It deserves to be ridden fast by SOMEONE!
Maybe we should just let Neda ride it.....
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Quit our jobs, sold our home and everything in it, gone riding...
- Thread starter Lightcycle
- Start date
It deserves to be ridden fast by SOMEONE!
Maybe we should just let Neda ride it.....
ouch. that's cold. :sad1:
:dontknow:
I don't know anything about helicopters. All I know is that it was used to take tourists to and from the island.
The markings on the side identify it as a MI-8.
I have a picture from the side, they look like bombs?
I don't know anything about helicopters. All I know is that it was used to take tourists to and from the island.
The markings on the side identify it as a MI-8.
I have a picture from the side, they look like bombs?
Hey! Big pictures are back on GTAM! 
ccasion5:
ccasion5:
Judging by the lines, it's extra fuel.
:dontknow:
I don't know anything about helicopters. All I know is that it was used to take tourists to and from the island.
The markings on the side identify it as a MI-8.
I have a picture from the side, they look like bombs?
Riceburner
Well-known member
Strange they have tail fins....maybe bomb casings converted to tanks?
You know, I asked the same question when Lunatic mentioned that they were external fuel tanks.
So I did some research and found out that the fuel tanks are expendable drop tanks that can be jettisoned to reduce drag and weight when the fuel is used up. The drop tanks are shaped like bombs with tail fins because they're designed to drop exactly like bombs, and can be guided safely (or not) to the ground using the same targeting systems as real bombs.
Neat, eh?
So I did some research and found out that the fuel tanks are expendable drop tanks that can be jettisoned to reduce drag and weight when the fuel is used up. The drop tanks are shaped like bombs with tail fins because they're designed to drop exactly like bombs, and can be guided safely (or not) to the ground using the same targeting systems as real bombs.
Neat, eh?
Updated from http://www.RideDOT.com/rtw/253.html
We're heading south today, away from the hinterlands of Karelia towards more populated parts of Russia.
Stopping for a food break. We notice there's a truck on the other side of the road selling stuff
The sign on the truck reads: Buy Money Badges
Not sure what exactly he's selling, they look like trinkets and fruits and vegetables. But from what I know about people selling stuff from the back of a truck on the side of the road - most likely it's not entirely legal. We eat our food on the other side of the road while the driver eyes us warily. I sense he is ready to make a break for it if he suspects we are KGB.
While stuffing my mouth with a sandwich, I do an inspection of our bikes and then I see this: BMW Disease...
Oil is leaking out of my shaft drive. I hadn't noticed this through Norway because it was raining so much, but this stretch of dry weather we're having has allowed the oil to collect at the bottom of the hub so it's finally noticeable. Dammit! I just had the seals replaced 20K ago! It doesn't look serious enough that it requires immediate attention, so we'll forge ahead and try to get it looked at when we pass a BMW shop.
On the whole, my bike hasn't had that many problems given the age and the mileage it's done, but by far the weakest part of the motorcycle is the shaft drive. I've had so many problems, it's been quite costly and time-consuming.
We're heading south today, away from the hinterlands of Karelia towards more populated parts of Russia.
Stopping for a food break. We notice there's a truck on the other side of the road selling stuff
The sign on the truck reads: Buy Money Badges
Not sure what exactly he's selling, they look like trinkets and fruits and vegetables. But from what I know about people selling stuff from the back of a truck on the side of the road - most likely it's not entirely legal. We eat our food on the other side of the road while the driver eyes us warily. I sense he is ready to make a break for it if he suspects we are KGB.
While stuffing my mouth with a sandwich, I do an inspection of our bikes and then I see this: BMW Disease...
Oil is leaking out of my shaft drive. I hadn't noticed this through Norway because it was raining so much, but this stretch of dry weather we're having has allowed the oil to collect at the bottom of the hub so it's finally noticeable. Dammit! I just had the seals replaced 20K ago! It doesn't look serious enough that it requires immediate attention, so we'll forge ahead and try to get it looked at when we pass a BMW shop.
On the whole, my bike hasn't had that many problems given the age and the mileage it's done, but by far the weakest part of the motorcycle is the shaft drive. I've had so many problems, it's been quite costly and time-consuming.
Back on the road. More people selling food at the side of the road
Russia is currently going through a food crisis.
Most of the countries in the western world have imposed economic sanctions on Russia because of the invasion in Crimea, mostly against the finance, defense and energy sectors of the Russian economy. In retaliation, Russia responded with their own sanctions against these countries, refusing to buy food from them. Although this sounds a lot like shooting themselves in their own foot, I found out that Russia imports a lot of food from western countries and currently there are mountains of produce in Europe piling up and these sanctions are significantly impacting the economies of countries who trade with Russia. Norway exports a lot of fish and seafood to Russia, and Canada's pork industry is heavily reliant on them as well.
Russia is still able to provide basic sustenance for their citizens. The sanctions apply to meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, dairy and poultry, all stuff that Russia is able to provide once it ramps up its own produce industry once again, but in the meantime, the supplies are scarce in the grocery stores and the prices are climbing in response to the shortages.
To make matters worse, the government has decreed that any Western food imports already in the country will be destroyed. We just read in the newspaper yesterday that massive quantities of cheese have been bulldozed into the earth. So far, 550 *tonnes* of "illegal" food have been steamrolled, burned or buried. That is crazy!!!
Although Putin receives a lot of support and approval in his country, these latest acts of nose-thumbing towards the west have gone too far in the minds of many Russians, especially when there is still so much poverty in the country. And yet in other news, girls wearing t-shirts reading, "Eat Russian" are marauding through grocery stores and reporting illegal western foods still on the shelves to the police.
It is quite amazing to be in the middle of all of this while it's happening.
All this is fine, as long as the price of our beloved cырок stay low!
When we first entered Russia, Neda picked up this candy in the grocery store called cырок (syrok). We didn't know what it was, but when we bit into it, it was delicious! It's basically sweetened cheese curds covered in chocolate. The curds have the taste and consistency of cheesecake. You can get them in different flavours, also with jam as well, we love it! Every time we go grocery shopping now we pick up more syrok. Hopefully the ban on dairy will not affect the pricing on our beloved cырок!
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As we get closer to St Petersburg, the second-most populated city in Russia, the traffic starts to get more dense. As the cars and trucks continue to clog the roadways, the drivers become much more reckless. Impatient drivers from oncoming traffic pull out into our lane, only to pass one or two cars at a time. They wait until the very last millisecond to duck back into their lane. There is a lot of swearing going on in our helmets as a couple of drivers don't even bother to tuck back into their own lane, forcing us onto the shoulder! WTF!!!!
These are the crazy Russian drivers we had heard about. It was terrible. Last year, there were over 220,000 traffic accidents in the country, contributing to 28,000 deaths. Just go on YouTube and search for Crazy Russian Drivers. A large part of the problem is poor traffic enforcement. Lawlessness on the road is rampant when you know nobody is going to stop you from doing idiotic things.
But also vodka.
We're still riding without insurance, so this worries me quite a lot.
To make matters worse, an hour outside of the city, I noticed that my engine is losing power at high revs. Everything under 4,000 rpms is fine, but the minute I rev the engine above that, it loses power. ARGH!!! This is very concerning, it's the first serious issue I've had with the engine. What makes matters worse is that we're on a tight timeline through Russia. We can't afford to hunker down in a city and try to get it fixed here because of the looming expiration date on our visas.
This is stressing me out a bit and just hammers home the point that we are not psychologically prepared to continue overland across Central Asia with all of its strict entry and exit dates.
As long as I keep the revs down on the engine, everything seems fine. We limp my bike through the gauntlet of crazy Russian drivers without insurance into the heart of Saint Petersburg and try to find our hotel.
We made it to Saint Petersburg in one piece! Coincidentally, the building behind me is called
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood... We'll have to check it out later
We find our hotel and thankfully they are able to find us a parking spot in this crowded neighbourhood. I park my bike and christen the spot that it's resting on the Church on Spilled Drive Shaft Oil. I have to do some Googling to figure out how serious the engine problem is.
Our neighbourhood, Nevsky Prospekt
We are in the heart of the shopping district
These are the crazy Russian drivers we had heard about. It was terrible. Last year, there were over 220,000 traffic accidents in the country, contributing to 28,000 deaths. Just go on YouTube and search for Crazy Russian Drivers. A large part of the problem is poor traffic enforcement. Lawlessness on the road is rampant when you know nobody is going to stop you from doing idiotic things.
But also vodka.
We're still riding without insurance, so this worries me quite a lot.
To make matters worse, an hour outside of the city, I noticed that my engine is losing power at high revs. Everything under 4,000 rpms is fine, but the minute I rev the engine above that, it loses power. ARGH!!! This is very concerning, it's the first serious issue I've had with the engine. What makes matters worse is that we're on a tight timeline through Russia. We can't afford to hunker down in a city and try to get it fixed here because of the looming expiration date on our visas.
This is stressing me out a bit and just hammers home the point that we are not psychologically prepared to continue overland across Central Asia with all of its strict entry and exit dates.
As long as I keep the revs down on the engine, everything seems fine. We limp my bike through the gauntlet of crazy Russian drivers without insurance into the heart of Saint Petersburg and try to find our hotel.
We made it to Saint Petersburg in one piece! Coincidentally, the building behind me is called
The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood... We'll have to check it out later
We find our hotel and thankfully they are able to find us a parking spot in this crowded neighbourhood. I park my bike and christen the spot that it's resting on the Church on Spilled Drive Shaft Oil. I have to do some Googling to figure out how serious the engine problem is.
Our neighbourhood, Nevsky Prospekt
We are in the heart of the shopping district
Saint Petersburg is basically a city built on over 40 islands. Connecting these islands are 342 bridges, which earns it its nickname: "The Venice of the North". Most of these islands are very close together, the bridges spanning over canals no wider than a four-lane road.
Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood is perhaps the most striking building in Saint Petersburg
Another bridge over Neva RIver
Russian tourists on a cruise of the Neva River
Looks like a wedding in one of the old buildings
Shop display in our neighbourhood, Nevsky Prospekt
A bit of the old still mingles with all the new
Saint Petersburg is such a beautiful place. It's the most westernized city in Russia and the architecture is so reminiscent of all the old European cities that we've visited in the last year and a half.
However, this wasn't the Russia that I was hoping to see. After the western media's Cold War indoctrination on the evils of the USSR, I wanted to see some of that Soviet culture in the buildings, the people and their stories. I so wanted to talk to an older Russian person, to ask them what it was like experiencing the Cold War from the other side of the Iron Curtain. What did they think of the western world? Did they fear and villainize us like we did them? These are the things I was most curious and fascinated about coming to Russia.
But Saint Petersburg is not going to satisfy my curiousity. It's basically Europe.
Members of the Russian army choir outside our hotel giving a concert. They were singing Adele's Skyfall... See what I mean?
So we decided to pay some money to visit the Russian Museum to see if we could get a glimpse of that period in history
The Russian Museum houses a vast collection of fine art throughout this country's history. I think there's a lot of over-representation of art from the 18th-19th century, lots of cossacks on horses. It seems to be the most celebrated and romantic period. However there was very little on the art of the Soviet era, from the 1920s through to the late 80s. It's not surprising, this was a difficult period for most Russians, marked by poverty, hunger and lower life expectancy.
There was a small wing dedicated to the Socialist Realism art of the Soviet Union
A lot of art historians think the Socialist Realism movement is boring. They call the art, "Girl Meets Tractor". I don't care what they say. Personally, I think this period of Soviet art is fascinating. I see so much struggle in the brush strokes portraying the common people caught in a larger political upswelling, the waves of an ideology that mattered none to the toils of putting food on the table.
The picture on the left, "Queue" by Alexei Sundukov in 1986 really hit home for Neda. From the style of the clothing that the women in line were wearing to the theme of the painting, it really reminded her of former Yugoslavia. It struck me that I didn't really need to find someone to talk to about the Soviet era. I was already traveling with one.
Actually not present-day Russia... I've discovered I'm a bit of a SovietPhile!
The adventures of Comrade Neda and Evgeny continue.
Kri$han
Well-known member
Evgeny, your driveshaft issues have made me wonder; what kind of tools are you and Neda travelling with? Just the stock bike kits? Would/could you post a picture of the kit?
(sorry if this question has been asked & answered, I tried quickly searching the thread)
So far, I've only done one week-end trip on the bike, with my better-half (when my wife was riding at the time, too) and we only had the kits the bikes came with on us.
(sorry if this question has been asked & answered, I tried quickly searching the thread)
So far, I've only done one week-end trip on the bike, with my better-half (when my wife was riding at the time, too) and we only had the kits the bikes came with on us.
I'm not sure what's in your stock kit, but the BMW kits suck. I heard the ones they supplied with the old oilhead boxers are pretty good, but my generation hexhead and newer basically give you an engine oil cap key and a screw driver.
I don't talk too much about the technical side of motorcycling because I think there are better wrenchers out there who have better advice to give. We never really sat down to plan what tools we needed for this trip. Our toolkit consists of stuff that we've collected throughout all our previous trips, so there's some duplication and we're probably missing some stuff too. But it's carried us for three and a half years on the road, so I'm fairly happy with it.
Our tools are divided into two cases, one in the back above the Rotopax gas can. It's a Rotopax toolbox that uses the same mounting bracket as the gas can. It's waterproof and lockable but I don't really like it. It takes up too much space and isn't located in a good place. In the future, I want to move these tools to a tooltube and mount it further ahead on the bike, perhaps above the bash plate behind the front wheel. This kit carries tools that we don't use too often.
- Socket set with the sockets most used for our two bikes, an 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13mm
- Screwdriver set with different heads, socket extension
- Adjustable wrench
- lot of fasteners: electrical tape, two-way tape, hockey tape, duct tape (I'm kind of a tape fetishist), shock cords, zipties
- hex head set, allen key set, torx wrenches
- air compressor and the most accurate tire gauge we could find (digital sometimes not the best)
- tire repair kit
- extra engine oil
- fuel siphon pump
- work gloves and lots of plastic over gloves that we steal from gas stations
- super glue and blue threadlocker loctite
- replacement parts for known parts that fail on our bike (fuel pump, electronic key ring sensor, etc)
I carry a secondary tool kit up front in my tankbag, these are all the tools that we use more often so they're easily reachable.
- Hexhead set
- torx set
- mini screwdriver set
- Leatherman multitool
- More tape (yay!)
- zip ties
- replacement headlights and tail lights
- needlenose pliers
- mini adjustable wrench
- headlamp
- owners manual
- shock cord and zipties
- pen knife
There's stuff that we never used. Because we have extra fuel cans with us, we've never needed to use the fuel siphon. There's stuff that we thought about carrying, but decided not to because of the space. I am on the fence about carrying a torque wrench long enough to remove our wheels. We don't change them often enough and we've just borrowed the tools whenever we're staying with other people. I still might pick up one in the future...
If we had spoke wheels, I'd definitely carry tire spoons and an inner tube patch kit and spare inner tubes. One piece of advice I would give is to research all the stuff that normally fails for your bike specifically and carry spares. That would have saved us so much time and effort the last three years. Now that we carry all the spares... nothing breaks, so if anything, it's a talisman for good luck.
Only carry the tools and bits that fit the screws on your bike. So don't carry the entire socket wrench set with you, just the size of the heads that you'll need.
Also, look for any bike-specific tools that you won't find at the local motorcycle store, oil filter wrenches, etc. The BMW bikes use a special spark plug remover, you can use a screwdriver but you're at more risk to damage the spark plug holder. So stock up on these specialty tools because you won't be able to find them at the Canadian Tire. Or Kazakhstan Tire or whatever.
I don't talk too much about the technical side of motorcycling because I think there are better wrenchers out there who have better advice to give. We never really sat down to plan what tools we needed for this trip. Our toolkit consists of stuff that we've collected throughout all our previous trips, so there's some duplication and we're probably missing some stuff too. But it's carried us for three and a half years on the road, so I'm fairly happy with it.
Our tools are divided into two cases, one in the back above the Rotopax gas can. It's a Rotopax toolbox that uses the same mounting bracket as the gas can. It's waterproof and lockable but I don't really like it. It takes up too much space and isn't located in a good place. In the future, I want to move these tools to a tooltube and mount it further ahead on the bike, perhaps above the bash plate behind the front wheel. This kit carries tools that we don't use too often.
- Socket set with the sockets most used for our two bikes, an 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13mm
- Screwdriver set with different heads, socket extension
- Adjustable wrench
- lot of fasteners: electrical tape, two-way tape, hockey tape, duct tape (I'm kind of a tape fetishist), shock cords, zipties
- hex head set, allen key set, torx wrenches
- air compressor and the most accurate tire gauge we could find (digital sometimes not the best)
- tire repair kit
- extra engine oil
- fuel siphon pump
- work gloves and lots of plastic over gloves that we steal from gas stations
- super glue and blue threadlocker loctite
- replacement parts for known parts that fail on our bike (fuel pump, electronic key ring sensor, etc)
I carry a secondary tool kit up front in my tankbag, these are all the tools that we use more often so they're easily reachable.
- Hexhead set
- torx set
- mini screwdriver set
- Leatherman multitool
- More tape (yay!)
- zip ties
- replacement headlights and tail lights
- needlenose pliers
- mini adjustable wrench
- headlamp
- owners manual
- shock cord and zipties
- pen knife
There's stuff that we never used. Because we have extra fuel cans with us, we've never needed to use the fuel siphon. There's stuff that we thought about carrying, but decided not to because of the space. I am on the fence about carrying a torque wrench long enough to remove our wheels. We don't change them often enough and we've just borrowed the tools whenever we're staying with other people. I still might pick up one in the future...
If we had spoke wheels, I'd definitely carry tire spoons and an inner tube patch kit and spare inner tubes. One piece of advice I would give is to research all the stuff that normally fails for your bike specifically and carry spares. That would have saved us so much time and effort the last three years. Now that we carry all the spares... nothing breaks, so if anything, it's a talisman for good luck.
Only carry the tools and bits that fit the screws on your bike. So don't carry the entire socket wrench set with you, just the size of the heads that you'll need.
Also, look for any bike-specific tools that you won't find at the local motorcycle store, oil filter wrenches, etc. The BMW bikes use a special spark plug remover, you can use a screwdriver but you're at more risk to damage the spark plug holder. So stock up on these specialty tools because you won't be able to find them at the Canadian Tire. Or Kazakhstan Tire or whatever.
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Face
Well-known member
Good advise on the tools, thanks. Btw, that's not just a BMW disease. Had the same problem on a Triumph Tiger Explorer in the Dolomites last year. Fortunately it was a rental and the tour company's problem, not mine. At least I was able to get to the hotel before it seized up. When they checked later, most of the oil was gone. Not something I would push my luck on. Got me on the wasserboxer GS for the rest of the trip.
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