We've been riding and guiding ADV trips for decades, and we're still learning something new with every journey. This quick-and-easy list of ADV riding tips will get you headed in the right direction.
When your bike sputters to a stop in the middle of nowhere, one kind of rider grins and thinks, “Game on,” and the other feels their stomach drop.
Rider school teaches the fundamentals—clutch control, shifting, braking, turning, maybe oil changes and chain adjustments. Great start. But once you’re deep in the backcountry, the classroom stuff doesn’t cut it.
Adventure riding punishes bikes in ways the manuals don’t cover, and knowing a few smart hacks can mean the difference between finishing the ride or hiking out.
Here are the tricks every ADV rider should have up their sleeve.
Putting your bike away for the cold months? Here's how to winterize your motorcycle for maximum protection with minimal effort.
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If you're gonna do it, do it right. Here's our no-BS guide on how to lube your motorcycle chain properly every time.
Just when we thought "all tire irons are pretty much the same", the folks at Motion Pro® showed us something different. This became clear as we set out on tour with a pair of their Bead Pro's back in February, and needed them on the 3rd day of riding into the heart of Patagonia.
We were headed down the west side of the Andes Mountains, leaving the famous whitewater rafting and fly fishing town of Futaleufú on our way to the Carretera Austral, when one of the BMW R1200GS rider's rear tires went flat. Yes, the occasional flat tire can be a nuisance, but let's be clear about something: If you're going to get a flat tire, this route descending from
Futaleufú is
one fine place to have it happen. Beautiful valley walls like curtains around us with lush, green forestry all around, and the bright blue "Fu" rushing it's clean flow below. No traffic. No signs. No cellular signal. It's a
great place to spend some time on a flat tire.
While the 2014 KTM 690 Enduro R that I picked up recently was only slightly used, the previous owner reminded me in the form of liquid weld just what can happen if the engine isn't protected. As shown in the picture below, something clearly "got in there" and punctured the clutch cover, and while the liquid weld was holding up pretty well, it was also just leaking slightly enough that it was time to just replace the cover itself.
Saving a little weight often seems like a lost cause on a 500+ pound "pig" like my BMW R1200GS Adventure, but then again, every little bit helps. Some significant weight was shaved with aftermarket exhaust last year and of course heading to the gym recently has helped as well, but these last 10 pounds lost from my adventure riding setup come thanks to Shorai Power!
What should we call this technique, anyway? It's not jump-starting, as we never touched the battery, and it's not bump-starting, because neither bike wasn't actually rolling. Out of respect for the single cylinder 4-stroke thumper that started the bigger BMW, should we call it Thump-starting?
