Quick Pre-Christmas Run

[breganzane]

Hi All,

A bit of light entertainment for those of you in the depths of winter or Covid or other maladies.  Chris and I planned a brief getaway after a pretty locked-down sort of year, the last ride of any description was a short overnighter to Dalgety in February to meet up with the NSW Lav club.  Forty km from home on that run Chris' V65 spat the universal joint out through the gearbox casing in a very V6-esque mechanical tantrum.  Sourcing replacement parts was a bit of an exercise, helped in the early stages by BruceK and then eventually Gert assisting with logistics when the ideal parts were found in Austria.  It took a while for them to make their way here and then they 'rested' on a bench here while other matters were dealt with.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and I suddenly realised I better extract a digit or I'll be in t-rubble!  You have to sort of split the entire bike to get to the gearbox on a Guzzi, but it's a pretty easy procedure once you've got your head around it.  With a new rear gearbox housing, new driveshaft and various other "while you're at it' things done it was running but I didn't like the sound of the gearbox, seemed a little noisier than before.  The whole thing came rapidly apart for another look at the bearings and identified a slightly rough input bearing in the bell housing.  That is where the photos start last week:

Guzzi "slightly disassembled" for another look at the gearbox.

The route - basically Cooma, Bonang Highway, Orbost, Buchan via the back way, Jindabyne via the Barry Way, and home again.  Twisty roads with some dirt sections, plus lack of riding and a desire to take it easy made it a 3-nighter, staying at Delegate, Buchan and Jindabyne.
The backdrop is a rapidly developing Covid situation in Northern Sydney, with borders closures swiftly enacted and rules changing as we rode. 

Late-ish start and a leisurely trundle down to the Delegate pub for the night, increasing enthusiasm employed the closer we got.  Great stretch of road from Bombala to Delegate.  Fire damage is still visible on the hills to the West all the way down the Monaro Highway, but all around is basically green and the bits where fire did reach the highway have mostly bounced back.
Meanwhile, with us only 20km from the border, the entry permits  we'd arranged for Victoria were cancelled by SMS at 10pm.  We reapplied straight away and fortunately got new ones issued even though we couldn't print them.
Delegate pub was good although probably not quite up to the high bar set by the Dalgety pub.  A good room though, and they arranged us a dinner in spite of not really having the kitchen open on a Sunday night. 

The conti breakfast bar was a dead loss so we went across the road to the cafe where we got a top brekky and a friendly chat.  Hard times there this year, the cafe having to basically single-handedly cater for firefighters for months, followed by border checkpoint crews.  They were looking forward to a breather then the borders closed again, though from the other side so was unclear what affect it would have.
Back on the road we shot down towards the border, happy to find the first section of dirt in the NSW side had been sealed.  Lots of activity at the border, a crane installing an army river crossing temporary bridge type device and lots going on but no checkpoint yet so we carried on.  From Bombala through to Bonang was pleasantly not affected by fire and is a fantastic ride on all sealed roads.
We always stop in awe at this sign, the country is so remote they just bang up a sign at the beginning saying "good luck".  All the way to Orbost there's basically no straight section more than 100m, and nothing more than the odd farmhouse for the near 180km section.

Past Bonang the road turns to dirt but it's a good surface and no big deal.  Here we were riding through burnt country for the first time, and it would continue...

Lots of this - varying degrees of fire damage.  But the Aussie bush is more tolerant of it than we are, and it bounces back sooner or later.  Some areas where the fire went through at ground level you'd hardly know it had burnt, but areas like this have many trees killed outright, while others begin the task of regrowing.

The dirt is only about 20-30km, then it returns to generally good bitument surface.  We stopped for a breather and to take in the total serenity...

More to come...

EDIT: Fixed links to photos and corrected the order (hopefully)...

 

[martymoose]

Well done mate, glad Christiane is back on the road! 

 

[T.C]

Nice work Steve and Christiane, looks like a whole heap of fun and just what was needed.
The Dalgety pub is a hard one to beat though isn't it.
cheers
Tom

 

[DavidH]

Great to see Christiane back on the road.
Excellent choice for the route Steve, LAVERDA country !

Not to hi-jack your story, but a week ago we were in the Warrumbungles National Park for a break.
Fire destroyed 90% of the park in 2013 and it still looks like it.  dead trees everywhere, very limited bird life, very few kangas and wallaby's and virtually no small reptiles in the undergrowth.
Completely decimated their koala population.  Bush virtually silent when walking - very disturbing.
I fear this is a portend for our parks and forests destroyed in 2019/2020.

But great to get out there and into them, supports the parks and the local communities.

Looking forward to the next instalment.

 

[Dellortoman]

Nice route Steve. Gawd, it's been 9 years since I last rode the Monaro Highway. That was with Tim and Russ on our Laverdas on the way to the 2011 BSFOS in Sydney. I remember it as a lovely bit of road.

We stayed at the Cann River pub on that trip. Cheap accommodation, nice feed and friendly barmaid.

Haven't been on the Bonang road since the late 70's. Was 2-up that time with a girlfriend on the back of my Kawasaki Z1. There was quite a lot of dirt road then, but I figured it would all be sealed by now.

Happy Christmas to you and Christiane.
Cam

 

[breganzane]

Hey, ok picked up again after some dental complications(nothing runs smoothly here for very long!).

The getaway was not without a few mechanical conniptions, but thankfully all of a trivial nature.  Before departure, Christiane was cranking the Guzzi with the kill switch off and the battery gave up the ghost alarmingly quickly.  Turned out to be a good thing, five minutes later I'd swapped in the Corsa battery which was new so we did the trip without that possible failure hanging over us.
 
Meanwhile back down in Victoria we negotiated the rest of the marvellous Bonang Highway down to Orbost where it was the warmest of the trip - but still perhaps only high 20's.  The weather thus far had been idyllic.  After a spot of lunch we made for the servo where I found Chris stranded on the forecourt with an ashen look on her face.  It had made an awful noise and after the driveshaft incident, she shut it down immediately.  A 30 second diagnosis showed the starter relay had jammed on, so I removed it, bump started and made for the nearby auto electrician.  Two minutes and a relay later we were back in business - gotta love the simple bikes!

Again this was fortuitous since we were able to confirm the road from Orbost direct to Buchan was bitumen all the way and in good nick despite heavily fire damaged country.  GREAT road, so much better than the highway, but yeah, sobering to be still riding through fire damage after a couple of hundred km. 

We arrived in Buchan to a booking at the Motel there, lovely place with a very agreeable room after the basic fare the night before.  Top view from the balcony, it seems like the town itself was not impacted by fire, but the hills visible in every direction had that 'comb' effect of bare trees and a visible ground outline typical of fire damage.  Must have been farken scary in that town with fire raging 360 degrees around.  Anyway, several km of cleared farming land in every direction likely made it defendable.

With the Victorian coronavirus situation basically cleared up, and the Sydney closures only a day old I had thought we may struggle to find anywhere to stay with people wanting to 'staycation' in small towns away from the city.  Not so, the place was like a ghost town.  A great meal at the hotel and some beer and wine and we were done for the day.  Meanwhile all weather reports had indicated a day of solid rain on Tuesday and sure enough around 10pm the heavens opened and steady rain set in.

 

[breganzane]

After falling asleep to the pitter-patter of rain on the roof, it was a pleasant surprise to awake to mottled cloud and the odd ray of sunshine.  With a nice conti breakfast supplied in the room we were loaded up and down at the servo for a top-up for the near 200km stretch to Jindabyne with little but trees in between.

Winding our way up the hill out of town I found I had lost the mighty Guzzi from the mirrors.  I found her stopped on the side of the road... this was a concerning pattern!  At least it was a lovely spot to break down...

The mighty green monster had just fouled a plug on startup, and I cursed myself for not carrying any spares.  But swapping the fouled plug onto the hot side was enough to clear it and we were off again after another 2-3 minute fix.

The road from Buchan to Jindabyne is called the Barry Way and is another fine run, although about 90km of dirt means you need to allow plenty of time.  Only intending to reach Jindabyne or Thredbo for the night, we had all day to do basically 200km.  The road started out bitumen and nice and twisty for about 60km where we reached a fork in the road and the dirt began.

Basically the dirt bit winds through twisty mountain bits, then along a river valley, then climbs out through the hills again.  To the Southern end of it is this quite interesting bit which is just one lane wide and has a gnarly drop to one side.  We only came upon one oncoming vehicle which fortunately waited for us at one of the few turnouts. Here we rode into some weather, but the rain never really got worse than an annoyance on the visor.  If anything it was good to keep the dust down and make the road a little grippier.

Somewhere along this way, the burnt country ceased for a while.

Around halfway, the Jota started to cut out over the bigger bumps.  The mental diagnosis process began as I rode along and I was a little perplexed as the electrics had been pretty thoroughly gone through during the bike's rebuild a couple of years back.  Although it retained all its original finishes and patina, it's mechanically fully rebuilt and enhanced.  The engine would pick up again after resetting the kill switch, but I was confused as the switch internals were brand new (but put back into the bashed and crashed switch housing).  I felt like a breather anyway so we pulled up for a look.
Another 1-2 minute diagnosis showed a loose negative terminal on the battery, caused by the combo of a non-original and not very flexible heavy earth lead, and the smaller battery not particularly well restrained.  I castigated myself for my slack-arsed-ness and spent 15 seconds tightening the terminal again and that was the last of the 'mechanicals'.

The road wound and meandered its way out of the valley and ended up at this nice lookout.  The weather by now had returned to sunshine and scattered clouds.

North of here the country opened up again and before too long the welcome sight of bitumen returned and the pace was picked up for an exhilarating run into Jindabyne.  By now you're at some decent sort of altitude by Oz standards (1100-ish metres) and the temp had dropped like a stone, unseasonably cool even.

We briefly considered cutting and running for home (only about 2hrs ride) but thankfully decided to keep the original plan and have ourselves a nice lazy afternoon looking around Jindy, starting with a quality bierhaus of course!

 

[Vince]

The time me and a mate did the Barry plus a lot more dirt including Macilops Bridge, we camped overnight and it pissed down hard. It was so greasy that 90ks into Jidy we never got out of 1st gear and had front end washouts every few minutes, no crashes amazingly. It's a complete bastard on road rubber in the wet. Stunning to look at along the banks of The Snowy River.

 

[breganzane]

A nice Italian feed of mussels and baby octopus concluded a fantastic day's ride, and we'd happened upon this motel with a very motorcycle-friendly looking adornment on the entry, a nice 'old' (doesn't seem long ago they were new) 996 Duc.

The host was a bike nut and welcomed us in like long lost family.  A nice room for a reasonable rate, an older place but renovated and very comfortable - Kookaburra Motel Jindabyne.  The dude was super impressed by the bikes and when we told him we'd come up the Barry Way he couldn't believe it.  Not terribly surprising when he showed us his own bike - a Duc V4R go-fasty version with the short stroke and all that.  Sounded mental alright but bikes that fast no longer really interest me.

We trundled down the road to Cooma for a late brekky (sorry no photos of the food).

Along the way I'd noticed a worsening cacophony from the primary drive side which didn't go away when the clutch was pulled.  Jesus nut?  Back in the breganzane shed I dropped the oil and pulled off the primary cover and sure enough, the tab washer was still firmly secured but the nut was fractionally loose.  I have a locking tool and used the torque from the RGS manual, so as per recent discussions on the topic, that figure is by far not enough and use more like 100+ ft-lbs in future.  No damage to spline so it should be fine with a clean and loctite and a visit from the 360Nm torque wrench.

All the best for a great Christmas one and all!  Lets hope the coming 12 months show a bit more promise than the last.  In spite of Australia's comparatively good position with regard to the Coronavirus, the economy is reeling.  My sector has copped it hard however I consider myself lucky to be in an area which has external funding in place.  We still effectively lost 4 out of 11 tech staff at the close of play for 2020, and we're one of the least affected areas in our organisation.  But with so many so sick and dying in other parts of the world I feel lucky to be able to write about a ride for no other reason than to go riding.  I hope wherever you are in the world things improve and we can all do a lot more riding in the coming years.

Cheers all
Steve

 

[rowdypat]

Thanks Steve, that really was a great read. Hope you both have a lovely Christmas. 

 

[Bottler]

Merry Christmas Christiane and Batto,

Great report on a lovely little ride on your  "adventure" bikes! Let's hope 2021 is a vast improvement on 20.

Cheers
Bottler

PS Had planned to deliver your calendar last night, by Jota naturally, but the postie was empty handed yesterday.

 

[martymoose]

If I planned a ride up the Barry way I would be lynched!  Can?t wait to get my 750 adventure bike on the road.

 

[piranha-bro2]

The Barry Way is a fave of mine - did it on the SF with a mate on his FZR1000. the SF cruised it at speeds well beyond my mate's bike or desire. Camped under the stars on the sandy-gravel of the Snowy.

Done it a few times by car - last was in the Skoda 4wd soft roader in very wet conditions and I can confirm what Vince said. The traction control light was running overtime! Again camped on the banks with partner and kids in tow these 25 years later - they LOVED it!

Loved reading your ride report, Steve. excellent stuff. Happy NY to everyone in a day or so. Bring on a new year with new promise - please!