Accessorising For Adventure

With an upcoming adventure ride at the planning stage I have been collecting a few more accessories to help make the Desert X more suited to the task. 

I have been a bit stumped by the DX’s fuel tank and its ability to accomodate a tank bag. I loved the Givi clip on tank bag that I had on my Africa Twin but with the offset fuel cap on the DX, Givi don’t make a bag for the Ducati…..and I hate strap on tank bags because they look ugly and the straps will cause abrasions to the paintwork - especially on an adv bike.

However, tied into this dilemma is my desire to be able to mount my drone controller, safely, somewhere on the handlebars or tank/tank bag. 

Without a tank bag I have been running a Lone Wolf bar bag which is actually very handy for small items and charging electronics from the bike.

But it rules out any electronics mounted on the bars. So, despite my misgivings - and this has been almost two years in coming - I bit the bullet on a tank bag. It even has straps! What helped was a 30% discount in the post Xmas sales. Now I will be able to carry the drone ( and other electronics) in the tank bag and mount the controller on the handlebars. I have an idea involving a Quad lock there…but more on that another time.

I went with a Giant Loop Fandango. Clearly, it won’t work with the bar bag in place but the bar bag won’t be needed with a tank bag.

The Desert X has a special axle nut on the rear and as such, I rushed in when I first bought the bike and grabbed a special tool/socket to fit it very early on. While it fit, I also had to pack a suitable 1/2 inch driver. Add to this the fact that the rear axle torque spec is 180nM so a big, heavy bar is required. I decided to splash out on the Eastbound all in one kit. It contains all of the tools needed to to remove the front and rear wheels, all contained in two small, easily packable satchels. It has a lightweight,  three piece bar so I can ditch the old school boat anchor of a bar that I have been carrying around. 

With a fair chance of hitting some sandy roads I decided to add an actual functional steering stabiliser to the DX. (the std Ducati one is as useful as a screen door on a submarine🙄)  Steering stabilisers are one of those things you don’t need until you need one. I had a Scott damper on my Africa Twin. They are nice. They are also expensive being American made. Our South Pacific Peso is pretty weak against the US dollar so the Scott was off the list.

I decided to go with the Australian made MSC item. It gets good reviews, is locally manufactured and is, importantly, fairly priced.

The damper is very easy to fit.... well,  it would have been if they included the correct length bolts for the anchor peg mount. 

The problem could have been that the mount is a bit low,  or that they forgot to include some washers to space it upwards a few millimetres as the peg was only about half seated in the slot in the damper (see photo).

So,  I put three 6mm washers(4mm would have been better but I didn't have any) under each leg and it seemed to fix the issue. 

The damper is very compact and unobtrusive.  It also seems to work extremely well,  unlike the simple screen door closer that is the genuine damper. 🙄

The only issue might be that the damper anchor mount looks to block the forward bolt that holds the tank on - this might prove to be a major pain in the arse when it comes time to clean the air filter. Time will tell....

In the mean time it looks to be a million times better than the genuine item which, as you can see,  does absolutely nothing. 

Now for some route planning. I just need to get my desk top computer back up and running as it is simply too painful to edit gpx and look at maps on a mobile device. 

Cheers.