The best laid plans of men with sidecars!
Plan 1. Thursday meet Peter in Burra, ride up through Orroroo to Hawker and stay in one of the caravan parks. Friday wiggle through Bunyeroo and Brachina gorges then to Farina for the rally. Relax Saturday and Sunday with maybe a trip up to Maree for lunch. Head home Monday via Old Beltana, stop somewhere then home Tuesday. Approximately 600 km each way.
All going to plan so far. Met Peter in Burra, running a bit late so cranked up to 100 km/h. Leave Burra. Sitting on 80-90 on Tweety's dial, getting around 14 km/l. Yes 14! Peter's KLR 650 with nice home made chair was doing the same! Get to Hawker at 1.30 pm, too early to stop.
Plan 1a. Get some supplies (beer) and camp in Bunyeroo gorge. Load up, heading out when Beatle (K 1100 outfit and rally organiser) and Blue (XJ 750 outfit) roll into the servo. They and the Port Lincoln mob are staying in the out of town caravan park. Plan 1b, we are staying too. Ended up with 14 bodies and bikes in the park, and a great time was had!
Plan 2. Head out with Peter and go through Old Beltana to rally. This plan worked! The gorge through Old Beltana was quite rough with some sharp edged wash outs. 60 km/h was a good fast-ish speed with a few panic stops and throttle steering! At one point, on the pegs through a very rocky bit, I opened the throttle and.......nothing! Lots of revving but no drive...oops! Knocked down 1 gear, same thing. Looked at drive shaft, not turning...umm yeah! Got into neutral, then 1st, let out clutch........and we are moving. Whilst on the pegs my left foot moved and pushed the gear lever into a false neutral between 2nd and 3rd. Hooray
A bit further on and we were suddenly being rounded up by a bunch of KTM and Suzuki trailies heading to the Finke races. These boys were fast! Final supplies of food and fuel at Copley, then 60 k up the road to the rally.
Saturday, still on plan. Untill Chris (BMW F 800 GS from Melbourne) said he was going home via Cameron Corner, 450 km up the Strezlecki track and Cameron Corner road, just because he had not been there for a couple of years! Beatle said he would too, different road home to Aubry in Vic. Beatle asked me and I said I would think about it. 30 seconds later I said yes. Ok now for the maths. I had 60 km out of the tank leaving about 150 in it. Ten litres in the can is another 110. Peter let me have his spare 10 l can, another 110, equals 360. 90 km short. Greg from NSW had a spare 20l in his sidecar which was handed out to Chris, Beatle and me. It only filled me to about 17l in the main tank. Okay, 17 plus 20 is 37 litres. Assuming 11 km/l, this makes roughly 407 km. Still short. Then John from Adelaide (another K1100 sidecar) joined in. With his 60 odd litres on board plus Beatle's 55, we would have enough.
Sunday was as perfect a day as the last three! We got moving at about 9 am. Then the signs from gods looked a bit threatening when Chris dropped the F800 turning from the Farina track onto the Lyndhurst road. (Top gear 20 km/h, stalled motor!) Pick him up (took 3 of us to get the bike up!) and keep going. The Strezlecki track was its usual mix of deep gravel either side of truck width grooves, embedded stones, (lot's of fun with both sidecar and bike wheels running in the gravel mounds at times, no steering to speak of!), smooth dried mud patches and deep gravel across the whole track. We stopped every 80 km or so to re group and check vehicles etc. Averaging about 60 km/h, the going was slow but very pleasant. A few road trains going the other way provided some entertaining dust and rock showers! A few km from the Cameron Corner turn off, I put the last 10 l in the tank. This meant 140 km with about 13 litres. Doing a rough calculation, I was down to about 11 km/l with a slight head side wind. Now heading east though put us straight into the wind. And with dunes and more corners, this would drop to about 10.5 km/l. Meaning falling short. The next couple of hours were probably the best time I have had on a bike, full stop. Flowing corners, cresting dunes, the sun on my back, just magic. Even the corrugations weren't upsetting. 412 km on the clock, no fuel. Topped up from John and Beatle and going again. Pulled into Cameron Corner with 428 km travelled. This prompted me to check my odometer against the actual map distance. It seems my odo reads about 6% low. So my economy figures are better than I thought. Now the gods had another go, no fuel at the store! More finger and toe counting. Dave from Gladstone in QLD had ten litres for his generator he was happy to give us. The two BM sidecars had just enough to get to Tiboburra, and the extra shared between me and Chris would put us about 40 km short. Then a return run with full jerry cans would get us all in. After a few beers and the most amazing meal, we rolled out the ground sheets and slept in the open. (Except Chris who got a room for his birthday treat!
Next morning I got the fuel from Dave, then he mentioned it had two stroke oil in it! Only at about 150:1, but enough to not use in the F800. (High compression and efi). But the store owner came up with a 44 gallon drum he was owed from a local cocky. There were us four plus four guys on 2 DRs, KLR and a HP2 BM. So we each took just enough to get to Tiboburra. I mixed in some of the two stroke but it must have been quite weak as there was not any smoke at all. We separated at Tiboburra as I had to be at work Wednesday morning. I kept going to Broken Hill while Chris, Beatle and John stayed at Milparinka to say gidday to a mate who was killed there a while back. Heading south now and the fuel economy was on the rise again, 330 km for 26 litres. Slept in a brick house for the first time in 4 nights.
Home stretch now! Coldest morning yet. Had to put the vented summer gloves away for the first time! Handle bar muffs are quite warm. Fuel at Yunta. 198 km. Average speed 95 km/h. 15.8 litres of fuel. 12.5 km/l. Good tail wind. Ran like this all the way home.
Now for the Boring maintenance issues! Added 300 ml of oil about 650 km from home on the Monday, changed tyre pressure to suit bitumen or dirt,.............and that was all. Obviously the air filter will need cleaning and another oil change and spanner twirl, but absolutely no other issues.
I didn't take many photos. Too busy having fun
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Hope to see some of you at FUSA, to do some of this again.
Michael and Tweety
A bit further on and we were suddenly being rounded up by a bunch of KTM and Suzuki trailies heading to the Finke races. These boys were fast! Final supplies of food and fuel at Copley, then 60 k up the road to the rally.
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