TAMP Season 2 Episode 17 Honda CRF 250 300 Special With Marc And Jamie The Lightweight Adventurers

Welcome to the trail and Adventure motorbike podcast with me Clive Barber and my good mate no Thom for
the days when you can't ride your bike there's always the trail and Adventure motorbike podcast
[Music] this week we're really happy to be
joined by Mark and Jamie the lightweight adventurers from off of YouTube I assume
they're talking about lightweight bikes not themselves that's a bit rude they're going to tell us all about themselves
their biking history and they're going to talk about their Channel there's an awful lot of CRF stuff on their channel
so if you're interested in the ubiquitous Honda please do check their Channel out but they also review other
stuff and they're starting to review other bikes as well they make great films we're also talking about the Honda
CRF 250 and 300 between us we've got five of them so hopefully our knowledge
will help you in your decisions as to whether you're going to buy one and what you're actually going to do to yours so
back listen and enjoy [Music]
massive thanks for joining us really appreciate it we've both been watching your films probably me more so than Noel
because Knowles had his CRF for quite a while now whereas I've only played mine for about a month I didn't realize because I've seen lots of your films and
I just and I didn't recently I've been changing the fork Springs oh my brilliant CRF so I went so I sort of
Googled how to change fork Springs and I was directed to that little film you made outside I thought that was funny
that you did you did the job out in the sunshine didn't you it wasn't a sort of a garage-based film really helped me enormously just to see you actually do
it step by step you know that's brilliant and we've had a few comments and people have said this has been like the first step into motorcycle for a
that we've ever had made us feel really good you know yeah absolutely I mean we we don't get masses of feedback when we
do get some great feedback the last podcast we did was just about technology for adventure biking and that's gone
down a storm we've had three or four people messages saying that's you know that's fantastic podcast really helpful but yeah it's lovely isn't it yeah it's
really nice well I was gonna say you saved my air box because I was going to cut my air box up and I watched your film on is it worth you know modifying
the air box and then thought well actually no it probably isn't I don't think yeah six
and two threes we've actually recently we haven't put the video out um we're waiting on another aspect to it
but we we put it on the dyno since and um it doesn't add power but it does add torque in the mid-range on the part
throttle it adds around about um two percent worth of talk overall so that in
reality it probably is worth it versus a compromise of then you know potentially ingesting dirt and dust and all the rest
of it but a way out for that video because I think we're um looking to develop the power of the CRF a little bit as well and I believe you've also
just had a fairly big milestone on YouTube as well yeah massive actually two and a half well yeah a quarter of a
million views now which is amazing superb isn't it yeah huge it's very it's
really been a bit of a rocket ship ride for us just over a year we're really on the channel and um it's been steady
growth but it's you almost get used to that growth and when it doesn't go quite as quick as it did last month if you start going what's going on what why
doesn't everyone love it you know 1 million subscribers and especially me
you know I'm such an analytical person I'm immediately I get on the phone to Jamie Wright what are we doing wrong what are we doing wrong what's up with
our performance here a bloody Nightmare and in fact it was just half term last week yeah that's it I didn't even think
about that I didn't even think about it excellent well congratulations that's fantastic we haven't had quite that many
listeners yet um yeah well I'm sure you will I mean it's a very different Market where you guys are into what we're in you know I think um as we've just
chatting a minute ago Clive that sort of being able to listen to the podcast is is brilliant we're we're only recently
coming into that which is who's Big she listened to radio and Spotify all the time but actually it's quite nice to to hear stuff you know
when you're on a long journey or whatever or a run yeah so uh yeah so you know what I've noticed about podcasts and and we've
spoken to Greg we we know Greg from his films but listen to Greg on a podcast and that was the first one I listened to from you guys we I found out a different
aspect to him if it's more Raw it's more personal he's a dick isn't it you've discovered that
yeah we've known it for years Greg if you're listening or watching we didn't know that there's more time isn't there
there's more depth to it I think that's what's interesting about it I think it's really immersive you know because you you build the image in your mind of
what's going on you you can almost interpret what they're saying slightly different to a video I think it's a very different medium James O'Brien always
says it's a vehicle that's intended to give him more time to talk to people than his normal three-minute Chats on
the radio so you can actually sit down and spend an hour or so with somebody and get to the depth of whatever they're
talking about just the method of listening I think listening to headphones I can't listen to a podcast just on a speaker or a speaker or just
on the phone speaker it's a totally different thing I often and I'll often be doing something whilst I'm listening to a podcast often work and often when I
look at that job it's start building job or something the work becomes so synonymous with what I was listening to at the time and yeah
you know I know exactly what I was listening to when I built that because it just it seems to just burn into your memory tell you what's
really lovely is I make David never listened to podcasts before and he's a builder and he started listening to ours
and he's just like discovered podcasts now and that is great because you can obviously you can listen to them when
you're building you can actually listen to something can't you really you can actually concentrate on two things at once they are a great thing to have on
in the background whilst you're doing something so so my dad lives in Spain and we're lucky enough we're going to see him in a few weeks time actually on
a bike we're going to bike down to his house so watch out for that video cheeky blog he's been big into podcasts for a
while and he's a little bit deaf so my morning routine when I stop at his house is I get woke up by his Alexa or
whatever it is in the kitchen on full blast and it's just of some sort of podcast started to come in and it'll be
some I know some news thing or some Global type informative podcast and
that's the first thing so Mark get ready to be woken up by that at full volume first thing in the morning [Music]
my first bike was a moped it was a Suzuki love that sounds really manly it sounds more like a scooter than a moped
it is a scooter it was a scooter back at like 20 odd years ago so yeah obviously
Mark and I are two of the people that run our YouTube channel they're lightweight adventurers but life of
motorbiking for me started at the age of 16 when I just want to start to get that first desire to want to go and adventure
and have a look at what there is outside of your local town you know I was never big into bikes as a kid but my mate who
you might have seen on some of the videos he introduced me he was always a biker nut so he bought a moped I also
bought a moped scooter and we used to go to a place called Matlock in uh Derbyshire Matlock bath it was where all
the bikers went and you get all these great bikes lined up down the side of the Chip Shop since that was what people
did on a Sunday and they would have us do on a little 50CC scooters would kind of ride up and that was a start for me
really my bike in lineage from then kind of went on to I don't know about it I had a CB 500 that was my first proper
bike and then a couple of sports bikes GSX up GSXR 600 and CBR 600 and then
moved on to the bike we've got now which is the CRF250 and that's my first adventure bike first bike that I'd ever
wanted to take off road just because of that desire of wanting to go and explore more and that's you know kind of offered
much more that way without ripping my arms off had you done much off-road before then zero absolutely nothing and
I've not done loads of Road stuff you know I've commuted to work and the normal Sunday Rider Mark will tell you
about what he's done but um yeah not being exposed an awful lot to biking but definitely not off-road why didn't you
go down the the Classic route of getting a GS 1200 as your first off-road bike ah nearly did we discussed this we
discussed that quite a lot because you know you watched the long way around and the long way down and obviously that's what gets almost everybody into
adventure riding and we almost did that we almost bought some really old gs's but then we came up with this notion I
don't know why because it's never actually going to happen we came up with this notion that we wanted a bike that if you needed to you could load onto a
canoe and get rode across a river or something so it needed to be light enough for that and that really
truthfully was where we started looking at lighter bikes and very much the lightweight side of Adventure biking
rather than that big heavy cumbersome bike that can take you on very long distances you know I've all got to have
a dream it might just be the river Trent but you'll get across it probably where his moped is now
so on the other bikes like the CBR do you travel on those bikes no that was uh
that's very much just just me getting into biking I was uh I was 17 18 I wanted something well I rode my mates
against you I wasn't that bothered about bikes he said have a go on this I instantly got a big the big biker
smiling was hooked on it from there on in and uh and it was really just a toy it was yeah traveling I used to work in
York and was traveling back and forth to Nottingham so that was more fun than sitting in a little Renault 5 or
something on the motorway I was just a nicer way to get about really and that's all I had it for just just a toy Mark
Jonah fill us in on your history so my name's Mark I'm a teacher I'm in Lincoln but I'm not I'm not a Lincoln native so
be an ex-military come from all over and I started off in East Anglia really I swear I grew up and I don't know if
you've ever been to East Anglia or or if you went there as a younger kid but it's a bit of a lawless County in a lot of
ways it's flat and it's sparse and the police us are spread out so and that's relevant because when I was 12 13 14
ride in big 400 dirt bikes through the forest was common so that's how I got
into bikes my older brother would sit me on the back he taught me how to operate a bike which I couldn't touch the floor
with and then I'd go as fast as my eyeballs with no helmet around them would allow me you know through the
forest terrifying when I look back at it now I think that's utterly utterly stupid although saying that that's the
sort of thing Noel still does but stupid in many ways it could have hurt myself could have hurt anybody else
let alone all the now moral Green Lane things that the lightweight adventurers and Jamie and I really sign up to but
what kind of bikes were you riding then you know why it was many many years ago 30 odd years ago but Kawasaki Suzuki's
uh you name it the brands but anywhere 250 up so there's still two strokes then or they've gone to four stroke a bit of
a mixture of both the one bike that I really really remember riding because I rode it more often than not because I
could touch forwards a little hotel jet 50. do you know those little things um twist and go things a bit of a soft
Road or by but I love that thing I pretty much borrowed that whenever we went out because I could go anywhere on it and touch it makes it automatic so I
had a similar story really I was riding lots of great big cr250s and Mako scramblers and all kinds but the RM80
that a friend of mine had was the most fun to ride and a Honda Monkey Bike was the most fun to ride there you go yeah now I make it was a fantastic little
bike that was great at the time I was probably already six foot but it was still great fun yeah great
because it's manageable and actually you can right there's an adage you know that it's more fun riding to slow back fast
than a Fastback slow right so and that that definitely applied to when I was a kid but but yeah that's what got me into
bikes and um then I joined the Air Force and uh the Air Force pays well I'm qualified as an engineer so I knew how
to fix things and it paid me well so there I was with the ability to do up a bike with money burning a hole in my
pocket so uh at 21 I did my direct access and went out and got the fastest singer I could which at the time was a
Thundercat why is it f600 a Thundercat banged up whole thing rode that for a year chose to trade it in and of course
the next bike you go to naturally is a TL thousand right yeah at 22 years old
called the Widowmaker you know I wasn't married but it tried to kill me still you'd have any falls on these bikes uh
the TL yeah it was my first one so uh yeah someone sorted that into a field at 85. oh yeah and walked away from it you
know just it was in Scotland I was living in Scotland at the time I'd gone round the bend of a well-known Road on a
friend's Fireblade maybe two weeks before and I took the bend at some speed whatever speed anyway match that speed
on the TL but the TL just didn't want to Corner it that's not what they do it
didn't go around the bend and I tried to so we both ended up in the ditch right okay your body didn't hit anything well
so I sort of fell into this drainage ditch you know the sort of cut out the dips at the bottom of the at the side of
the street and then um there was like this done how to describe it but drain actual
brick build drain which blocked the ditch I don't know how to best describe it but my body slammed up against that
and stopped me from whatever speed I was doing at the time 2030 having skid along the road stop dead so the whole right
hand side of me was was bruised it was black and blue I had organized hematomas which is ultimately just a bruise in
between muscles from head to toe but nothing broken and I walked away from it
which inside yeah so of course I fixed that bike up and quickly moved it on uh
because I couldn't afford the claim on the insurance and um yeah a bit unscrupulous now when I think about it but I put an mot on it moved it along
I'm sure it's legal yeah yeah and I got myself a flyer blade because I'd like the other guy rode that around for a
while and then once I was old enough and sensible enough I traded in and got a brand new 636 zx636 and that was my bike
then for a good few years that eventually led me on to racing so I raced for a few years raised 600 through
the through the air force I say raise it's like a handful of events raced on that I did a number of track days and
then when that was getting too fast moved down to Classic 250s two strokes and then classic one two fives Two
Strokes again you know the older prettiest loved it loved it loved it I'm starting to see what you mean now Jamie
this is annoying isn't it yeah this really knocks us all out of the water and then and then of course the
sold Master 36 we've got Benelli tourney and this is where things start to change for me because tornado 2007 a beautiful
red Italian Exotica thing took it down to London got stolen overnight flat dead no 27 no no claims bike's gone police
did recover it but it was it was totaled and um so well done police met precise yeah so I bought a 10 air 660 because
that's all I could afford and I hated it I utterly hated it but I was riding at home I'd met my girlfriend Katie now my
wife and uh I was riding from one's place to another to go see her along the
a38 near Burton I'll never forget it just outside Nottingham and I had a panic attack and also I pulled over the
side of the road sweating palpitations don't know what it was all about lift the bike home at 30 or 40. parked up
didn't ride again for I don't know eight years what was that attack brought on by do you think you know what I've never ever
put my finger on it I just felt incredibly vulnerable and I didn't I didn't ride for eight or nine years
packed up at my parents house didn't ride it sold it without riding it somebody come and collected it used the
money to get married and then the only other time I've ridden a bike is I rode a bike around the state's a Harley
Davidson around the um Grand Canyon it's the only other time I've written since until I got a Sierra Jamie it's getting worse Jesus Christ he's done everything
I'm sorry yeah I'm sorry I'm I'm like a throw and through biker who had such a
Hiatus from bikes I lost that biker identity you know and so when we created the lightweight adventurers it found
like not to get all philosophical but I felt like I was regaining this identity you know you're welcome Mark yeah
is that what brought you back to bike and then the off-roading stuff or what was the impetus that got you back on on
two wheels well so and Jamie will back me up on this one we'd actually always said we wanted this YouTuber um Channel
which was adventure and I'm big into my Land Rovers Love My Land Rovers so we Jamie had a Land Rover at a time we said
well we'll make it a Land Rover Adventure Channel whatever it is but actually adventuring on four wheels is
bulky it's heavy it's hard it's cumbersome and and it was Jamie I gotta
put it all down to you mate and you said well this would be so much easier on bikes well we we initially decided it
was going to be an adventure Cooking Channel I'd venture to a place and we
even recorded a few of these and they were terrible yeah oh I want to see these oh yeah like most people drop some
minutes um we we'd we'd spend hours getting down to some secluded beach somewhere and
we'd carry all these big things out because the land driver can carry loads of stuff so obviously you take all of the cooking gear that you can stoves and
everything this is going straight to Dave it sounds better than a lot of the stuff
that is on Dave actually possibly yeah maybe this is a tangent we'll have
a second Channel but uh but yeah I think we were looking at um the idea was
almost like a Land Rover version of The Hairy bikers I think and we called it feed the sensors that was the idea
and it was awful because we didn't know how to record everything we had it was
far too difficult because now we're walking there with all this gear and then you're the only cook that was the
only cook um and not even but uh but YouTube doesn't know that but yeah so we kind of
we said look there's got to be a better way Liz you know how can we how can we quench that thirst for wanting to be
somewhere remote-ish doing something that not everybody does and being both bikers we said well why
don't we we'd watch the long way around and we thought wow that looks brilliant you know in outer Mongolia or something
like that truth is you don't get to go there every weekend but you know maybe we can go to the Peak District and
recreate a similar sort of thing and that's really where the channels start to get born out of was that with a
mixture of Beau miles type stuff the backyard Adventure can you do and that's where the lightweight element comes it
sort of works on a few levels lightweight Adventure you don't have to go very far you don't have to carry very
much stuff and then when we go to the pub we're pretty lightweight as well so it kind of works on all three levels
it's like a clean Adventure almost not a not a burden down with all weights either physically or metaphorically call
it what you will but it's it's a adventure light or a lightweight Adventure whichever way you want to see it but what's the name of that guy
Alistair that we met in Wales no oh so he does like his you know he's I
think he's got kids and he used to travel the world and bicycles and things like that and now he does these mini
adventures and we actually bumped into him in a garage in in Wales when we were on our trip last year I congratulated
him on a film that he didn't make so well that's the leading come on you've
got to tell us now that's a bad story than anything oh it was a Dave cornflake film I mean they're so similar these two
people in their filmmaking style and Dave Conway had scooted around Japan I
congratulated Alistair Humphries on his film that Dave conthright made uh he very
politely told me he didn't make that film and I for some reason started to try and convince him that no he actually
did make that film which explains when I went and chatted to him he just assumed I was taking the piss
Ed my girlfriend always said you know don't approach people that you that you only know off the internet or something
or something that just says it's disastrous to even attempt it I just get told don't approach people
[Music]
filming these trips have you developed a way that it doesn't for you spoil the
experience of riding bikes and having fun we've almost flipped it on its head and um actually the filming gives us
that experience it's it's the reason to go out you know and I know that sounds quite that almost sounds like we're
taking away the fun of biking you don't because you now you're doing different things on bikes to get it on film how many people might just Cruise the same
road at the 30 mile road that they've cruised all the while or off-road track or whatever and it almost becomes samey
well now actually now you've got to be you've got to think about it how to how to make this creative how to make it fun
how to make it engaging and that makes the whole riding experience different yeah well Greg I mean we keep talking
about Greg but Greg's tapped in this hasn't he with the shoot and ride thing and I went out on Sunday purely to take
a photograph right sort of two hours just to take a picture because it gives you a it gives you a
point doesn't it almost gives a reason to go out because if you otherwise if you didn't have that reason you might just go
I can't really be bothered so I'll sit and watch this or I'll do that sort of thing but if we know we've got a we've
got to produce some content otherwise everything kind of dies away the channel dies so we go right have you got a day
spare well let's go and take the bikes out let's get to the Peak District or even if that's a local Lane yeah it
really does it almost fuels the bike rides but it does it does to a degree
take away that flowing of the adventure I think that's what you're talking about and I know Greg on your previous podcast
talked about yo yo stop and no documentary is 100 accurate I think is the words are used and he's right
because you're right a bit and you'll go I need to capture this but I've just done it saying can you look back there
and ride that again oh but you fell off last time can you fall off this time you know it's um so there is a little bit of
that but we try and we try to be as honest as we can in the videos because that that authenticity for us is hugely
important so sometimes if we haven't captured it we'll just accept that it's not being captured that bit and
something else will happen later on I mean we've we've tried to recreate things before or haven't we in and it's
fair to say we're rubbish at that we we did a film for a local KTM dealer and we had this great chat at the end of it and
he said oh we should have recorded that so I put the camera there and it was like hey Jamie tell me again
[Laughter] it's horrendous yeah yeah people see right through it I
think you need to be a very good actor to pull that off yeah if all other film crew with you that's that's the easy yeah these people have you normally got
someone just one round just capturing everything and then that's what you get those golden nuggets darling we have
yeah yeah so it seems had it ruined watching
other people's films for you I always find the like the ride away shot I'm just so distracted because all I'm
thinking is God that guy had to come so far back to get his camera again you know how trusting was he to leave his
camera there whilst he rode after the Horizon and then came back again you're so aware of it aren't you once you've done it a few times you know what it
does for me it makes me critique our films continuously and that's where it
spoils it so I watch theirs and go that's so much better than ours every single time I watch it I've really beat
myself up because I know the heartache that they've gone through to do it and and maybe we've only done 75 of that
heartache or 50 or whatever it is I think we should go through that process
you know we should we should bleed as much as these people I think the worst thing is when you put so much effort in
and it just flops and we were actually talking to Vanessa Rook uh a week or two
ago you're the girl on the bike we got on the bike then yeah she was saying that they're saying to us
she says you know you put a lot of effort into a video and you'll think brilliant you know spend all these hours
and it'll just for some reason I'll do really badly and then something else that went together in you know an hour
or two goes on and it just takes off and people just like it and it's it's such a strange you need to get more cats in
your videos I think you know the amount of shite that gets
had 10 million views on it and you just think you just literally no effort gone into that yeah
yeah cats or a blonde wig and a little bit of lipstick yeah well Jamie there you go have you seen that woman that
tends to do Motorcycle Maintenance she's an older lady and she basically wears a
see-through top so you can see everything I'm definitely going to search it out
later
but she gets tens thousands of views of course she does I'm not sure I'd get the
same if I put a see-through top on I don't know if we would lose subscribers yeah [Music]
why did you go for the crfs we checked out every single bike on the market which filled a relevant criteria had to
be smallish capacity cheap had to be cheap had to be economical and robust
and simple to use and we checked out the Himalayan the 390 help me out here mate
the old that we just wanted something that was rugged and at all that was the initial bit so the old mt450 the
Harley-Davidson oh the older Army bike yeah we even looked at those you know and then I was on the brink of buying
Earth g310 GS and and it was it was you actually mate you saved me again you just said let's just nip up the road
let's go see what 100 have got reliable robust you don't have to think about it and the second I saw it I was like yeah
that's the tool for the job so it wasn't born out for a love of the brand or the Aesthetics or it was because it was
functional but also capable you know it's we we looked at the GS and and the Himalayan
and we started to get hung up a little bit by our ground clearance and would it start to limit us at some point because
we imagine they were going to ride vertical drop-offs and all sorts of things which you'd never do mainly on
some sort of average Lane but um but as soon as Mark sat on it he just said this feels good it feels right and we rode
around the car park and I think you bought it within 10 minutes didn't you yeah yeah and what I really liked about
CRF is it sold as this trail bike beginner's trail bike commuter I think some magazines cited it as a winter hack
and I know a lot a lot of people use them for that but the second I sat on it I thought I could travel anywhere on
this and ultimately that's what we've gone on to do you know we're taking them down to the south of Spain and we've
been up to north of Scotland and we really should go everywhere we use them very differently to a lot of people but I thought once I'm on it that's cool I
don't have to think about it it's got all the basic things and I know wherever I return my wheel it's going to take me
there and the first ones you bought were else or rallies the first one uh mix so
Jamie's got the L and I've got the rally yeah and these are the same ones you've stuck with those first bikes that you bought yeah yeah well I initially
because we were looking at trying to save money I had and still have and it's the video that's going to come out at some point and I decided to try in a
adapt a different bike so I'm not going to say too much about it because it's not been put together yet but that that
kind of ended in tears a little bit because it does end up costing me money to adapt it and then was still not not
really designed I was effectively trying to build a Scrambler type thing and it still wasn't really we went down a
couple of local lanes and um Mark Just Whipped past me on the on this CRF and
it gave us a massive Delta between what he could achieve and what I could achieve you know so yeah so then that
was it wasn't long before the owl got got bought you bought yours new my mine was like six months old or so wasn't it
so yeah yeah very similar bites of course and when when 300 came out did
that get you thinking I need to now change to the 300. No No Yeah because
well and you know what for me no because I'd started out by 250 to another point
it's I don't know how to best describe it I didn't buy it because it's a CRF250 I
bought it because it's a tool and it's all mine now so having three extra brake horsepower a few extra kilos less
who cares who cares you know I'm not going to go scramble up this wild Ravine
if I've got five 10 15 extra brake horsepower it's not how I ride 24 brake horsepower is Ample Ample to
take me thousands of miles and go over any terrain and and realistically we're all I would say in this group
to good Riders not excellent not poor you're not going to outright a CRF250
Rally or an L you're just not I mean I think it's worth saying that I think Honda have gone in the right direction by take it from a 250 to a 300 I think
they have and I think if you're going to go and buy a brand new bike the 300 is a
better bike than the 250 uh just purely because it's got that bit of extra power and a couple other gimmicks
but I just wish they'd make a 400. yeah they've got a 450 haven't they but
it's um it is then a different bike you know what's the price twice the price much more servicing to be done on it and
also you everything that we kind of love about the 250 and the 300s start to fall
away unfortunately you know you've got to worry about service in it maintain it much more and it becomes much more of a
baby to look after rather than the sort of tool that you can just put to one side and just you know it's going to
work I get a little bit miffed with The Beginner's bike tag yeah yeah yeah because yes it is it'd be fun it's a
fantastic beginner's bike but it's also a fantastic bike for having Adventures on and doing trail riding and it'll
pretty much do everything you need it to do the only thing I wouldn't probably want to do is commute to be honest but
other than that the biggest limiting factor is the person that sat on it ultimately you know as soon as you can get your skill level to somewhere where
you can handle the terrain we've got a friend who's who's very well very capable on a bike and he was uh keeping
up with Husqvarna 700 701s off-road happily for KTM 500s and he was happily
riding along On His 250 rally no problem at all so you're absolutely right it's it doesn't need to be classed as that
beginner bike you can have fun on it if you've uh if you want to you know absolutely and it's a Honda so you know
pretty much every time you press the button even though you haven't changed the oil or the air filter for 20 years
no that is going to work I watched that video the other day of uh filter actually on the side of the tree yeah
we've all seen it never allowed to forget that so it's so
unfair because he's actually really good at working on his bikes and doing maintenance I think if you'd have seen
the chains that Jamie and I just recently replaced on our bikes we wouldn't have a single thing to say so we don't care for our bikes some
sometimes it'll get ridden get put in the shed and forgotten about until it gets used again it's so tempting at this
stage to defend the whole air filter debacle but it would ruin the film it
would ruin the film only for the 12 people that are listening and it would really annoy the people that have heard
me bang on about it about the Injustice of it in the past but if I just say that it was a k n
reusable filter the air box Jubilee clip that come loose and it had let some
water in and that was the fault that day not the air filter and if you were going
to defend it that's what you would have said but look if you didn't I'm glad you never went there it's getting edited out it was great major mechanical in the uh
in the titles at the end and that's what happened what I really loved about watching that film and you know just to
make it serious is how everybody really rallied around you know you know there was nobody watching on from the sideways
just criticizing and that's a camaraderie biker ship isn't it
[Music] it's just become a thing though I mean I've been next to River Crossings where
somebody's we've sort of come through first and I'm stood next to Clive and Greg's filming somebody coming through
next and Clive is just next to you going four four but that's good Telly right that's just
good for the viewer that's also not true uh it's great isn't it enjoying the misfortune of others is one of the July
but again the reality is seriously that after falling off somebody's got the
shot then they help you up or help you 100 over
foreign what's been revolutionary for me is that I have old air cooled things like
can you see that yeah yeah yeah yeah so that thing that XL 600 and behind it
there's a there's a an XR650L now these are both pretty much have the same air
cooled 600 650 engine in and I've gone through so many cylinders and pistons
and all sorts and I've had all starvation issues and a lot of my time with these bikes has been taken up with
them dealing with the mechanics of them whereas since I've had the CRF this CRF that I bought this one that I've changed
into a white one I'd have to bother with the engine at all I know the engine's absolutely fine it's done 29 000 miles
really but I know the engine's just fine I can spend all my time just fiddling with the Cosmetic things on it I know
that the engine is probably good for another 30 000 miles and you know what a lot of people say that makes the bike
vanilla because it's not got character whatever character by wow coming from the world of Land Rovers I know character means broken things yeah so
hey if you want character on an adventure bike then you're on a hide into nowhere because character comes a
bunch and you get to love it and its character
is then it's vanilla and and that's a beautiful thing you know because you can it's Dependable it's reliable in all
these words do you have any other bikes squirreled away in the garage apart from the the one you've been trying to build yeah so
we've got this Jamie's got a scrambler in the CRF and then I've got a an r9t a bit BMW r90 Urban GS if you can picture
that yeah um recently they look amazing is they no
that's that's a bike that's always described as having character isn't it yeah so this has got character and and
character again is is things that come a compromise to other things it's got character because when you Revit the
Torx deer twists a bike yes and it's got character because it's it's oil cooled air cooled and so if you sit in lights
it gets red art which I've not experienced yet so their character aren't they it's a bit of a nothingness
bike in the sense that is it for going fast on not overly it's got 100 brake horsepower
but it's not a sports bike can you take it off-road yeah you can but your spoilers beautiful looks you know so
it's got character in those ways yeah it's all doing lots of off-road on them isn't it I've only seen them on
Instagram and I can't remember what they're called old abuse ever come across them no I mean there's a lot of
people that really abuse them you know hey I can bring myself to do it it's like punching a puppy in the face
if this has got road tires on it never goes down no you know what weirdly I've just um I've just bought some Kendra big
box to put on it but simply for the looks yeah simply for the looks here if I if it goes off-road it'll be down a
gravel track to take me and me and him camping somewhere so I said about my big I got a big KTM adventure bike I said
I'm not going to take it off road it's just going to be my road bike and within three days of having it it was going
down Green lanes and it's now got knobbly tires on and Bash protection they're so good we took out a KTM 1290
and we couldn't believe how good that was off-road with road ties on it was it was incredible it just wears its weight
so nicely down low it feels planted we yeah I mean Katie hammock I think a
great brand for for decent off-road bikes anyway they just feel good off the road yeah we
loved both of their bikes and hopefully we're actually going back to right there the 890r which we're so so excited about
that should be the Unicorn bike right but yeah there's nothing to look at but it looks incredible yeah it probably is
too big you're absolutely right probably is but it still looks incredible [Music]
between us we have one two three four five crfs five there's two questions
there why have you got two null of the same bike that's a good question and
then uh I guess the next question is has anybody actually had any issues with their crfs
you can go first now why have you got two I got a rally to begin with and I got a rally because my friend had won
and he sorted it brilliantly it had all the things on it that I would ever want to put on it so it came to me in a great state and I really enjoyed riding it but
it slightly unnerved me that I couldn't see the engine and that there was a lighter version out there and then this
CRF250L came up for sale there was a neighbor of Greg's and he was letting me
have it for a really good price so I thought well I'll buy it and do it up and then I can really compare the two and actually I think I'd prefer the
rally to the L strangely but that's probably because it is so well sorted and it's got a much better suspension
than the L that I've got and you know what um if you'd followed our Channel there's a I did a video where I chopped
the Plastics on the rally so you can see the engine and it's uh I think it's that's probably made it the best
all-round bike yeah I actually shared that video with Nolan when I'm gonna do this bearing in my my bike's only about
a month old that's I mean that's you've got them in your hand there right haven't you you're massive massive balls
in your hand yeah but it'll transform it it's brilliant there's just no need to have them there it's it's basically it's
a it's a it's a thing to make it look like a rally bike that would normally have petrol tanks hanging down there and
all it does is it acts as a dirt storage for not being able to clean your bike properly that corner is kind of the
first thing to hit isn't it yeah it's rare to see one that doesn't have that little corner that sticks out I fitted
crash bars because I was so desperate to protect them so what I've done is ultimately just added 10 kilos of scaffolding around my bike and made it I
don't know six inches wide or whatever it was yeah ridiculous you really don't need crash bars because your handlebars
tend to hit the ground before the engine I don't think I've ever done any engine damage on any of my bikes I mean but
this was my first ever off-road bike and I was I didn't know you know I come from a a way of road bikes where you protect
your Plastics at all costs so yeah hey since I've gone and blown myself up with a Dremel trying to cut my Plastics often
my Dremel you borrowed all right I never got back you can have it back it's just not gonna
work so you can so you've got two are you going to sell one of them then are you moving uh no because I think one I
will never keeps your bike for more than about 10 minutes also we went uh we went to Northumberland last August and well
we didn't take trail bikes we went on road bikes but there was a little contingency there at trail bikes and when I looked at the photographs
afterwards of where they'd been I thought actually if I'd taken my rally bike I don't think I would want to have
taken it on those gnarly sort of river Crossings and tracks they took it on so it'd be quite nice to have a dedicated trail bike and my bike I'll keep more as
a travel bike with slightly less aggressive tires on it and or just do what we do and make your CRF250 rally
the one and all bike and that's what I was just about to say we we don't you know that was the other thing for us we
wanted to be able to ride to the trails do whatever we needed to do and then ride back that is key to what the CRF
250s give you they give you that to be able to keep up with the the dedicated off-roaders and also you know you can
trundle on the motorway at 70 mile an hour on them as well might not be the most comfortable but you can do it and
you can do it for a long time as we did recently I sort of I dream of having one and this garage will be so much easier
to deal with if there was just one bike in it well you know hardships you go through no I mean stays in your garage
but you know what here here we are saying how amazing the CRF250 is and it's a one bike one thing only and we've
both got yet another bike sitting in the garage because sometimes bikers we like variety you know and you just need a
different one bike if that makes sense okay it gives you two bites but maybe you need a third one bike okay but also
this has been part of my my God I nearly said that the journey word then part of
my motorcycle Journey has been discovering which genre of motorcycling best suits me and I'm still sort of feel
like I'm trying to find that out a little bit I always kind of piss people off by saying I actually kind of prefer
Road riding to trail riding in a hashtag Scooter Boy uh but I'm still just undecided as to
which which is the best one for me I think I just enjoy all the different types I still occasionally late at night
start looking at cruises oh for sake Jesus we're talking to these other two not you stop talking now don't get
yourself in any deeper hey we've we've looked at Cruisers you've looked at Bobbers I've got an r9t
in the garage hey we're there with you know sorry guys you're the outside here mate bloody um let's send this podcast
now so the second part of my question was has anybody actually had any issues or do you do we know of any significant
issues that crfs 250s and 300s have had well we've had one issue between us
haven't we mate take yeah take over yeah when you first got your url yeah well actually yeah mechanically
um my l i when I bought it brand new one of the first trips we did well I
think the very first trip we did was go to the Peak District and I rode my brand new bike off-road and we all know how rocky the Peak District is
yeah with my minutes of Road experience off-road experience but our second trip
was to Wales and we decided to do the Tet north to south in Wales and by the end of that trip I'd
done only I think it was less than a thousand miles on the bike the clutch had gone on it but
mechanically that was the only problem I had I did go back to Honda and backers and forwards and you know that they
didn't really want to change it but they did change it in the end put a new clutch in and then that one was fine for the next couple of thousand miles I had
no problems so I don't know if it was just at installation Rider error unlikely
do you feel like you'd ridden the clutch quite a lot and that oh not really one
of the weird thing was one of the questions I got was well you've not ridden It Off Road have you yeah
it is well it's not really made for that I was like what are you what are you talking about
yeah so It ultimately yeah it maybe it was when I was learning maybe I was riding the clutch a bit more but even so
it shouldn't happen that in 600 miles a year so we got a new one in and I've since actually upgraded and put a new
clutch in it just the other week actually but other than that mechanically that's the only problem
that either of us experienced that in a flat tire that's about it have you ever drowned them no and you've really tried
no they didn't need to know that one when we went through the river Colorado oh no it was a puddle wasn't it
the end of a horrible day's ride it's long days riding in Wales and it was on that trip and uh we got to the end and
we'd we've got a planned place that we're going to stop off and we booked in for for a camp and Mark says do you want
to just go over this bit just this one last little bit and I said and it was a bit cold it'd been raining all day and I
said oh mate I just don't want to end up laying down in a puddle because I'm tired
that's exactly what he wants oh so we we wrote up this sort of scraggly little
lane and we got to the top and it was just what was a massive puddle ultimately you know and there's nowhere
getting around it all the size would just merged and you just it was just harder work to get around and I had no real experience of going through water
Crossings so Mark with his big gangly legs because he's unusually tall went first and he was able to put his
feet down and keep himself all right and there was a big bank on the left-hand side so I thought if I keep close to that and go nice and slow I can just
kind of paddle with one thought and so that's what it did to about the middle and then the the front wheel went and
the whole bike just did that sort of Comedy straight over to the side and the whole thing went under the water your
head went under your head Your Head and Shoulder went under the whole bike went under like this bike had done 400 miles
at this point did you manage to kill the engine yeah the engine kind of stopped I quickly jumped off because I just I was
already in the water jumped off it luckily I don't know how it it kind of I got it up we just started it up and it
just blew stuff straight I was absolutely fine I was really lucky but yeah and I'd gone all the way all one
side all the helmet was under the water I was properly submerged on luckily the
exhaust side that was really useful note to readers it's probably best to check your air box before you actually try and
start your engine after it's been underwater yeah absolutely I knew that we completely know this now and we've
done no you know multiple water Crossings but at that time you know really Jamie had ridden 400 miles
off-road well 400 miles on an off-road bike let alone off-road and I was
literally I'm month or so ahead of you were you with that amateur and we tackled all of Wales Tech and so this is how we learned we went and it was a
Bachelors of fire you know it wasn't oh should we just go to a course should we get some mates to show us that no no feet first let's do this we've got two
off-road bikes right bits of whales are really hard aren't they oh really hard Mark Mark end up in tears on what
there's a big old um there's a big old climb I think it's in in North Wales and we got halfway up a market this is like
on day two of a five day trip and I think at that point it was ready for coming home weren't you yeah I spent a
lot a long time in the early stages very very nervous of of kind of having a go
at anything on the bike because it was all new you know I'd written plenty of time I've done a lot of commuting on road so I was happy on a road
and there's a few times where Mark and I got to something that looked quite daunting and you know it it's worse if
you kind of half commit to it isn't it if you kind of if you're a bit tentative you've had it you know you either got to
say I'm not doing it or you've got to just ride with confidence and have confidence all about keep keeping
momentum isn't it really just keeping going a bit of momentum yeah trusting the time of conviction you know having a
bit of conviction about it absolutely yes as soon as you you can't if you half
commit everything's going to get difficult if you try and paddle everything that's going to get difficult if you just if you accept that the bike
will do its job it'll track you on which the CRF does brilliantly and the tires will grip did nine times out of ten
[Music] I wanted to also talk about
accessorizing and improving and upgrading I think the first thing to say before we talk about the actual upgrades
is the disposability and the upgradability of the CRF is a reason we bought it because you only pay four
grand whatever it is you're not paying 14 000 for brand new GSA which you then take a Dremel to so that's the beauty of
the CRF I don't think there's one component or one area on the bike that we've not upgraded in some respect I
think the first upgrade was the tires we went to the Michelin trackers which if you've not tried them hands down
probably one of the best 50 50 tires out there we tried all the different sprocket combinations we've done the
airbod airbod marks suspension we've we've replaced all the suspension
hyper Pro setup the handlebars are different the screens are different
wow I mean you you literally name it you look around the bike we've changed a lot but it's all basic stuff and it's all
cheap so I reckon I've probably only laid on about 650 700 quid onto my
rally which I bought for four thousand one hundred so for less than five grand now I've got a really sorted really
sorted rally and Jamie's in a very similar boat you know we were lucky Adventure spec um sent us a whole bunch
of Kit to review and keep so he's got a whole adventure adventure spec Suite on
his L and and that has transformed his bike from being a trail bike with not a
lot to do really into this rally Adventure tool machine calling what you
will yeah so yeah we've done a lot of upgrades um I think my favorite upgrade
my favorite upgrade has got to be chopping the Plastics so I'm really I'm really excited for you to do that Clive
and I want you to send us videos and photos yeah I am very very tempted it's just that the thought of like you say
point of no return Isn't it really yeah and it you can get new plastic yeah they cost cost about 250 quid yeah it's not
expected it's not cheap for both sides do you think do you think a Dremel is the best tool for it yeah yeah and if I
could do it again I would see I cut mine I cut the first one off the bike and then put it up what I really should have
done is just release the lower Plastics pulled it aside make sure I was cutting in safe maybe put something behind it and just cut it on the bike to get the
form correct the problem with this a spinning tool cutting plastic it quite often melts rather than does a clean cut
so you're always left with a little bit exactly what this did so I just I just got another piece of plastic d-bird and
then I bought some car trim you know that goes around the doors and Boots of old cars at least and I uh I trimmed it
off with that and it looks practically Factory finished yeah another good trick for trim which I
somebody once gave me because I had a fiberglass cowl on the front which had a really sharp edge to it and somebody
just said I'll just get some petrol pipe and a really sharp standing knife and cut the length of the petrol pipe black
fuel pipe and then slip that over and that's still on the bike today that's really good how dare you how absolutely
dare you say that when you've taken the piss out of my foot Peg extensions what I made myself oh go on tell us about
these they're an absolute work of art aberration
you're there in your workshop on an anvil beating some makeshift they make fantastic foot rests
for them why are you beating something out of an old tin can it was actually Four mil stainless steel
bar oh it's turning to something like that you like it looks nice looks like something you've built whilst you've been Shipwrecked
they're great actually I basically just used an angle grinder and cut like little V's all the way along 25 25 mil
strip of bent I didn't have anything to heat the Steeler so I just had to it with a hammer for about an hour
until I got to the rough shape then I drilled just drilled four holes and bolted them off look great but do you
have an online shop Clive and you had to do this to get out of ubekistan you were saying
just to get out of my garage I've got big feet what can I tell you now the reason I did it was because a lot of the
the foot Peg bigger foot pegs you buy they're wider but they're not longer
so to me a footpeg extension should should be able to get your whole foot on it
not your whole not literally 12 inches that'd be ridiculous running boards you need running boards why'd I think of
that yeah let's go back to Cruisers and I also made myself a um side stand
extension well the side stands quite short so if you put it if you're on a slope it's just the bike's just going to
fall over so I've got like a one inch piece of plastic Cuban heel on it now
yeah people don't wear those anymore I have to I'm in them now so I can see
the camera yeah you stood up we were just talking about accessories
Jamie have you got anything that you've done to your bike apart from all the Adventure spec stuff that you've got
yeah I was really lucky with all that you know I think if I was going to nail down one upgrade that I did that I think
I don't want to use the word revolutionize because people throw that around a lot but really made a big difference the way they buy handles and
rides and it's it's the suspension I didn't realize how soft the suspension was until I changed it out and we
initially went to some Progressive Springs like the hyper Pro and went for almost the cheap option on the back
and that worked and then my my shock seemed to to blow at some point and I
wasn't really sure what it was but that warranted me to go out and spend a bit more money ultimately so I got the yss
uh shock on the back that's what it's on now and it really really made a big difference to how I could ride and how I
could kind of just soak up all of the undulation of the off-road stuff and it was really that coupled with the tires
the suspension of tires I think the two bit best things that anybody can do to make the bike handle better and they had
made a big difference other than that aesthetically I I started I actually went through a bit of a process I
I went on a weight shedding Journey so I changed out the whole exhaust and I
managed to save several kilos on that I don't know exactly how much I can't remember yeah aftermarket exhaust aftermarket down pipe and everything
else so that that was really good I've since put the old exhaust back on because I kept getting a headache
because you can't get a nice light exhaust that's quiet so I went back to the old one just because it was a lot
nicer to go along the lanes within a lot nice to do the long journey so the thing I did is I swapped out the battery for a
lithium battery to to save a bit of weight there but again it's almost a bit pointless it's this this I wanted it to
be nice and light and Nimble whatever you did it just made it a nightmare on the bloody Motorway because the front
the nose kept going light and I I get a little bit of nose wheel wobble so I've since now I've started I've added weight
back in and I've just fitted a massive tank to it a bit a big 3.2 gallon tank
because the biggest problem we had when we were both going out together is the Rally's got much better range than the
owl and Mark would never have to think about fueling never I think about petrol
stations and every five year I'd get about 100 miles out of a tank which meant that at around about 80 to 90
miles I was starting to think about a fuel station which doesn't give you an awful lot of riding So eventually I I
managed to Source a tank online from off Facebook's almost selling it and I put
that on just a few weeks ago and we did a ride a long ride and it was the first time we'd gone out and I didn't have to
think about fueling at all and it was such a good such a good feeling I've got some numbers on the 300 so the the for
the new 300 the L is 7.8 liters and the rally is 12.8 liters so you get an extra
five liters which equates to 130 miles versus about 215 miles and on
the rally that's significant because my Rally's only got 10.2 liters I think or whatever it is and actually now that
Jamie's got 13 and a half you never had to think about Fuel and I ride up but but my bum was proper twitching and I've
not felt that for a long long time and we got to my LED thing was flashing and
I went over the intercom I said Jamie mate my thing's been flashing for like the next 10 miles and we're in the back
end of Beyond like there is not another petrol station I've been worried about fuel for many many years so thanks mate
you've transferred that bird for me haven't you you'd take that I've had it for two years you can have it now well
we did find though when he went and put the fuel in is he still had about a liter and a half two liters in the tank so if you have got a 250l or or a rally
then actually that flashing light comes on and you've still got a fair bit of this I reckon you've got 20 to 25 miles
once you start flushing yeah I always thought they'd sort of worked it out that you had about 30. right and maybe
that's the case I certainly did 10 and still had a liter and a half left you know which was a surprise so Jimmy
your bike does it feel obviously it's so much fatter tank do you quite like the feel of it now that it's a wider looking
thing that you're looking down on oh you know what no I think it looks incredible so it's the yellow I initially wanted
one of the black tanks because I thought well black tank coming off black tank going back on um but actually I've got one of the
yellow ones and it looks very off-roading looks very dirt biking um and I have a transparent one or yeah
so it's a h Abyss or a Subs I don't know how you'd say it but you can kind of you can see the fuel level inside which is
quite a nice thing um but it's it hasn't I've not tried it
off road yet we've not done any any off-road stuff so I don't know how it handles there but on road it feels a lot
nicer actually it just brings a bit of weight to the front end of the bike it seems to sit a little bit nicer on on
motorways yeah I'm genuinely very very pleased with it and I think again I think it's I mean you always everybody
you do you go oh that's the best mod it's just the latest mod it's the latest can I just say from a complete Outsiders
I think it looks absolutely incredible it's it's transformed the look from a a trail bike to a smaller Venture bike I
think it looks great well that's going to be my next question what what have you done to prepare the bikes for going on longer Adventures well we're just now
starting to get to the point where we've done all of the the routine mods you know the swapping a component out for
this Y and Z and now we're getting into the nitty-gritty of right I mean I even said to you Jamie I've got this foam
thing across my rental handlebars I said that's Prime real estate so I'm gonna take that off I'm gonna take that off
and I'm going to weld bits to the crossbar to mount cameras because because I'm picking up cameras and
GoPros and stuff when you're riding is is treacherous so right that's that's Prime real estate so I'm going to weld a
little bracket on there and that's where my GoPro is going to sit and I've wired in new USBs and I've just hacked plastic
apart to get there you know and my little extra screen you know I've just drilled bits in my screen to hold but
you know so we're starting to now go down the Clive School of bike modification and just take a hacksaw and
a drill to it some very fine engineering I've told you about that booked us into his Workshop we were booked in in a
couple of weeks man so I'll bring my files yeah if you do that you'll need to bring a hammer and a chisel I've got the
Hammers yeah I think we're very much we've got to the stage now where we're not bothered about bike the bike's looking pretty anymore you know there's still
relatively new mines like two years old and if you run a sports bike a two-year-old sports bike you'd be like
that's good you know nothing's going anywhere near that that doesn't make it look even better whereas now it's very
much I just want it to be a tool that I can take get out the out the garage go and use to see something that I've not
seen before or experience something I've not experienced before so and we're very much getting down to kind of racks that
are usable that make life easy anything that makes my life on the bike easy is
the next thing that's going to go onto the bike looks and Aesthetics are very much not on my radar at the minute I
think that is the thing with a dirt bike it's almost a relief when you do scratch something for the first time because it's like thank God for that just get on
with it now and it's interesting seeing a lot of obviously new people to dirt bikes and they're like you know what do
you use to clean the Plastics with what a hose I don't know Prime Plastics have got a big crease in it and it was from a
really impressive fall in the campsite
yeah my little legs didn't help me out again and the bike went over and I've got a crease down the right hand side
and it's never never fully popped out I've tried it a few times but actually I got to the point where I go actually it's a battle scar now and it reminds me
of that trip it's a Memory isn't it yeah a memory absolutely and that's that's how we've gone then that's the point I was just trying to make now we're trying
to add a story to the bikes you know not trying to force it at all but every little sticker every little scratch every little Dent every accidental drill
hole where I've just gone haphazard with a drill right that's that's part of its tapestry that's its Journey no you'll
like that yeah and um but yeah I love that we'd gone to the adventure bike what was
it Jamie the adventure in Overland Festival down in Stratford yes great great little show if you've never been old Vehicles so from massive trucks down
to Little Land Rovers and bikes check out the video there's a video Clive I'll sing you yes I'll have a look yeah I
haven't watched that one I watched all the others every single one guy who had this BMW which was about 74
million years old and and it was beautiful this thing had been accidentally curated into this adventure
machine and every little thing you'd say oh and this is when I fell off in you know Scandinavia and this is where a
buffalo rammed me off my bike in you know whatever whatever I was like I love that I love that it tells a story it's
an adventure yeah and Mark said about I said and this is where I bought it from Hull yeah and this is the new thing that
I bought online I got it cheap it was 14.99 and this is Noel will be like oh
this is where I spilled my latte a cream tea all over the handlebar Glide will be
this is a bit of Driftwood which I use as handlebars now The Latte thing actually that's that's a
big adventure thing we we've spoken to a friend of ours Gordon you might have seen him on the channel but he's he did
the GS trophy on the BMW GS Trophy and we had a look around his bike once and he talked to us and he said the best mod
he's made is a cup holder and he had it like tie wrapped but he said that's when I go to the
castle I could put my latte in there I remember a lot of people used to cut a tennis ball in half and put a wet rag in
in the tennis ball which was strapped to your handlebar so you had something to clean your visor with brilliant it was a popular one in the olden days I like
that right my dog's got one less tennis ball tonight yeah you've done anything to your bikes by the way you talk about
us doing mods and stuff have you have you done much to yours have you had I know yours is Dyke so yeah bar risers
foot Peg extensions brackets homemade tail tidy hand guards new grips taking
the rear foot pegs off homemade side stand extension 12 volt USB sump guard rear brake protector I
haven't done suspension yet because I'm waiting for Adam to come up with the rally rate stuff so apparently I don't know if I'm allowed to say this but
apparently it's shipped from Holland last week so should be arriving and I'm I'm getting straight down there to get
that fitted making a film about that Moto X full system the reason I put the new exhaust on a for weight but also I
really hate those mild steel headers in fact null had a real problem getting his old one off because they just rust and
rot really quite quickly so I wanted to put a stainless steel header pipe the
end can is horrible as well that just rusts the back I mean the originals they just they know I mean that's where
they're saving their money you know the engine's brilliant but the components were like that of where the money's saving while you get a cheap bike
ultimately well the nice thing is they're made in Thailand there's a lot of spares mate a lot of parts made in Thailand and you can actually buy them
from biker bits quite cheaply so for a full exhaust system it wasn't very much money was it 140 quid or something it's
not a problem just ordered an Outback motor Tech pannier rack because Greg's going to give me some magadans to use in
the next film yeah that I think that would be great bags as well I think they'll look good on the bike yeah yeah they do look big it'd be interesting but
they do look big but I'm assuming you can roll them down and make them a little bit smaller hopefully you do shop
for a lot of beer at about four o'clock most days yeah yeah which is why it'll be useful yeah absolutely the one mod
I've done that I got a bit of stick for because it seemed to be a bit unnecessary to some people was that
because my exhaust header was a nightmare to get off and that's because it had so much weather pelted at it by the front wheel
for 29 000 miles so it had really sealed itself into the block but on trial bikes
I've had quite a lot of them have come where I've put on a splash guard which is a bit of heat proof plastic that
wraps you know goes around just a flat piece of plastic with a hole in it and a cut that allows you to get it over the
header and then just wire tie it to the frame so the reason you got stick for that was I showed you my one of my
homemade mods and you just went that's very ugly yeah and then showed you and then yeah and then you put that on I
just had cut paste that splash guard gets completely
covered and obliterated but it's all the that would have hit the block and now he's kept back by this this splash
guard so I think that's quite a good little mod that most people don't put on the L version yeah yeah let's Clive are
you uh I don't need one I've got a rally but I'm gonna cut up as soon as we finish recording this podcast I'm gonna
post the bits to you is if you've got the confidence to do it the worst case scenario is if it goes
wrong they're not overly expensive for a new set of plastics and it's but you know you you stand to really
individualize it make it your own you know I'm just worried what I'm worried what Clyde's going to reincarnate the plastic as you know he's going to take
it off the pan and then put it on as a c or I don't know I've also just just done a welding course as well over the last
four Saturdays Anything Could Happen
so I guess the final thing I wanted to talk about was the riding experience which we haven't really touched upon
really so I've I've I've come from 16 years of riding a KTM Enduro bike which
I still absolutely love it's a massive grin that snap of acceleration is is
utterly compelling but I really enjoy riding my 300.
because it is so easy to ride the clutch is so light the power comes in Rel even
though some people seem to complain about it they've obviously you know never ridden something that's ready to race before
so that just I literally just can slide it out of my garage on a on a gravel
drive and have it sliding all the way out I have to do a 90 degree turn to get onto the road kind of thing and it's
just so lovely to ride like that you can being a less powerful bike I think you
said earlier Mark you can absolutely just cane it and it's great fun I was amazed at just how great they are on the
motorway I rode back from Wales last year in the rain and was pretty much kept completely dry by the weather
protection on it I didn't have waterproof pants on and I arrived home with a dry crotch pretty much which is quite unheard of in the rain even being
waterproofs really when you say pants do you mean trousers there were trousers there were yeah the new yeah because
pants in England means something completely different doesn't it and I believe we are still in England but I was laughing my head off coming up the
third lane on the motorway thinking I want a 250 yeah overtaking 911
but often yeah on a 250 on the motorway it was just incredible but also a big
what you're saying about you've got to change your mindset a little bit I don't like because I always tried to be quite kind to my bikes I've never really liked
the idea of revving them quite highly but so that was a big adjustment for me was that you do have to rev this bike
yeah well don't you to get the best out of it you know you have to be not shy of
getting up into the sort of the top two thirds of the range Facebook's a friend of us Gordon are going to bring him up
again but apparently there's two maps naturally on the bike anyway so if you roll on the power nice and gently you'll
be on one map which is a very easy learner friendly one if you've ripped the throttle back quickly it'll jump it
into it's more Snappy map it's more racer map and you'll actually feel a little bit of a difference and you'll
hear a little bit of a step change in the engine as well so you can depend on you can almost control it a little bit
better in that sense as well so if you know you want to be a bit more uh sort of ripping up the lanes or up the road
or whatever it might be if you open up your throttle quicker and like you say dive it's not going to throw you off the back which is brilliant
um yeah you can kind of get a little bit of power out of it that way as well I I think it's a in the sense it's a really
poor Enduro bike which a lot of people buy them for ridiculously it's it's not that it's a it's a trail bike it's uh I
see it as a small adventure bike and the second you see it as a downgraded adventure bike yeah you're in a perfect
sense you wouldn't get on a massive 1200 GS or a V-Strom or whatever it is snap
the throttle and think great I'm going into a power slides but you'd get on it and you'd get up to speed and you'd
you'd sweep around that's what the 250 does and it does it better than any of those bigger bikes in my opinion it's an
adventure bike not a Enduro bike it just looks like one you know and the second
you accept that you're in for a much better experience it's very much that bike of compromise isn't it as soon as
you accept that it's it's gonna be a compromise somewhere but actually if you want good it's everything which it kind
of is you're in a great place yeah well this is something John Ross said to me about his he said it's it's not very
good at one particular thing but it's very good but lots of different things yeah yeah well there's a there's a
reason that a lot of people take them around the world you know um you wouldn't go around the world on a hard-end Euro or a trials bike it just
wouldn't I mean you try and ride Coast to Coast if you're a bit of an idiot I've seen a video of someone doing that that's not what it's for but something
like this you can go out on Sunday and take a nice little trail ride you can equally ride to Norway
you just gotta accept that it might not be as good as something else in all of these things but the difference is it
can do all of these things the Swiss Army bike yep have you all suffered riding altitude at all uh well we did go
to we do live in Lincolnshire no so um have you ever been up high enough that
you've had any issues or uh no I mean we were recently in higher I don't know
whether we let the cat out of the bag our video comes out this Sunday but we're off to the Isle of Skye and we rode to the top of some mountains-ish on
some of the passes and we've we felt no no discernible difference I mean my
hands slowed down faster than my bike so yeah uh no no discernible differences
hand grips we talked about mods heated hand grips and and don't let anybody ever laugh at you I got some super muffs
same as Jamie did hey we're talking about mods yeah hands
down pun intended the best mods yeah we're a big fan of the bar muffs I mean
they look horrible they they do they don't look good it makes your bike look like a moose but
they if you want warm hands we rode to Sky and we rode through snow and we had
little Trail gloves on and that is all we wore with the heated grips yeah I had my Adventures back Trail gloves on at
some points heater grips moths perfect and no you talk about the riding experience we in 72 hours or less we
covered 1300 miles or so and we we rode through every single season I didn't
come out with it with dry pants either trousers or pants Clive in fact I was drenched but it was fine we got off the
other end and was like cool that was a thing it wasn't fine apparently there was some storm last week and we were in
it yeah it was horrendous of the height thing because I noticed
that one day in the Pyrenees last October that my bike really struggled and I could only put it down to the height that I was at I don't know how
high it was but it really really it was struggling to keep up with the other two three hundreds I was with no we've got
through an hour and a half of talking about the CRS without without you mentioning fuel economy because I was
thinking about it and I was like don't mention it don't mention fuel economy don't mention fuel economy but whilst you're not while still not listening
don't you get a slight kind of little doesn't your heart leap a little bit every time you fill it up and you think
it 12 quid I can't believe I've done all that and it was 12 quids at least two days we search out the most expensive
fuel don't we put it here we go yes I'm spending less than a tenor yeah they are incredible aren't they yeah unbelievable
yeah it just it contributes to that cheap disposability affordability that means Adventure it makes it accessible
hey we're all middle-aged guys here kids responsibilities whatever whatever money matters you know Money Matters so you
could have the latest KTM 690 with all the farkles and Haagen-Dazs on it or you
can have a CRF rally and I bet I bet you have as much fun on the rally or the Oriole yeah um you might not get there
quite as fast but you'll have eight grand in your pocket after you've crushed it [Music]
we've got a little I'm not going to say too much about it here but we are working on a project which will bring a
250 up to a 300 in comparison and we'll have that Dyno tested we'll
have it all buttoned up so leave that with us like a blown engine to me fingers crossed not they're well proven
elsewhere in the world hey leave it with us if if it comes to nothing it comes to nothing but this is that's our that's
our goal you know that's what we're hoping for and if we can bring everybody on the 200 up to 300 power
then then I think we're in a really great space well my 250 my 250 rally it
had a 300 kit fitted to it this kit from America right I think it's just a barrel
isn't it pretty much but you have to put the uh is it an EJ K so an EJ an egk is
a funny old thing it just it modifies signals it doesn't give its own signals and it and what we found already doing a
lot of the sort of research to the bike is the bikes will really run lean and the djk leans it out so an ejk does give
discernible difference but not in the right way not in the way that we're gonna go we're going to go very much down the uh the ECU route
um and we've been speaking with Thailand a lot about this and we've got a guy in UK is helping us so
yeah again not to give too much away but fingers fingers crossed if we can squeeze out a couple of extra torques
and maybe half a break horsepower I think will be comparable to a 300 not yet not the same 300 will always be
better displacement is the key but um it'll be comparable yeah well this one got put back because when it got drowned
it was very quickly drained and sorted and it locked Hydra locked in the barrel
but the one thing that then failed was that water got into that EJ K unit yeah yeah yeah and completely screwed it yeah
that really put him off and just had the whole thing put back to stock again foreign
the biggest adjustment that you can make to the the CRF250 or the 300s power is
your mindset and I know that sounds ridiculous thing to say but as soon as you accept that you're not on a ready to
race or a you know a gas gas or something hey you're adventuring yeah
you're not Moto enduroing or whatever the term might be you're adventuring and that means taking in the world it can
still be exciting hey you can't see squirrels at 70 miles an hour down the track you know so it's exciting in that
sense but you don't also need to be going 0 to 60 down forest tracks in my
mind you know so I think that's that's the biggest adjustment you can make is your mindset towards
what you're out there to do on the bike because as soon as you realize you're going that a little bit slower hey you
know what this is really enjoyable [Music]
well that was a very enjoyable chat with Mark and with Jamie what you actually heard then was edited down from nearly
two hours of us just chatting and having a laugh properly nice blokes so make
sure you have a look at their YouTube channel the lightweight adventurers and tell them that we sent you next week
we're going to be joined by Darren higginson who features in the film London to Sydney which is a full-length
motorcycle Adventure film on YouTube Darren's one of two blokes who rode all
the way from London to Sydney and he's going to tell us the story that features in that film make sure you check out
YouTube and watch the film before listening to the podcast we'll see you next time thanks for listening
[Music] foreign
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