We have been on a long distance motorcycle trip since July 2016. Our plan is to travel around the world and we made so far 17.000 km in Europe and 50.000 km in Africa. So, we tested some different motorcycle tyres during this motorcycle road trip. Of course we did our research before we left and we got a lot of advice from different people, but most of this people did not go on a motorcycle trip to Africa neither did most of them ride long distance trips by motorcycle. So eventually we learned it all ourselves and now we would like to share our experiences with you, hopefully it helps you a bit on the way with your choice to find what tyres for a long distance trip will be the best.

First of all you need to take a look into what kind of roads you want to ride, this is where you can make a choice for your motorcycle tyres. For those who want to ride a lot in the desert with all the loose sand you need something very knobby. For those who want to pass the fastest way you will need more road tires and for the last group what we belong too those who want to ride everywhere except the real sand dunes you need a all road tire. This is because we will ride on the tar road, gravel road, muddy road, rocky road and some sandy road (no deep desert-sand). We are looking for some adventure 😉

Which Tyre is best for a motorcycle trip?

Our original motorcycles tyre size 90/90/21 (front) and 120/80/18 (rear), we are both riding a Honda CRF 250L and you can look for why we choose the Honda CRF250L.

She has started our motorcycle road trip from Turkey and we met on Germany after that we went to the North Cape and travel around Eastern Europe until we had a little experience how we can ride motorcycle because we had zero ride experience in the beginning.

Our first tyres where the original Honda CRF 250L tyres IRC Dual Purpose. After that we had Heidenau K60 just before start our Africa trip by motorcycle from Morocco. We changed two times more our tyres in Africa and used  Michellin T63 and Mitas E07.

IRC Dual Purpose GP-21F / GP- 22 P  

This is the standard tire Honda delivers the Honda CRF 250L with. We started our journey with it and made 17.000 km without change front and rear tyres, this was a bit of a surprise as the tires are knobby.  It was our Europe journey and we didn’t ride motorcycle before, therefore we were riding mostly tar roads and ‘good’ gravel roads in Europe. The tires is IRC dual purpose and we could ride on the dust and mud with it.

Conclusion, we where very surprised they lasted so long (for a knobby tyre), they did their job and we felt safe riding with them on all different roads also during the rain. Just use them till they are finished.

Heidenau K60 

We where very happy in the beginning with this choice Heidenau K60, before we only ride with the original Honda CRF 250L tires, so this was a huge step forwards. Especially as we started on the tarmac roads, we ride about 2000 km in Greece, Italy and Morocco before we started riding some off-road in Morocco.

We passed some amazing mountain roads in Morocco, they where all in pretty good condition and we where still very happy with our tires 🙂 Eventually we even try to ride a bit in the desert sands (or we can say soft sand)  but this was not a great success but I think our motorcycles are just not strong enough for this either when they are fully packed. When we ride further down south the rear tire begin to loose more and more profile ( it was so fast to loose in 10.000 km after IRC experience), so we started to look for new tyres. Unfortunately this is not a easy thing in Africa, especially with our motorcycles as they are small for Western standards and big for African standards. With a lot of luck we found one new and one second hand rear tires in Nigeria with a lot of help from the locals.

Conclusion, the Heidenau K60 is a good tire but doesn’t last long enough for a long distance motorcycle trip also who we met on the road and used the K60 they were saying same thing like us. Anyway, we ride 16.000 kilometers with the rear tire, need to say the front lasted all the way to Cape Town (South Africa) 24.000 kilometers.  So, we skipped some off-road ride because of that.

Michellin T63

We got our ‘new’ tires in Lagos (Nigeria) and we changed them in Gabon, just before we started a 280 km long mud road from Ndende (Gabon) to Dolisie (Republic Congo) (Movie).  For this road you do need some profile on your tires as it can be very muddy all the way. They did a good job on this road but on the tar roads it’s not the best tire ever but that makes sense as it is a knobby tire. We ride in total about 8.000 kilometers with the Michellin T63 tires.

Conclusion, the Michellin T63 is a good off-road tire for mud, gravel, rocks or small sand roads. When you are using it on a tarmac road it won’t last so long as the profile is more knobby as a normal all-road tire.

Mitas E07

We arrived in Cape Town, South Africa during the winter time so it was a good place for us to take a rest and we decided to fly to the Netherlands from there to visit my family, my first niece was born and we really wanted to see her. Also this was a good moment for us to buy new tyres in Europe as they are much cheaper as in South Africa, by this time we learned a lot more from other riders on the road who we met or had contact with and also, we have learned how we can ride and which tyres is the best to motorcycle trip for us. 🙂

Most of them where using the Heidenau K60 (scout) or the Mitas E07, as for us the Heidenau didn’t last long enough we decided to try the Mitas E07. Also we found a good deal for the tires and we could take them with us with our flight, we packed them really well so we didn’t had a problem with the size of the package. Also we choose a bit bigger size for the rear tire, we now use 130/80/18 on our Honda CRF250L.

We started in Cape Town (South Africa) with the Mitas E07 and ride through all circumstances due weather and underground. In Africa we ride till Sudan, unfortunately our African adventure ended there (she couldn’t get Egypt visa because of some political issue between two countries) and we air freight our motorcycles from Sudan to Turkey. At the moment I’m writing this article we are still using the Mitas E07 since Cape Town we made 26.000 kilometers with front and rear and I’m not thinking about changing them yet.

Conclusion, the Mitas E07 is so far our best tyre to long distance motorcycle trip and we will continue with them as they are lasting very long and we feel comfortable riding with them.

What we have been learning on the road we always like to share. You can find playlist to watch from our maintenance here :

 

FS

We have been learning a lot of things on the road about our motorcycles. Some is basic mechanic stuff some is hard job… Everything is so new for us because we never ride motorcycle before start our world trip. 🙂

Must check one thing after change/repair your tire.

We change tire many times but we didn’t know one detail for control until have problem.

I had flat tire again in Mozambique and we repaired it. It was look like everything fine but when started to ride the feeling was no balance at all. It was hard to ride slow and I had hard time on the sand. Therefore we checked again to find the problem and we saw that tire didn’t fit well.

We tried to get air out and put back again in a petrol station but didn’t work. So, we took out the tire, got air out and got the wheel lose of the tire, use a little WD40 after then gave air again.

So, if you change your tire first time you should keep in your mind to look this detail. 😉

Motorcycle was working automatically without use start button

I turn on the engine and started to ride. It was rain and Ferry said that my in front light didn’t work. Must be a problem with the bulb or a fuse. After a while we had a break and than when I turn on my engine motorcycle work without using the start button. Still my light wasn’t working.

Rain was like shower so we couldn’t do anything. Next day, the problem kept continue. The light didn’t work and motorcycle started before push the start button.

We saw that a little stone got stuck in the start button. The button takes all electricity from the motorcycle when the engine goes on. So, if the button stuck the motorcycle can work automatically and still takes all power from the motorcycle. Of course, no electricity. We got out the stone and everything turned back normal.

Now. After all gravel, sand, dirt..etc. road we always check the start button to make sure nothing stuck and sometime we use WD40 to make sure.

Our air filter, we can’t clean it but we couldn’t find the same as our motorcycle air filter.

Our motorcycle (Honda CRF 250L) air filter needs to change every 24.000 km. We changed first time when the motorcycle was 29.000 km. The air filter was clean so we wanted to use long because we were in Africa.

After Congo, DRC, Gabon and Namibia We wanted to check the air filter. It was only 12.000 km but air filter was dirty. No way to put back like that but it was hard to find as well. We went to a mechanic service and use their brake cleaner to clean the filter. After it got dry we put it back again.

When you start the motorcycle engine you need to open gas more and listen to the sound. Because in the beginning the sound is like somebody coughs.

We heard from some people who use OMO to clean their air filter. We haven’t done that but keeping it in our mind if necessary we can do it.

No chain oil and chain cleaner in West Africa 🙁

When we were starting to our journey we had two chain oils and one chain cleaner. We were thinking to easy find this kind of stuff in Africa. But we didn’t. When we were in Senegal we found small chain oil that was so expensive. Can’t be like that we have no option to travel without oil the chain.

We bought truck oil, which is thick, and not keeping dust. Just need a teeth brusher to put it on the chain 😉

Sometimes, we must clean the chain of course. Can’t find chain cleaner but find break fluid everywhere. So we bought one small and clean the chain with it. It is really so easy to clean. 😉

…will continue 🙂

What we have been learning on the road we always like to share. You can find playlist to watch from our maintenance here :

 

Our plan makes 200.000 km with Honda CRF 250L. Therefore we must take care well. We made more than 52.000 km until now.

Chain oil:

We oil our chain by hand and do that every 250 km, when we can’t find real chain oil we used motor oil for trucks, this is very thick and a good alternative for the chain oil.

Engine oil:

We change our oil every 6.000 km, we try to find the best quality available. This is not easy in a lot of countries. We try to look for 10W 40 API SG or higher JASO MA. Unfortunately we can’t always find this, as we are in Africa we can also use 20W 50 what is more available this is because the temperature will not be lower then 10 degrees Celsius when we are riding.

Oil filter:

We change our oil filters every second time we change our oil. This means every 12.000 km for us.

Air filter:

We change our air filters every 25.000 km, this is a easy job on the CRF250L.

Sprockets:

We use the original sprockets for the motorcycle 12 front 44 back for us the speed and acceleration is enough at the moment. It is possible to change them to 13 front 42 back so you have a higher top speed and the acceleration goes up. We are riding in Africa and are here to see and explore, also the road conditions are not good we see a lot of really big potholes so it’s nice to ride slowly. We change our sprockets first time after 40.000 km, the front was really finished at this point, the rear could do a bit more but not much.

Chain:

We started with the original DID 520 VX chain, which hardly went for 20.000 km. This was not enough for us, now we are riding with a golden ?????? chain, this one we use now for 25.000 km and is still totally fine.

Tires:

This is a tough one, we started with the original tires from Honda. They lasted surprisingly long, we made 17.000 km with them. After research, getting advice from a lot of people we bought the Heidenau K60. This is a tire to use off road and on the tar roads. For us this was not a good choice, when riding in Africa the roads are different everywhere the tire is useless in the sand and not good enough on gravel roads, they lasted 15.000 km. We found second hand tires in Nigeria the Michellin T63, they handled the off road conditions much better. We will now start with the Mitas E07 dakar, we certainly hope this one will get us at least 20.000 km

Spark plug:

We changed this after 50.000 km and keep the old ones with us as a spare pare what we hopefully don’t need to use.

Brake pads:

After 50.000 km they still look fine, we have a extra pair but we didn’t change them yet.

Brake fluid:

We changed our brake fluid after 30.000 km, this was even in Africa easy to find.

Brake :

We passed 50.000 km and still we use first one. We don’t use brake that much in Africa, look like 🙂

Gear pads:

Our plan was changed around 50.000 km but still going well. Therefore we have been carrying with us we will change when we need.

Light bulbs:

We only change them when they break, this happened for both our headlights after 40.000 km.

Fork seal:

We changed one in Nigeria after the terrible roads in there. Ferry’s right fork seal torn. It took 13 days to find new one because our motorcycle size is a little different. Now, we have two extra with us.

 

What we have been learning on the road we always like to share. You can find playlist to watch from our maintenance here :