Turning my Motorcycle into a Round the World Machine! | S1E04

All right, we've got a problem. I'm gonna have to cut them off, which seems like a terrible thing to do to a brand new bike. My journey around the planet begins at North America's most northern drivable point. The plan is to ride through Canada and America before crossing over to Europe. From there, I'll make my way through the Middle East and Asia. After island hopping through Indonesia, it'll be Australia and finally, New Zealand. The end of my journey will be marked by the southernmost point of the South Island. I'm calling it the big spiral and this is act one, preparation. Hey everybody, it's time to modify the bike. If you missed my previous video, I purchased a brand new Kawasaki KLX 300 to take me around the world. In stock form, it's a fine bike, but it's not set up for long distance travel. The KLX has a fatal flaw in that it has a pretty short range of 200 kilometers on the stock tank and there isn't much for aftermarket options available for the bike. Well, I've been researching and researching and I found a guy in Europe and he's been designing a kit that he hasn't even sold it to anybody. I think I'm pretty much the first one to install this kit and this kit is gonna increase the fuel mileage. So it's going from a seven and a half liter tank to an 18 liter tank, which is more than double. The only thing is, is he's designed it for the 2023 and earlier and mine's a 2024 and he's not a hundred percent sure it's gonna fit, but we're gonna try and we're gonna see how it goes. The aftermarket fuel tank options for the KLX are limited. That is until I found an Austrian guy living in Italy that has been spending the last three years of his life designing an adventure kit for the KLX 300. It seems to solve all my problems. All right, so now that I've got the bike disassembled, it's time to start installing the kit. And the first thing I need to do is put a bracket on here and that's kind of the center point of the kit. Since I'm the first person, like this is still like basically a prototype, I would say. Nothing's labeled, so I'm gonna have to start sorting through all these parts and figuring out what needs to go there. It'll be a bit of a puzzle, but I'll be following instructional videos that the designer put together. All right, that was a lot of bits. Let's start installing the front mount. I've never worked on motorcycles before, but in my past I've spent a fair amount of time working on cars, which has given me enough confidence to tackle this project. All right, I got the top mount on, took a little longer than expected, but it's really important to get it right because it's kind of the central mounting point for the whole kit, but it's actually really nicely machined and a beautiful piece of hardware. So yeah, so far so good. Next up is some kind of wiring harness stuff. Let's see. All right, so I put in this wire from the starter relay, going all the way through here, gets ground there, and then goes up to the front where we're going to install the rally tower. The rally tower is a high point where I can mount my tablet. It'll be my main navigation device as I make my way around the world. All right, rally tower installed. So basically it's a fancy mount for my GPS. So if you can imagine sitting here, my GPS will be sitting here, allowing me to navigate. It also includes like, this is a mount for the fairing and stuff, and the headlight will sit here. So as I mentioned before, this kit is designed for the 2023 and older Kailh X300. And I have the 2024. And basically the main difference is some different plastics and a different headlight. And it's the headlight that is causing problems because it kind of fits in with the kit. I'll show you the difference. So yeah, that's the 2024 light. It's really nice actually. It's LED and a little unfortunate that I can't use it. So I got this one off eBay. This is the 2023 and older headlight, but they have different connectors. So one is four wire and one is three wires. So I've taken the four wire and figured out which ones are powered when at different settings and wired them up to the three pin H4 connector. So let's plug it in. And hopefully it works. All right, moment of truth here. Oh yes, it works. And high beam. Oh yeah. That's exactly what we want. I'm happy that worked because I'm not great at electrical, not much experience, but it was pretty basic. Just check which wires are getting power when you turn on the lights and turn them off, et cetera, et cetera. And then just wire them to the proper ones on the H4 connector. So I'm making progress. All right, so now that we have a working headlight, it's time to install the gas tank. And this is maybe the most exciting part for me because it's the part that's gonna really solve my distance issues. Plus they look really cool. So this is half of the tank and this half of the tank is already bigger than the stock tank. And you can see it's just half there. It's a split tank. And there's the other one on the ground. So the first thing we need to do is apply reflective sheets to help keep the heat off the tank. Dual tanks on most motorcycles are far too small for long distance travel. So one has to rely on the aftermarket to increase their range. All right, got the tanks prepped. Finally put them on the bike. All right, we've got a problem. There's been update to the 2024. It's not on the 2023 and I have to do some cutting. So when they changed the plastics for the 24, they also added these tabs and they're causing problems. So I'm gonna have to cut them off, which seems like a terrible thing to do to a brand new bike, but it's just gonna have to happen. Okay, let's get cutting, I guess. I did know there was some uncertainty about the model years before I bought the bike, but I also knew that the Japanese brands only change things in very small increments. But I did not expect to take a hacksaw to my brand new bike. So these tanks look so good and apparently I can start it now. So I'm gonna put some fuel in and start it for the first time with the new tanks. Hmm, what did I do wrong? Oh, here we go. That's awesome. There's a bit of smoke here. Maybe I got some liquid or maybe some of the paint got on there, but it's probably fine. Oh yeah, there's something wet there that was burning off, but awesome. All right, there's still more to do though. I have a lot of stuff to do here. So time to install the bash plate. Although things are moving along quickly in this video, I'm taking time with this install and small adjustments go on into the night. All right, it's a new day. I spent a lot of time just getting that skid plate and the tanks aligned right, just so you get a good panel gap, as they say, and it's looking pretty good. But now we've got to put on the whole front cover and that'll help make the whole thing look a lot more complete. When I found this kit, it really felt like serendipity. I had looked at so many motorcycle and aftermarket options and none of them seemed to fit the bill, but this kit turns a light bike into a round the world machine. The final results, I'm quite happy with. Oh my God, this kit looks so good. Gerald, the guy that designed this, he did such a good job. Everything fit together so well and it looks awesome. I'm so happy. But we're not done yet. I've got a handlebar to put on and some hand guards. And of course the computer is very important. So let's get to it. Being used to the adjustability of mountain bikes, a set of adjustable bar risers will allow me to fine tune my riding position. And this set of hand guards will be indispensable. Well, I've got the controls installed. Now it's time for the computer. So this is it. So it's just a big rugged tablet. It's not really the newest thing on the block, but it's designed for exactly what I wanna do, this adventure type riding. So I'll be able to see my maps and stuff on here. And actually I installed this on the bar. So that's gonna help me control the maps from the handlebars because when it rains, the touchscreen is not gonna work that well. With this processor being introduced in 2018, this tablet is a bit of a dinosaur. But with a rugged exterior and a mount designed for motorcycles, it should be a reliable choice. Okay, I'm so happy the way this came out. It's, to me, it's beautiful. Maybe I'm biased, but it's, I really like it. Like the tank is so cool. It goes all the way down here. The skid plate integrates with the tank. Got this working. I actually flipped it around to get this kind of working better. And yeah, oh, I just realized these are loose. I gotta do those up. But, oh man, this is the bike that's gonna take me around the world. I hope it works out. All right, let's go for a ride. With the helmet cam completely mounted in the wrong direction and my audio subpar, we'll keep this short. All right, so this is gonna be my view for the next couple of years, I think, which is crazy to think about. Looks like I need some gas. But yeah, so far the kit is working well. I had a few little things I had to adjust, like I had to rotate the computer, the tablet, and, oh, wrong gear. Yeah, I had to rotate the tablet, so this was coming on the other side. Actually, when I was unloading the bike, my bars rotated, so I made sure those are tight. But overall, it went on okay. But I have to get used to the location of the signal because it's a bit further out because my controls for the computer are now right next to the grip. So let's see how it feels standing up. Yeah, that's better. So I put these bar risers on. Feels a bit better standing up. All right, let's get some gas. Oops. All right, let's just put a little bit in, like three liters. Tank takes 18, but I don't really need that much right now, and I just wanna play it easy in case something goes wrong and I have to take the tanks off or something. But anyways, maybe we'll call it for this video. And yeah, the bike is working great. I think this tank is gonna be awesome. The windshield is helping for sure. Yeah, I think even just this, the tanks are kind of covering my legs a bit so I get a little bit less wind on the legs. So I'm pretty happy. In the next video, I will be doing a practice road test with first gear, and then I'm gonna be driving to Penticton to do my road test because that was the first available road test I could find. And Penticton is, I think it's about three, three and a bit hours away, maybe four. So that's gonna be interesting. It's a really nice, warm, hot place. And I chose it also because it's really flat there so I don't have hill starts and stuff. But yeah, it's gonna be interesting. I'm putting a bit of pressure on myself by doing it all the way out there because I'm gonna really wanna pass after driving that far. But anyways, thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.