Using hidden spaces on your bike
 

Following on from the travelling tips thread I thought I'd see how other people had managed to use the hidden spaces on their bikes for carrying tools or parts or secret stash of money in case you get robbed.

Photos would be great too if you have them.

For us, we have two main places although not very secret:

1. Under the front seat of the GS I have screwed in the Oil filter wrench so that it doesn't take up valuable toolkit space.

2. Under the rear seat I can slide a long tyre lever for the extra difficult tyre changes.

My next idea in the planning is alongside the panniers, attach a couple of metal skewers that we can use for cooking meat, vegies over a wood camp fire.

I know some people attach documents or copies of documents in water proof zip-lock bags to the inside of fairings on the GS, if you've done this or other tricks what are your experiences?

Take the plastic bungs out of the ends of frame tubes and use the space to store spare/stove filling petrol pipe. Works on the XT600E and Bonneville.

Andy

Remove the exhaust(if u have 2) and use this space:
http://media.snimka.bg/8781/023818213.jpg
Maybe u know about that:
http://media.snimka.bg/8782/023818477.jpg
And WD40's stays:
http://media.snimka.bg/8781/023818241.jpg

that is some good tip!

Tire, brake and clutch levers zip tied to the subframe. Anything long and skinny is good for that.

Spare fuel / syphon pipe and wire inside handlebars.

Eddie.

took me a while to spot the wd40

HI Sgichev, those are some pretty cool stoarge ideas!

Please tell me you actually keep a bottle of Jameson in the container? :thumbup1:

I recently saw that Best Rest sell little tubes with rubber end caps for talcum powder to zip tie to the sub frame. Great idea. Might try that with filter oil.

HI Sgichev and welcome to the Hubb.

I had to reply as I was looking at the very same promotion tin of Jamesons and thinking along the very same lines. I also thought that it might need lining with an old inner tube depending on what is stored inside.

Its good to carry a couple of spare final drive chain links on one of the cables (clutch cable) just in case.

Cheers
socks

Run spare cables alongside the originals, in the event of a failure the cable routing is already the same and the repair takes minimal time.

Spare rear sprocket behind the number plate.
Make a container out of 15mm foam pipe lagging and gaffer tape - stuff it up the swing arm. Good for a stash.
Stash behind the armour of your bike pants.


Welcome to Two Bikes Running

If you are going to carry spare parts etc strapped to your frame or bashplate or whatever, don't use cable ties. To be honest this is so obvious that I would be embarrassed to have learned this the hard way even if I hadn't have been advised about this first, which I had.

Cable ties work great for tidying loose cables together. In any application where they're under stress they will eventually slacken off and then break. If you're attaching relatively heavy items to your bike like sprockets, and then riding on bumpy non-tarmaced roads, this will happen quite quickly, even if you use multiple cable ties. Instead use wire (and pliars). Fencing wire was suggested to me, and you'd think lockwire would be a good bet as well. The added bonus is this makes things marginally more difficult to remove, and therefore steal.


Re: doubling up your control cables. If you fit new genuine cables before you go you should get a very long life out of them, far longer than the average trip. Cheaper and less hassle to just carry a repair kit, or (just a couple of pushbike brake cables and some solderless nipples, which you can even make yourself if you're that way inclined and too cheap to buy for about a pound each). If you get one of those kits that come in the little round tins that fit in your jacket pocket, you should probably have room to stick in a chain split link or two.

Making the best of what would be useless space. Very nice!

The space inside the Wee's fairing ahead of the tank is begging for sort of internal tank panniers. Still thinking about it, but probably involves stuff sacks and cargo nets.

Andy