Initial assessment and some DIY

By the end of September I had the bike running well enough to think that using it for the Elephant rally might be possible. It started easily and filled the garage with smoke quickly enough to convince me that the oiling system was working and a few brief trips along the drive enabled me to check it had the required number of gears and functional brakes. I could even see a faint glimmer somewhere in the depths of the headlamp when I turned the lights on. That was good enough. At this stage I had no documentation at all for it- no insurance, tax, MOT etc so taking it on the road for a more extended trial wasn't possible. Maybe in years past I might have tried a Sunday morning trip down some of the quieter roads near here but a combination of age induced maturity and (mostly) the increase in the use of numberplate recognition cameras made the decision for me. At this stage it wasn't even registered in my name so a numberplate camera would link it back to the people who gave it to me, who would then ring me up wondering why they'd just received a letter from the police.  Probably not a good move.

 In practical terms the next step was to look at what changes would be needed for the trip. It already had a rack fitted but the method of fixing meant that it was only intended to take light items. Anything over about 10kg would lead to things breaking and as I was going to need to take a lot more than that it was going to have to go somewhere else. I knew the rack mounts would break and exactly where because I'd done it in the past on a trip to Greece. Overloading that bike eventually led to the whole rear mudguard, including the lights, rack and luggage, snapping off and falling in the road. Once bitten twice shy as they say so this time only light stuff would go on the rack. Rummaging around in the depths of my garage turned up a few items that might help. The first thing was a huge top box that I'd bought to fit the Honda Gold Wing that I'd owned back in the late 70's. Putting that on the rack wouldn't help with the weight issue (in fact the box alone weighed near to 5kg) but it did have a number of older Elephant rally stickers on it that would give me some street cred en route. Hmm... street cred versus needing to call a recovery truck when the whole thing collapsed? It was a close call but in the end the need to keep the front wheel on the ground made the decision. The box was out.

The other thing I found was a set of old 70's panniers. These had also been used on the Gold Wing and looked small on that bike but looked about right for the bloop. They also looked the part, being from about the same era as the bike. There were no fittings but I could make those and a quick examination of the bike showed that Suzuki had kindly provided a threaded hole in a perfect place for a small subframe that I could make to fix the panniers in place. A few evenings (ok, more than a few, but that's how these things go) with some steel tube from B&Q and a mig welder and I had the panniers attached. All my previous experience with making luggage systems (quite a few over the years) came into play, keep the weight forward so it doesn't affect the handling, keep it low for the same reason, tack here, weld there, add a few nuts and bolts and it was done. Except it wasn't. As soon as I fixed the panniers on and gave it a trial run up and down the drive I knew it wasn't. The bags were so far forward the corners dug into my legs, and that banging noise, what was that? "That" was the sound of the pillion footrests knocking into the bottom of the panniers when the suspension compressed. Removing the footrests was the quick fix and a few bits of drilling, cutting and rewelding moved the panniers away from my legs enough to get rid of the worst of the pain. They still do catch but I bought some foam from the local market recently to pad the top. Nothing like engineering the problem away!

Pannier mounted on the bike -

The subframe made up to support the panniers. The bag hangs on the two upright bolts -

Lidl's came up with a magnetic tank bag for £20.00 that increased the luggage space on top of the fuel tank and the local army surplus store supplied a holdall that would fit across the pillion seat. As the time for departure has approached and things have been packed and trial fitted I've now discovered I've got too much luggage capacity and resisting the temptation to use the space available to take "just in case" items has got harder and harder! What I do know is that whatever I take won't be right, I'll leave behind stuff I could really have done with and pack stuff I'll never use.