I've only done a handful of rides up at the Glass House Mountains but it's quickly becoming my favourite playground for the bike. It suits my riding style as there's plenty of mud, water, sand and single tracks to blast through. It's also only about a 40 minute blast up the highway from me meaning it's completely doable on the DRZ400 without having to trailer the bike.

There were eight riders out today, Luke on his WR250, Matt on his new Husqvarna 510 (which turns out to be the best bike in world!) along with Ronnie and a new face Scott on their KTM's. We also planned to meet Ian on his WR400 and Steph on her KTM out in the forest. Jeff on the Honda CRF400 was going to 'find us' on the trails...

So how the hell was Jeff going to find us?! Well the plan was to run the Life360 app on our phones. I've never used it before but you create circles of friends in the app and it plots your location on to a map... Lets see how that goes!

After spending 10 minutes sheltering from the rain at the Big Fish Tavern we decided to ride out in the drizzle and get into the forest. It was clear from the start that today was going to be pretty epic as after a couple of minutes riding down a sandy track we hooked a left and hit the 1st single track.

And it was amazing! Winding through a twisty track, trying to keep on the pegs to stop the front wheel washing out in the wet sand, hopping over logs, ducking to avoid low hanging branches - so much fun.

The day carried on with more of the same, mainly whipping through single tracks with the occasional blast along a dirt road to get to the next turn off. Amazingly, Jeff did find us! We'd just started on another track when he appeared, my phone had led him right too us.

We met with Ian and Steph at around 9.30 and headed off again, this time down a pretty steep muddy decent in search of a track they'd hit a couple of weeks ago. No joy finding the track, but getting up and down the slick muddy slopes was good fun.

There were a couple of spills, pretty much everyone dropped their bike at some point and we had to get the tools out on one section to fix Stephs throttle which was sticking. The only real disaster was that Luke realised he'd lost his tool bag along the way... We did double back in an attempt to find it but it was a little like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Amazingly though, he got it back! Steph put a post in a Facebook group she's part of asking people to look out for it and someone found it and returned it to Luke the next day - bit of luck that.

As always, the ride was captured on the excellent Relive app running on my phone.

But sadly, apart from the group shot I didn't get any other photos - I was to busy enjoying the ride! So I managed to get a couple of shots of the bike before she got a bath, just to prove how much she was caked in mud!

In terms of 'must do mods' on the DRZ400, the list goes:

1. case savers
2. bash plate
3. barkbusters

and purely for aesthetics:

4. tail tidy

Having done the first three items when I picked up the bike a year ago I've been putting off doing the tail tidy as there always seemed to be something else to spend money on. But having put up with everyone I ride with telling me I 'really have to do something about the arse end of the bike...' for a long time I decided to get to it and replace it.

The first challenge was finding a suitable unit. The ones offered by B&B and R&G appear top notch in terms of quality but pretty expensive for what they are. Asking around on Facebook quickly revealed that the Savage tail tidies listed on eBay for around $40 are more that up to the task at a fraction of the price. nice.

So I ordered one up from eBay along with an A4 piece of 4.5mm polycarbonate. One of the fellas who'd chimed in on the Facebook post had suggested making a backing plate for the licence plate as in his words 'it stops the number plate becoming a meat slicer' and also reduces the risk of the number plate cracking (which seems to be a common problem when the bike gets dropped).

While I was waiting for the unit to turn up in the post I got to designing the backing plate template and figuring out all the other bits I'd need to make the project run smoothly. One thing that came up in my research was that the police are pretty hot on roadworthy dual sport motorcycles having a reflector on the back of the bike:

All motorcycles must have at least 1 rear-facing red reflector which is visible from either side of the rear of the motorcycle.

https://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Safety/Vehicle-standards-and-modifications/Vehicle-standards/Motorcycle-standards#reflector

if they pull you over cos they're in a bad mood, sure as eggs are eggs you'll pick up a fine. Interestingly, when I took the tail tidy into the local police station the cop on the desk said he wouldn't pull me up on it! But then I found out that traffic cops are a different department to bobbies in squad cars and decided that it wasn't worth taking the risk... The good news is that the factory fender ships with great bolt on reflector so my template incorporated the original to keep everything nice and legal.

And to doubly make sure the cops would be happy I also picked up these round screw in reflectors that I'd use in place of bolts - safety first and all that.

The template can be downloaded here: QLD Motorcycle Number Plate Template PDF. Please note: it seems that each state has a slightly different set of dimensions!

Which left the last challenge being how to wire in the back brake. I had no joy finding a 3 wire connector that matched the one on the bike and after a lot of asking around the general consensus was to cut the current wires close to the current brake light and then splice/solder the wire to the ones on the new unit. After some hunting around I found these excellent 'solder splice heatshrink tubes' at JayCar. What a genius idea: the middle of the heatshrink tube has a small band of solder so all you do is slide the tubing onto one of the wires, merge the wire strands as you normally would when joining wires with solder, slide the tubing back over both wires aligning the solder section with the middle of the joined wires and heat with a butane or electric coil lighter (or a heat gun if you have one, long and short being 'heat' not 'flame' as you don't want to burn anything). The heat melts the solder giving a great join quality and meanwhile the shrinktube contracts around the wire giving a waterproof seal. Wrap in electrical tape and it's good to go.

Once the unit arrived the first thing I discovered is that the slots don't line up with the holes on an Australian number plate - which isn't a big deal but if i was going to fix the plate to my polycarbonate backing plate I was going to have to perform some surgery. After a few experiments I decided to cut the ends off either side of the tail tidy and drill new holes in the plate to mount it.

I checked with the legality of this and found that:

Drilling holes in a number plate is only permitted:

• to enable it to be attached to a vehicle
• if the holes do not interfere with the appearance of any characters on the plate
• if plates are not altered in any way so as to damage or deface the plate.

https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/registration/numberplate/replace-change

The next challenge was figuring out which wires joined to which. The wire colours on the new unit don't match so it was a case of trial and error to figure it out: twist the wires together, turn the bike on, pull the brake lever and check to see if the light gets brighter - it turned out the combination was:

• grey to red
• black to black
• white to green

With the wires joined, the number plate and reflector fixed onto the backing plate and the indicators added it was a simple case of removing the old unit and bolting the new one in place using the original screws. The cables were routed around the subframe, the fender went back on and it was job done.

All in, it was probably $65 including bolts etc from Bunnings - we'll worth it as I think you'll agree, it looks far better than the original! 

Only a short ride, 3 hours in the forest up at Mnt Mee with Wayne, Ronnie, Chris and Guy but that was perfect for me as to be honest, I kinda felt like I was starting over... They reckon it takes a couple of weeks to 'forget' how to ride and a couple of hours to get back into the rhythm.

So I went for it! It was a little shaky at first and as it was very dry and dusty I took it slow and steady and had a great time.

Highlights of the day we're spotting a huge snake (well, huge to me - apparently it was a baby!) and making it up 'A Break' in one go without hitting the deck.

All in all a perfect blip in the forest - it's good to be back ;)

As ever, I had the excellent Relive app running on the phone which captured the entire route - if you've not tried it, it's GPS tracking app that compiles any media you shot along the way into a video. Well worth a go!

The great thing about the following bits is that it also solved the issue of relocating the ignition as I'd also put some fat bars on the bike.

DRZ400 Ignition key and USB mounting bracket - $58

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2670086546420290

Initially I was considering buying a MOTOdash MD4.1 but it's plastic construction and the fact it had to come from the states kinda put me off... It looks like a neat bit of kit but I wasn't convinced it would stand up to the abuse of offroad riding. With shipping from the USA to Australia it came in at $64 which wasn't bad, but it could end up being a pricey mistake...

Then I found a 3D printable version online which looked good but after some investigation, I found it was going to be $100 to print in tough enough plastic and again, I had no idea how accurate the 3D model was.

Eventually, I found the solution on a random search in Facebook Marketplace. Warren Fincham makes these himself and it looked spot on! Clearly a lot of R&D has gone into the design I really liked the idea of supporting a 'garage enterprize' so after a quick chat with him, I purchased a unit at $58 inc postage.

He's even knocked up a video on how to install it:

USB charging socket - $16

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/12V-24V-QC3-0-USB-Fast-Charger-Socket-Outlet-On-Off-Switch-For-Car-Motorcycle-AU/202814414112

The next challenge was finding a USB charger socket. Nearly all the units I found on eBay either had two USB sockets or no way of turning off the unit other than disconnecting it from the battery. After a lot of searching I eventually found the perfect item: 1 USB socket, an on/off switch and a bonus volt meter (which turns out to be supprizingly acurate!).

The only downer with the unit was that the orientation doesn't match the photographs which means the volt meter is at a 90 degree angle... Not a deal breaker though.

Phone mount - $17

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/360-Motorcycle-MTB-Bike-Bicycle-Handlebar-Mount-Holder-For-Mobile-Phone-GPS-AU/202827532582

This actually turned out to be the trickiest item to source... I'm not a big fan of the X-Grip style of mount as the 4 prongs seem to come into contact with the volume and/or power buttons on most phones. The Quad Lock system is probably the most solid solution which doesn't interfere with the phone buttons but it's expensive and you have to get a case that matches your phone...

Baring in mind that the phone I use on the bike is a Samsung Galaxy S6 I picked up on Gumtree for $40, dropping $100+ on a mount seemed a little excessive...

So I trawled the eBay listings for hours looking for an alternative and after 2 failed attempts (the 1st one had a really long stem so the phone stuck up higher than the bars, the 2nd one a crappy mounting kit that didn't work with the fat bars) I finally got one that was perfect.

The nice thing about the mount is the short stem so the phone sits nicely between the bar risers, it's small and it doesn't mess with the phone buttons. You can also have the phone landscape or portrait. I have mine set up in portrait mode as it means the phone doesn't bash the petrol tank.

RAM Mount Tether $6

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/RAM-mount-compatible-tether-rubber-net-harness-X-grip-motorcycle-phone-GPS-Honda/153751925065

This item wasn't part of the original plan but during my research I'd seen a lot of bikers use this with the X-Grip mounts. It works perfectly with the phone mount and at $6 it's a very cheap bit of insurance against the phone bouncing off into the bush if the phone mount screw loosens off.

Short 90 degree usb cable $1.50

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Short-25cm-Cable-Elbow-90-Degree-Type-C-USB-C-Lightning-Micro-USB-Cable/353003959219

I found that a standard usb cable stuck out to much but this one sits flush to the dash and the base of the phone without loads of cable dangling around.

Putting the whole thing together took a couple of hours as I had to remove the seat, plastics and petrol tank to run the power cable from behind the front headlamp cowl back to the battery. I used an inline fuze that I cannibalised from another USB/Cigarette lighter socket I had kicking around as I figured a little extra protection to stop anything nasty frying the electitrics couldn't halm. With all cables and terminals wrapped in electrical tape and the bike put back together I was good to go - and it works a treat!

The final piece of the puzzle was getting an app that locked the phone in landscape mode. Android seems to support locking in portrait but landscape is triggered by rotating the phone and I found that the screen would sometimes rotate when going round corners... So I downloaded the Rotation Control app from Google Play and that solves the issue. It has the added benefit of rotating the home screen too which makes navigating the apps etc on the phone loads easier.