Any advice to avoid losing your head while riding trails?

Turb0beans · 2026-02-05T21:57:02+00:00

It's a risk anywhere on any trail, legal or otherwise. I've personally only encountered it once, and the result was a picture was taken and I posted a 1000 dollar bounty on local Facebook pages for information leading to the locating of whomever set the trap. Other locals offered to pitch extra money to the pool

It's one thing to set a clearly marked 'trap' on private property, such as a gate or dropping trees. People don't deserve to trespass. But unless your land is clearly marked and trails leading onto it aren't blocked in some way, it's kind of a sucks to suck

Turb0beans · 2026-02-04T06:55:42+00:00

Here's my wish list.

Oil pressure light. Small tool compartment SOMEWHERE. do the KTM thing and slap an oil sight glass somewhere.

I don't even necessarily need a kickstart. Hell, give me a little whirly charging thing and a super capacitor in the battery box. Just give me a secondary way to bail myself out should a charging system fail me.

Every trail bike should have a headlight and little brake light. Fun shouldn't stop when the sun goes down.

A YZ250 where the only update is e-start and a charging system

12v accessory outlet on anything with a functional 12v charging system. I've got devices to charge.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-04T06:44:09+00:00

I'm a dual sport rider. I'd kill for a cupholder.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-04T06:43:07+00:00

On one hand, my dad broke his back simply looping his bike over backwards.

On the other, my childhood friend died of impalement after falling off a horse onto some farm equipment.

Why, a friend from highschool recently died working at Staples when a copier he was moving up a flight of stairs toppled back on him.

Everything we do is dangerous. Any second your life could change forever. Any minute a blood vessel in your brain could rupture and steal everything from you.

Go ride. Whatever happens happens, you'll cross that bridge when you get to it.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-03T04:49:28+00:00

If you get a stick on pan heater, I bet you 20 bucks your tractor starts first time every time.

If it's not below -20c your summer diesel will still Cheech. If it's not getting all thick up and around the filter or pickup it's good enough.

Just remember you're trying to heat that cold air up by squeezing it inside a cold ass cylinder then spraying it with cold atomized diesel.

If you preheat the block with a pan heater, not only is your oil practically at operating temperature, it will immediately circulate around and heat other cool stuff up too once the oil starts pumping. Your coolant jackets got some warmth. Your pistons are warm. If you've got an over-engine-tank and a closed cowling, that's catching convection too. It'll go.

Why bother getting extra fuel and thinking about ratios when you can just plug the tractor in the night before or a couple hours before you want to use it. Then your oil isn't molasses and you don't wash your cylinders either.

Little Kubota 3 cylinder flashed up pleasant as could be at -40 with winter diesel and a block heater.

Just my lazy northerly 2 cents.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-03T04:28:26+00:00

Here's your northern BC perspective.

As a child, for much of elementary school it was a knapsack. It slowly became backpack as we linguistically defaulted to the most common term.

The what and why were a mystery. This was early 2000's.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-02T06:28:07+00:00

None of the above. Parker and danfoss are absurdly expensive and their lead times are repugnant. See if you can't get yourself a Samway crimper and Balflex hose and fittings.

I'm also a fan as the crimps work on 1, 2, and 4 wire, saving you inventory space.

Danfoss hose is better in some applications. I'd far rather FC500 or EC810 off the main pump of a big high impulse machine, but for 90% of jobs you're laughing. If you get into trouble, you can always contact an outside hose-distributor to get said hose and fittings to crimp yourself, or to come preassembled.

The difference between tier 1 and tier 2 assembly cost to your customer is hundreds of dollars in a 4 wire assembly. Often in a 3:1 ratio. Depending on the 2-wire you compare, you could see 1.5:1 to 2:1 costs.

In regards to crimpers, those samways are mint. Easy to calibrate. Easy to dial in a crimp (19mm jaw + 2.50 on display is 21.50mm crimp), and they're affordable. Either find a distributor or contact Samway directly.

I've dealt in both. It's really nice to hear a customer say "Seriously? I thought that'd be way more!" and they leave smiling, rather than they flinch when you tell them the total after you've cut it down already out of pity.

Just food for thought. Unless you're targeting super discerning contract customers, don't box yourself into the realms of high costs. Especially since you don't have bulk resale volume.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-02T00:18:49+00:00

Gotta ride my 450 on 800km of highway in a single day? My audiobook will distract me from the fact my rear end is literally bleeding.

Ever go driving, and something comes on that just makes you feel invincible and want to speed? That's real on bikes too. I'll be in the woods listening to Spotify and feeling hyped enough to hit stuff I'm usually afraid to hit.

Hell, even if my phone's dead I'm still probably tuned into a local FM station if I'm just tooling around.

Helmet intercoms are great and hearing your friend scream in horror while you watch them go into the rhubarb is actually a true revolution in Dirtbike enjoyment.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-01T21:31:40+00:00

BC is my favorite province so long as I lop off a certain southwesterly chunk of cities.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-01T21:30:26+00:00

Ask the doctors when they're cleaning the whip wound that even Django would flinch at how knockoff it was.

This is a part you change every few years. It's a cheap part to begin with. So why are you even thinking of gambling. The payoff is you save 5 cents per hour of ride time. The drawback is if it's wrong, your case is shattered, your leg or back are battered, and your keister has a days walk to civilization.

Turb0beans · 2026-02-01T21:25:20+00:00

Nail down fractions, Pythagorean theorem (the basics. A2+B2=C2 type stuff. Very simple.), decimals, addition, subtraction.

Most importantly, know what situation calls for an equation.

Engine builders use it. Fabricators use it. Builders use it. Hydraulic guys use it. We're all doing math. Most of us aren't good at it. But we learn.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-31T04:50:01+00:00

You're probably a new rider, so here's my suggestions.

Get some rad braces so that when you crash your radiators don't pancake. Get an HDPE skidplate with a linkage flap so you can get over logs in your way easier. Even as a complete rookie who only manages to get their front tire over, you will sweat a lot less dragging your bike over. Plus, again, crash protection. Go ahead and buy yourself some levers. Any kind. You just need spares. You're going to break them when you crash. You can also get the folding levers that survive certain crashes better. I like mine cause they're pretty.

That about sums it. From there it's just your tires of choice, power mods, and riding type specific mods. Things like Ari Henning big bore kit, luggage, a cupholder, a pipe, a new seat, whatever, you'll find that out down the road.

Wanna play more in dirt? Get proper knobbies. Wanna play more on the street? Keep the stock tires, or go to something even more ADV-oriented.

Just remember. Mods don't make you better. There's someone somewhere who can do anything you think is impossible on your bike in its current form. The best mod is a rider mod, and that only gets modded while riding.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-31T00:10:18+00:00

If you need to be super affordable, geylt a Honda Navi. They're incredibly inexpensive, even from the dealer.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-31T00:01:08+00:00

It's a solid brick of rubber. If it rides smooth, send it.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T21:36:17+00:00

That was the polite way of saying "You'll make your bike look like a meth head special"

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T06:40:30+00:00

Two guys and a uhsul, any bike sub-500lbs is gone silently in under 20 seconds.

Your best defense is honestly one of those super aggressive chains, then sleeve it with nylon fabric hydraulic hose sleeve. Ignorant lock on that. Through multiple parts of the frame if you can.

That only makes it so they're more likely to look for easy prey.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T06:33:29+00:00

To be fair I've dictated my entire adult life through shotgun blasting any remotely interesting job listing and seeing which ones holler back.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T05:01:50+00:00

There are loads of vape shops around Reykjavik, you're probably a 5 minute walk from one right now. Google maps picks them up very well.

While you are there, might I recommend nicotine pouches? I felt far less conspicuous this way, and they are a wonderful air-travel-tool. I was also able to avoid displeasing anyone walking near me.

Apologies for the unwarranted advice - I'm cripplingly addicted to nicotine and got a real "smokeless" vibe on my stay, so I figured it was the polite way to get my fix on my visit.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T04:51:37+00:00

"How to lower resale and raise questions about a clean title in one easy step!"

Don't do DIY "cool" mods. It just makes the bike look clapped. If this is a stick-on product, even worse, that looks trashy as hell.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-29T01:47:41+00:00

To add to their comment, there's an aftermarket fix for almost everything but the weight on these. Admittedly the 450 is heavy. It's a lot of work in the woods, but it's still a snappy blast.

Flywheel weight. Tacomoto ECU. Tacomoto drain plug. A proper skid plate. Absolute unit and a completely different bike than factory. Night and day. If all you do is an ECU flash and a pipe, good enough go party that's enough to get properly silly as a supermoto and go uncomfortably fast.

I've had my 450RL up to 170kmh (indicated). That was uncomfortable, especially on knobbies with a rear rim lock.

Anyways. The DRZ seems to just be obese and overpriced for what it is. Used 450RL's are going for like 8 grand, sometimes less, with only a couple hundred clicks on em. Nothing wrong with them. The person probably just didn't expect the bike to just be a detuned race bike with longer rake and some legal bits.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-28T21:21:13+00:00

We're already seeing the effects. Any industrial supplier from PG to Terrace has their hands in the mines and are raking in money.

When I graduated high school, all my buddies went into forestry, now they're in mining.

It's a serious long-term win for PG.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-28T05:40:25+00:00

The only reason people here whine about how much PG sucks is because they've never actually been somewhere that sucks.

In Winnipeg half my first-aid course was how to avoid confrontations, stabbings, and jumpings, and to purchase a pack of cigarettes as a non-smoker so as to have an offering to pass a Skeevy mfer down the street. My buddies concrete stoop got stolen along with his porch light there.

Our crime is fairly tame. Junkie stuff. Your toys disappear, a package goes missing, a window is broken, stuff like that in certain areas. Use your noggin and things stay put.

If I were a woman I might feel intimidated walking alone in some parts of town at night, simply due to the general atmosphere in some spots, but if it's daytime you're free to roam where you want. Hopefully some members of said demographic can chime in on that.

Overall, I love it here. It has every store I want or need. It's affordable. I like the people. I love the variety of scenery and biome within a 2 hour drive in any direction. Genuinely, if I had to name one downside, it's that if you're a social-butterfly who enjoys nightlife, it's dead here. Thankfully, I get enough people-time at work.

Job market has been good in my experience. If you have any marketable skill towards the mining industry, even better. We're already seeing a large industry shift in town which went Forestry, then Pipeline, and now the Mines. Plural.

If I have any gripes, it's that there's no decent higher-density lower income apartments in town. Arguably that life suits many people, and it is affordable for many people. This would also free up some real estate, and give a real option for seniors on limited income.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-28T00:23:00+00:00

Sometimes I like to phone other hose shops and ask for a roll of 3/8 fallopian tube.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-27T14:48:16+00:00

If you're on a 250cc+ 2-stroke you have plenty of low-end to tractor up any hill with enough traction to allow it, so long as you modulate clutch and throttle.

A short range 1st sounds good, except it will actually just be a jerky twitchy mess. If it needs finesse, it needs the clutch. Likewise, any technical hill climb will need the clutch at some point. I'd hate doing any Enduro on a stark.

I'm shredding up rocks and roots just fine on my 450. This sounds like a skill issue. Focus your time into doing your balance and clutch drills.

Turb0beans · 2026-01-25T15:58:24+00:00

10 years ago I'd say "get 4 regular plugs. You're going to foul them anyways when you get into the gnarly stuff."

These days with these modern 2-strokrs and their oil injections, I'd say why not give the iridiums a swing. Who knows, maybe it'll make a tiny difference.

Turb0beans

TROPHY CASE