make a bike look ugly?
 

Hi there,
I'm preparing to take my bike through South and Central America, and Africa.
I bought a nice looking tenere '98. Is it advisable/necessary to paint my bike in a 'less willing' color to make it less attractive? It's now shiny blue with colorful striping.
Please let me know.

Greeting to you all,

Roland

'Painting' it to make it less shiny and attractive......?
Euh, how about riding it? Sounds like more fun to me. Get it dusted, muddy,... Just ride miles and don't wash it. If you put a protective coating on it first you can clean it years later and sell a nice looking bike!

For ex: before the winter hits (Oktober) I clean my bike very good. Put on a protective pruduct (especially against the salt they throw on the roads here in wintertime). Then I don't clean untill somewhere in spring. The dirt that sticks to it actually becomes a protective layer on itself. Rinsing it off daily is no problem.

Just a thought.

Hi, I thought Yamaha had already done a good job of making the Tenere look ugly. Chris

Hi, Roland!

Great idea travel through central and south america, I'm sure you will find wonderfull places.

I live in Recife, Brasil, is nice city with nice places to go, maibe you would like to came down here.

About ugly motorcicle, don`t if is necessary for central america, but for Brasil, if you really want to, just let it dirty is enough.

If you would like to, inform when are you leaving and your plans know some motorciclist groups here that will be happy to receive you.

Good look and take care

------------------
Bráulio Mecchi


[This message has been edited by Grant Johnson (edited 19 January 2003).]

Hi there!
Try getting old gear - meaning - try to get a set of old used plastics - probably in different colours and with heaps of scratches or cracks - you will be happy to come home with a complete nice, unbroken set to put on - and if you throw your bike away you're not all that shocked ;-)

The colourfull mixture of old plastics might be interesting to put on notes of other travellers or something alike - or stickers, or a map of your trip or whatever - you can paint it in one colour first and then add infos, emails, maps, stickers, notes or whatever on the tanks/plastics :-)

Would be a real good souvenir - don't you think???

I did the central/south america portion of your trip a couple years ago. a guy that I rode with a while down there had a tenere and had problems getting over mountian passes because of the fuel/air mixture at altitude. I dont have the answer for you, but would advise you to find out how your model performs at altitudes up to 5-6000 meters and what, if any, adjustments you'll need to make. I'd hate for you to miss those rides in the Andes. Luck.

Hi Roland,

you should drive some dirt roads, that's enough.

But you should never leave your bike alone in or close to urbanisation.
There is always a possibilltiy to put the bike into the "hotel", ROOM; GARDEN OR A GARAGE:

we had NO PROBLEMS ON our trip.
More information on our homepage:

http://www.Die-Motorradnomaden.de

Good luck

Best wishes RalEva

[This message has been edited by RalEva (edited 19 October 2002).]

I reciently returned from a 5 week cycle camping cruise through Mexico and Belize on
a Harley Sportster. I added a larger tank
painted it flat black and stuck flamming skull decales on both sides.

If you have a good looking bike at the begining, it will look like an older good looking bike at the end. Many new models look different from bikes made in the past, and people can tell they have value even when they are dirty. Although riding them makes you think they look less desirable, keeping them covered can help alot. Try starting your trip (with a nice looking machine) using an old light weight oily dirty bike cover. The kind you find on the floor in the corner of a shop that nobody will need. Make sure it looks like a rag and then use it during your travels until your bike has some character. When it is no longer needed, and you have many stories to tell, you can dispose of it easily.

Check out http://www.ratbike.org/ for plenty of photos and plenty of advice. You don't need to go quite so far as these folks go to make their bikes ugly, but it will give you some great ideas. They also have a tech section with an area devoted to painting your bike.

One of my favorite ideas is to use simple and cheap luggage, in particular, large ammo boxes and most anything you can get from a military surplus store is dirt cheap, extremely rugged, and often times even has rubber gaskets for waterproofing.

I like http://www.cheaperthandirt.com/ for online window shopping, but you should find a local military surplus or you will eat up your savings in shipping costs.

Best of luck,

Jarred

Just ride your bike as we did with our new BMW GS Models, they were black as we started in Alaska, but now they turned into yellow-grey in Peru. Just don`t clean it and lie to the people about the value. We put also some plastic tape on the windscreen and somewhere else, so it looks like something was fixed. Always store in Garages or Cocheras or so as we did, gives you a better sleep. Most accomodations have it.
We´re riding the PanAm and just did the Cordillera Blanca. Go there, but there rough passes about 4000m altitude. So check how you can adjust the injection, there was no problem with the BMW GS engine. Also exciting is around Chachapoyas!

I had friends that used to spray paint expensive bicycles ugly, drab colors, to 'theft' proof them...and it worked.
Thieves would steal the pretty $300 bike chained up next to the 'ugly' $2000 bike!

For a motorcycle, with paint and bodywork in good shape to start with, I think dirt and stickers are the route to go. With any luck, and barring any mishap, at the end of your trip you can remove the stickers with a hair dryer, some elbow grease, and maybe some WD40.
Maybe a little strategically applied oil to attract dust on certain body parts would help?
Does anyone remember the article in a US moto magazine maybe 10 years back about the guy who rode a Honda XL through South America, and who would find all sorts of religious symbols and good luck messages scratched into the paint of his tank whenever he parked it unattended? I think Honda has it on display...and gave him a new tank in return. I guess this is something you wouldn't like to find on your new GS!

Tenere is een prima fiets, gewoon niet meer wassen of op de sloop die zijpanelen vervangen voor een paar gelijmde oid.
De bergen kan een probleem worden aangezien de tenere daar niet goed tegen kan, dat wordt horten en stoten. Er is een tenere site in nederland waar ze er wel topic over hebben. Wellicht ken je de site al (ben ff de naam kwijt maar google moet jekunnen helpen. Ik heb zelf jarenlang een Super Tenere gehad, het is wel een olieboer en rijdt niet echt zuinig maar verder is de ST super betrouwbaar, heb je al een corbin zadel op het oog? Standaard zadel wordt echt een probleem op de lange afstanden.

Succes,

Marco

shiney harley
 

I am just leavin for the states, gonna buy me a harley and ride to ushuaia, gonna cover my bike in dust `and dirt(naturally), and keep a bloody good eye on it!
Anyone else (apart from Pete and kay Forwood) done this on a harley? I would be glad to hear your stories!
Dan

Don't worry about the dust if you're going to ride an HD Dan, they're ugly enough as it is! :rofl:

Garry from Oz.

Hi there,
to harleydan,
yes, there is still some mad traveller wich use an HD to ride the world.
i went to khardung la on himalaya last year just 3 months after peter and kary forwood; i was the second one in the world...
now i'm plannig to ride across south america, starting from buenos aires about on the end of next january (2009). maybe we could have a meet
down there...
in the meantime have a look on this: www.lungastrada.it , my website
it is in italian, but a lot of pictures are titled in english, more or less...

see ya on the road?????????????????????????

Back to the OP, isn't it a bit of a waste of time making your bike look old and battered, if you're in the developping world it's still likely to look different, and you'll look different, so if you do stumble across someone who'll nick it they'll nick it anyway.

Mind you if it's very different from what's available locally, will it actually have a lot of worth anyway? I mean who'd want a BMW GS1100 when the nearest dealer is 2000 miles away and spares cost a year's wages?

Who would want a six year old, 100,000 mile C90 clone that's been ridden by a large collection of careless teens intent only on making a few quid. Yoof here abouts stole one! You can't even use the defence it was the pizza they wanted, the kid doing the deliveries had taken the bag out and walked up to one of my neighbours doors. It is possible that the brainless morons didn't work it out of course :rolleyes2:. It was found the next day out of petrol with the pizza box missing.

Then there are the cretins who stole a mates MZ for the purpose of setting it on fire. Those :censored: :censored: :censored: are IMHO best dealt with using a tow rope fastened to a lamp post ,as while the bike was a near perfect example, the in-sewer-ants say no MZ is worth more than a few hundred quid and that's what they'll pay.

Now, I believe this an oddly British pnenomena and in most of the world (certainly Africa) people perhaps still think hard before stealing. I would therefore worry more about things like GPS, jerry cans, camera's, stoves etc. than the bike itself. I habitually use a chain on the bike's back wheel that in Morocco convinced the locals that England was a very dangerous place indeed. They stated as well as I could understand that there was no risk of anyone breaking my huge chain to take the bike in Morocco :confused1:

I'd get a big chain for the bike and worry more about smaller items.

Andy

There is a product called sheet tack paper that you should be able to buy at hardware stores in Europe. They sell it at Home Depot and Lowes over here. It is a transparent protective plastic product that is used to line the bottom of drawers and prevent utensils from scratching the bottom of the drawer.

I painstakingly covered all the panels on my bike with this product to protect the paint. When I got to Nicaragua I decided that I wanted to tone down the look of my bike more so I covered the plastic material with duct tape. After a couple weeks the duct tape gets old and your bike starts to look like a Chinese bike. This was great for avoiding the Peruvian police who are notorious for pulling foreigners over to extract bribe money. It was not until I removed the plastic in Argentina that I started to have problems with the police pulling me over on my shiny bike.

BTW: Do what you feel is best for your safety on the trip. There will always be guys who will make fun of you for taping up your bike, but half of them don't have the balls to do a trip like this anyway.

Is using military surplus stuff a wise idea? I'd have thought that someone trying not to be noticed, travelling with military-style luggage, would attract a whole lot of unwelcome attention in certain parts of the world! I know that cammo trousers etc are against the law in some countries, maybe looking like Rambo on Tour would be a bad move?:biggrin3:

They will know you are a foreigner from a million miles away no matter how hard you try to fit in, but it is still better to try and look like a poor foreigner as opposed to a wealthy one.

That is rediculous how Lonely Planet advises that you can be mistaken for a soldier if you wear camo clothing in Latin America. It is not something I would test out, but they are not going to mistake you for a rebel unless you are roaming through the jungle.

You will not be mistaken for a soldier with military surplus tank bags. There are so many Hollywood stereotypes that you will uncover when you go down there.

OK, I'll take your word for it, but rather you than me! Hollywood stereotypes aside, given the popularity of The Great Satan and its former colonial master-now-lapdog (that's the UK to you), I'll stick to trying to look like a skint Belgian tourist (visits to DRC excepted, of course!)

I had enough of a fright when a taxi driver in Belfast asked a group of us "So, yous'll be squaddies then?" (or words to that effect)
****ing hell no, we most certainly were not, thank you very much matey, but given the fact we all had crew cuts and were carrying/wearing odd surplus stuff (we were tech crew on a rock tour), I could see why he jumped to that conclusion. It might have been just an innocent remark, but my arse was going like a trumpeter's lips!!