wheeled convertible. Just think of the joy of riding along out of the rain, or equally, out of the direct sun on a stinking hot tropical day. Before we move on from these points, I should mention that in the true overlanders spirit of everything needing to have two uses, the windscreen wiper does just that. Extend the arm, stick a glove on it and you have an automatic waving machine. It’ll go down a riot in many countries!

How nice it would be to have the luggage capacity to be able to carry a tent big enough to stand up in and to cook in. Your tent is your home for a large amount of the time on a long journey through rugged lands. It’s your shelter from the weather and your only private space. The guys have chosen a Norwegian Tentipi.

And of course, if you are going to have a tipi, then you have to take advantage of the point that it’s quite possible to use a wood burning stove inside. Not as ridiculous as it sounds when you can hunt one out that’s ultra light and ultra efficient.

And going back to cooking for a moment, when you have a heat source that’s always there when you are on the move, shouldn’t you take advantage of it? The guys have cunningly adapted the exhaust system so that a cooking pot nestles perfectly upon it. Ride the bike, and arrive to a hot dinner, at no extra cost either. To make the set up really trick, the pot has a fitted stirrer so they can stop things burning as they cruise along. Damn it. Why didn’t I think of such things?

Security? It’s one of the greatest traveller’s pre-trip fears. Am I going to get my stuff pinched off the bike? And if I do, how on earth am I going to replace the kit that has gone missing? Well, the guys have thought long and hard about this issue and to get at their kit any would-be sticky-fingered local is going to have to go off in search of a good-sized crowbar. The opportunists don’t have a chance!

Now here’s a thought. If it was possible to have seats on your overlanding bike that you could settle back into as if you are easing back into a comfy armchair, wouldn’t you? There are an awful lot of overlanding bikes out there that appear to have saddles made for people with just one skinny buttock.

As you take a look around the machine, you’ll find a constant range of modifications that will either make you envious or will raise your eyebrows in a very twitchy way. The front pannier is a homemade fridge that runs off a solar panel! There’s a clothes-washing mangle. Some of the pannier racks hold extendable car jacks that can be lowered to help raise the bike if it gets bogged down, or a tyre needs to be changed.

The box sections that hold the panniers also fit together with a couple of extra brackets to make a bead breaker for a tyre-changing and wheel balancing tool, meaning they can easily change and balance their own tyres in the middle of nowhere. And speaking of tyres, both wheels have pressure monitors that are linked to warning lights on a dashboard that looks the business. The boy in me couldn’t help wondering which button was for the ejector seat!

The lights are trick too, and the bike even has two Hawker sealed batteries. Two? Well, there’s the stereo to run, lights for night camping and “things” to charge. Oh, and of course the bike has a winch, for those problem moments when nothing else will do.

As the trip has been in the planning for four years, the two of them have had plenty of time to do real research and these days of the internet have really helped. The winch is a light weight quad bike set-up from the States.

Then there’s the more obvious things like adapting your side-stand with a wider base plate so it doesn’t sink into the soft stuff quite so easily. But Kevin has had a touch of sheer Heath Robinson genius. This idea is worthy of the “Gadget King” at his best. How about a couple of outriggers, which drop down instantly at the press of a button so the bike just won’t fall over on dirt roads? If your bike and racks alone weigh in at 400 kilos that just has to be a good idea doesn’t it?

It’d be great to have a set home for your spare fuel and oils wouldn’t it? This is key because they add significantly to the weight the bike will be pulling. In the case of this bike its one of the things that the guys have been so clever with. They have burnt out a large number of grey cells on making sure that the bike is perfectly balanced.

Kevin says that even at low speeds, the weight is hardly noticeable, and yes they have been practicing off-road. The combination of low down power and perfect balance has allowed then to play hard on some very dodgy tracks.

And you know the feeling when what you want nearly always seems to be at the bottom of your pannier…. How about the idea of making your panniers into multiple mini panniers so that everything is just that much more accessible. And there is something else that I love about the luggage on this bike. When you hit something or take a tumble, almost inevitably the bottom corners of your panniers get hit first.

They are always the bits to get the most dinged and in that position any dings can encourage a dusty or wet mud mess to appear inside with your gear. So what have the guys done? They have made their panniers sit into ridged steel frames that will take the impact, and being steel they can be repaired in just about any third world country along the way – unlike aluminium.

So is there a downside to this wonderfully Mad Max way of setting off around the world? Actually there are several, but most have been foreseen by the couple and the rest, well, “We’ll deal with them as we find them,” says Kevin. Now that’s real adventure.

Downside number one is the reality that yes, the bike and their kit are monstrously heavy. The departure weight of the bike and gear was around 800 pounds, and that meant they had have several key issues to deal with.

Spadas have the reputation of having forks that flex under load, so being an experienced Guzzi man, Kev has dealt with this issue. How? He made his own forks of course. These are based on the old Earles forks and will soak up loads of punishment.

Kevin has changed the suspension to Fournales air shocks, and in case he has a problem with those, he’s carry a spare set bolted on in place. He’s beefed up the frame, and has fitted heavy-duty taper bearings on the wheels. “My car runs on those,” he told me. “So they ought to be fine for this.” And stopping power?

Well, bringing this bike to a halt must feel a bit like stopping a juggernaut, so Kevin has doubled up the Brembos and has made a very trick set of running gear for the forks to cope with the weight and the brakes. To give you an idea about the level of thought that Kevin has put into their bike, this is what he said when I asked him what I thought was a simple question about the brakes.

“I set about making the front swing arm and it was at this point I had to think about brakes and how to mount them. I initially bought some second-hand Brembo 4 pot calipers from a modern Guzzi but I was struggling for places to mount them that didn’t clash with the suspension pivot or the shocks. This left either forward of the shocks or underneath the swing arm.

The only way they could mount forward of the shocks was to mount on a floating plate, pivoting about the wheel spindle with a torque bar running back to the fork legs.

I have seen similar setups on trick European sidecar outfits and it is meant to work really well as it stops the braking forces interfering with the suspension, but it is complex to make requiring a bearing to rotate about the spindle/hub and I just did not have the room for floating brake plate.

I tried mounting the four pots under the swing arm but they are so long that they looked vulnerable. It was about this point that I also found out that bizarrely you cannot buy spare pistons/rebuild kits for the new 4 pot calipers although you still can for the old 2 pot Brembos, which put me off them even more.

So I tried mounting the original 2 pots underneath the swing arm which looked fine and it was at this point that I first thought about extending the swing arm tube beyond the wheel spindle so that I could mount 2 calipers per disc front and rear. In effect 2 complete Guzzi linked systems running in parallel with each other.

The problem with this is that the original master cylinder would not move enough volume of fluid to operate 4 calipers at once so I started looking on the internet for a solution, I managed to find a couple of small Brembo remote master cylinders that were about the same bore but much more compact and this got me thinking. They were a reasonable price so I bought the two of them and spent a long time head scratching to work out how to mount them.” And mount them he has.

Is Kevin some sort of geek? No way! But his knowledge, ability and enthusiasm are endless. To put it simply, he is a man who has an engineer’s brain, a craftsman’s skills, and along with Karen, the two of them have the ability to solve what they have merely seen as intriguing problems.

With all the weight, I was a bit bothered about the Spada’s wheel rims. “No worries about that,” says Kevin. “These old Guzzi rims are tough as anything. In fact the rear rim on this bike once hit both sides of a roundabouts curb with no ill effect. Oh, and the bike was doing 70 plus at the time.” They’ll be fine then.

I asked Kevin if there was anything that was bothering him and Karen about the bike and the trip. The bike? “No.” Off-roading on such a heavy beast? “Nope.” They aren’t bothered about that. They know they won’t be entering the Paris Dakar and are quite happy to work slowly along through the rough bits. And anyway, haven’t a couple of amazingly outside-of-the-box guys, stand up Nick Sanders and Sjaak Lucarsen, taken R1s through some of the most rugged terrain in the world? Kevin and Karen have absolutely wonderful “can do” attitudes.

They know they haven’t got everything right. They know that to many, their bike looks absolutely nuts, but they absolutely don’t care.

They do have a healthy level of respect for the unknown. I was glad to hear that this wasn’t fear. That might have stopped them in their tracks. With respect for the world that they are about to ride out into, and for its people then, well, they are set for adventure and these two are going to have a huge one. It’ll be unique and wonderful, and any mistakes they may have made will not be for the want of trying to get it right. Any disasters along the way will just be the beginning of an unplanned adventure.

There’s a world out there that Kevin and Karen are hungry to know more about. There are things to learn and sights to see that they know they can never experience at home. TV? No, not good enough. They intend to see the world with eyes wide open and to feel it with every touch. They want to take all the advantages of being on a motorcycle and live those joys every day, in their own unique way. A full on adventure is about to unroll. I wish them every success! Dual sport? They think so!

Sam Manicom is the author of adventure motorcycle travel books into Africa, Under Asian Skies, Distant Suns and Tortillas to Totems.

www.sam-manicom.com and www.aerostich.com

Fact Box

The planned route:

France, Germany, Czech Rep, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey,  Ferry across The Black Sea (Trabzon Turkey to Sochi Russia) Russian Federation, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russian Fed (Ship from Vladivostok to Toyama Japan) Tour of Japan (including hopefully catching up with Kevin’s cousin who he hasn’t seen for 25 years), (Ship from Tokyo to Brisbane)Tour of some of Australia – East Coast and Alice springs probably, (Ship from Melbourne or Sydney to Auckland), Tour of NZ North and South Island, (Ship to Chile) Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Mexico, USA, Canada, Home

Fact Box

The planned trip duration:

“2 to 3 years. But who knows. We’ll ride whatever it takes. We are flexible. You have to be. Things change.”

Fact Box

Engine Modifications:

• A Deep sump conversion
• External rear mounted filter
• A Mocal oil cooler and a high output oil pump
• A Mocal thermostatic sandwich plate which fits between the filter and the sump
• VDO electric oil temp sender
• VDO electric oil pressure sender on top of the central oil feed to the heads
• Helical cut aluminum timing gears
• General engine rebuild
• Fitted a 40 amps peak output alternator off a Suzuki Supercarry minivan.

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