hello and welcome back to the channel in this episode we look at the start of our
simpson desert adventure this is the plan we're going to leave sydney and travel 5
000 kilometers to the center of australia and hopefully back home unscathed this is the part
of the journey we're really interested in in the middle of australia lies the simpson desert
we'll be heading from west to east we'll enter the desert from mount dare on the western edge
and travel the 500 kilometers across the desert to birdsville 500 kilometers doesn't seem too much
when you look at the size and distances in australia but the simpson desert
is something else and those 500 kilometers are going to be quite a challenge
there are over 1100 dunes in the simpson desert they run in parallel so we're riding up and down
1100 dunes in that 500 kilometers that in itself is quite challenging the dunes themselves range in
size from 3 meters to 30 meters and in the west to east direction that we're going to
the dunes will be increasing in size as we go culminating in what they call big red
30 meters sand dune that if we get to the top will mark our completion of the simpson desert
before we start this journey we better set up our bikes now i've been working on my bike for
a little while and i think i'm pretty close so let me show you what i'm up to and what i need to do
okay for those that have been watching the channel for a bit you might have seen me using this
giant loop coyote bag in a few of my overnight videos i really enjoyed the giant loop bag packs
nice and tight sits close to the bike and it's really good for your overnight ride a couple
things i don't like about it though one of them is because of its shape and it has one main zipper
to get in and out it is a bit awkward opening that zipper and if you need to get in and out of it
you know several times during the day to get things out it's a bit of a pain
so because i want one a little bit more storage capacity and two a little bit easier to get in and
out of my luggage i'm actually going to change this and i'll show you what i've come up with
so this is my setup for the simpson desert as you can see i've changed to the
craga os 18. i have two os 18 bags sitting on the craga os base uh and i really like this setup
keeps all the weight got my heavy things down here um my tools or some tools spares
food cooking equipment things like that down nice and low clothes and some other things up higher
keeps it very tight for the bike it's easy to get in and out of a lot easier than
the giant loop quality the things i need to get to during the day the top bag is to see
here i've got all my camping gear in there so i've got my tent my sleeping bag uh my sleeping
pad um the other things i'll show you shortly what i've got in there and how it packs down
but this is my setup i'm really happy with this it makes things a little bit more modular easy to get
into it's giving me a lot more storage space and a lot more options for how and where i pack things
so for the simpson desert this is what we're going to do this is how we're going to carry everything
and hopefully it'll work well so when we take that top bag off this is what it looks like inside
you can see here what i've got easily accessible well easily enough so i've got my thermals
water bladder pillow and sap phone a few little things sitting on top once we take those out of
the way you can see what's really in the bag so down below we have my tent my sleeping bag
and my sleeping pad these are the things that i'm going to be needing every day so that's
why i've put them in one bag so i can easily take that bag off walk over to where i want to
set up my tent and i've got everything i need including my thermals have a good night's sleep
now for fuel to get across the simpson desert from where we're heading from dalhousie across
to birdsville it's about 500 kilometers 500 kilometers everything goes well and we can take
direct line we need to have fuel for contingencies for needing to divert around flooded creeks you
know higher fuel consumption in sand that type of thing so what i've got i've got standard tank 12.8
liters i've got my rear tank which is 16 liters so we've got there 18.8 liters to extend that
i have here one of these eight liter ladders and this will be used only for the main part of the
ride through the simpson that will be filled up and strapped somewhere like this and we'll be
using that fuel pretty much as soon as we can to get that out of the way and then this simply just
rolls up and can be stored in any of these bags or strapped here itself um that gives me around 26
liters i think uh what i'm aiming for is 30 liters so it might be another small fuel container um
i need to come up with that four liters somehow but we'll work it out
and that will be my 30 liters that should give me easily six 700 kilometer range
with this bike hopefully in sandy conditions done a little bit of testing and i'm pretty confident
with that so we'll see how that turns out yeah this bladder is going to be really important
for crossing the desert okay so the bike setup's almost complete
we've got the new luggage happy with that we've got the fuel got the fuel sorted out um we need to
do final service on the bike so that's new oil new oil filter uh new air filter and one of the last
things i need to do i need to get i'm looking at a tank bag that's going to have my filming
equipment my drone spare batteries charging equipment stuff like that so i need to get a a
tank nice tank bag will fit you good size but it's not gonna get in my way too much i've got
an idea what i want for that um and then i need to get some tyres the actual tyres for the trip
um and i'm leaning towards the michelins so what we'll do now we'll head down to the bike shop here
we are down at coastal motorcycle center west gosford all your honda kawasaki and ktm needs
i bought plenty of bikes from these guys so they know me well
let's go upstairs speak to matt in parts and see if he can fix me up with some tubes i'll go
and find the other bits i need they have a large parts and accessory showroom so it's easy to find
what you want i'm looking for tyres so they've got quite a range which is not really helping me much
but i want to have a closer look i think i've found what i need
so i've narrowed it down it's going to be michelin star cross medium or soft use the soft before now
it works that's what i'm going to use so there's my front tire michelin star cross 5 in the 90 100
21 soft compound that's my front tire now let's find a rear tyre uh star cross 5 of run before
that worked well uh not a 19 need a we got the 18 so i've run this before in a medium but i think
i want something a little bit firmer a little bit stronger and tougher something's going to last uh
hey this is exactly what i'm looking for michelin tracker in the 120 90 18 hopefully that'll fit on
okay oil accounts this is a a longer harder wearing tire so let's even get it out of me
that's it that's that's my rear
that's the front that's the combo i'm going to use for the desert
fingers crossed that's going to get me through i'm also after a tank bag and from what i've
tried on before and what fit nicely for me was this nelson rig where is it oh this one
nelson rig what's this one the rg 1045
that fits the rally well so i'm gonna grab one of those
all right so this is everything i think Tyres, spare tubes, tank bag i think that'll do it
thank you thank you so this is it the final luggage setup got my tank bag on got my krega
pannier bags in my top bag as you can see i've still got plenty of room to move around on the
bike i can stand up i can move my weight back uh i can move around on the bike and which really what
i need in the sand you need to be able to weight the bike um pretty much you need that everywhere
but this setup gives me the freedom of movement i want gives me the carrying capability with my
luggage my camera equipment sleeping stuff uh fuel i think this is going to be perfect
i only time will tell so got to do that service and then we're done next time you see us we're
on our way to the simpson so make sure you tune in for that it's going to be quite an adventure
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