Round The World Videos
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iPod It s a key area of wear and tear on a bike, and especially a big trailie - so replacing the steering head bearings is one of the essential jobs you ll have to come to grips with on a long trip, or just as a long-term owner. Pete s KTM 950 came back from South America with knackered steering head bearings, and in this episode we show how to remove the worn-out ones, pack the new ones with grease and install them. Most automotive and motorcycle bearings are in constant, full rotation during their life, so they wear evenly as they turn. But steering head bearings move very little when you re riding - generally rotating just a few degrees side to side. This makes them particularly prone to uneven wear, especially if they are not kept properly adjusted. Think about it - you re doing big miles, mostly in a straight line, over rough roads. Shock is transferred from the wheel, through the fork legs, via the triple clamps/yokes to the steering head bearings. If the bearing is loose, each bearing roller begins to wear its own groove. This makes the bearing even looser, and it flogs around even more, accelerating the wear. Eventually the steering becomes notchy - the handlebars don t move smoothly from side to side - and as it gets worse you ll feel a clunk when you hit a solid bump. You ll get vagueness and imprecise steering, because the loose bearings are flapping around rather than seating solidly. A relatively small amount of free play in the bearings at the steering head can have an alarming effect on handling. In the worst cases of misadjustment and neglect the bearing can begin to break apart. Each bearing, top and bottom, comes in two parts, the bearing and the cup. The bearings are installed on the steering post, which is part of the bottom clamp. The cups are pressed into the steering head. The two most difficult parts of the job are removing the bottom bearing and taking out the cups - so watch the video for our tips. Don t be tempted to leave the cups in and just change the bearings - you will be wasting your time and money. A cursory dab of grease on the new bearings just isn t enough. They need to be solidly packed, and Trent s the man with the knowledge and technique. Finally, make sure to listen to what Pete says about readjusting the bearings soon after you ve replaced them. He is speaking from recent experience - Waz Update: We re embedding our videos at advrider.com and visordown.com - here are the links so you can read what people are saying and join the discussions. Discuss this video at Visordown.com Discuss this video at Advrider.com

iPod This time around we get an overview of a bike s wiring harness, or wiring loom. This spaghetti-like confusion of wires and plugs is the backbone of the electrical system - and after a ride across a partly flooded South American salt lake, the KTM s needed replacing. Pete gives a brief rundown on rear suspension compression, rebound and preload settings, and how even though the shock and spring are a single unit, they do different jobs. Trent and Waz discusses the dry-sump oil system used on most adventure bikes. Richard gets his number two bike up and running (creating a bit of smoke for added drama) and Trent grapples with the last spokes to be removed from the front wheel hub that he s helping Waz rebuild. Make sure to leave a comment after you watch! Electrics and suspension tend to be voodoo areas of bike mechanicals. Just looking at a wiring diagram is frightening enough, without delving into the loom itself, which of course looks nothing like the diagram! But troubleshooting bike wiring is less about an in-depth knowledge of electrical systems - and more about the ability to work through a problem, starting with the simplest and most likely cause, such as a bad earth . Headlights that have become dimmer over time might make you think you need a new or bigger battery, or even new bulbs, but more than likely you re looking at a deteriorated connection somewhere. Bike electrics are very exposed to the elements, and right from the start there are ways you can protect against failure, such as by cleaning out any dirty or corroded connectors, and sealing non-weatherproof ones with silicon, as discussed in this episode. A contact cleaner spray sold at an amateur electronics store or auto-electrical outlet is one way to get grease and dirt out of connectors. But sometimes you can t avoid the need to pull connectors apart and give them a proper mechanical cleaning. You might even have to replace the metal terminals themselves - this is something we want to show in a future instalment. You don t need a full understanding of suspension variables - rake, trail, preload, compression damping, rebound damping, spring rates to name a few - to take advantage of the settings available on modern bikes to improve the ride quality. The range and position of adjusters varies widely on bike shocks absorbers - some bikes have little or no adjustment. Watch this episode for Pete s brief introduction to rear suspension adjustments. If you ve heard of dry-sump lubrication and are wondering what it is, Trent and Waz have a rundown for you on how it works, and the benefits it brings to adventure bikes and dirt squirters. Apart from the advantages we discuss in the video, a tank-based system like on Pete s KTM or Rich s BMW also lets the manufacturer improve the weight distribution of the bike by moving the oil storage unit to the most desirable position. It s good to see Richard s number two bike on the road - apart from the smoke. Now we can get working on number one, which will be having a set of sexy KTM White Power inverted forks installed. - Waz

iPod In this episode, we dismantle a front wheel, removing the brake discs, spokes and nipples - and Trent brings out the blowtorch to free up some sticky bolts. Pete builds a sandblasting cabinet, mostly out of junk, and continues work on his KTM 950, while Rich is getting close to his BMW being back on the road. There was no way Pete was letting me put the new twin-disc front wheel on my bike without at least giving the shabby hub a paint job. That means stripping the hub, which means breaking down the wheel, which means removing the spokes and nipples, which means replacing any that are in poor shape or simply don t survive disassembly you can see how this job snowballed. The first stage is to remove the brake discs. You do this with the wheel still fully assembled - because you probably couldn t get the spokes out with the discs still on, and even if you could, it s easier to remove the discs while you ve still got the rim to hang on to. Trent advised that the bolts would probably be locked into the hub from corrosion. A big problem on bikes is that you often have different metals coming together - in this case, steel bolts screwed into an aluminium hub. Due to the different properties of unlike metals, it is a recipe for an electro-chemical reaction, which means corrosion. Trent explains in the episode how this causes bolts to seize. His solution is to heat the hub. You could use a blowtorch, or an electric heat gun of the kind used to strip paint. Or at the side of the road, a cigarette lighter that can throw a decent flame might just get you out of trouble - don t apply it near anything flammable, of course, such as your petrol tank and its contents. And heed Trent s warnings about how aluminium behaves when it approaches melting point! In my case the disc bolts are not generic, they are specially machined. In other words I can t just go to any nut and bolt shop to buy replacements. I ll be reusing them, so it was important not to destroy the heads in the process of undoing them. Once the discs are off it s time to address the spokes, which radiate out from the hub, and the nipples, which attach the spokes to the rim. A good start is to spray the nipples with a seize-busting solution such as WD-40. Leave them for a while, then attack with appropriate spoke spanners and large flat-blade screwdrivers. For the inevitable stubborn spoke here and there, you might need a set of vice grips to stop it turning while you rotate the nipple. Even if you never rebuild one, it s useful to know the anatomy of a wheel. On any big trip where rough roads are involved you should carry spare spokes and nipples in case of breakages, so you ll need to know how to install them (after removing the tyre and tube, of course). Trent gives lots of know-how in this episode about the different kind of spoke/nipple/hub arrangements you might encounter. Pete is saving us all a lot of grief by building a sandblasting cabinet. It s hooked up to Trent s air compressor and we ll use it to strip paint, rust etc from parts that we re going to repaint. There have been a few teething problems, but Pete s getting close to turning this into a workable and very handy addition to our workshop. Richard isn t far off getting the BMW back on the road, and begins making some final pre-flight checks. Once this bike is mobile, we ll start attacking his other project - an F650 fitted with long-range tanks and a set of KTM inverted forks. Sweet. - Waz

The Amateur Traveler talks to the Anders Family (who were recently featured on the Oprah Winfrey show) about their trip around with world with 4 kids ages 4 to 14. We will answer questionns like: How does traveling with kids change the journey? What were your favorite places? When did you feel farthest from home? Are you crazy!?

an interview with Kirk and Donna about their year long round the world trip

an interview with Kirk and Donna about their year long round the world trip