Atlas Questions

I saw a nice tidy LED light bar, maybe 30mm wide x 100mm long that mounts just below your headlight but I cannot find it now. I occasionally run into GS BMW idiots running massive lights during the daytime, There is a huge thread on Adventure Rider recommending you use high beam plus as much lighting as possible all the time to be seen as a safety concept, just so stupid. The first thing you do when these idiots approach is look away from the blinding lights, really safe.
 
I just noticed, there is a grill just under the headlight in its shroud. That's where the oil cooler sits so no mounting accessory lights there to block airflow.
 
Andy J said:
The alternative is to buy some of those lights that cyclists/mountain bikers now use that burn you eyeballs out when they ride towards you on the road.
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Yep. No road rules about dipping headlights on bicycles. Drives me nuts - and bloody awful on bike paths where they can be quite narrow - one of them coming towards you and you don't have the flasher to tell them to dip!
 
Bit of a round-the-block jumping the big speed humps test day today after jacking up the rear shock preload. As I expect to have a bit of a load in the panniers on trips that's how I did this test. The max load on these panniers is a paltry 5kg, so naughty me upped that a bit to 8kg. So that's 4/ 2litre soft drink bottles filled with water in each pannier with one of those 50mm green Andy Strap elastic straps around both panniers and over the seat. It's a great help with stopping them moving and adding support as well. I also completely filled the 25-litre fuel tank. So off I go but just opening the throttle and causing the rear to dip under power resulted in THAT GROUCH sound again. I used to think it was the rear tyre hitting the side of the muffler but that's shimmed well over I think. Maybe the tyre is hitting a slight protrusion in the back bottom of the airbox, I cannot see any rubbing marks though. It never gets any louder even if you hit big speed bumps hard enough to get air. I now need to do the same with the Panniers not fitted and see what happens then. There is more room on the shock to increase preload more but where it's at now has me just on the balls of my feet with the loaded panniers fitted. More preload and the Panniers off will have me on Tippy Toes and I want to avoid that if possible. I won't muck with the Headlight adjustment till I am happy with the shock height adjustments although its adjusting screw needed some lube in a can to move easier. Other than that it's going really well, getting neutral was pretty good for a change. It would have been good to finish these things tomorrow but there is predicted rain.
 
It's all good, I expect some more preload will sort it. I might try adding some duct tape to see what is making that Grounch sound.
 
I was just reading a test on the latest Honda Africa Twin 1100cc Parraell Twin Adventure Bike and I thought some Dimension comparison might be interesting. The Honda is 228kg dry, the Atlas is 185kg, suspension travel is very similar. Other than way more modern tech suspension and electronic rider aids the biggest difference is seat height. The Honda has 2 seat heights at 837mm and 857mm. The Atlas is a staggering 900mm and that's with a bit more rear sag than it really should have. Thats at least 43mm higher or 63mm than the Honda, the only bike I have ridden that exceeds the Atlas seat height was an old Twin Shock Husky with 300mm of travel and that was 960mm and caused nose bleeds because of its altitude. Add in a nice wide comfy seat on the Atlas that widens your stance and no wonder I struggle to get on the bloody thing.
 
When MX bikes moved into the really long travel suspension era I could get my leg over the saddle of them, but then with one foot on the ground and the crook behind the knee of the other leg on the saddle!! Obviously once moving it wouldn't matter but stopping at lights on a dual purpose version was hilarious (for onlookers, not me!).
 
MX is one thing, but hard enduro where you need to dab a foot occasionally becomes hard unless your 6 4. It's a bit academic as I am way too old for that stuff. At least it's easier doing a horse mount. So tomorrow the club ride will be a repeat of where I did my first Atlas ride and had to pull out and limp home with a blocked idle jet. I am hoping I will manage a couple of hundred ks including quite a few on what used to be really bad corragations. Should be interesting.
 
Learned a lot from today's biggest ride. The shock preload stays as it is, With minimum luggage load I still get the Grouch sound from whatever is rubbing on a big hit but it's way less, loaded it's a pretty constant sound with the shock dipping, unloaded it's only on really big hits. I really need to find out what is doing this. I am on tippy toes with the sag as it is, it's approximately 8mm low so close enough. Any more seat height will make parking and foot paddling a huge pain. The biggest issue today was losing the speedo after 30ks of the ride. Bet it's that blade on the drive that connects the hub. I am hoping it's a Ducati part but we will see. Not fun riding with no speedo on a Sunday on the most heavily policed road in Oz, especially after watching 3 bike Cops pass the ride meeting point that morning. So no MPG or tank range, I might try scaling it off Google Maps but that will be an arsehole to do. I got neutral at traffic lights approximately 70% of the time so not too bad. I also found where the wind roar and slight buffeting is coming from. It's only above 80kph that it happens. So I have a bigger windscreen bolted at the upper headlight wing and I have jacked the Navigation tower up a fair bit so I can see under and through it to see the Speedo and Tacko plus the idiot lights and get a hand through that gap to get at the key. If I hold my hand in front of that gap the wind road and buffeting all but disappear, its very pleasant little bubble of still air and quiet. I was thinking of some clear perspex as a see-through cover, BUT I still need access to the ignition key. This needs some cogitating.
 
Good question Chris but no, Early on after mucking about with the new Mark 3 exhaust I found the muffler was blocking the wheel travel. I shimmed the huge irregularly shaped muffler clear of the tyre and adjusted the chain so it had play when the 3 centres are aligned. Rear wheel centre countershaft sprocket centre and swingarm centre. It's hard to load the bike to the max and see what's contacting the tyre. It's a 130 but looks massively wide. There is an oddly shaped airbox protrusion I suspect might be IT. Anyway, I am waiting for nighttime to adjust the heading tonight. Should be fun.
 
Well that didn't go as well as hoped. I decided to look at the headlight adjustment tonight after a club ride instead of writing up a log book entry not after a club ride. The tank was full, 25 litres add to that the panniers were well overloaded and the light adjustment was fine. So I head home in the dark and decide I would take the panniers off in the yard after cutting across my nightmare wheel-rutted driveway. Think of crossing tram tracks and you have to go at 45 degrees only 10 times deeper and wider. Easy in the daytime not so easy in the dark. The best option is to charge it in a determined way. Hesitation in this stuff usually results in not getting a good dab and tipping over and that's exactly what happened. The only damage is a bent gear lever and my embarrassment. I also couldn't lift it on my own. All good, it is in the shed now with a very well-adjusted headlight, fuck me. It's been a big day.
 
Bad luck with the tip off, but could have been worse.
Have you thought of fitting a cycle sat nav speedo as a back up in the event the main speedo fails? That’s what I use on most of my day time only bikes.
 
One of the bigger ones would go close to blocking that hole in the Nav tower, They have some impressive functions as well but it will still stop access to the ignition key unless it has a quick disconent housing. I was thinking about the tipover. What happened was the bike leaned just a touch too far over as I popped over the first rut and I couldn't hold it up. The odd thing is it fell into the high side of the slope, usually, they go on the side where your leg isn't long enough to dab the ground. Did I mention my driveway has a decent cross slope as well? Add in its spectacular seat height issue which was the same on my 3c, It had 15mm longer rear shocks now back to standard and you hang there thinking Yes yes for a few seconds and then realise No it's down and over. What do people say about top-heavy Laverdas? I did learn it crashes well, that bent gear lever has a spring-loaded tip as well. It must have hit just right. Laverda did some really smart stuff, That lever is steel and not alloy so it will bend back fine. The rear brake lever also has a spring-loaded tip. Impressive stuff.
 
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I made a piss poor attempt at calculating the route I took yesterday off Google Maps and that came out at 240ks and is probably as close to right as a fully unedicated guess. So that has the bike getting 43.48 imperial miles per gal and the bike range at 386ks. The litre per ks is meaningless to me, I know 50mpg is pretty good so 43mpg with that massive car carby is reasonable. I will check it properly when my speed is working sometime.
 
This is what I use, a Cat Eye Stealth. Small enough to fit in little spaces, but still large enough to read the screen.
And I reckon you should be able to get 50mpg with a bit of experimentation.
 

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I might look out for one of those big Cateyes, Andy - the GPS speedo on the Q has Trip 1 and Trip 2 (which both zero if the power is switched off!! Idiotic system) plus ODO, but not sure I'm getting the full km with that - although that may have been a prob with intermittent current interruption which was causing the thing to restart about every 30 seconds! These digi instruments are VERY sensitive to a less-tan=perfect earth or power connection. (ewhich in this case was the three-pin connector that came with it :mad:).
 
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