I've got '06 Thruxton for littlebit over year and I've driven 10k with it. I mostly commute & enjoy 100-200km trips to curvy roads (nearest good one is 30km from where I live :/). Also we tend to take weekend trips with wife couple of times per month. Problem is the condition of the smaller roads and the gravel roads that we come across pretty much every time.
The issue at hand.
1. I really like the way Thruxton looks (especially at the current setup) and mostly way it feels. However I'm not quite happy with the suspension and damping. I've went through the whole sticky (now 88 pages) and I understand that driving two up and solo doesn't really have one good solution what comes to suspension. Also most of the suggestions are about purely street use. What sort of solutions have scrambler guys used? Any bitubo experiences? Most of the smaller roads have pretty big grooves, holes and jolts + gravel.
2. Tyres. What is good dual purpose tyre both for sportier ride in the twisties both in gravel and asphalt. Michelin anakee 3 any good? The current Mezler lasertec are at the end of their life and they were absolutely horrible in the gravel.
3. Front fender options. Are there any? I've been thinkin about mounting LSL aluminum fender to rectifier stock holes.
4. Engine & oil cooling protection. I'm thinkin about making cover that would also cover half of the oil cooler. Any experiences on this? is there big risks that the cooling suffers? Currently the engine looks like **** due tons of rock hits, so I need to paint or polish + coat it in near future.
Any other things I should consider? There are so many nice & curvy roads that are currently out-of-bounds for me due tyres and rock protection. On the other hand I do not want to switch totally to scrambler as I find the Thruxton more visually pleasing + I look forward to more tinkering .
Sorry; but doesn't this really answer your own question?
You're trying to go from one end of the Bonneville range and mod it to work at the other end, but still keeping the original look and feel. Having said that the other end 'The Scrambler' is (to me anyway) just a street bike with 70's off road styling. It should have really been called a Street Scrambler.
Your ideas won't work and IMO would look just plain wrong.... :surprise:
You could however add an Oil Cooler Guard and Sump Guard without loosing your Thruxton good looks.......
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough. I'm not trying to make dirtbike or enduro. I just want to enjoy most of the _roads_ available.
I wouldn't say that the look of the Thruxton changes too much with little more gravel road friendly tyres and engine protection. And suspension&damping is the same story.
About 10% of my driving is even now on gravel roads do I want it or not. 20 prosent on top of that is on horrible paved roads. Also I have access to many good curvy gravel roads that are now just too much to enjoy with current tyres.
I love my Anakee IIIs and they look similar to some street tires. I've never been off road, so can't say more than they sure beat the stock Scrambler knobbies.
There is a Scrambler bash plate you can install to cover up the front of the engine.
It's had suspension work, Bitubo WMEs on the back and emulators and springs for my weight. It handles the bumps quite well, It dosn't like corrugations and thats probably due to the heavy wheels. Dropping the tyre pressure helps, around 20psi is a good starting point.
A steering damper adds to stability and I would recomend fitting one.
Have a Triumph skid plate fitted which protects the engine somewhat but the exhaust pipes are exposed.
Also fitted a fender extender to the front, stops some of the debris from the front wheel.
I purchased a Bonneville which I set up for adventure touring with K60 Heidaneau tyres. The K60s work quite well on gravel but on a Thruxton some thing like Tourances would be a better bet.
Thanks for the comments. This is just what I was looking for. And awesome looking bike you got there.
What about the front tyre. 18" size is quite difficult to find other than road tyre. Can I mount similar size rear tyre to front if I just reverse the direction? Avon fe didn't say yes or no on their page on the matter.
I was forgetting about the 18" front on the Thruxton, only run road tyres which do ok on gravel so long as it's not muddy.
I see Heidaneau does the k60 scout in 110/80/18 in a universal tyre ( front or back)
The k60 scout on my Bonneville handles quite well on the road for a hard wearing tyre . It does feel a bit less stable at high speed though (over 140 kph). The only thing with the k60 is it picks up pea size stones and fires them back at the engine. Bonneville has a full length front fender so that's not too much of a problem but the stones bounce around between the fender and the tyre before being shot out.
I have a set of Heidaneaus on my other bike (800 GS) with about 5000 miles on them. While they may not have huge grip, they are predicable as well as decent in the wet.
They are known to wear well. They do well on gravel/dirt roads. The only knock on them that I know is that some riders report a significant "buzz" or vibration through the front forks during the
first few thousand miles. Mine did it in the 15-30 MPH range: it felt like a harmonic it was so strong. I won't buy again because of it: it was really annoying. A friend of mine with a Triumph 800
had the same experience, though not as severely.
Got change to try out Scrambler yesterday with original tyres. And I was surprised how little you notice the knobbles. We had knobbly tyres in our home farm pickup (it was mostly used for farm & hunting purposes so it didn't really see much pavement) and they were atrocious the one time I tried them on asphalt.
Anyho I liked the traction of aggressive front tyre, so I decided to get Heidenau K60 (110/80 R18) for the front and Avon Trailrider for the rear (150/70 R17).
Testdrove the tyres today and they were pretty fantastic.
On asphalt there's weird like whistle from 60km upwards, dunno if I overtightened the front axle bolts or is it from tyres. I used same torque as for back axle (cannot remember it just now). I would almost say it's like dragging brakes, but they didn't really drag. Actual curves are just as nice as before. They are pretty numb and do not react at all to bad surfaces and perhaps take little more grunt to get to lean into curve. But grip is as good as in old Metzelers.
On gravel everytings is just fantastic. I started slowly, but after 20km the curves were very tight, but I could carry quite nice speed into curve and accelerate out. The front would bite even in loose gravel and arse was easy to control with gas. Very predictable and confidence inspiring.
.......On asphalt there's weird like whistle from 60km upwards, dunno if I overtightened the front axle bolts or is it from tyres. I used same torque as for back axle (cannot remember it just now). I would almost say it's like dragging brakes, but they didn't really drag. Actual curves are just as nice as before...........
But anyways I think the noise is from front tyre. It's increases pretty linearly with speed and it's not really noticeable below 60km/h. I noticed that it does exist today on commute as I wasn't wearing earplugs. And the front wheel moves freely and without any brake drag when I just move the wheel by hand.
Next week I get the engine / oil lauter protector and few centimeters of lift for the front fender. Tomorrow we'll take Trumppa for 3-400km spin to escape the heat. Hot damn I hate the summer.
And also regarding mud. Even if it would start raining again, the ground doesn't have any clay on it. So it doesn't really stick. It dries into dust, and cleans pretty well while driving. Especially from crome. The less nice thing is the salt that the ****ers put into gravel roads to keep them from dusting.
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