V2XS

Oh no, not another motorbike blog post !
Yes I’m afraid so… I bought this bike last summer and it is still a work in progress but I thought it was time to post something about it and the progress I’ve made.

History

The 950 Super Enduro R is a limited edition bike produced by KTM between 2006 and 2008. It is the equivalent of an “homologation special” from the car world and was created to allow KTM to compete in the unlimited class of extreme enduro racing. Only 3,000 were made and there are reputed to be about 30 in France. More of the history of the bike can be seen in this unofficial YouTube video :

Why ?

I must admit that I didn’t have particularly compelling reasons to buy this bike as in reality it has far more power than I can use and is a monster to try to wrestle along the narrow local trails. However, it is certainly an interesting bike to own and riding it (off road) is a challenge which I quite enjoy, and which will hopefully improve my skills. I did have in mind to take it down to Morocco this winter but those plans were binned due to COVID – maybe next year…?
The rest of this post talks about the various mods I have made to the bike to make it more suited to trail riding, in addition to maintenance work and upgrades which are still ongoing..

Rectifier Relocation

The rectifier unit is located in the middle of the bike directly above the hot exhaust and they have a tendency to overheat and fail, often taking the alternator and battery with them.

Resolving this issue involved relocating the rectifier to the side of the bike away from the exhaust and exposed to cooling air..

Fuel Pump

The engine uses carburettors which are located between the V of the engine with the air filter under the fuel tank. Normally carburettors are gravity fed fuel, but in this case the tank wraps round the sides of the frame and the level can drop below the carbs, which requires an electric fuel pump. This unit is a simple diaphragm pump which is actuated by contact breaker points. Over time the points wear and can fail. The ones on my bike were still working but in a sorry state :

The recommended mod for fixing this problem is one developed by a 950 enthusiast in Holland who goes by the Forum username of “Dr BEAN” and this mod is know as the Dr. Bean Mod. He has developed a printed circuit board with an optical trigger that completely replaces the points. It comes as a complete kit and just requires some (rather fiddly) soldering.

Remove Indicators and Tail Tidy

For off road use (and the inevitable offs) it is wise to remove any extraneous parts that will otherwise only get bent or broken. In my case this included the mirrors and indicators and part of the rear mudguard. You can buy aftermarket “tail tidy” units to reduce the expanse of plastic hanging off the rear of the bike, but I managed to come up with a solution by simply cutting the existing tail unit..

The end result is a lot neater..

Other mods in the same vein were changing the grips, fitting new “flag style” handguards – I prefer them to the full wrap round guards that were originally fitted. I fitted a small mirror out of harms way and some shorter brake and clutch levers – less likely to be bent or broken in a fall.

Tyres

I could write a blog post on just this subject as there are lots of options and pros and cons. But in simple terms a bike that can be used on road as well as on the trails places a mix of demands on the tyres and tyres that are good on the road do not work well off road. This has resulted in a wide choice of dual purpose tyres that are supposed to cope with both situations. The bike arrived with 50/50 tyres but they were not much use off road so I swapped them for Pirelli MT21 Rallycross tyres. These are “full knobbies” and the most agressive tread option available for the 950 – you wouldn’t want to go too fast or lean too far on the road with these, but I wasn’t planning on doing much road mileage.

Emissions Equipment and Air Box

For mainly off road use I wasn’t interested in complying with emissions regulations and the exhausts had already been changed from standard which saved significant weight as the standard silencers are fitted with catalysts and very heavy. Removing the emissions equipment from the engine should make it run better (I don’t need more power) and removing the huge airbox will also get rid of some weight quite high up on the bike. The air filter was replaced with a foam element – much lighter and easier to service and the carbs rejetted to suit. This was quite a fiddly job as everything is buried within the frame in between the V of the engine.

I was pretty pleased to get it all back together and working and it seems to run better than before !

Suspension

As I mentioned at the beginning this is still a work in progress as I continue to work on the bike to make it more manageable on the trail. The various mods I have done have reduced the weight by 10Kg but it is still a 190Kg bike ! This is almost twice the weight of my KTM 250 Enduro bike with over three times the power – quite a handful !!
As I have ridden the bike more I’ve become quite critical of the suspension which is very stiff and harsh. This should not be too much of a surprise as the bike is capable of carrying two people plus luggage and has to be able to cope with that load. When it’s just me on a rocky trail the suspension doesn’t have enough compliance and as the speed increases it starts to behave like a bucking bronco.
In a bid to improve this I have removed the suspension and taken it to Max at TraxxControl near Cahors. We will probably need to change the rear spring and revalve the rear shock as a minimum, but we’ll see what he comes up with once he has everything stripped down…

Left Hand Rear Brake

As with nearly all other motorbikes the rear brake is operated by your right foot. On the road this is absolutely fine. But when descending a loose, rocky downhill section off road you need to maintain your balance (standing up on the pegs) and be able to delicately operate the rear brake. It may just be my general lack of competence but I find this really difficult and the brake tends to be either on or off. Part of the problem is that with big clumpy motocross boots on it is hard to feel the pedal at all, never mind delicately control it. I did shorten the pedal which helped a bit but was not a complete solution…

On my KTM Enduro bike I was faced with the same issue and fitted a left hand rear brake (LHRB) system from Clake in Australia. This was a revelation and that bike is just like a big mountain bike riding downhill – front brake on the right, rear brake on the left controlled with one finger each while being able to move about and keep balanced on the bike.

Unfortunately this system is not compatible with the 950 for various reasons and I have been unable to find another supplier. As a result I am currently working on a system of my own and the most workable option I have found is to try to use a thumb operated brake on the left hand side. I’m waiting for the custom brake line that I’ve ordered so that I can assess the amount of braking force that I can generate with my thumb. If it’s not enough I’ll have to come up with another solution…

Steering Head Bearings

When removing the suspension I noticed that the steering felt notchy – something I hadn’t noticed when riding the bike. I was quite shocked to see the state of the old bearings and that I hadn’t spotted it before. Maybe I should just stop fiddling about with the bike and just learn to ride a bit better…?

To be continued…

Welcome to my latest mini-project – building an electric mountain bike… Why would I want to do that….?

• I’m surrounded by loads of great off road trails, ideal mountain biking territory
• Unfortunately there are a lot of steep and rocky climbs which are just hard work
• I’m a “petrol head” so already have plenty of motorbikes for riding these trails, but I’m interested in exploring the potential of electric power

I do a reasonable amount of cycling on the road on my Sirrus X, but that is no use off road. I could just go out and buy an electric mountain bike, but they are very expensive for anything of decent quality (thousands of Euros) and are constrained by the EU regulations. The regulations restrict the motor power to 250W, are pedal-assist only and the motor cuts out at speeds over 19 km/h. These are all sensible safety measures and even a 250W motor is the equivalent of having a second person pedalling. And where is the fun in buying something ready made when you can build your own ?

I spent some time researching the possibilities and options and quickly concluded that I didn’t want to be restricted by the regulations so would be building an “illegal” bike – but reasoned that for mostly off road use this would be OK. There are many options regarding motor type and location, drive system, battery capacity and mounting that I won’t go into here. Having looked at the choices I decided to start by finding a second hand full suspension mountain bike with disc brakes and then buy the individual components for the electric conversion (motor, controller, battery). I hadn’t finally decided between a mid-drive (mounted on the bottom bracket) or a hub drive (mounted inside the rear wheel), but did want a large capacity battery which I planned to carry in a rucksack. Mounting a large battery on a full suspension bike is not easy and needs to be very secure to survive the off road abuse. My goal was to be able to cycle from my house into Cahors and back on the trails that I have used on the motorbikes…

Having come up with a plan I went to look at some bikes… As I was looking for something a bit specific and France is a big place this involved a few 3h round trips and I didn’t find what I was looking for – one of the issues being frame size. The bikes I looked at were apparently size L but were too small for me. Eventually I found a suitable machine – a Trek Remedy. This is a quality full suspension bike with disc brakes and an ideal base for the project. What made it even more perfect was that it came with an electric conversion kit from French supplier OZO. The kit was a year old and had previously been fitted to the bike but the owner had removed the kit to try to sell the two separately. The complete package met my requirements and made my job a lot easier (assuming I could get it all back together). As a bonus the electric kit was still under warranty…

This is the naked bike (the main picture at the top of the post shows the finished conversion). The bike seemed in well used but pretty good overall condition. There are a few things I need to sort out:

• Pedals are awful and need to be changed
• Brakes need swapping to get the front brake on the right (which means bleeding the system)
• Dropper seat post doesn’t lock – it’s hydraulic so may need bleeding/servicing
• Has a front derailleur with two cogs – this can probably be binned as with the electric assistance 1 cog should be enough. The current big cog (alloy) looks a bit worn.

Having given the bike a check over I did a bit of riding around on it and found it very hard work getting up the hills. I used to do a bit of mountain biking in the UK around the South Downs and brought my bike over to France with me when we moved but soon changed it to road tyres and eventually sold it – now I remember why. I have to admit to being a bit disappointed at this stage… Maybe the electric kit will make a big difference ?

The kit has a 1000W hub motor, a hand throttle and a 1KWh battery. It all went together OK but cable routing to my satisfaction took a long time (and used lots of tie wraps). Did some test riding and hill climbing and the transformation was absolutely amazing. What a fantastic piece of kit – overcoming all of the disadvantages of the naked bike. I tend to pedal all the time and just use the motor as a top up to get up hills and in terms of range can already tell that used in this way the battery will last longer than me – 80Km or more should be achieveable.

Disadvantages ?
Well there’s no denying these things cost money – the OZO kit is 1750 Euros new ! There is a lot of added weight – maybe 25Kg +, the motor alone is 10Kg. The battery in the rucksack does start to feel heavy after a while and doesn’t get any lighter as it loses charge ! The heavy rear hub motor does compromise the bike’s downhill performance, overwhelming the rear suspension and then bouncing out of control. There is some resistance from the motor when pedalling but it seems reasonable to me – pedalling on the flat is hard work anyway due to the fat tyres and overall weight, but is manageable.

All looking pretty good, but after a few rides the hub motor started making a funny noise… I’ve contacted OZO and they think it is a hub bearing so it will have to go back to them for a replacement…

As a close follower of this Blog you will be aware that I had decided to go down the route of a small car plus trailer for my summer shade sail deliveries. The car was covered in the previous post :
https://v2xs.com/ford-focus-2/

I was looking for a relatively lightweight (Max 500 Kg gross weight) box-type trailer. Trailers of this size don’t need to be separately registered in France, are covered by the towing vehicle insurance and can be driven on a normal car license. Shortly after beginning my search I found an ad on a local Facebook Group that appeared to be the ideal solution. I got in touch with the seller and, completely ignoring the sage advice of “Caveat Emptor”, I agreed to buy it without seeing it. The seller very kindly agreed to deliver the trailer 50Km to Alexander’s house in Limoges – this was during lockdown so I had no legal means of being able to view the trailer in advance. The price was right, the deal was done and the trailer duly delivered. It then sat in Alexander’s garden for nearly two months until I had the opportunity to collect it. Once I had got the trailer back home and started to inspect it, I quickly realised it wasn’t such a good deal after all…

The main problem was that the wooden floor of the trailer was completely rotten and needed replacing. The owner had covered the floor with lino so on initial inspection it looked OK, but having peeled back the lino the floor itself was very soggy and falling apart. Having started to strip out the floor the second issue quickly became apparent – the chassis frame was rusty and would need rubbing down and repainting. Fortunately the structure was solid and it was only surface rust, but it was another job I wasn’t expecting.

Other issues were that one of the tyres turned out to have a slow puncture and the other one wasn’t much better as the rubber was badly cracked. Finally the electrics were a mess and the lights didn’t work so would need fixing or replacing. Altogether quite a catalogue of jobs that meant the trailer definitely wasn’t a bargain. And I now had no choice but to fix it before I could use it and even if I just decided to resell it there was still a lot of work to do. Lesson learnt ? Maybe…

I visited a few of the local DIY shops to price up a replacement floor. The correct trailer-spec marine grade plywood was expensive and only available to special order so I started looking at alternatives. It’s not the right time of year for decking so the stores had some leftover stock that was cheap which set me thinking. I felt sure it would do the job and is treated timber but was concerned about the expansion due to temperature and humidity. The store also had some composite decking which was more expensive but a lot cheaper than the marine plywood so I bought some lengths of that. It was a few mm thicker than the original floor so had to be shaved at each end to get it to fit in the existing metal framework. In addition the composite decking is hollow and I didn’t want to leave the ends exposed as they looked rather odd and would be a hiding place for dirt and spiders. At the front end I welded in a new section of angle iron to block off the ends and at the rear fitted a strip of Aluminium checker plate which had the added advantage of protecting the loading lip. The end result was very tidy.

I decided to rub down the interior wood work and treat it to a coat of paint to brighten the interior and generally make the trailer a bit more presentable – I had some old pots of paint left over (don’t we all ?) and managed to choose what I thought were complimentary shades…

The chassis frame was treated to wire brushing / sand papering to get off the old flaky paint and loose rust before painting with silver Hammerite – left over from the Focus re-painting.

The electrics and lights were all stripped out and replaced with a brand new set.

I bought two new tyres and decided to fit them myself (how hard can it be ?). I fit all my motorbike tyres and had recently replaced the tyres on my motorbike trailer so was feeling reasonably confident. However, these were “full size” car tyres 145/70-13 and it proved almost impossible to break the bead in order to remove the old tyres. I eventually came up with a lever system which worked a treat – but only after a lot of struggling and swearing.

Apart from a general clean up and fitting new locks that was about it – one fully reconditioned trailer ready to go…

If you’ve been following this blog you’ll remember that we recently worked on a Focus for Alexander which I have been using as a local runabout :
https://v2xs.com/ford-focus/

The intention is that he will take over this car as soon as Laurena passes her test but with lockdowns and other things getting in the way, this may be some time. However, having some four wheeled transport did make it easier for me to get around and try to find another car. I had a long debate with myself about the type of vehicle to go for and was very tempted by the idea of a van. The justification for this was that a van would make it easier to do the summer shade sail deliveries and provide better motorbike transport. But I had to admit that for the rest of the time I just don’t need the space – so the alternative was to go for a smaller car plus a trailer. In the end there were two factors that swayed the decision in favour of the small car :

1. The times when I need the load capacity are actually quite limited – once per week during the summer for shade sails (I actually take some most days but the big factory delivery of customs arrives once per week) – and a few times a year for various motorbike events. In total maybe 20 times per year – not a huge amount of use…
2. The clincher was (perhaps surprisingly) driving Alexander’s Focus and realising how much fun a small and responsive car can be in everyday driving. The roads around here are like English B roads and max speed rarely gets above 50 mph, but the Focus has such a nice feel to the chassis and responsiveness to the steering that I really quite like it. I was so surpirsed that I looked up some contemporary road tests and every one of them praised the ride and handling of the car. As a comparison, not long ago I had a Mini Cooper JCW with 250 bhp which was hugely fast but the steering feel and response of the controls was not as good as the Focus.

Decision made I started looking for a small, fun car… and then another Focus came along… The story with this one was remarkably similar to Alexander’s car – English couple came over to France with their Focus, switched it over to French registration, used it for a few years and then bought a French car, the Focus then relegated to a local runabout until expensive repairs and Controle Technique (French MOT) loom and make it uneconomic to keep it.

Alexander’s Focus is a 2003 Mark 1, the new one is a 2008 Mark 2 facelift (also known as a Mark 2.5). The car was 2.5 hours away in the Gers and from speaking to the owner on the ‘phone the main issue seemed to be that it needed a new catalyst. Having done that job on Alexander’s car I wasn’t too worried and went to see the car… This was just before our second lockdown and I agreed to buy the car but couldn’t come back to collect it until just before Christmas.

I couldn’t have picked a worse time of year to be (mostly) outside crawling around underneath a car… Once it was all jacked up I was able to look at the catalyst issue. What I hadn’t realised is that the Mark 2 Focus is actually a different car to the Mark 1 and although both have 1.8 litre petrol engines they are different platforms – the Mark 2 is quite a bit bigger and more refined but it still retains the same suspension design. The engine is different and mounted the other way round which meant that the catalyst was between the engine and bulkhead and harder to access. On the plus side the Mazda designed engine doesn’t have a cam belt so that was one job crossed off the list. A bit of research and I understood the previoius owner’s problem and willingness to sell the car cheap (and it was cheap) – the catalyst is part of a one piece assembly that comprises the exhaust manifold, catalyst and flexible coupling to connect to the rest of the exhaust. A replacement is about 800 Euros and garage fitting might well double that cost. I found a cheaper option and would (of course) be doing it myself but was concerned about being able to successfully remove the exhaust manifold – snapping off a stud in the cylinder head would be a massive job to fix. It did occur to me that the failure (you could hear the exhaust blowing) was probably in the flexible coupling and the manifold and catalyst may be OK. Very difficult to be sure but some grovelling under the car and limb contorsion seemed to confirm the flexible was broken. A bit more research and I managed to find a supplier offering the flexible as a repair section – no need to replace the manifold and cat – I placed my order…

In terms of cost (£70) this was a great solution, but required cutting the pipe between the flexible and the catalyst and that section of pipe is virtually impossible to access. Removing the manifold would make it much easier but carries more risks. I decided to try the cutting route with the fall back of taking the whole thing out. It took two days…

The image above shows the problem. The pipe had to be cut after the catalyst and before the oxygen sensor – I have put a black tie-wrap around the pipe (which you can just make out) marking the cutting location. Impossible to access from above…

Access from below was much improved once I had cut off the rest of the exhaust system (it also needed replacing) – but even so there was just enough room to squeeze in with a Dremel and gradually cut small sections of the pipe. I lost count of the number of cutting discs I got through…

Now just need to wait for the bits and refit the complete exhaust system…
The next big job on the list was painting the underside of the car.. It seems that every car that spends a few winters in the UK becomes a rust farm underneath – mostly the chassis/suspension components but a few bits of bodywork too. To stop this getting any worse I rubbed down everything I could get to and then painted it with good old Finnigan’s Hammerite. It was a horrible, dirty, uncomfortable and thankless task – we did the same on Alexander’s Focus – well when I say we that was Alexander’s main contribution to the work..

For the new exhaust I ordered the centre and rear silencer, but only discovered when they arrived that the rear silencer does not include a short length of pipe from the exit of the silencer to the rear of the car – Doh ! To speed things up I ordered this missing pipe from a local supplier on a “click and collect” basis – went to collect and it wasn’t there – they had lost the package! At this stage I was under pressure to get the job finished as I was planning to drive down to Portugal, but then they started another lock down so the pressure was off. Ordered the pipe from my normal supplier and it arrived 3 days later – all correct.

Other items were more straighforward – a routine service, two new tyres, replace split intake hose and general clean and tidy up. Put the car in for the CT and it passed first time. There were a couple of advisories on tracking and rear brake balance which I’ll need to look at…

In terms of driving the car feels like exactly what it is – a larger and more refined version of Alexander’s car. It’s quieter, more comfortable but also a bit bigger/heavier and not quite so responsive. For running around the local lanes I think I prefer the feel of the older model, but not for any longer journeys.

Having sold the Faithful Freelander I was reduced to using my bikes and the M3W for transport. This was actually quite good fun – not quite so good in the rain and luggage capacity rather limited though. I started looking for a replacement vehicle but realised I would have to ride there and back to look at it which rather limited the search radius. At around this time Alexander mentioned that he was on the look out for a new car too. He has recently moved from the centre of Limoges to a cottage in the countryside and ideally needs a second car for Laurena to be able to get to work without relying on him. There is the small issue of Laurena passing her driving test but he seemed quite hopeful that might happen soon…

It seemed to me that if I could find a low budget car for Alexander I would be able to use it for a while as a temporary runabout until I sorted a longer term solution. Completely unlike the UK, second hand car prices in France are ridiculously high – finding anything running with a valid Control Technique (CT – same as the UK MOT) would be at least 1,000 Euros – somewhat more than Alexander’s budget.

Before long I spotted a Ford Focus on one of our local Facebook Groups – this was a RHD car (which the French don’t want so are relatively cheap over here), but it was French registered. Registering a UK car in France used to be relatively straightforward but BREXIT has made it much more difficult. The car was cheap but had no CT and needed work. I went to look at it…

It was a 150Km round trip but fortunately the weather was kind and the ride was great fun. The car was in a bit of a sorry state – the interior smelled like a dustbin – the lady owner did explain it was mainly being used for trips to the dechetterie (tip) and for transporting what was evidently a very smelly dog. The owner had been to see a friendly local mechanic to see if it would pass a CT and had come away with a list of faults..

• Driveshaft needs replacing
• Water leak – possibly the thermostat
• Two tyres needed
• A few light bulbs not working

On the positive side the body looked in reasonable condition, the car started and ran OK and had recently had a new clutch. There was no evidence of the cam belt having been replaced which was a bit of a concern – the car was on 129k miles and was 17 years old – a cam belt change should be done every 100k miles or 10 years. What can possibly go wrong ? A bit of haggling and the deal was done…

Went to pick up the car a few days later and managed to drive it home without incident – apart from needing to put some oil in it (was below minimum) and the fact that it drank a litre of water on the journey. Let the fun strip down begin…

Over the next few days I stripped the car down and made a list of eveything that needed doing, ordered the parts (which cost more than I paid for the car) and generally had a great time. The pictures below tell most of the story…

If at first…

Not too surprisingly it didn’t pass the CT… Fortunately it only failed on one thing, unfortunately this could have been quite expensive. The failure was on emissions – the Inspector thought it may be a pre-catalyst air leak but there was also the possibility that it might need a new catalyst…

Running the engine and examining the exhaust manifold didn’t reveal anything, so I borrowed Susan’s leaf blower and plumbed it in to the exhaust – in fact it was a perfect fit..

The next step was to cover the manifold and catalyst in soapy water and look for a leak…

So I found the leak, but after several attempts at welding it up in- situ I gave up and decided to remove the catalyst to get better access. Unfortunately I then dicovered that the catalyst was fractured and in several pieces. I may have contributed to the damage during the removal process…

So it appears that although there was an air leak there was also a significant problem with the catalyst which looked like it had overheated and melted in places. So I ordered a new one…

Pleased to say that on the re-test the car passed and is now good for 2 years motoring….