My modified 1983 Honda XL 500R be lookin' rather quite dandy :)
Hello there, fellow Gravel Gobblers and Wheeled Wizards!
I would like to show off some pictures of my ol’ gal. I have been riding and modifying this marvelous machine for the better part of six years now. Throughout those years, I’ve taken her on numerous big and small adventures across central and northern Europe, where she has always been by my side, reliably rumbling over stick and stone - whilst calling her my home for weeks and months, both on and off the road.
As the years went by, she - as one would not expect from a machine solely made of metal, rubber, and (very little) rust - evolved into a neat little machine for weekend exploration or long-distance, butt-scrambling adventures.
A list of things that I changed and/or added:
- (Just recently) Yamaha 426F USD fork conversion (changing the original duplex drum brake to a DR-Z400 disc brake)
- Self-made navigation tower (keeping the original instruments while making navigation much mor plesant.
- Auxiliary lights (now you can see what you’re about to crash into… even at night!)
- Self-made crash bars / front pannier rack
- Self-made rear pannier rack
- Oil cooler (keeping those 2 liters of oil from burning up at temperatures only seen inside Tokamak fusion reactors)
- Handguards (for guarding your hands and levers)
- Some old British military panniers, front and rear (those rear panniers are amazing :0)
- ~20-liter Paris-Dakar tank and seat (The Dakar-tank really needs fresh Paint tho.)
- Some fancy-schmanzy Enduristan fender bags
- Wider footpegs (because: wide = better)
- Tires: Heidenau K60 Scout (I had the Continental TKC80 for a while, but they wore out fast and were as slippery as a freshly buttered penguin on wet asphalt.)
tl;dr: I ride and modify a 1983 Honda because therapy is expensive and I can’t make financially smart decisions. :0