Norway assault vehicle 95% ready...

It deep ends (hah!) how much ground clearance the plate actually costs,
Shirley. I'd rather drag a plate along the deck than frame, or exhaust
headers, or other fragile bits. If the thing is standing off by a
couple of inches, otoh, I'd lose it - or the standoffs.

I'd go along with this, though. I can't see a problem with leaving it
on for civilisation, but being prepared to remove it when conditions
suggest it (ie before they dictate it).

 

Titanium these days, old boy.

The Russians, of course, use oak.

 

I thought you were hitting the trackless wastes, North of the Arctic
Circle. It was the width of Steve's panniers that struck me really:
whereas you lads riding stuff that's narrower than a Nissan Micra might
be OK, even when the soft snow is coming up over your feet on the pegs,
he's going to be dragging those things through the snow. Perhaps.
Dragging them both might even be OK, but if one was to hit and drag,
that's an off waiting to happen.

By your description of snow clogging around the motor with a potential
for overheating with thin oils, I'd assumed you'd be in snow of spindle
depth or greater.

 

I don't think we've got time to check out any bikes on Ebay Nige....

 

I've been as far north as Bodo (sorry, I cba to find the right
character map,) and there are some looong stretches between
civilization when you get north of Trondheim. A "couple of hours" may
be a bit optimistic.

 

They move even fewer than telegraph poles, you know.

 

We're going a long way north of the Arctic Circle but not beyond the
outer reaches of civilisation. The panniers on my Tenere are bigger
than the ones Steve's fitted and I've no worries about them dragging
in the snow, have a look at one of the sites with webcams showing the
roads through Norway and you'll get a better idea of what we're going
to be dealing with.

When have I suggested we'd have snow clogging the engines or being
over spindle deep? It'll be cold in the mornings but the actual depth
of snow will only be an issue when we drag the bikes off the E6 to
camp overnight. We're not planning on going along little lanes that
are feet deep in snow, we've got a lot of miles to cover in low
temperatures but it's a main arterial route through the country.

 

What's the ferry up north of Bodo cost these days Andy? Sheer idle
curiosity on my part you understand.

 

Well, in the "Cold Climate Oil Grades" thread, you said:

"One other thing that was pointed out to me was that we could end up
fucking about in deep snow in which case the engine will be getting
very hot because there'll be no airflow going over it and it could be
too much for thinner oils."

Which I took to mean that you could end up fucking about in deep snow
and that you could be doing it for long enough to be concerned about
cooking the engine oil. Deep, to my mind, would be perhaps spindle
deep.

Apols for the formatting, it won't fix.

You've ruined my mental picture of the brave adventurers battling
through nipple-deep drifts, dragging bikes on sleds bashed out of Volvo
bonnets behind them now. Studding it up the main drag doesn't have the
same cachet, you know?

 

You must console yourself with an image of brave adventurers
sitting in the shed hacksawing off the blackened stumps of
fingers some months afterwards.

 

You cruel fucker.

Well done.

 

It only takes 6" of snow to make you slow down enough for things to
get a bit hot and bothered and I've got a 21" front wheel so the
spindle is 10.5" off the floor. Miles away from it.

Sorry.

 

I neither know nor care. It's bikes or bust as far as I'm concerned.

 

Using the patented Mavis Beacon "Hunt&Peck" Technique, Steve

That's going to make masturbation a tad tricky.

Lucky their nobs will have fallen off, eh?

 

"I'm just going out for a dump; I may be some time."

 

Or, if you're Steve Loukes, you don't go outside, but use a Sainsbury's
carrier bag as en-suite facilities

 

Every cloud...

 

You misunderstand, when you get to <googles> Bognes the E6 becomes a
ferry to Skarberget. So, unless your journey is going to stop 100k north
of the Arctic Circle, you'll be needing to pay a paltry 55 krone fare
and get the (correct) ferry.

Timetable/price list;
http://ruteinfo.thn.no/no/default.aspx?rnr=33

It's a good opportunity to warm up, get a coffee and buy a scandalously
expensive open sandwich.

 

If it drags on something hard enough to damage the headers, something's
gone very wrong indeed. And if they are daft enough to try & battle
through snow that deep, narrow & hot headers that will probably fit in
the front wheel's rut anyway will cause far less drag than a wide
flat-bottomed bashplate.

Bashplates are great if you're riding over big rocks & logs, but
they're also great at collecting large amounts of mud/snow & adding a
surprising amount of extra weight. Hence the reason people usually use
something like
http://www.missionmx.co.uk/acatalog/DRC_Skid_Plate_Foam.html

 

I was thinking of rutted ice in that respect, rather than soft snow,
but there you go. I obviously unleashed my fevered imagination in
directions it shouldn't have gone.

Every day's a schoolday, and I've learned something today. Having said
that, we often used to wedge a lump of high-density foam or even a lump
of wood between bashplate and sump on rally cars, but that was as much
to reduce rattles and/or drumming as much as to keep the mud (or worse,
little sharp stones) out. As long as it didn't take away that
wonderful smell of toasting mud that always made me feel hungry.