First, on Thursday, my new Dauntless sidecar arrived at Noon and I got my first look at what I would be mating onto Vikki, the DL1000 V-Strom. The assembly process, it's particular travails and triumphs will be detailed in a latter post, but here's a peek at the sidecar when it arrived:
She arrived on Thursday and tonight, she was assembled enough for a test ride....wow, what a difference from Natasha, my Ural sidecar rig! More to follow, but here's the first picture of her out on the driveway, courtesy of Ken, my house guest and candidate Iron Butt rider.
Ken, from Beaumont, TX, arrived early this morning, after achieving the 1000 mile in 24 hours Iron Butt challenge. He did it in 18 hours or so, and rode through high winds, fire detours, freezing cold and arrived safely at my house shortly after 7AM, tired but safe:
Sun blasted shot I know, but both of us were pretty loopy at this point in the morning.
Ken from having been up almost 22hours and ridden over 1000 miles; me from cat napping on the couch all night, awaiting his arrival.
Ken's "Katana Bandit" motorcycle joined my stable of three motorcycles, and there was room for everyone in this particular stable:
Today, I rode with Ken over to a local motorcycle accessories shop to get a new tire mounted for Ken's Bandit as the thread on the rear was wearing thing with all the miles he'd been racking up. Ken showed me how easy it is to remove/install the rear wheel:
That's it for now, more as I've time to write it all up. Riding on two wheels for Gary France's ABCD shot tomorrow along with introducing the Cache La Poudre Canyon road to Ken.
6 comments:
Vikki has put on a little weight, but heck, does she look good!
I don’t recall ever seeing a sidecar on a V-Strom before and I must admit that I did wonder if it would look any good, but from the picture taken by Ken, I was wrong and it looks very good indeed.
I am looking forward to reading how the mating process happened (that sounds very zoo-related).
I'll bet you're happy as a pig rolling deep in it. Very cool. I'm eager to hear what the differences are between this and your old rig.
Brady
Behind Bars - Motorcycles and Life
http://www.behindbarsmotorcycle.com/
Vikki gained her weight pretty fast, or so it seems. The chair looks nice on the Wee. Now I am curious how the hack does on the road. I very much expect to see her in the ABCD challenge.
Vikki looks good :-) the V-Strom is chain driven, does this convert it to 2 wheel drive?
Can't wait to hear how is goes.
Looks good. I'm sure it'll ride better than the Ural. Interested to see the build.
Gary, yes, I like her new looks as well, even though she looked just fine without the sidecar.
Brady, happy I was, then multiple periods of stress, now tweaking things. More to follow.
SonjaM, Vikki was nowhere near ready to take out on the open road on ABCD day, but there will be postings with her in them!
GeorgeF, no, no two wheeled drive unfortunately, am having to relearn the having to deal with sidecar inertia issues.
Chris, the build was full of WWID moments, more on that soon. Still tweaking the alignment, sometimes I get a big wobble on turns.
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