With a forecast for good weather and both the Molesworth and Rainbow roads open , Editor Ben Wilkins chucked the tent on the back of the ES700 Enduro for a dirty weekend loop .
If you read the last dirt issue , you might have seen I rode the our long term GasGas ES700 Enduro from Auckland to Nelson over the course of a couple of days . I was surprised at how comfortable it was – well , what I really mean is I was surprised it wasn ’ t less comfortable . With my prospective plans to make the ES700 into a lightweight adventure bike , this was good news . With no changes to the bike other than rolling the bars a little forwards , the 1200km trip wasn ’ t crippling .
FUEL CRISIS Happy knowing distances of 250km in one hit weren ’ t an issue from a comfort point of view , I set about planning a weekend loop from Nelson taking in the Molesworth and Rainbow roads , with a night at Lake Tennyson . I was intending to be self-sufficient for both food and fuel , doing the loop in one hit without dropping into Hanmer Springs . Accurately figuring out how much fuel I ’ d need on a napkin , led me to think I ’ d need more fuel than I had range from the 13.5 litre tank . I ’ d been getting between 4.2 and 4.5l / 100km ( 24-22km / l ) on the trip south . The
section from Blenheim to Lake Tennyson , a bit of exploring in the St James Valley and up through the Rainbow to fuel at St Arnaud was looking to be about 300km . 22km / l with 13.5 litres came up at 297km – running the tank dry . Way too close for comfort . I popped to my local bike shop and bought a 7.6 litre Giant Loop Armadillo fuel bag to strap to my luggage . Sorted . Giant Loop does a 3.8 litre , but I didn ’ t have the time to get one posted , so bought the bigger one that was in stock .
WHAT LUGGAGE ? Long time readers might know that I have an old BMW R80GS , on which I use Mosko Moto panniers . As I want the ES700 for lightweight adventuring , and I don ’ t like spending money on new if I have something already in the shed , I needed another luggage solution . I ’ ve had some Kreiga US20 and US10 bags for about 10 years and they ’ re still going strong , so that was my starting point . Kriega does a harness for its US bags , for use on dirt bikes . They ’ re for the newer bags with a different way of connecting , but I took a punt and bought one , as well as the heel
46 KIWI RIDER