Hello hello—today we are brimming with excitement over our upcoming Florida trip! Mainly to give our Elefants and moto trailer (it still needs a name, we were thinking ‘Green Submarine’ but are open to suggestions!) a good test run over many miles, but also to be able to see Ehren’s grandpa (he’ll be 91 this year!). It also doesn’t hurt to be in some warm weather again. Ehren is decidedly not a beach bum, but you won’t see me complaining about lollygagging around in the sand and sea (if we’re not too busy riding, that is!).
The bikes and trailer are all packed up and ready to go in the truck and covered trailer, even though we don’t leave for another 4-5 days. Gives us a little time to finish up some other sewing projects and video editing. We’ve been working 24/7 on our various projects since late August (with a few breaks here and there to see family since they’re scattered all over the state, or if we needed a day to just run errands). Our workdays generally begin around 9-10 a.m. and end anywhere from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. A typical workday consists of 40% ideation, design and fabrication; 25% traveling around town getting parts/tools/supplies or going back and forth between the house and shop; and 35% actual progress (finishing one step and going on to the next).
We finally got to a point where we could work on our solar system for the trailer. Using a CTEK D250S DUAL battery charger, we were able to integrate a 30W Renogy solar panel into our battery charging system. When we are riding, the bike will charge the auxiliary battery in the trailer. But when we are stopped at camp, we will be able to use the solar panel to charge. This works for us because that will be the most likely time we will be heavily using that battery (video editing, using the bike lights, charging communicators, etc.). We have since made a handy mount for the solar panel on the underside of the trailer door.
In other news, my bike is up and running now! I didn’t get a whole lot of ride time with either Elefant before they both met their respective gremlins back in Nevada (Ehren’s Elefant had a reg/rec meltdown and mine had some issue with the ignition system), so it’s a new bike to me. They fall more easily into a corner—which is nice if you’re used to it but can take you by surprise if you’re not. Overall it ran great, required a lot less carb tuning than Ehren’s bike did (though that’s probably just cuz we now knew what tuning these bikes liked), and I could definitely feel its power compared to my beloved KTM. It has more torque due to its engine design (V-twin vs. thumper a.k.a. single cylinder) which will come in handy when towing a trailer.
We’re pretty pleased with the colors as well! My bike, Ehren’s bike and the front swingarm for the trailer feature bars we built and then had powdercoated at the Bemidji Occupational Development Center (ODC). If you remember how they looked beforehand:
Raw steel just crying out for a good powdercoat.
You can see how good of a job they did! We were happy to give them some business as they do so much for communities in northern Minnesota. The ODC’s powdercoating services are available to the public (call, visit their website or find them on Facebook). We would definitely use them again!
Last, but certainly not least, we were able to take our trailer out for a short test run! We are happy to see that a lot of the wobbliness of the previous design had been remedied as we’d hoped. Just need to get a few more miles on it before we’re truly satisfied, but it looks good so far!
—Britt