Building The Ultimate Long-Distance Enduro Bike | Preparations Begin.

Here’s the thing… yes, there are absolutely better options out there. If I had the money I’d probably go out and buy an old school DR – yet right now, this is the bike I’ve got and that’s good enough.

Let’s set this thing up for the journey.

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Your invite to come join the conversation – https://discord.gg/U4GfryAGEk

London to Bosnia series – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfjb_pw_gF5V2yhu1dKN-CioDc_WqamiY

#KTM #MotorbikeAdventure #TravelVlog #trailriding #TRF #greenlaning #MotorcycleJourney #AdventureTravel #Trailriding

Okay. Oh yeah, it is absolutely sweltering today. So, I’ve shut myself in the garage. I’m currently doing some maintenance work on the KTM. Got back from the ABR festival yesterday. Always been a bit skeptical about the ABR Festival, whether I’d enjoy it or not, whether it’s going to be too busy, whether it would be the right kind of vibe for me. I was working there for four nights, three days, the TRF. I got to say, I had an amazing, amazing time. I met some of you guys there as well, which made my whole festival. I bought a load of new stuff for this bike. Spent way too much money. Rode the trails one hell of a lot. And the trails were pretty much just like fine ground powdered mud, which is not great for the bike. I mean, the fork seals need cleaning. The air filter probably needs replacing. I mean, the airbox itself is disgusting right now. Uh I’m looking at the starter uh relay right now because I can’t get the electric starter to work. And I feel like with the trip we have coming up, it’s quite important to have an electric start. I’ve left it for the past 3 months cuz I don’t mind kicking it because it’s been generally kind of chilled, you know, not too hot, not too sweltering heat like it is right now. So kicking it has been fine, but when it gets hot like it is today, I don’t want to be kicking this thing over like 10, 15 times to get it going sometimes. Although it is running sweet right now and it does take one or two kicks. I will say that it’s doing pretty well. But that brings me on to the reason for this vlog. I guess the past few months I’ve kind of lost direction with this vlog. I’ve kind of been thinking, well, what am I doing now? Where’s it going? You know, what am I going to talk about? And now it’s coming full circle back to really what this vlog is about. And it’s about adventure. It’s about exploring on two wheels generally. Obviously, four wheels have creeped in recently with the van, but I’ve decided to steer clear of that and keep it specifically to two wheels. So, yeah, obviously bikes come into it. I talk about the bikes. I do the maintenance. I talk about, you know, the bikes that I’ve ridden and give them small kind of reviews, reviews, my kind of reviews, just talking about the bike and my feelings about the bikes. But generally this channel is centered around adventure and the adventures that I’m going on on motorcycles. So me and Mac, a friend of mine, he’s in the shop blog. I met him in Shropshire with a TRF run. He’s on a T7. I’m going to be on the KTM 450. We have booked a ferry from I think it’s Portsmouth to Santandere in October. That’s a 33hour ferry. It cost us just over £100 each in October, which is pretty damn good. We got a full birth cabin each as not each, four bath cabin each. No, four berth cabin between us for just over £100 each, including two bikes. We are intending, well, we are going to basically head out to Santandere and then do 5,500 kilometers back to the UK on as much T as we can possibly fit in. We’ve got about three weeks roughly to do this. So that’s super super exciting. And there’s a lot of preparation to do toward that trip, particularly for me because I’m going to be on this thing. Now, many people have already said to me, you know, it’s not the right bike for doing a long tour on. It’s not the right bike to ride that amount of distance on. And in a way, they kind of do have a point. You know, it’s an enduro bike. And for those of you that don’t know much about these bikes in particular, you know, they’re kind of geared toward racing. The the maintenance is pretty high on them. Generally, if you are racing them hard and kind of pounding them on the tracks all the time, I think the service intervals would be about every 10 hours for an oil change and filter change. Then obviously you got the air filter. I mean, everything on this thing just has it needs a lot of kind of attention all the time. You’re checking a lot of things all the time, but also it’s a bike built to do a lot of work. You have to bear that in mind. So, there is preparation to do. There isn’t many places to kind of store things on it, you know. So, the coming vlogs, I guess, are going to be preparations toward Spain. Now, we’ve got a trip planned in two weeks time, not this weekend, next weekend. And we’re going to essentially try and get the KTM ready and the Yamaha ready for Spain in the next two weeks. We’re going to chuck everything on. So, that means the baggage we’re going to use, which I’ve not sorted out yet. Um, all the tools we’re going to take, all the spares we’re going to take, the tires we’re going to run. I guess not by next week, but generally the setup will be there, the camera gear, etc. And everything else we’re going to need, the camping gear, the, you know, the first aid kits, the food and water and and spare fuel and oil. We’re going to take all of those things, the spares for the bikes. We’re going to try and pack next weekend and then do a trip from around the Cotsworlds all the way to Wales. We’ve mapped out, well, Mac has mapped out a route which essentially includes as many trails as we can possibly fit in from here to Mid Wales. Then we’ll arrive in Wales after what maybe a five, six hour ride off road, pitch up a tent, and then we’re there for two extra days just riding trails as part of the TRF. And then we’ll be riding back. So, that’s going to be the real test to see whether our current system will work and what might go wrong when we get to Spain because once we get there, we’re there and we don’t want to be faffing around. So, this test is going to be this this trip’s going to be much more planned. There’s much more research going into it than when I went to London to Bosnia. That trip was a just literally go and then make it up as I go along. Um, and we’re going to be off-road, so obviously there’s many more things to consider and bear in mind for your own safety and, you know, looking after your own bike. And for me, this is real adventure. You know, I did that chat a couple of vlogs ago on what is adventure. For me, this is a real adventure where you’re you’re relying upon yourself. Things can absolutely go wrong. You know, you can fall off, the bike can break, anything can happen. and the weather can turn. You could be stuck in the middle of nowhere. You don’t really know what you’re expecting. The trails could be rocks the size of blooming children. The It could be uh water crossings, you know, rivers. It could be deep, thick, sloppy mud if it rains. It could be snow over the mountains. I mean, you don’t really know what you’re going to get. And that’s the exciting part of it for me. And that is the reason why we’re planning so much ahead of time. So, the next few vlogs will be me preparing this bike for Wales, which will be essentially our Spain test the best we can. I am currently running mouses in these tires, so I’m going to have to switch those out. We are going to pick up some Enduro tires for Spain. These would not last half the trip. We’d have to change them halfway through. So, I think we’re going to go for Enduro tires. But, I’m not going to go into all the details now. Essentially, the next few vlogs will be me setting up this bike to make it ready for a bigger trip, which really excites me and then we’ll test it out in Wales and see how it all goes. Yeah, it’s super exciting. So, we’ve got the bike set up, the luggage setup to go through. I’ve got some repairs to do to the bike before we go anywhere. We got the camera set up as well, the camping setup to go through. and then the kind of spares and tools set up as well. And that’s what I’m going to be going through over the next few weeks. And then hopefully Wales goes well. We’ll obviously document that as if we were going to go on a big trip. Document the whole weekend, see how we go, see if this bike stands up to the test. And then hopefully a few more tweaks, we’ll be readyish for Spain. And then between now and then, there will be more trips, more things going on. I do have some exciting news to follow as well. But yeah, any recommendations you guys have got for luggage on these things, for carrying tools on these things, etc., please do throw it down in the comments. I got loads of ideas. We’re going to start doing it today. But, um, first things first, I’m going to see if I can get the electric start fixed, and then we will move on to cleaning this air filter before the new one comes. And then I’ll just replace this damn thing. But that is the journey moving forwards. That’s going to be the totality of this vlog. And I’m super pumped to get back to this thing of adventure rather than just being around the local area, which is still adventure for sure, but going away far and really challenging myself, you know, and getting to grips with riding this thing a long distance. I mean, who knows how it’s going to go, whether it will survive or not. It’s exciting and I hope you join me for the ride. Let’s get to work on this thing. Right. I’ve had an issue with the ignition now for about 3 months and I kind of left it because I don’t really care too much for the ignition. I’ve got a kickstart. It starts fine and I’ve just been riding it a lot. So, I’ve just not really had the time to fully check this the whole, you know, every wire out the whole wiring diagram. The CE might be wrong. Anyway, I think to avoid checking everything, this is the starter relay. Now, I’ve never actually tried this before. I’ve never had to because I’ve never had an issue with the ignition and I’ve got a brand new battery. So, it’s not the battery for sure. It’s got a full charge. Next place to go maybe it’s to start a relay. So, I’ve exposed the two bolts on top. I’ve seen this done online. and I’ve not tried it myself. I mean, I’m hoping that uh it’s somewhat safe. I mean, it’s not going to look very uh good. It’s going to spark a little bit. I’m pretty damn sure from what I’ve seen. And hopefully this will somewhat protect me from being shocked. Um but apparently if you bridge this, you’ll know whether it’s the starter starter relay that’s the issue and then we can just replace this component and it will be good to go. So, let’s just see what happens. Okay. Okay. Okay. There we go. That is the problem. Replace that and we’ll be good to go. So, that’s that problem down. Although, it definitely wasn’t the best idea to hold the screwdriver on there for too long because um yeah, you can definitely smell that. But good to have the problem. Uh, and if I’ve done something absolutely mental there, please do let me know. Now, I’m going to clean the air filter.