Hi all, myself ( Pete ) and a friend of mine, Tony have been planning a trip for nearly 5 years now and it is just round the corner. We’re doing this trip for us and to bring some awareness about the charity that family and close friends of Pete Banks, a ,son,friend and brother that passed away, have been working with over the past 7 years. Riders for health. www.riders.org . This trip was actually thought up by Tony, Pete's dad and he asked me to come along if I fancied it. I went away and had a think.....bike trip from Canada to Ushuaia for 6 months. Well I thought...I am not guaranteed to make retirement as this was when Tony wanted to go when he retired, so YES MATE!! definately coming!!!! It was quite far away at this point, so the trip only came up in conversation…. everytime we met up..lol. We started to look at different bikes, Yamaha's, KTM, Triumph,BMW. After looking into the requiremnets of what we wanted we settled on the XT660z tenere's. I managed to get one at the right money as I was going to use it to commute to work but Tony was holding off for a while as it wasn't needed at that time.
As the time has gone by we have looked into which area’s we are wanting to visit and how we we’re going to bring awareness of riders to the people that we meet on our travels. Now maps aren’t cheap are they!! Looked around in shops, online etc. Eventually we had to bite the bullet on some maps and just get them as they were needed. Brings me to the point of what you need on the trip, if you have deep pockets then the worlds your oyster as they say with all the gadgets that you can get for your bike, camping, shipping the bike or flying the bike, but as most of you who have done travelling or are about to the trip comes down to one thing. What’s your budget?
After we had decided on what our budget was and where we wanted to go, and a bit for contingency, we could decide on what year of bike we could go for. I went for a 09 tenere and Tony, after waiting to closer to the date of leaving came across a xt600z tenere from 1988, so he bought this with the idea of stripping it down and re-building it from scratch so he knew that everything on the bike was sound and he knew the life of all parts that were on it. My tenere only had just over a 1000 miles on the clock so was quite happy. I have now only got to 9000 miles, she will have a full service before we leave. I have upgraded the chain and sprockets to the D.I.D 520 ZVMX-110 chain because of the extra weight that is going to be on the bike and they guarantee the chain up to 25,000 miles. Which with the help of Tony changed last week.
Here’s my bike.

Here’s Tony’s Bike, nearly complete.





here's my bike.

Hello Pete and Tony,

good choice of bikes ... pls tell us more about where you want to go.

I have ridden a 1VJ 1987 Tenere around the world from 1999 to 2005 and my sponsor KEDO KEDO - Performance Products used to send me the best DID X ring chains on the market (could have been the ZVMX, but I am not sure about this). I always changed the front sproket after 6000 miles .... but I never got more than 14.000 miles out of chain ... most of the time not even 12.000 miles. But I did not use an automatic chain oiler.

Please dont believe in the 25.000miles, because you will end up somewhere with a worn out chain. Plan ahead with not more than 12.000 miles, if you dont use an automatic oiler.

Enjoy ... see you on the road

mika from Samaipata Bolivia

Hi Mika,

Thanks for your advise about the chains. We are both having scott oilers or gravity oilers on the bikes to get more life out of the chains, we are just looking into them both, we have scott oilers on other bikes and were thinking of taking them off and putting them on these but Tony has come across these gravity one's that are around £20 so we are thinking of them at the moment. The only thing with these is you have to switch them off every night or stopping for long periods. The scott oiler works of a vacuum so you can leave it alone,maintenance free. Tony is a mechanic and will be checking the bikes as we go round.

more about the trip.....

We have, with the help of David at HC travel, sorted out tranportation of the bike via RoRo ship, roll on roll off to Halifax NS, We arrive in Halifax on the 29th April, Where we are staying with friends, old next door neighbours of mine, which is great,saving pennies, as they say look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. There we are planning on buying the camping equipment, helmets, and other items as is it cheaper for us to purchase them there and saves us on shipping costs. We are then staying in Canada all the way across to Vancouver and then come into America, keeping to the West coast down to LA then across into Las Vegas to meet up with another friend of mine and stay for few days. Plan is then to head into Mexico down to Panama, Columbia, Brazil,Peru,Argentina down to Ushuaia. This could change as we go. The route is only a guide and if we see or are told by others we meet on here or on the road of a nice route that we should go then thats where we'll head.

See ya on the road Mika

Hello Pete,

in the Americas you will be able to find a 520-110 chain in most places, maybe it will be made in Brazil or China, but it will get you to the next big city with the option to buy a DID. Be aware there are a lot of fake DID chains sold in South America, and sprockets can be very bad quality.

So, just take a few front sprokets, and maybe one rear sprocket and you will be fine.

Learn as much Spanish as you can. Enjoy

mika

Hi Mika

After reading your previous reply I think its a good idea to bring a few sprockets with us, at least then i'll know they are good quality. Been learning spanish, well as much as I can. Hopefully it will sink in.

Pete

well managed to get a few more things done for the trip, Had to go to Leicester to get my IDP licence, they do it over the counter for £5.50, good job that I check and double check paperwork as she had added another number to my driving licence, that would of gone down well at the border, sorry doesn't match can't let you in. IDP licence, tick.

Contacted a company for bike insurance for Canada and USA, got to wait 10 working days for that to come back.

Cush drives and brake pads are here, got to fit them then only service and new tyres left to do on bike, oh yeah, and to do some trial runs to Wales or somewhere to practise unloaded bike setting up tent, packing it all again, move on and repeat, want to make sure that I have it packed in the right place and order.

went and had a good chat with computer bod, to see what is available for me to take on trip. Settled on a note pad lap top as won't need cd drive, everything going on memory sticks and photobucket. He did suggest though that I could get a decent note pad from one of these cash convertors, as will be much cheaper. What are peoples thoughts on this? Is it a good idea? has anyone dealt with these places?

Final payment done for all the shipping and invoice received to say no outstanding balance.

Tony's bike Has passed its MOT, and now is having some boxes made to fix to her, slight problem with neutral at the moment but hopefully easy fix, Tony will tackle that when bike returns.

I went and had a look round a camping shop and came across the biolight. This £149, it doesn't need gas, fuel , petrol, it burns wood, sticks anything you can find, maybe an option for trip, but not sure, anyone had one of these, are they any good?

8 and a half weeks to go before the bikes go down to southampton to be put on ship and 10 and a half weeks for our flights, not that i'm counting or anything.

Just finished the same trip but in the other direction on two g650gs BMW's . We did 30,000 miles , changed the chain & sprocket s after 17,000 miles and they are still good. We used Scottoilers and I believe that's the only reason we got away with one change. We carried a spare set of sprockets for each bike, as Mika (hola amigo) says chains aren't difficult to source in SA but quality might be.
Enjoy the trip, we did
Gino & Fiona Rondelli

Hi Gino & Fiona,

Sounds like you had a great time, did you do a ride report I can have a read of?
How long did you take to do the trip? 6 months? As Mika pointed out to me and yourself, will be taking spares. I have just bought the Loobman kit for the chains with twin delivery system.

Any tips that you found while doing the trip would be greatly received, recommendations on where you stayed, which borders you crossed.

Thanks,

Pete.

Hi, we kept a blog "it's ongoing" if you go back to Nov 2012 you can follow it through, my e mail is on it, if you need specific info and we'll try to help. We took a year, no point in rushing things. Www.ginoontour.blogspot.com

Regards
Gino & Fiona

Thanks, Gino & Fiona, will have a read.

We are on a similar trip but from mexico city ro ushuaia. We are currently in Playa del Carmen staying with our daighter who just had a baby.
We plan on being in Ushuaia in November so may se you on the toad send me a PM if you think we can help in any way.

Hi garrydymond, will definately pm you if needed, as you say, might see you on the road, will have to have a , we'll be down that way October time.

This is the thing with a USB port, ya?
Opinions vary, (but not by a huge amount)
The USB port has not got a very high output, and the fire needs to be really hot.
The stove itself is said to be pretty good, but, IMO, for that sort of money, you can go and buy an equally as good gasifier stove, and a whole heap of solar panels for charging, and still have change.

Yes its the one with USB port. Thanks for that info greasemonkey, not thought of solar panels, will add that to my list to investigate.

Decided to tackle the cush drives yesterday and rear brake pads.









As you can see, the cush drives were needed quite abit ago, need to add them to parts list to take another set. Yamaha did good on this, £32 for the set, better than evilbay£40 plus delivery.

Went for Sbs pads, being a better quality than standards. £22 a set

It was a bit of a pig getting it to line up again, spacers check, line up the caliper, check, lift up wheel, check, spacers falling out, out of line check, right this is getting on my nerves.......time to step back have a brew and start again.

everything lined up, lift wheel,spindle in all greased before hand, like a dream, she goes back together. Sweet.

Wheel nut on, tighten up chain again, perfect, job done. double check and check again. Spot on. Happy. Dinner time.

Thats another job off the list. Next is front pads