Wow. It’s already been a couple of weeks since I quit my job and time seems to be flying. I’m still working on getting my Houston life in order before I can even officially start preparing the bike. I’m certainly enjoying my time not having to wake up but my days are still just as full. The only bad part is that I’m still not shifted my spending habits into Frugal Traveler Mode. I’m still going out with friends to bars and to eat. I have to stop and return to my life of rice and canned tuna. It is just a frightening thing to no longer see deposits into my bank account.
Here she is ready to accecpt the new tank
I have managed to sneak a little bike work by installing my Aqualine 28 liters Safari tank from JustGasTanks.com. They generously gave me a discount lessening the blow of transforming a trail riding bike into a world tourer.
Installation Overview
The install was very simple. The most difficult part was cleaning the tank of all the plastic shavings that remained in it after manufacturing. There was a bit of flashing and tons of shavings from the various drilled holes like the petcock. I just followed the instructions of using a little bit of fuel and shaking it around the tank until it comes out clean. This process took about 30 minutes of manhandling the giant plastic beast.
The instructions were perfectly clear as I couldn’t really add anything here to be helpful other than to iterate again… remove ALL the plastic shavings.
All ready for the test ride
The actual installation took only 5 or 10 minutes of removing the old tank and fitting the Safari tank in place.
Safari Tank Review
After filling up the tank completely, not surprisingly the riding characteristics of the bike changed completely. The bike was still nimble enough to ride filled up, but was hardly nimble. I don’t know if it just took a while to get used to the added weight or if was just burning the top gallon lightened the load enough such that it was no longer as bad of a pig. I rode the bike with it about 80% full offroad a bit just in the neighborhood and it was okay. My stock suspension wasn’t bottoming out or anything, but it was fairly squishy.
In the future I won’t fill up the tank to the top as I’ll rarely need the 300+ mile range that it affords. The tank is HUGE but didn’t really weigh much more than the stock when it was empty.
The tank is no wider than the handlebars and is no harder to weave in and out of traffic
I still have a ton of things left to do to the bike like install my Happy Trails hard panniers, Trail Tech X2 headlight, and Vapor computer. I also have a bunch of maintenance items to address as well as a few other little things. Both HT and Trail Tech were amazing and decided to donate equipment to support my ride.