Husky Trek 2022 - my Husqvarna 701 the morning after 2000 ks of tough stuff.

Motorcycle Adventure Dirt Bike TV supported proudly by Adventure Spec in the UK, Rally Raid Products, Giant Loop in the United States, Adventure Moto in Australia, Pirelli Tyres, Motel Oils, RK Chains and Australian Adventure Bike Magazine. Now you know I test a lot of bikes but finally I'm out on my own Husky 701 Enduro. For me the most versatile, capable bike out there for tough adventure. Now before you get too excited this is not the full length Husky Trek video that will be out on this channel in a couple of weeks. This is the morning after video, the trek is finished, how did my bike fare up, what broke, what worked and what I wouldn't do again. If you're really good I'll leave a bit of pov footage at the end so you get a feel of what a Husky Trek is all about. Now just a quick warning to those new to the sport, the Husky Trek caters for all levels of skill of riders from those starting out to those who really know how to mumbo. The footage on this video is from the hard breakouts. Brilliant conditions but really tested this bike out and you know we always review these bikes shiny and new. This bike has done a fair dinkum 10 000 k's, it's crossed the Flinders Ranges, it's crossed the top of Australia's north end in the Tropical Punch series, it's also been on a couple of Nuggets hard rides and and now it's been on the Husky Trek and believe me you can tell by the mud that was a fair dinkum ride of 2000 kilometers up round Gympie. So let's start the back of the bike, this is the second set of tyres on the bike during the ride. I had some Pirelli XC's on which are basically you know highly oriented off-road tyres and they wore out in about two days. I could probably get three days out of them but I wouldn't have had access to new tyres if I did that and easy changing. So I changed them on the end of day two and I got some Pirelli Rally Scorpions that have now done three days which was around 1200 k's in varied conditions. That's my preferred tyre of choice and those tyres would have lasted the entire adventure no doubt about it. With the Pirelli's the the front tyre seems to last two of the rears and that's the formula that I've roughly worked out. So we can see original chain and sprockets, this has done a heap of work and it's looking very dry at the moment but I'd like to see the front sprocket. I haven't taken that counter shaft cover off yet but well I'll have a look at that later on today. But yeah still lots of life left in that chain although it's on the way out. The the Arrow exhaust that I fitted before I headed off was excellent. It's not too loud, didn't mind the sound of that the entire ride. What I did like though was it wasn't hot, it didn't generate heat. You can see some of these straps have dropped down, they haven't melted. If that was the OEM muffler they would have stuck on there or just melted off like it is so damn hot. So let's keep going through the bike. The Mojave, you wouldn't believe it, the Mojave saddlebag wasn't opened in anger. The only time I opened it was to get some snakes out and they just work perfectly. The the way they sit behind the foot pegs it actually gives you a bit of support when you're standing going downhill. But yeah they were good and they're all dry inside like they have copped a piddling and yeah that zip is not waterproof but certainly keeps the mud and crap out and all the stuff in there is good. The zips in this kind of hard dirt we're in, those zips start to get a bit sticky and what I'd recommend if I was on a long ride is just to have a little bit of silicon spray just to keep them lubricated. A little double-ended dry bag on the back with some prog horn straps that work to treat so you can just bang take that off like that. Not that I'm doing it one-handed but there's the other one. So I just kept the jacket in here and a couple of odds and ends and you just flip it back like that and you've got access to the rear fuel tank. So during the ride Nugget snapped off his key in the in the fuel cap and that's why I have this a service fuel cap. It's just simple, just does undoes, does the job well. You can easily get it off. Yeah so that worked well. These prog horn straps really quick and if you want to get your seat off and I did that for an air pre-filter change all you do is you just got this prog horn strap you undo that and you can just move that forward and off it comes and you can easily get the seat out. A Fandango Pro bag. This one has really had a flogging. This has been with the bike almost since I got the bike and it's lasting well. There's been a change in design by Giant Loop and it's got a stronger structure to it but it kept all my stuff dust free and and dry and worked a treat. GPS you'll notice I didn't have it connected to the bike. I just ran off the battery. I got caught out a couple of times like the battery just ran out because we're on the road for ages and but I had a spare set of double A's. So that's the beauty of this garment. The 680T and now that's been superseded but you can just drop in a couple of double A batteries and and you're away again if if the day gets too long. Now switches. All the switches despite the absolute drubbing they got in all this these muddy conditions everything worked well. I spent a lot of time in Traction Control 2 with the Traction Control on. That is a surprisingly good you know when you're tired and you're riding in slippery mud and that is a surprisingly good setting to have the bike on and just looks after you. When it gets a little bit dry and you want to bang the back out a bit more I turn the Traction Control off and that's just holding that button for five seconds. But all that worked well. Now side stand. Now this side stand started playing up. There's a on these bikes there's a magnet that aligns to a sensor and that's got to be aligned. There were two occasions when the bike just stopped and I had to move the side stand around and you know just flick it up and down flick it up and down. Turn the bike off and reset it and then it was fine and after that you know by about day three it was faultless. Didn't have any problems at all. Air filter. All I did was change the pre-filter at the end of day three and that unifilter pre-filter kept the majority of dirt out of the out of the filter. You know the main filter and really impressed with that. This is one of the challenges I had. I lost my brakes due to fork oil. You can see the fork oil has dripped out of the seal come down and landed on the brake and so for the last day I didn't have any front brakes. Which it really changes the way you ride. Like you know usually use the front brakes to set up in dirt corners and you know to get the center move the center of gravity forward onto the front wheel. Couldn't do that so I had a tendency to overshoot corners a bit. So my response to that was just slow down. You just got to slow down. The name of the game if you're overshooting corners you're going to come into a car or truck and that's just stupid. So you just slow down. What I would say is both fork seals leaked at the same time. Now I don't think that's coincidental. I think what happened was on the end of day three. When I come in following a ride I wet down the forks and I make sure I get all the dried crap off them. You know before the next day's ride. Because that's the stuff that sticks to the fork leg and then it and then it rips the seal or disrupts the seal. But this time I used a cleaning solution and I reckon it did something and affected the forks. It's just too coincidental to lose both fork seals at within minutes of each other. And next time there's something I learned from that. I'm not going to put anything any coating on those apart from just some water and a bit of um you know a bit of cloth just to make sure they're clean. Because um yeah I think I stuffed up. I maybe sometimes put a bit of WD but that dries out seals and sometimes I use um some silicon. But this stuff I used did not work well. I was coming down a hill and this brake that this was sizzling and yeah that wasn't good. This um Pirelli Scorpion Rally on the front has really handled the conditions well. Now tyre pressures. Now I went far more conservative than I normally do. Because I noticed there was a lot of rocks where you could have easily got a pinch flat. So on the rear I was running 24 psi and on the front I was running 24 as well. Now that made it a little bit skatey. But at the end of the day you adjust to it and it was fine. But I didn't get a flat and nor did Nugget. And a lot of people did. And when I stopped when they were beside the road and say oh what psi were you running? Many of the riders said they didn't know. Which I mean that's a classic. You know it's nothing worse than getting a flat. I mean Nugget has absolute phobia about getting a flat. Because we're so bad at changing tyres. You can see all the oil has come through. Now the bash plate. This bash plate's really good. It's a bit more complex. Yeah it's a great big hunk of metal. And it's noisy. And we'll get into that in a second. But the great thing about it. If you see these lips here. Just it sticks out. It just protects the front end of the gear lever. Now I hit a rock head-on into that and locked that gear lever right round until it was stuck. But this prevented me snapping off the gear lever. Now I'm thinking about getting a plastic bash plate because of the noise. I just don't like this. This is very effective but it bounces the noise up. I put some rubber underneath the engine there to stop it. You can see a piece of rubber in there. But it hasn't done much. Now oil change. This bike has only had one oil change in the last 11,000 km. Nugget hasn't changed the oil on his bike. And you know that bike didn't miss a beat. And I think it's a tribute. Any bike that can survive Nugget not looking after it and treating it rough is a tribute to the bike. I'm going to keep these GL grab loops on the bike. Never used them but they come in handy. You know someone if you get stuck someone can just grab you and just pull you up really easily. So that's the bike in a nutshell. The lights on my bike. This is the 2021 bike. The lighting on this bike is significantly improved over the 2020 bike. And yeah I was really happy with the lights. Particularly coming in a couple of times we came in during the night. These flip mirrors continue to work well. Get out of the road. You can easily flip them out of the road if you want. Rear brakes. So time for them to be replaced. You can't see them because of the mud but yeah they need a replacement. So rear brakes they're looking a bit worse for wear as are the front. The front are completely knackered now they've been oiled. So they're going to be replaced. So what else am I going to do to the bike? It needs a significant look over now. Obviously it needs new fork seals. New oil. New oil filters. New air filter. And we'll have a look at that chain. It's probably got another thousand k's in it if I'm lucky. The other thing I'm going to do is the rear linkages now in the rear suspension. They haven't been done for a long time and and they need doing now. So I'll take the whole swing arm off and and do those linkages and re-oil them and make sure they're all good. Suspension setup for me for this ride was excellent. Yeah I was really impressed with it. There's a guy at the ride, Chris Watson, who's a multiple world champion and he's also a motorcycle dealer in Cessnock. And he was saying to me you know these aren't adventure tourers. The 701 is an adventure explorer and that's exactly what we've done on this Husky Trek. So the Husky Trek film and it'll be a full feature-length thing maybe over an hour because I've got so much good footage. That'll be out in a couple of weeks. You got the gate? What up? You got the gate? Yep. Get away. What are you doing? After you. Husky Trek, let's go! What a detour! you