Coping With A Dunking

This entry is part 7 of 22 in the series Adventure Rider Issue #10

Smart riders prepare their bikes for deepwater crossings and possible submersion.

For most riders, rain means discomfort.

But while rain itself can be challenging, some of the effects of rain in even very warm climates can create potentially harsh conditions for adventure riders. It’s not just a wet crotch and water in the boots we’re talking about here.

Practical experience

Rainwater has to drain somewhere, and of course it goes into waterways and becomes part of our beaut environment, nourishing all the little animals and native fauna. As the rainwater heads to the ocean, the waterways themselves become much larger and deeper.

For riders that can mean some very tough creek crossings, and if it rains hard enough, water across roads and trails.

First of all, if you don’t know what’s in the water, don’t ride into it. That’s simple, and common sense.

We don’t know anyone in the world who deals with bikes in deep water as much as Roy Kunda of Cape York Motorcycle Adventures.

Over the years we’ve seen Roy prepare and dedrown countless bikes, and he has coping with deep-water crossings down to a very fine art. He’s also done more river crossings than Adventure Rider Magazine’s editor has had hot coffees, and that’s saying something.

Roy recommends walking the crossing first.

That lets the rider check the type of bottom under the water – whether it’s smooth, potholed, boulders, slippery, rutted, whatever – and to get a good idea of the force of the current. A rider’s legs won’t offer anything like the resistance of his bike. If the current’s pushing hard against the rider’s legs, chances are the bigger surface area of the bike will mean the whole lot gets swept downstream and there’ll be nothing anyone can do about it.

Everyone’s seen pics of Roy’s groups carrying bikes across the rivers of Far North Queensland. Whether to walk, ride or carry is decided by Roy’s rules-of-thumb refined over a couple of decades.

“If the water’s axle-deep you can ride across,” guided the Cape York pioneer. “If it’s as deep as the top of the wheels I’ll walk the bike in first gear with the engine running, remembering to be on the down-stream side of the bike. If it’s up near the seat it’s an obvious time to walk the bike across with the engine off.”

If you do decide to walk the bike through water that’s likely to be up over the engine, the single-cylinder guys should turn the ignition off, put the bike in gear, then push it forward until the compression locks the rear wheel. Click back to neutral and start pushing. Having pressure inside the cylinder will help keep water out of the bore itself.

Sucker!

Roy learned a lot about preparing bikes for deep water in over 20 years of leading tours and running hire bikes in Far North Queensland.

It doesn’t get much wetter than the stretch between Cairns and Cape York.

“You can make a big difference to a bike’s tolerance to water by re-routing the breather hoses from the carburettor and engine,” he explained.

“On most bikes the engine breather is routed down low between the rear of the cases and the swingarm. When you tackle a deep-water crossing, the engine cools fast and creates a vacuum that sucks the water up through the breather.

“Re-route the engine breather up high to the airbox, and the two or four hoses – depending on the bike – from the side of the carburettor can run up underneath the fuel tank toward the steering head.”

These two minor changes allow the bike to handle increased depths of water.

Remember not all the hoses from the carbie need to be re-routed.

The drain hose from the float bowl should be left as is. It’s sealed until the drain screw is undone, and the hose needs to run downward to drain the bowl anyway.

Words of wisdom

What if the bike sucks water anyway?

Despite all the preparation and care, it happens – you can count on it at some stage of your riding lifetime. Roy Kunda has spent a considerable part of his working life restarting drowned bikes. In Roy’s riding environment, a drowned bike often means a bike that’s been totally submerged. We’ve watched him retrieve submerged bikes, clear them out and get them started so often he makes it look easy. Here’s how he does it…

Roy Kunda has restarted more drowned bikes than he’s caught barramundi. That’s a lot of bikes restarted!

“The quickest and easiest way to dedrown the bike without engine damage is to follow these steps,” he barramundied. “There’s no real shortcut if you want to get it right. And once the bike has been submerged make sure you don’t try and start it. The gears will work like a blender and mix the water with the oil immediately.”

1. Open the airbox and remove the filter. Squeeze the water out of the filter and leave it to dry.

2. Turn the fuel off and open the drain on the carbie float bowl and leave it open. Water will have worked its way into the engine cases. If you haven’t started the bike the water and oil won’t have mixed. Water is heavier than oil
and will sink to the bottom.

3. To remove this water, crack the oil drain plug of the sump and carefully unscrew it slowly until water starts to seep out. Don’t remove the plug or you’ll lose all your oil. Once the water is dribbling out let it go on until oil starts to seep through. That’s when you’ll know most of the water has been removed. Tighten the sump plug.

4. Once you’ve removed the water from the engine cases the motor is safe to wind over. Remove the spark plug and with the throttle wide open wind the motor over until all the water stops pumping out of the cylinder head. Replace the spark plug.

Now you’re right to start the bike safely. Do up the carbie drain screw, turn the fuel back on, replace the dry air filter and do up the airbox.

Remember, if you push or tow the bike to start it without following the steps you’ll run a high risk of severe damage. Take the time to do it right and it will ensure you can keep riding.

Fuel injection

Roy’s tips are about as good as it gets for carburetted bikes. But adventure bikes, especially big-capacity adventure bikes, tend to be much closer to the leading edge of technology. What do owners of fuel-injected bikes need to look out for, and what kind of preparation can they do to increase their bike’s tolerance of wet conditions? What does a rider need to do if their fuel-injected bike cops a drowning? We went right to the top man for the tips on this one. Cliff Stovall, based in Melbourne, is Australia’s Triumph Technical Manager, and we’ve seen first-hand some of Cliff’s work with drowned, fuel-injected bikes.

“As far as preparation goes, and using the Tiger 800 as an example,” step-motored Cliff, “the first thing we’d do is install an oiled-foam prefilter. In the case where the bike does end up in a river crossing that’s deep enough introduce water into the inlet side of the airbox, the oiled prefilter will help repel the water. Clearly, it won’t keep the water out forever, but it helps.

“The reason I say a prefilter is because most of the standard air filters in fuel-injected bikes are very difficult to get to. So a prefilter is easier to service, and it’ll help stop the water before it gets into the airbox proper.”

Where carburetted bikes have a collection of breather hoses from the carburettor, engine and airbox, fuel-injection is a sealed, pressurised system, so there’s nothing to worry about there. Cliff has a couple of often-overlooked breathers he recommends rerouting, though.

“The fuel-tank vent itself, and the fuel-tank overflow hoses on fuel-injected bikes, run down beneath the bike. I run those two hoses up underneath the tank and over the top of the frame.”

With Cliff’s set-up the water level would have to be higher than the tank to get in through those two hoses, and if the water’s that deep, you have a whole world of other problems that will make water in the fuel seem minor.

After those two main changes, Cliff recommends filling the rubber boot over the stator lines with silicon.

“If you’re going to be doing a lot of water crossings, there’s two plugs for the pick-up coil on the stator side of the motor. There’s normally a rubber boot protecting those plugs and wires where they go in through the engine case. I like to take that rubber boot, which is supposed to seal water from getting in there, and fill it with silicone. That way the water can’t run down the loom to find its way in.

“The boot is a good seal for normal rain and wet conditions, but if the motor’s going to be submerged, particularly for any amount of time, that’s what I do.

Cliff also pointed out that some shaft-drive bikes have a vent from their diffs. Dunking the hot diff can cause water to suck in through that vent. If you can see the vent on your diff, give some thought to running that access to somewhere higher on the bike.

Gulp

So what when the worst happens? The bike falls during a creek crossing and under it goes? What’s involved in getting a fuel-injected bike running again?

“You do exactly the same things you’d do on a carburetted bike,” spannered Cliff. “Make sure you take the air filter out. If it’s saturated with water, you don’t want the motor sucking all that in as well when you’re trying to start it.

“Pull the air filter out, pull the plugs, tip it upside-down, turn the engine over and try and pump as much water as you can out of the motor. Some water-displacing fluid like WD-40 might help compensate for some of the moisture that gets caught in there.

“After that, put some spark plugs in it and try and get it fired up. Once it’s running it’ll clear itself out.”

What about electronics?

“The electronics on modern bikes are pretty-well sealed,” injected Cliff.

“All the coils and ECU plugs are sealed into them and are waterproof.

“If you really wanted to get hardcore you could go through and take all the waterproof GM connectors apart and hit them with some dielectric grease and put that back together, and then make sure that’s done for every ride, but I’d call that very extreme.

Easy does it

There you have it. The good oil on preparing your bike to handle water crossings and the procedure for getting it going again if things go wrong.

Make sure you do your preparation, and make sure you don’t attempt crossings with-out doing the risk assessment first.

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