On gravel, goal is to get dirty but not down

June 15, 2003|By Paul Duchene, Special to the Tribune.

As adventure touring on motorcycles expands into the Second and Third Worlds, blacktop highways become dusty memories.

Welcome to gravel roads.

Even in the U.S. gravel roads are a temptation. After all there's a certain exclusivity, secrecy and privacy associated with them, or they'd be paved.

And gravel roads set traps for the unwary. Apart from the chance of blasting all the paint off your fairing, sportbikes with short bars and the rider's weight on the front wheel are easily dropped if deep gravel is encountered.

"You get to a certain road and you stop and think: What's down there?," says Dwight Hughes, of Clearwater, Fla.

The 64-year-old Hughes has ridden all over Africa, Europe and South America on dual-sport bikes, once racking up 33,000 miles in 18 months. He has four adventure tourers, a Suzuki V-Strom and Ducati Elephant in Florida, a Kawasaki KLR 650 in Texas for trips into Mexico and a BMW 650GS in Heidelberg, Germany.

"I've learned that I can go much faster on gravel than you'd think; it actually smoothes out," says Hughes, who once rode to the bottom of Mexico's very steep and deep Copper Canyon two-up with his wife, "but she says never again!"

Hughes says he trusts his instincts and leaves mechanical problems of gravel riding to his long-distance riding companion of the last five years, Lance Raber, a 56-year-old retired emergency medical technician, from Oregon City, Ore. They met while touring in Chile in 1999.

"We have a deal," says Raber, "I keep his bike running properly, and he takes the pictures. If something goes wrong, Dwight gets off and crosses his arms."

Raber is a former motorcycle roadracer, flat-tracker and speedway rider with thousands of miles on gravel roads. He took a 5,000-mile trip through Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Argentina in 1999, 4,000 miles of which were on gravel at elevations up to 13,000 feet.

The genial Raber is taking things easy after an accident in the mountains above San Sebastian in Northern Spain in April that left him with a shoulder injury. He's quick to add the accident occurred on blacktop and his Kawasaki KLR650 is on its way home in a box.

"I overcooked a corner and stuffed it under a guardrail," he laughs. "Everything metal is bent, everything plastic is broken."

Raber says the KLR is ideal for bad roads and long days and compares it with the KTM 640 LC 4 Adventure R and the BMW F650GS, also single-cylinder dual-sport bikes with tires that perform well on gravel and blacktop.

"They all have good fork angle, the trail and rake has a lot to do with how a bike handles in gravel."

Fork rake is the angle the front forks project in front of the bike. A shallower fork angle puts the wheel farther forward and makes the steering slower. Trail is the distance between where a line through the forks hits the ground and the front tire contact patch. The longer that distance, the slower the steering.

Shallower fork angles make the bike steer more slowly, which is an advantage.

Raber says the first thing is to perform basic checks if you know you're going to be out in the puckerbrush. That includes brakes, tire pressures (and it's best to have near-new tires), fluid levels and oiling the chain. Take a tire repair kit, a decent set of tools and enough food and water to survive if you have to walk out.

Tips to stay on top of the bike

Beyond preparations, Lance Raber, a 56-year-old retired emergency medical technician from Oregon City, Ore., and frequent off-pavement rider, has some advice for riding ongravel roads:

- Keep a loose grip on the handlebars and let the front wheel dance.

- Slide to the rear of the seat to unweight the front wheel (rear-mounted luggage will help this, too). Be careful, if the front wheel is unweighted too much, the bike will not respond to steering input.

- Make speed changes slowly and smoothly.

- Try to stay in a tire track--it has less loose rock.

- Stay on the inside of a corner if you can; cars throw loose gravel to the outside.

- When you get into a "tank-slapper" (vibration in the bars that can throw the rider off) don't slam on the brakes, ease off the throttle. The back wheel will act as a gentle brake.

- Carry enough speed to make it over road condition changes (if sand or gravel gets deep for example). It's much harder to steer when you're going slowly.

- Gravel riding will teach you how to countersteer. If you find yourself in a slide, picture yourself as a flat-track racer; steer in the direction of the slide, add power and you'll have control. You can get out of most trouble with the throttle.

- Never modify the air box on your bike.

"I went with another friend to South America, and he'd put a [air] filter directly on the carburetor," Raber said. "The dust ate his motor in the middle of Peru; he never even saw Lake Titicaca. The stock air box draws from dead air under the seat," where there's much less dust.

Raber said he learned another important lesson from watching the recent Paris-Dakar Rally on television. The world's toughest off-road race crosses the Sahara.

"One of the KTM guys was sitting on his bike by the road, and the support helicopter landed to do an interview. He said, `Well I guess I should have waited for the pit crew. I thought I could use motor oil on the air cleaner--and here I am.' Air filter oil is much stickier than motor oil. The sand went right through [the oil]--into the engine."