Rally Raid | Moto-Abruzzo

30/12/2011

Time for a change – 2012

It’s that time for reflection as one year fades into another, time to take stock of Moto-Abruzzo and in what direction I want to push it in 2012. Well to start with, I guess I have to think back to exactly what got me motivated enough to start the blog in the first place. It was (and still is) my Caponord Rally-Raid of course. I had this idea to write-up my own experiences, nothing anecdotal from others, only what I knew and experienced first hand. To that end it’s been quite successful – but limited, if nothing needs tinkering with, or breaks … what do I write? And that’s the Achilles heel of the blog.

So for 2012 I need to expand, to keep the blog fresh, to introduce a little pace …. but I don’t want to lose the essence of what I started. After plenty of dog walking and time to reflect, these are the meager ideas that popped into a tired mind.

Abruzzo: More content, but from the perspective of a bikers eye. Abruzzo websites/blogs abound with more general info than I could, or want to accumulate …. but none are from a bikers viewpoint as far as I can see.

Caponord: I’ll stop taking the mundane jobs for granted, everything is questionable to someone. So I’ll cover the basics with text/photos/video/3D to add more depth to the Capo content. Simply put … more detail.

Blog layout: Devote a little more time and effort to increasing the blog look and speed for mobile/smartphone use. The technical content may be useful when you’re stranded by the side of the road! Mobile content is where it’s all heading I guess.

Mystery project: Yep, the one and only. The dusty canvas draped over the mysterious artifact that gently pulses and hums hypnotically in the shadowy corner of the barn may well be pulled back to reveal ………… all in good time!

So I hope dear reader, you’ll still pop by now and again and see what’s new, maybe drop me a line – good or bad. Constructive feedback can only help move the blog and it’s content forward. Layout or display issues would be very useful …. I’m no internet wiz-kid. I’ve an ageing laptop running Vista and access to a couple of old clunkers with Windows XP. Combined they let me see the site in Firefox, Explorer and Opera but I’ve no idea what it looks like on Windows 7 or any other browser. Time to upgrade? Yeah, you may well be right…….

$The Capo on \'Cold Road\'$

A warm, windy and atmospheric December day, that was ideal for a nice ride out and few moody pics dropped to black and white. Picture 2, looking over the saddle …. I can see my house from here!

02/10/201111/10/2022

Shorai batteries now in the UK

It’s a lovely warm afternoon and I’m stood holding a little lightweight box with two terminals …. It’s a fake, a toy, it has to be. This simply cannot be a real battery!

Some sleazebag once tried flogging me a wooden camcorder in bubble wrap at a French fuel station, luckily I rumbled him. I’m starting to have a sinking feeling, maybe I’ve been stitched up like a kipper this time. No way is this a battery, no siree Bob!

The thing is though, the Shorai LFX18A1-BS12* is indeed real, and yes, it does only weigh 0.96Kg against the portly 4.6Kg that the YTX14 tips the scales at. It can weigh as little as a budgies fart and pack more punch than a high power version of the standard battery because of the lithium-Iron technology it uses, frankly it’s way over my head but if it works, I’m all for it. Here’s the bullet points the technology is supposed to offer:-

Fraction of the weight of traditional batteries
Faster cranking for better starting
Faster charging
No lead or explosive gasses
Twice the service life

What’s in the box? Firstly, a neat carbon composite battery with a measured floating voltage of 13.36v – that’s about 90% charged, exactly what the website says it should be. The box also contains an instruction leaflet, stickers (ooo!!) and lots of adhesive backed foam strips to pad out the little darling to fit your battery bay nice and snug like. It only took a few minutes to match up the foam to pad out the Shorai to YTX14 dimensions, then ease it into the battery bay and begin reconnecting the cables. One nice touch is that all the terminal nuts have a piece of foam pre-attached to hold them in place and hence, make bolting the wires in much easier … a simple thing, but much appreciated!

So the proof of the pudding, the first start. Nothing much to say really …. It started up nice and strong like it had always been there, absolutely amazing! It settled down to a normal 14.2v charge at idle and I left it for about 10 minutes and then turned the bike off. I went back the next morning and measured the floating voltage – 14.04v …… about 95% charged! So even in the few minutes I ran the bike, it had taken charge and dropped nothing overnight. This is looking promising!

The YTX14 that came out is about 3 years old and a quality make, but has started to show signs of distress over the past few weeks. So I think it fair to consider it life-expired and so use its cost/life as the yardstick with which to measure the Shorai unit.

This then is day 1, I’ll write periodically over the coming months about its performance, especially on balance with the YTX14 it has replaced. Hopefully in the next few weeks I should be getting the Shorai SHO-BMS01 charger to use directly into the batteries own port and then I’ll see how it fairs in ‘storage mode’ for the winter period.

The Caponord (all years) can take either the standard fitment LFX14A1-BS12 or the higher powered LFX18A1-BS12, they are both the same case size.

UPDATE 2014

Shorai have now replaced the original battery model for the Caponord/Futura with the LFX21A6-BS12.

20/08/201120/08/2011

Motolombia – Colombia Motorcycle tours … on a Rally-Raid!

Occasionally I get emails asking for info or help and I’m more than happy to assist if I can. Frankly, I’m flattered that people think I have something to offer. The other day, Mike from Motolombia contacted me about his Rally-Raid ‘Bella Donna’ ………. and frankly, it knocked me for six! For the past couple of years or so, I’ve followed the adventures of Mike and ‘Bella Donna’ – their highs and lows as he travelled extensively, finally planting roots in Columbia. Now married with two children he’s the owner and driving force behind Motolombia Adventure Motorcycle Tours.

It’s been a real delight for me to make this connection across the continents and I hope that if all things work out, next year I can visit Columbia and we can sink a cold beer or two. Mike and ‘Bella Donna’ have proved beyond a doubt that the Aprilia Caponord is as capable as any bike out there at this over-landing lark. Please, take a moment and have a look at his site – especially the videos. What a beautiful country! www.motolombia.wordpress.com

08/08/201108/08/2011

Quill Exhausts – new straps in a Jiffy!

It’s nice to write something positive especially when it’s a British company involved! Some of you may remember that I didn’t have the best of dealings with Quill Exhausts in 2009. Well last month I contacted them again by email and this time – wow, what a difference! I enquired about a new silencer strap as I lost one and have been using a flimsy ‘universal’ one since. In the end I got two …… free ….. yes, free! Just send a pre-paid jiffy bag and we’ll have them in the return post, I was told … and sure enough, a couple of days later they arrived. So firstly, thank you James at Quill Exhausts for your exemplary customer service and quick email replies, I’m very impressed, thank you. And secondly, thank you to Jim Smith (Abbey Motorcycle Instructors) for sending the Jiffy bag on my behalf, you sir are a star!!

29/07/201129/07/2011

The Nautilus pays for itself!

Years ago I was reversed into …… a HGV stopped on a main A road, we and the traffic behind us stopped as well. Then he reversed. Instinct 1 – horn, instinct 2 – bale out, or be crushed. As accidents go, being reversed into is quite a slow affair, time enough then to process the outcome, time enough to let the dread take hold. My step father and I were lucky, trapped by the car behind with nowhere to go, a quick thinking German jumped the line of traffic and drove alongside the tractor unit with his horn blaring.

Role on to yesterday ……. heading back home on the heavily laden Capo. I take a right turn onto a decent section of road I know well. Ahead is a HGV. He’s moving at a reasonable speed and I’m in no hurry, so I settle on the crown of the road about 100m behind. In about 2Km I’m turning left (pic. above), about 75% of traffic turns there …. So it’s quite conceivable this chap will as well. In my mind I’m setting up for the overtake once we’ve settled down after the turn.

We approach the junction doing about 70Kmh and his left indicator starts flashing. A second later I indicate as well. He starts braking and I back off the gas. I’m thinking he’ll shave off 20-30Kmh to make the turn. As you can see from the picture above, it’s a wide open junction with good visibility.

Then things rapidly unravel.

I’m still at the crown of the road, so I can see his mirror clearly …. And the fact that he’s scrubbing off way more speed than I’d anticipated – he’s stopping! I’m now about 30m behind.

He stops …. I stop about 15m behind, in clear view of his mirror. He’s still indicating left.

Then it happens. The engine revs, the reversing lights go on and with a lurch he’s accelerating backwards towards me.

It takes 0.7 seconds to process and react so they say.

14m, 12m, 10m ……..my thumb hits the horn button …… and the Stebel Nautilus sings out. It echoes off the back of the truck and floods through my earplugs, it gets the job done. Sleeping Beauty is awoken from his afternoon siesta by the 139db kiss on his delicate eardrums.

And just like that, the situation is defused, my pulse falls as I ride away and I realise my tongue is well and truly stuck to the top of my desert-dry mouth. The weak knees and tremors take a bit longer to fade away.

Why this muppet did what he did I have no idea, the nearest entrance behind us was about 400m and anyway, the junction is so spacious and quiet he could have turned around easily. I guess I’ll never know what thought was crossing that barren wasteland called his brain.

The question is, would the situation have had the same outcome if I hadn’t recently fitted the Nautilus …..

08/07/201107/11/2011

Colour wiring diagrams

It’s not often these days that something really useful comes along, but Chris Elms has pulled one out of the bag! He recently popped over to the AF1 Caponord forum and quietly dropped off two wiring diagrams. Nothing new you might think – we’ve had wiring diagrams with the workshop manuals for years.

But these are different, in all the right places …. Chris has reworked them with all the wires now in color, extra technical details added and above all – layers! The ability to select or deselect sections of the wiring loom, making it much clearer and easier to trace specific wires. That feature alone is worth a King’s ransom, absolutely brilliant. You need Adobe Reader to open the files (PDF) or a program cabable of opening that file type. If your browser is able, view the standard or ABS versions here, or download them from the menu bar.

Chris has kindly given Moto-Abruzzo permission to host his wiring diagrams. Thanks again Chris!!

02/06/201102/06/2011

Reasons to be cheerful ….. pt3

A tickle round the mountain, five logged files and two and a half hours of logging later …. it’s no longer a work in progress, it’s a runner!

It may only be a couple of weeks ago that this little project kicked off, but for the life of me, I can’t quite remember why I started, or in fact where I really thought it would lead. So I guess this is most definitely a natural end to this part in the development cycle. It starts, stops, logs and displays more than I originally intended. I guess there’s nothing more to do except get logging!

As for the other stuff on my wish list ….. well the aquisition of external info such as speed (measured not GPS), brake line pressure and gear position may well be handled by this little device. 8 x 5v analogue inputs should be fine … all looks fairly straight forward in the instruction book anyway. We’ll see!

So what have I learned from the data so far? Firstly, the air intake temperature is a fairly consistent 15ºC above the ambient air temp at all times – higher when the bike’s in stop-start traffic ….. all very power-sapping. Secondly … truthfully there isn’t a secondly just yet, but what I’m interested in looking at on the next couple of runs, is the barometric (air pressure) data. It’s measured in the airbox and with the restrictive ‘snorkel’ in place I’m expecting to see a drop in pressure at high RPM/throttle opening …. but will the data bear this out? And how much will it fluctuate by?

24/05/201102/06/2011

A datalog slog

As many of you are aware, last year was a breakthrough one for Capo owners because we got the fantastic (and free!) TuneECU software. One thing we haven’t got though, is a datalogger …… the only thing I’ve seen to date is the very basic offering with the extortionately priced TuneBoy software.

One thing he did though, was supply the Visual Basic 6 source code with it – and that set the old brain cogs whirring once again. Could I turn my hand to programming and figure out how to do the job myself? Well it’s been a week or so and if I say so myself, I’m rather chuffed at the progress so far. It took a few days to get my head even marginally around what the hell I was looking at … and a few more to port it over to a more modern (Visual Studio) software and deal with the additional problems that caused.

Anyway, here I am on a sunny Tuesday afternoon with a couple of screenshots from the little darling as it did the business with the Rally Raid.

So what’s it do?;

Logs RPM, throttle position, Air temperature, Engine temperature, O2 Volts, O2 Status, Cooling fan activation and Battery volts.
It also calculates and logs Maximum RPM, Minimum and Maximum battery voltage ( twice for minimum – starting and general running), Maximum Air Temp and throttle position.
The graph initially projects the complete data run and can be zoomed into for extra detail. The cursor locks onto the data plots and displays the reading from that point.

It looks as though data files are about 100Kb per hour in size, so storage space isn’t going to be an issue ….. unless your logging to a ZX81! There’s still more tweaks and twiddles I want to make but the majority of the work is done ….. the down side? Well, because it’s a derivative of the TuneBoy package, it uses the same modules to connect to the ECU – and therefore, needs the a TuneBoy cable. So if you haven’t got a TuneBoy cable …………………

Extra stuff I’d like to do;

Add GPS location/Speed data to the file from my Garmin.
Add a timecode or some way of keying the log to a video/audio feed.
Add extra analogue inputs via another USB – brakes, fuel pressure etc.
Tea making and cashpoint functionality ….. eh???

But of course, one step at a time …… chickens in, dogs walked and fed, play with kittens …. oh look it’s time for bed, maybe another day. Night, night.

17/05/201117/05/2011

Bug in TuneECU 1.9.3 regarding Sagem ECU

A new version of TuneECU has been released that may well be relevant to Caponord/Futura owners. If you have recently downloaded version 1.9.3 ……. remove it as it has a bug with regards to communication to/from the ECU. A new version 1.9.4 has been released (Monday 16/05/2011) that fixes this issue, although this is untested at the time of writing.

04/05/201126/05/2016

The slippery slope to oblivion.

Aprilia Caponord ETV1000 Rally-Raid - slowly dissapearing from Touratech The new 2011 Touratech catalogue turned up yesterday – well both of them actually. The main phone-directory tome (all 1,219 pages) and the positively sylph like ‘Timeless’ catalogue for “Enduros of the first generation”…. no doubt sporting a nice line in aluminium false-teeth containers and enduro incontinence pants!

Well I thumbed through both … then thumbed again. Oh dear, it appears the Caponord no longer gets its own chapter. In fact its accessories are relegated to a chapter called ‘Travel Enduros’ …. us and the Triumph Tiger 955i. No longer worthy of our own pages we’ve shifted sideways to the Twilight Zone pending a place in the ‘Timeless’ catalogue of 2013 no doubt. Or are we destined to be wiped from the accessories catalogues for good?

Some bikes of course become the darlings of the media, some the riding public – and some are a hit with both. The Capo though, slipped through the net. Neither loved or hated by the press and frankly let down by Aprilia themselves by virtue of a poor dealer network, hardly the stuff that attracts hard earned dosh to swap sweaty palms. The public hardly got to see one, let alone try it … so the Capo came and went … and wasn’t missed with its passing. That, frankly, is tragic.

Oh well, mine still makes for a nice bit of shade ……