The wrong bike?

By the time I left Wiesbaden the next morning I was starting to get a feel for how much fuel the bike was getting through. Over about six hundred miles it had been fairly consistent at around sixty miles to the gallon. I hadn't worked it out exactly but it was within one or two mpg of that and I was wondering what if anything I could do to improve things as I set off down the spur motorway linking Wiesbaden and Frankfurt. Fifteen minutes later I realised that my musings had meant I'd missed the turn onto the main autobahn to Nuremburg. The detour before I was back on the right road was about 12 miles and I concluded that not getting lost was probably a good start if I wanted to cut down on fuel usage. Exactly why the bike was using so much was a bit of a mystery. OK it had a screen on the front and panniers sticking out at the sides but I'd been careful(ish) to not extend these beyond the area my body would cover so the total frontal area shouldn't be much greater than normal. It's not as if I'm that big either so it wasn't a case of small bike and pie eating rider. I'd also been careful when setting the bike up to check the things that could affect fuel consumption such as the state of the air filter, the carb settings and ignition timing. All of these had been checked and rechecked and I knew they were as they should be. Whatever the reason, and despite all the slipstreaming behind the trucks, one gallon of fuel was going through the engine every 60 miles so I was going to have to face up to the extra cost.

It was at this point I started to wonder if I'd brought the right bike. I could get 60mpg out of my CCM 600, I wouldn't have to hide behind the trucks and with twelve volts available from the battery rather than the bloop's miserly six I could use my electrically heated clothing to keep warm. Also I'd be able to do the trip in two days each way rather than three so saving about £90 in hotel bills. If I really had to travel at 50mph with minimal electrics and only a kickstart to get things going my XR600 Honda would do between 80 and 90 mpg at those speeds. The bloop was starting to seem like the worst of all worlds. So why had I brought it? Mainly because of my experience of four previous Elephant rallies. Getting to within about 20-30 miles of the site was easy; any bike, and usually the bigger the better, would do. The roads would be kept ice free and there was no real difficulty. It was the last section where bike choice was important. These were usually small rural roads that the gritting lorries wouldn't prioritise so snow and ice could be found everywhere and a tall, top heavy, overweight bike would be a liability. On a bad year a visit to the ditch twenty miles from the rally site could end the trip very quickly as I'd come close to finding out the year I went with my brother on a 250cc MZ. When I checklisted desirable characteristics for a bike in those conditions the bloop ticked many of the boxes. I'd put up with crawling along the autobahn to make sure I'd could get through the snow.

Of course there were other methods of getting through the snow and one of the joys of the Elephant rally is seeing what solutions other people have come up with. The obvious one is a sidecar and the rally site is usually littered with various (mainly unlikely) pairings of bike and something with a wheel stuck out to one side. I'm loath to call them sidecars because that conjures up an image that many of these "solutions" don't conform to. A small caravan bolted to the side of the bike for example. At the other extreme two bikes bolted together with a rigid steel frame holding them together; two engines, two riders and two number plates at the back! These latter guys, I'm proud to say, were British.

My target for the day was a hotel in Regensburg, a town about 50 miles from the rally site and the plan was that I'd arranged to meet a fellow "Elephanteer" there. We'd then travel down together the next morning although as Dave was going to be on a 1200GS BMW it might be a somewhat asymmetric fifty miles. When I arrived at the hotel at around 4.00pm I saw two other UK registered BMWs in the car park, one of which had its drive chain tied up near the seat with a bungee strap. A few minutes later I met Paul, the stranded bike's owner and heard how the chain had snapped, fortunately only a few hundred meters from the hotel. Unfortunately in the act of snapping it had broken off a chunk of the engine casting and Paul was on the phone to the local BMW dealers to see if they could help. Half an hour later a van turned up and took the bike away. "Phone us in the morning" were the driver's parting words.

Heading south

It would have been nice if I'd woken up to blue skies and a gentle breeze but sadly the wind was just as strong as ever and the sky was a featureless grey. It wasn't actually raining but about twenty miles down the motorway that omission was rectified. Just gently to begin with and I started thinking I can live with this but around the time I crossed the border the heavens opened. The rain came down in torrents and the spray being kicked up by the trucks covered the whole motorway in a kind of fog causing me real problems with visibility. Welcome to Germany! My destination was a hotel in Wiesbaden and that was a good 150 miles down the road or about four hours at the speed I was doing. This was going to be a long tiring ride.

To minimise the visibility problems and pick up a little speed as well I went back to trying to pick up tows from the lorries. If you could sit 60 - 70 meters back a lot of the spray had dissipated and as you were going at the same speed as most of the trucks very few came past so cutting down on the number of bow waves of spray I had to endure every time a lorry overtook. Over the next couple of hours I picked up, benefited from and lost probably thirty or forty tows and I became quite good at anticipating what would work and what wouldn't. You could forget cars. They came past too quickly and were too small to create much effect. It must be all the effort the factories have put in to cut fuel consumption by reducing drag and I can report that it seems to work. Most cars slipped past with hardly a ripple. Vans, even the largest ones, were much the same. Generally, white van man had his Doc Martens jammed into the shagpile and came past far too quickly for me to be able to benefit. They also seemed to want to change lane every few seconds, something the ardent towist absolutely must resist doing. If you're being towed you stay in the slow lane. I'll explain the reason for that in a minute.

The best tows came, not from the big slab sided trucks, but from bulk liquid carriers such as petrol tankers or milk delivery lorries. It took me while to notice this and even now I'm not sure why but the intensity of the wake at the back was definitely stronger. They were also easier to stay behind because, fully laden, they tended to be slightly slower both on the level and more importantly, on the hills. Once in the wake of a big truck you could sit there, reduce the throttle opening quite considerably and relax a little. There was some side to side buffeting from the vorticies but generally it was a pool of relative calm. I would normally aim to sit about 60 meters back so I could see round the truck but the effect was there much further back and noticeable (although not usable) back to around 200 meters. Occasionally I would be sitting there quite happily behind a truck and suddenly it was like I'd put the brakes on. The tow had vanished but seemingly nothing had changed. I'd have to drop to third gear and start all over again. It took me a while to work out what was happening.

When I did work it out I think I graduated into the "aerodynamic towing level two" class. The basic principle behind following a truck is that the frontal area of the lorry punches a hole through the air. The displaced air doesn't immediately fill in behind though, it takes a little time (and because the truck is moving, distance) before it all settles down (about 300 meters in my estimation) although the intensity diminishes the further back you go. There would be areas of fast moving air and areas of slow moving air and, by the seat of my pants, I'd try and position the bike in one of the "anti-nodes" of slow air. That was all well and good and worked effectively on an ideal day when the truck was moving through still air. On the journey to Wiesbaden though it wasn't still air, there was quite a strong wind coming in from the right hand side. Parts of the autobahn were protected from this, when we went through a cutting for example or by trees or buildings and the air behind the trucks would behave predictably. But if you suddenly came out into the open the side wind would blow the wake from the truck to the left - into the next lane and I would suddenly find myself having to deal with the bike's full 55mph ground speed. That's when you felt like the brakes had gone on. Within a couple of seconds I'd be too far back and too slow to be able to do anything beyond start over.

By the time the afternoon had passed I'd formulated a set of rules for truck towing. Firstly, if I wasn't doing 50mph when a truck came past I'd never make up the speed. The truck also had to pull in fairly quickly after coming past as well so it worked best with some other traffic around. With light traffic almost all of the truck drivers took quite a while to pull back in out of courtesy but by then they were too far ahead. You needed a strong initial surge to gain the extra 5mph and you'd only get that close in. Once up to speed you could slowly drop back to a safe distance and stay there but the bike didn't have the acceleration to make the speed up before the truck was out of range. Once in the tow you had to watch out for things that would disrupt the aerodynamics. The commonest was a car pulling into the gap forcing you to drop back but the next commonest was the previously mentioned side wind issue. You could anticipate it to an extent by looking a few hundred meters ahead to see what was coming and maybe moving in a bit closer or moving to the left hand edge of the lane but a strong side wind would blow the effect completely into the next lane and out of reach.

It was easy after being towed for a few miles to be lulled into a false sense of security. The bike was doing this all on its own, it really could keep up 55mph. So when the truck you were following suddenly indicated it was going to pull out and overtake it was natural to go with it. I very quickly learnt not to do that. You'd go out with it and slowly start to go past whatever it was you were overtaking - usually another slightly slower truck. All would be well until the truck you were following got far enough ahead to pull in - usually just as I was level with the front of the slower truck. I'd then suddenly lose the tow and find that I didn't have enough power to get past. Inevitably there would be a long queue of cars behind me at this point and my only way out would be to gradually slow down and pull in behind. That was a seriously dangerous position to be in - particularly on a 70's tech "seize in an instant" two stroke. I very quickly concluded that if my tow truck pulled out to overtake, just let it go. By the time I got to the Wiesbaden turn off I had formulated a complete set of rules for aerodynamic assistance on the motorway. Firstly, don't worry too much if it doesn't seem to be working, not every truck is suitable. 2. The sooner the truck pulls in the better (subject to not hitting you!). Some of the truck drivers welcomed being told they were far enough ahead - by a flash of indicators for example. 3. Once up to speed behind the truck, drop back. You don't need to tailgate, the effect works quite a way back. 4. If you start going up a hill generally the bike slows down faster than the truck so anticipate it by closing up slightly as the hill starts. 5. Don't follow the truck blindly. If he turns off, let him go (obviously) but, most importantly, if he pulls out to overtake let him go. 6. If you lose the tow for whatever reason just accept it. Some tows can go on for some considerable distance but most of them would only be for a mile or two. There's a lot of trucks around and another one will be along shortly. 7. A general point. For safety reasons I'd rather be behind a truck and doing roughly the same speed than be in front and slower. The consequences of something going wrong with the bike in front of a lorry are much more serious than if you were 50-60 meters behind. I had a rear tyre blowout in front of a truck on the motorway in Belgium many years ago and I was lucky to survive.



Overnighting in Wiesbaden

Life in the slow lane

You might have noticed that the ground was wet in the picture at the end of the last section. It had been raining on and off all the way to Dover but what greeted me as I came off the ferry was rain of biblical proportions driven horizontally by a 30-40mph wind. I'd misjudged the amount of time needed to get all my various protective layers back on before the boat docked and half of it was still strapped to the bike as I rode into this deluge. I needed to find shelter quickly before I was soaked. Those of you that know the ferry port at Calais will know that they funnel you straight from boat to autoroute with nothing in between and the best I could find was shelter under a bridge just outside the ferry port that I accessed by riding the wrong way round a roundabout (fortunately empty of traffic at the time!). How difficult it is to remember to ride on the right for us English (add wink smilie here)! No sooner had I got off the bike and started pulling on various overtrousers and jackets than there was a loud crash and I turned round to find the wind had blown the bike over. I was less than half a mile into France on the first day and I was already wet through with the bike lying in a heap on its side.

Fortunately only my pride was damaged and with everything upright again I was able to head off on the 200+ mile ride to Amsterdam. Those of you with any sort of knowledge of the layout of Europe might be thinking that going to southern Germany via Amsterdam doesn't seem like a very direct route - and you'd be right. It adds about an extra 100 miles. I was taking the opportunity to visit my son who is at university there and who'd offered to put me up for the night, thus saving the cost of a night's hotel. Did I mention this trip was on a very strict budget? Soon after leaving Calais I was buzzing along happily at just over 50mph. The bike seemed quite happy as well and it was just a matter of trying to stay dry and count down the miles. After a few of those miles it came to me that the increased performance was due to the tail wind and I started to wonder what speed I'd be able to manage if I was going the other way? Still, if things went to plan it would be nearly a week before I'd be on the other carriageway and the wind must have died down by then.

Fifty miles later I could feel water starting to find its way in round my neck and not long after via the puddle I was sitting in on the seat. No sooner had I started to come to terms with that and the engine cut out. Thanks a lot. It chose to go onto reserve in the middle of a motorway junction with cars and trucks passing and repassing on all sides. With soaking wet hands and cold fingers I couldn't find the tap and turn it to reserve before I ground to a halt at the edge of a filter lane with cars coming past at 120kph inches from me. Trying to find the kickstart in a hurry with my right foot I misjudged things and put my foot straight into a deep puddle. In a few seconds I could feel the water trickling in ...

After another twenty miles or so of splashing along in the slow lane I found a service area and pulled in. The filler nozzle went into the tank - and nothing happened.

Eventually, by reading the instructions on the pump, I worked out that you had to prepay for your fuel and I could do this by either giving the cashier money in advance or by using a card at the pump. My wallet containing various cards was deep down in a dry area of the luggage that I didn't want to expose to the rain that was sweeping across the forecourt so I trudged dripping in to the shop and gave the lady €10. That didn't get me much fuel but to ask her what would happen if I overpaid would require me taking off my helmet, balaclava and removing my earplugs. Not to ask her, but to hear the reply. The earplugs in particular were difficult to get back in properly so taking them out was a last resort. Of the five countries I visited on the trip only Belgium had this prepay requirement. Maybe they've had a spate of drive-aways or something although it's not as if their fuel was any cheaper than the other countries or anything like that. Maybe they're just less trusting.

Hours later I arrived in Amsterdam.

The rain had eased slightly although the wind was just as strong as ever and I was slightly concerned about where to park when I arrived at my son's apartment as the gusts had the bike rocking on the stand. We eventually decided to leave it in the lee of the fire escape, not because it was particularly sheltered but if it fell over it wouldn't damage anything else. I fully expected to find it on its side in the morning.
We covered the radiators with all of my wet clothing and took the train into the centre of Amsterdam for the evening. Shortly after we returned I heard a loud crash from outside and was convinced that that was the bike going over but much to my amazement it was still upright when I went out to start loading the next day.

Well the last post was the fantasy. Here's how it actually went ...

From where I live it's 130 miles to the ferry at Dover, all bar the first six miles being on motorway. I'd booked an 8.30am ferry so arriving at 7.45am would be just about perfect. Calculating back I concluded that if I left around 4.30am that should be plenty of time. I didn't quite make 4.30 but by 4.45am I was on the road. First shock was how bad the lights were. After about a mile I stopped and turned on one of the spotlights; wow, what a difference, I could see about as well as I would in a car. I didn't bother with the second one and the few cars coming the other way didn't veer off the road so all seemed well. I switched it off as soon as I got on the M40 as much of it was lit and concentrated on getting some miles done. The next shock was the performance with 50mph seeming a distant vision. I could just about buzz it up to 50 in third but there was quite a gap between third and top ( the bloop is basically a 60's design so only a four speed box) and as soon as I changed into fourth it slowly drifted back down. And that was on level ground with a slight tail wind. Progress consisted of a continuous cycle of accelerating up to speed in third and watching it ebb away it top. After a while I took the only option available to me.

No, that wasn't turn round and go home. Having paid for the ferry on a use it or lose it basis I was going attempt to get to France at least. The answer was to make use of the free help that was all around me - on the M25 anyway. I soon noticed that a number of the trucks that overtook me were not going that much faster if they came past at the top of my speed cycle, just as I changed into top. If they pulled back in soon enough I could get an aerodynamic tow up to their 55mph and if luck was with me (ie no hills or they didn't turn off) I could sit there for some considerable time in their wake. Reading this you might think that this was a somewhat risky venture, tailgating a huge lorry on wet roads (did I mention it was wet?) on one of the busiest motorways in Europe and in the dark. Well, lorries or not it was still going to be dark, wet and busy but I quickly found that the aerodynamics worked for quite some distance behind the truck. With the really big container sized lorries, or even better, ones towing a similar sized trailer, you could sit back at 60 -70 meters and still be dragged along. At the speeds we were going 60-70 meters is about a two second gap, a perfectly normal distance. I got to be very good with getting free lifts from the trucks and some of them went on for some considerable distance - 13 miles in one instance before our paths diverged at a junction.

Even with the "lifts" it came as shock number three when the bike went onto reserve after eighty miles - fortunately within easy reach of a service station. Filling it up and running the numbers in my head came up with 60mpg! Sixty to the gallon from a commuter 125, what on earth is going on. The period road tests I'd read all said it would do around 90 - 100mpg and even one test where they flogged it it flat out for a couple of thousand miles got 75mpg. Perhaps I hadn't filled it up completely before I started or maybe my mental arithmetic ability had suffered from the ravages of time. I decided to reserve judgment until the next time I filled it up, but at 60 to the gallon this trip could get rather more expensive than I'd anticipated.

I got to the port just on 8.00am. Nobody, either French or English, wanted to see my passport and the booking in queue only had one car in front so by five past I'd arrived in my allocated lane - just as they started loading. I had time for one very quick snap and then it was straight onto the boat.

     

Departure day

I'm writing this the day before I leave. Six months of planning, construction and problem solving and the bike is loaded and ready to go. In my mind I had visions of how the trip would go - I'd leave on a clear, crisp winter's morning and head for the ferry at a steady, if not spectacular, 50mph, arriving in time for a chance to warm up and grab a lateish breakfast before the European motorway network beckoned. A couple of days later I'd be in southern Germany picking my way easily through deep snow while larger, more unwieldy bikes were sliding off the road and being towed out of ditches with their owners rehearsing what they were going to tell their insurance companies.

The reality is that it's tipping it down outside and forecast to rain for at least the next two days. Not only that but the wind has just sent my bins skittering down the road and it's going to get windier. Additionally, reports from southern Germany say that snow is a rare commodity there at the moment. I have better bikes in the garage for these conditions but the bloop is packed and prepped, so, for better or for worse, it's the bloop's 10bhp versus the west wind and truck drivers watching a DVD while they steer. Here we go...

Wind and rain

The Americans have a word for it - mission creep. Actually that's a phrase but lets ignore that for the time being. What am I talking about? The tendency for things to go far beyond what you originally intended because each further step seemed logical at the time. That's how the screen for the bloop evolved. I've never been much of a fan of screens on motorcycles, thinking that they only got in the way and that better clothing or a bit of "man-ing up" to use a recent expression was all that was needed to cope with the conditions. However advancing years and memories of freezing during the last Elephant trip convinced me to take another look and I decided the bloop would have a screen.

I suppose that back in the 70's when hoards of bikes like these were being used to commute to the local station you could buy all sorts of bits for them including screens but there's not much chance of finding anything suitable around these days. Maybe weeks of looking on ebay might turn up something but it would no doubt be a "genuine and rare period accessory" and priced accordingly. I'd hate to ruin a "genuine period accessory" when they are so rare on a trip like this so I turned to a different part of ebay and for a few pounds bought an A3 sheet of 4mm thick clear acrylic. Actually it might have been polycarbonate or perspex or some other clear plastic. The terms seem be used interchangeably by many of the dealers and not being versed in the art I can't tell one from the other. Either way it looked clear enough when it turned up.

I chose an A3 sheet because I guessed that my chest area would present about an A3's worth of frontal area to the wind, so substituting the plastic for me wouldn't make much difference to the bike but might marginally improve my comfort. Also A3 sheets were cheap and I'd use all of it. Buying a bigger sheet would cost substantially more and I'd have to throw a lot of it away when it was cut to shape.

A week or so later, after a lot of trying to decide on this angle or that, should it be bolt upright or at some sort of jaunty angle, around the headlamp or on top, decisions, decisions, I'd got it vaguely mounted. In the end it went right in front of where my chest would be and sloping a little to the rear for no other reason than it looked about right. More B&Q steel tubing, a couple of modified car exhaust clamps and a couple of evenings sparking away with the welder and it was mounted. That was that, on to the next bit.

That's where the mission creep bit started. The "next bit" was fitting a pair of handlebar muffs in an attempt to keep my hands warm and / or dry. I didn't want to buy these as it would mean spending money so I considered alternatives. The really poor mans version of handlebar muffs is a couple of 5L plastic containers with one side cut out and cable tied onto the handlebars. I've used these before so I know how effective they can be but the bloop is a very small bike physically and 5L containers were much too big to fit in the space available. I tried downsizing to a 3L container but the cutout was too small to get my hands inside and still operate the controls. I did find a plastic milk carton that fitted well but the plastic was too flimsy and I didn't think it would survive the battering on the autobahn. Reluctantly I "borrowed" some muffs I had fitted to the CCM and modified them to fit the bloop. Last time I used these muffs in the rain they leaked like a sieve and the interior filled up with a couple of inches of water. Far from protecting my hands they were stuck underwater for hours on end as I plodded back through France, but they were all I had so I started thinking about ways to protect the muffs - defense in depth I suppose!

The obvious way was to extend the screen sideways with a couple of "wings". These were wings in the architectural sense - the east wing and the west wing. Ebay came up with an A4 sheet of perspacrystyracarbonate or whatever it was, which I cut in half and via a couple of metal struts fixed in front of the muffs. That should keep most of the wind and rain off. So that was my chest and my hands sorted but what about my legs? In December a "quick" 10 mile round trip to the MOT station in the rain showed that they were the only bits getting really wet. I needed to come up with some protection for them. A week or so later I was in Maplin's, the electronics store, and they were selling small plastic snow shovels for £5.00 each. Looking at the shape of the shovel part it struck me that they would be perfect for knee protection if I could work out how to mount them - and I could shovel snow with them once at the site. The perfect double function accessory.

Over Christmas I worked out how to mount them, what would need to be modified and what would need to be made. When I went back to buy them we'd had some snow and... they'd sold out! The next day I took another look at the screen and decided that if I extended the wings downward that would give me some knee protection at least. A few days later and a couple more plastic A4 sheets arrived from ebay and fixed were in place. To stop it flexing I   initially just velcroed it to the back of the indicators but after a trial run I had to make up a couple of extra supporting struts. The screen is now over twice the size I originally intended so the bloop's 10bhp is going to have to work for a living. Feeling guilty, I bought some fully synthetic two stroke oil to help it on its way.

This is the "final" version of the screen -

Preparing the bike - lighting

The pannier were one thing but there was still a long way to go before the bike would be anything like ready. Next item on the list was to do something about the lights. The more I look at the bike the more I appreciate the amount of thought that went into it back in Suzuki's design studio. No money but quite a lot of thought. For example, most original purchasers would have used it for commuting so a decent headlamp probably wouldn't be necessary- there'll be streetlights to show the way so any old headlight will do and a few yen can be saved. As long as other vehicles can see you that'll be good enough. But as you pick your way home slowly in the gloom you don't want cars crashing into the back of you, so they fitted a huge bright rear light. See what I mean about foresight, they really thought it through. I did wonder about swapping the lights over as the rear would probably have done a better job of lighting the road ahead but thought better of it. After all, who expects a motorcycle to be coming down the road backwards at 40mph.

I did look at whether I could rewire the lighting system to run some decent bulbs and concluded that, yes, it would be possible but it would cost more than I was willing to spend at this stage. Maybe later, when the bike had a few trips under its belt, I could justify it but not at this point when I had no idea whether I could even get to the end of the street on it. So I was going to be stuck with all of the original 6 volts slowly making their way through the bulb and scaring the photons into illuminating the front mudguard. To actually see the road I needed some extra lights and the power for them wasn't going to come from the bike.

Many years ago I ran a number of motorcycles with auxiliary lights. Many of them were totally useless (the lights that is) but a set of Cibie Oscar rally lights fitted to my Gold Wing would light up an empty road for over half a mile. Something like that on the bloop would be great but I'm not sure even the engine even put out enough power to light them never mind the generator. That kind of brute force approach was out, I'd need something more subtle. The off road bicycle world supplied the answer. There are lots of very high output battery powered LED lights available on the market for bicycles, many of which are far brighter than car headlamps or even the previously mentioned rally lights. They're small (think teacup size) and powered by lithium ion batteries about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Mostly the good ones come from the US, but unfortunately arrive together with eyewatering price tags and were way way beyond what I could contemplate spending. Good old free enterprise quickly solved that problem though. Chinese copies could be obtained on ebay for a fraction of the cost, so on the basis of nothing ventured, nothing gained I tapped my credit card numbers onto the screen and waited.

And waited, and waited... Eventually after six weeks (and many emails) a package arrived. When I plugged all the bits together and switched it on I must admit I was very impressed. This two inch diameter lamp was bright, really bright - brighter than our car headlamps by quite a bit. This looked like it might work. I made up some sort of mounting bar for the bike, replaced the bicycle orientated rubber band based clamp with something more substantial and worked out where to put the battery. I then decided for reasons of symmetry to buy a second one. That arrived from Hong Kong in five days, restoring a little bit of faith in the international postal system, and after a bit more rejigging of the mount it ended up on the opposite side of the bike. Both of them turned on together was just amazing, lighting up the road far more than any normal headlamps. The big problem had just shifted from one of running off the road in the dark to one of blinding people coming the other way and having them crash into me. I've not really solved that one yet.