Therapy & Maintenance

After our snowy ride my bike was in dire need of some maintenance. The chain was so badly stretched it was making clanking noises on the last day and was well beyond the red zone on the adjustment and it was still loose.

The rear tyre was also cactus, with less than 1mm of tread left. I got 12,256 kms from the Motoz Rallz which was less than the Motoz Adventure and it was noisier than the Adventure also, so I went back to the Adventure tyre on the rear.

I had two weeks off at christmas so it was time to get cracking. So the day I went to do it was surprise, surprise going to be 41°C. F*ck this heat. There's always tomorrow.

So next day I picked up a new rear tyre from Tyres for Bikes at Dural and started the process of replacing the tyre and the chain & sprockets. Plus the bike needed a good wash. 

I replaced the rear Tyre and rear sprocket first and put it back into the bike and then gave it a wash. 

I was fearing the front sprocket change as I remember how hard it was on the R1, but in actual fact is was quite easy. I Jammed a screwdriver through the chain from underneath, then undid the nut. I came off quite easy. I was surprised to see that it was heavily rust stained. inside where the shaft contacts the sprocket. I put the new sprocket on with some marine grease to hopefully stop the rust. We shall see how it looks at 60,000kms. Front drive sprocket 54nm. Rear drive sprocket nuts 100nm. 

I'd bought the new DID 525 Chain and sprockets before the trip but thought it better to put them on after the trip. The chain didn't get oiled the whole trip as it was coming off anyway. I'd bought a chain breaker previously when I was at AutoOne and time to actually use it. I ground the head off the pin with a grinder The chain breaker made quick work of pushing the pin out.

I was wondering what the f*ck a x-ring chain actually is. To the naked eye the x-rings look quite like o-rings, but on closer examination you can see they are actually made in the form of an 'x' or a '+'. Probably easier to say x-ring than +ring.

Using the chain breaker to make the new link was also easy, I've not used one before so I searched the University of  Youtube for knowledge. Pretty easy really once you know how. I used the rivet link as I don't trust using the circlip link. 

This is the 4th rear tyre I've put on the bike now with 33,600km on the dial. I would have been on the 6th on the R1 by now. Hopefully I'll get another 15k from this tyre.

I must say that working on the bike was quite therapeutic, not as good as riding it but just spending time on the bike was good for my soul. A well earned beer was required during after a job well done.

Scottay & Joffrey and I went out for the last ride of 2024 just to test out the new chain and tyre. How good does the bike handle with a new tyre eh?

Cheers Everyone hope you had a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year. Sadly it's back to work....

This tyre lasted how many kilometres? Motoz Adventure review.

So way back in March last year I put on a set of Motoz Tractionator Adventure tyres. You can read about that here. The front tyre was the worst tyre that I have ever used. The rear tyre however is a completely different story. Here is the tyre when it was new.

Motoz Tractionator Adventure

Initial thoughts were wow the tyre is pretty noisy on the tar, which it is but that's not really a concern for me as I wear ear plugs so cancels that part out. You can feel the knobs as you roll along slowly but as speed increases that disappears. On the tar it's a surprisingly good tyre, the only time I had a few little slides was on a wet roundabout, which I've done on sports tyres. Probably more of an indication of greasy road surface than anything else. I've also managed to keep up reasonably well with the boys on their Tuonos, MT10's on the tar, when they push to 10/10's is where I back off a bit but still very impressive to keep up on this knobby tyre.

I've never had an issue with the tyre riding off road or on the gravel. In the gravel it grips really well with the big knobs and propels you forward. Even on a few of the steep climbs I've done the AT powers up the hill the rear tyre feels pretty planted, even when it spins up, very controllable. Not that I spin the tyre much, which is probably why I got such great wear out of it. I've read people on Facebook forums saying they only get 4000kms out of these. They must be spinning the tyre all the time to wear it out that fast.

Even in the mud coming out of the Turon River creek crossing the rear tyre was pretty stable, didn't really slide about too much, it's got a pretty aggressive tread pattern. It's rated as a 80/20 tyre 80% offroad, 20% road bias. Scotty on the Vstrom was sliding around on his more road biased 50/50 tyre.

The following photo was taken at 13,500km's just before the Bridle Track ride about a month ago.

13,000 Kms

Total km's I put on this tyre was 15,371 and it still looked much like it did in the photo above. I probably could have got 16-17km out of it but don't want to push it to the limits.

So visiting Tyres for bikes today set on getting another one of these tyres I was disappointed to find out he sold the last one 10 minutes before I got there. Damn. So I have to choose something else.

The owner and another rider that was waiting recommended the Motoz Tractionator Rallz, he said the tyre was a bit softer than the adventure but was still a good tyre. So that's what I went with. Time to see how this tyre goes. I'll report back later on after I've used it and let you know my thoughts. The tread pattern of the Rallz is similar to the Adventure, so I'm hoping that it will feel similar. 

Motoz Tractionator Rallz

Edit: 9/1/2025

The Rallz Tyre did 12,256km before it was worn out. The tyre probably had less than 1mm of tread. Probably 80% road riding 20% dirt. I don't spin the tyre up in the dirt likes others do so probably why it last so well.