Henry, I offroad a Suzuki Burgman (650) and have taken it through most major Australian deserts (and a few non-Australian ones in Kazakhstan/Russia/Mongolia).
I do NO major preparations whatsoever - I don't even let air out of my tyres.
The biggest challenge is having the small front wheel dig in in deeper sand, so you will often prefer to ride slower - this where you have an advantage, however, as you can ride slowly without needing to worry about a lot of fancy clutch work,
Many of the dirt bike riders would often prefer to go slow in these conditions too, but find they can't because the engine will die at low revs (without a lot of clutching/declutching) so they have to go faster to maintain momentum.
When I rode the Sahara I found that the dunes had a hard and soft side, provide you get enough speed up on the hard side you will maintain sufficient momentum to cross the soft side of the undulation before sinking too deep (most of the time anyway  ).
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Garry from Oz - powered by Burgman
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