If anyone is interested I'm starting to think about what to pack for our trip to Mexico. It's still three months away but Ward will be taking the bike and gear down with him so I have to get everything together and down to his place in just a couple of weeks.
We'll of course take all of our own personal gear, riding equipt. and rain gear but here's what we have to take from a maintenance/repair stand point;
Tools - what I did was start with the factory kit as a baseline. The tools in it are crap but its a good indication of sizes etc. With this in mind I swapped out everything I could for store bought tools with the exception of the few specialty items that are specific to the bike. My kit now includes:
Wrenches / Basic Socket Set / Screw Driver Set / Vice Grips / Pliers / Special Allen head for the front axle / Crescent Wrench / Spark Plug Socket / Leatherman Tool / Allen Wrench pocket kit
Misc items include; tire repair kit (plugs, worms, patches, glue, reamer tools etc) / CO2 canisters as an emergency fill / slime brand air pump / as a last resort a tube to use in an emergency (only the larger rear size is necessary because in a pinch it will work in both tires) / electrical tape / duct tape / WD40 / epoxy / lock tight / fuses / jumper cables / small size tire irons / air pressure gauge / supply of misc metric sized nuts, bolts and fasteners / zip ties and wire / flashlight and batteries / first aid kit / siphon hose / jumper cables
What's not shown is the tool tube I installed on the bike; inside this I carry POL items that I want to keep separate from my luggage: chain lube / oil / kerosene to clean the chain / rags , rubber gloves and handy wipes.
We're lucky - the storage room under the seat is huge and I can store just about all the actual tools there. The larger bulky items like the spare tube, jumper cables and pump can all go in two tank pannier's I install for long trips. This leaves the larger pannier's and the top box for our actual luggage.
The irony of course is I don't know what to do with half of this stuff but better safe than sorry. I'll have a laptop with a downloaded PDF of an entire DL650 repair manual and necessity is the mother of invention so I'm sure we'll be fine.
More to come as we continue to prepare
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