Den said:
Just found this thread whilst browsing.
Margus, well tell us. Did any little thing go wrong during your trip ?
Sorry, couldnt help myself
Just found the old thread.
17200 kilometres trip - absolutely NO maintenance on the bike, just pure kicking on Asian roads off the main highways and my 1100 didn't miss a beat!
Only issue was the telelever bolt got loose twice in Elborz mountains and then on returning Zagros mountains in Iran, hitting potholes driving with more than allowed speed mostly, but got it fixed with local iranian garage men - just needed right size torx key that i didn't had with me. Didn't had locktite, so it got loose again later, but then tightened it more, so it stayed fixed till the end.
I'm amazed by the bravery of the rear Showa shock - bike was overloaded, so it hit to maximum going through some deeeeep potholes with speed, it happended so often, i was almost fully certan that in one spot it'll start to piss the oil out and i gotta get on with the DHL/Fedex $$$ thing and Iranian customs +200% costs $$$ procedure, but NO - the stock soft Showa bugger kept working till the end!
I destroyed the CAT and poisoned Lambda sensor running on very poor quality leaded petrol they had there thousands of kilometres, but if the engine got warm, there was basically no differences on performance, only with cold engine it struggled a bit, especially around 3K rpms, but it was few minutes in that kind of unbarable heat the engine was hot again and running like there never was any cat or lambda - Motronic adapted or defaulted itself?
The bike consumed about 1.5 litres of oil per that distance (+30 to +40C heat in Iran mostly).
Truly exceptional bike for this kind of expeditions! Especially after riding legs together with Honda Africa Twin and KTM950 - both did only short and good condition distances compared to me.
The GS is perfect for discovering
the real Iran, dunno why most people drive through Iran fast as possible (paranoid, scared?), there's loads of stuff to discover off the main highways with big trailie, especially near to Iraq border (30 miles) for example:
Cheers, Margus
