Hi, we are back from our absolutely fantastic round the world trip. We did 22,000 miles through 22 countries in 16 weeks. The ride report and pictures is Russ’s very good blog. http://www.russolivant.blogspot.com/ so I am not going to re-hash that here.

We have been getting lots of questions as to how things stood up so I suggest if we use this thread to discuss any specifics.

We made a not very good video in Niagra falls that coverd, the preperation, Ride-abilty and Crash-abilty of the the Tenere's during our trip. Unfourtanlety there is a lot of wind noise the quality is not that great but it may be usefull for some. Here are the links
Preperation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCQhIfYsC9o
Ride-abilty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdpzFCoOtoo
Crash-abilty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR733ZQKqVk

In summary this how various components fared.

The bike – Fantastic. A true all rounder, we went scratching up the Swiss mountain passes, spent weeks offroad crossing Mongolia , rode 1000’s of miles of “road works “ in Russia, rode fast gravel tracks in Alaska and Canada and battled with traffic in some of the most congested cites in the world. In every circumstance I was very happy to be on the Tenere.

Comfort – We all had the standard seats expect for Russ who had a Gel Insert. After you have everything in the correct place most importantly the bars, everyone was more than happy with the comfort . The winding roads heated grips were one of our best ideas!!!

The luggage- Caribou cases with inner bags worked a treat. All the others on the trip with MM pannier and no inner bags were very jealous every time they carried their pannier up stairs.

Luggage frames – We used SW-Motech frames. We always suspected they may be the weak link and after some serious abuse they cracked. We had these welded up by our new best friends, the Iron Tigers Motor cycle club in Vladivostok.

The crashes – The bikes all stood up well to various incidents. Even though the crash bars were broken at the frame , they did save the water pump on a few occasions. Two of the bikes now have new front wheel rims but other than that only a few broken levers and some bent bars.

Consumables –
Tires - We used 4 rear tires and 3 fronts. We started on the standard Tourance , switched to TKC for the dirt, then used Dunlop 750 in Alaska (it’s the standard tire for the KLR 600 very cheap and not bad at all. The one extra rear tire was due to very excessive wear on the very sharp tarmac in Canada.

Chain & Sprockets – I used one new chain and one front sprocket. The standard chain did 20,000 miles. I still have the standard rear sprocket on. We did take some aluminium Renthal rear sprockets but this was a bike mistake, They do not last at all, especially in the dirt and as they wear they chew up the chain.

Oil & filter – We changed oil and filters as per service schedule. During the last 6,000 miles cruising at 5000 RPM the bikes did start pumping a lot of oil out the breather. We suspect that the valve that controls this (it an emissions thing) has got dirty and needs cleaning up. We will investigate in detail when the bikes get back.

We had 5 Tenere’s on the trip, we have all experienced the same issues everyone else has , ( Rectifier wiring etc).

One of the Tenere’s had a major issue it looks like a cam chain guide has broken but until we know for sure what the deal is, I suggest we leave that out for now and don’t speculate.

Thanks to everyone on this forum for their help before the trip the input was invaluable.

Let us know if you have any other questions .. Look forward to seeing everyone at a meet somewhere soon. (Ace Caf� when Jmo is back could be a good idea )