Special Stage 10

A couple of Saturdays ago, the Daybreaker Rally came through here and the cars got to sample some of my favourite "just up the road" gravel roads.  Add in some crappy weather and I was interested to see what sort of damage they'd done to the roads - would they just be nicely swept of gravel or just a series of massive ruts through knee deep mud?

Without actually looking at a map of the Rally, I decided just to head up one side of "The Valley" (Pohangina) and come back via the other.  It turns out that I nailed Special Stage 10 when I took Finnis Road (end of the special stage) and Ridge Road.  Here's the map of the rally.

I'm happy to say that the rally hadn't ruined Finnis Road (perhaps because it was downhill for them?) and I had an absolute blast charging up the hill.  There was grip where I needed it but also some slightly slipperier corners that allowed the  rear to slide around exiting corners under power - nice!

Hitting Ridge Road and it was pretty much more of the same except for where it wasn't...

There were some quite muddy and slippery bits where I had to pull my head in a bit to avoid the sort of off-road excursions that rally cars are prone to take (but sensible motorcyclists try to avoid) and also some bits where small, hard ruts had been formed.  The ruts were the trickiest as they were quite narrow and although they weren't deep it was easier to get a little upset if you slipped into one when peeling into a corner.

Nevertheless, it was a real hoot checking out the road and the mud and slipperiness was something you don't get every day.

Arriving in Apiti, I continued onto Kimbolton where I stopped for a sausage roll and to see if Ian and his mate Craig were around as Ian had mentioned that they were going to be in the area.  We kinda fluked making contact over Messenger 'cos that's something you're not usually looking at when ya are hanging onto the bars...

It turned out that they'd just stopped at a corner on Ridge Road.  I let them know that it was an "interesting" ride and then after a bit of back and fourth we agreed to meet in Apiti.

Thinking I had plenty of time (with them having 20+ km of Ridge Road to ride to get to Apiti, I meandered off up the road and grabbed a snap of the Kimbolton Fire Station for the AdvRider page before trundling off to Apiti to get that one as well.

In Apiti, I mooched around a bit and took in a few more photo stops before parking under a veranda as there was the odd spit around.

I hadn't been there long when I heard a couple of bikes coming into town from the Kimbolton direction.  Turning around I recognised Ian and his DR so I jumped back on the bike and raced off to catch them.

It turned out that they had taken one of the side roads off Ridge Road and hit the tar to get up to Apiti a bit sooner.  It also turned out that Craig had a new horse.

After a bit of a chat, we fired up the bikes and headed for Makoura.  I have to say the gravel section of Makoura Road was magic - really fast with plenty of grip.  And then it was onto Pohangina Road.

And that's all the video my useless GoPro took...

Pohangina Road was in a lot better condition than Ridge Road (no rally cars eh?) and while there was the odd slippery bit, a lot of metal had been laid over the sections that can get a bit slippery.  It was interesting being on some fairly clear, hard-packed stuff one minute and the next being into some deeper stuff that kept ya on your toes.

We had a quick stop in Pohangina where Ian pinched the Africa for the quick squirt back to my place fo a cold drink.

A pretty short little ride but neat to be out chasing the cars and nice to catch up with the chaps.  I even had time to wash the bike as apparently it was getting a bit grubby...

Oh, and this was some video of the cars on Ridge Road:

A small tale of two Tigers

It seems the lure of a T-plane triple is irresistible...Colin has joined me bagging himself a Tiger to replace his orange bike.  In his case it's the 900 Rally pro in a nice green/black/white and it sure looks good in the flesh.

But it's new and needs running in, so we had to go for a ride.  As it is his gravel bike, you probably won't see it running with my Tiger roadie very often so we thought that for the first ride would should actually do that and get a couple of pics of the two tigers.

When Colin left home the weather was nice but by the time he got here the wind had got up a bit and there was even some moisture in the air - time for a pre-ride coffee then.

Finally getting underway, we headed out up the valley and got stuck into enjoying the delicious Pohangina Valley.  As we'd had a bit of weather lately, we had to keep a pretty good eye out for debris on the road and other winter hazards.  

Keeping an eye out for hawks was a reasonably good idea too as I had a really close call with one who was struggling for lift - it was close enough to smell the possum on his breath I tell ya.  Should have had the camera on - I'm pretty sure it would have filled the screen.

Cruising around the loop I was looking for a place for a photo op so we popped into Rangiwahia for a minute to snap the Tiggers.

From Rangi, we made our way through towards Mangaweka before carrying on up to Taihape on more great back roads.  Just one small herd of cattle to squeeze past and the odd interesting site along the way.

I nabbed a bit of footage of the ride but the GoPro played up a bit again.  Stopping and starting recording all by itself and also not recording video but recording sound (over a frozen image) a few times.  Frustrating.

As you can see from the video, the weather had definitely improved and it was really nice in Taihape where we stopped for a fairly average lunch.

After lunch we fuelled up before catching up with Glen and all his projects and heading back homewards.

On the way back we turned off SH1 just before Ohingaiti to dodge more winter related wreckage through to Pemberton, then Kimbolton before checking to see if my folks had any coffee.  Thank goodness, they did.

Caffeinated up, Colin went one way while I went another to get home after a nice little ride on our fantastic felines.

Carnivore farkles

Having a flash set of Denali's on the T7 seemed a bit risky with the sort of riding I do on it so I started looking at how I might swap them over to the Tiger.

Well, I'm no electrician and the Tiger has a Canbus system that you can't just go chopping into.  But, there is a solution.  An outfit in South Africa makes a dohickey called a ezCan and Denail also sell these with under the Denali Cansmart moniker.

A quick look at NZ (and Oz) retailers and they all seem to advertise Denali stuff but don't seem to stock it (and their prices are eye-watering).  I did a net search and discovered abikething.com and a ton of really helpful videos by the owner including the below one where he kitted out a new Tiger with all the bells and whistles:

His prices were also a lot cheaper (still not a cheap farkle) and he had stock.  A couple of clicks and about a week or so later a box turned up.  Some cheap Ali-express mounts also turned up around the same time so that was handy 😉

I'd bought the Deanli branded unit as the wiring leads that come with it plug directly into Denali stuff.  And this is where I hit a problem.  My Denali's are reasonably old and come with a 2 pin plug whereas the new ones (and the Cansmart loom) come with 3 pin plugs, bummer.

A few emails and I was back in business.  I just had to cut into the super nice Denali lead and wire on a 2 pin plug.  Routing the cables was pretty easy with some of the plastic removed and then it was ready to hook up the laptop to the Cansmart and tell it what it was plugged into it and how I wanted it to work.

The Cansmart uses the bikes OEM switchgear

This ended up being child's play with the only issue being a laptop falling off the bike onto the concrete floor...it seems to be working though...

The video shows most of the trickery that all works from the bike's standard switch gear, but here's a list of how I've set it up (the software allows you to play with lots of things and the Cansmart has 4 outputs for 4 devices/sets of devices):

• the Denali's are not active automatically (good for WOF time), but a button press turns them on
• with the bike's lights on dip and the Denali's active, the Denali's come on at about 30% brightness (adding a second set of DRL's) and the headlight is actually brighter
• hitting high-beam gives maximum output
• flicking an indicator on turns the Denali's off to ensure that the indicators are visible.  I could have actually wired the lights independently rather than as a set and then only the light on the same side of the bike would go out when the indicator was switched on.  I opted for simpler wiring.
• hitting the hazards alternates between spots and indicators - should be fairly obvious...
• flicking the high beam 3 times (actually tricky on the Tiger) causes the lights to flash
• Hitting the horn makes the lights flash

Pretty cool, shame about the video:

You may have also noticed another farkle in the shape of a decent horn.  The Cansmart is setup to control Denail Soundbomb horns too.  These are made of gold too.  So, I found a knock-off on Temu and ordered another, different mount from Ali-express (after watching the first video in this post I had a fair idea what I needed).

I wonder how long it will last there?

A bolt just asking to be trimmed...

The hardest part was getting the horn in place and being able to tighten mounts etc.  I had to try a few different ways but finally got it in and secured.  Routing the wiring was easy and then all I had to do was connect the laptop (no dropping this time) and tell the Cansmart that it had a horn connected.  Done, time to film that video...

Oh, and I couldn't ignore the T7...

These are cheapies like on the S10.  They're damn good though and I won't cry as much if I break one...

Only issue is that they are not hooked up to go on/off with the high beam which is what I need.  The T7 has a weird system where the high beam trigger wire only put's out something like 0.9v.  This isn't enough to drive the relay (well, that's what I think the issue is) and apparently if you tap it and use it for the trigger then you can even damage the electrical system - I'm not too keen on that.

There is however a way to do it which I am cautiously investigating.

And you can get a EzCan/Cansmart for the T7...