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Let's kick it off with the one and only picture. Didn't stop much.
That's the little Renegade just off of the driveway at my parents' little place outside Castell.
Back story: my parents have owned some acreage with an antique doublewide on it in Llano county near Castell for nearly three decades. It remains a rarely-visited remote getaway, lately because there was no internet access. So for Christmas, we (the fam) put an outdoor LTE access point up on a 30 ft. pole on the property to give them internet access and make it at least reasonable to go spend time up at their place. Well, a couple of weeks ago they went up to check on the place and told me "the internet isn't working". So yesterday my dad and I decided to go out there so I could diagnose the problem, and took advantage of the gorgeous weather to ride our motorcycles out there.
They are at the end of about 4 miles of that pink granite gravel/hardpack/sand road that is common to Llano county roads off Llano CR105. I wanted to test my ADV-converted GS500 "Renegade" on the gravel roads out there ever since doing the work on it. My dad chose his scramblerized TU250X, which notably has Shinko 244 tires on it.
The route was 1431 all the way from Cedar Park through Marble Falls to Kingsland, left on 3404 that turns into CR307 past the river, jog to Llano on 71/16, then up FM152 from the middle of downtown Llano to Castell. We stopped at Castell for a soft drink then backtracked to CR105 and took it until the pavement ran out and then on to the other CRs and unmarked gravel roads to their little place on Hickory Creek near House Mountain. Coming home was the reverse.
I've been out to their place hundreds of times but usually we have gone all the way down 29 to get there, or when I lived in Austin briefly, I would come down 71 and take 2323 in. This is the first time I'd taken this route, and boy was it worth the 10 minute time penalty. Of course 1431 is a great motorcycle road and we took nearly the full distance of it. CR307 from Kingsland was lovely, but too bumpy for my Triumph so I am really glad I was on the Suzuki. 71 was a little unpleasant (more in a minute), but CR152 is a fabulous motorcycle road, almost destination worthy. This is a route I am going to have to repeat many times. Fantastic.
OK, so the ride. FM1431 of course is mostly 55 and 60 mph 2-lane hilly road past Lago Vista, which is no problem for my GS500 which eats up these backroads like it was made for them. But my dad's little TU250X was running flat out half the time and this made the hills a bit of a challenge, especially those coming out of a turn where he was basically unable to really accelerate and get back up to speed. The knobby tires did surprisingly well on the windy pavement. But the little 250 was looking for more most of the ride on 1431. But it was lovely once we got past Smithwick and 1431 slowed down and turned to 4 lanes so the irritated drivers on our tail could pass. As usual I love riding through Kingsland, and the route out of Kingsland was glorious and the little bikes loved it. 71 on the other hand exposed the worst of the 250's lack of power, since there were a couple of 2-mile long stretches of 2-lane at 70mph speed limit that was over 10mph above the TUX's max speed. But we pulled through and then the rest of the ride through Llano and out to Castell was marvelous.
The GS500 was ideally suited for this whole route all the way to Castell and beyond. It was cranky to start up, making me think the choke is just plain old not working, and there was still some oil coming mostly from the left fork even though I replaced the seal recently, but I think the fork oil level is high. Still some fuel leaking from the left carb even after the rebuild. Freaking bike is nearly 30 years old, I guess I had better just get used to it leaking a bit. Anyway, it ate up all of this variable surface asphalt and was the ideal bike for the ride. Funny how twice the displacement and 3x the power made it a lot more capable than the TUX.
Things really changed once the pavement ran out. These Llano Co. dirt roads are graded to a granite and limestone base with decades of that Llano river "gravel" packed on them, making for a hard pack variably washboard surface with a thin layer of loose fine gravel turning to sand on top and the same piled deep in corners. The TUX with its knobbies rolled through this like it was nothing. The lack of power was no impediment when we were going under 30mph. But the GS was not happy. My Shinko 705s are certainly better than straight up street tires on this surface, but they are not knobbies, not even close. As long as we were going in a straight line, regardless of bumps, and I kept it to 30mph in about 4th or 5th gear so the revs were low and I didn't risk a throttle twich that would spin the rear wheel, things were pretty much fine. I had to ride it like a gigantic overweight dirt bike, letting it slip around a bit and trusting it would not go down, and it didn't. But a couple of big 90 degree turns had 4" of that fine gravel / sand on them and this was a rather serious problem for the GS. First one I came too I was going too fast before I realized that I couldn't lean into the turn and get it to turn, but was too fast to turn without leaning and I nearly went off the road. It plowed with the front wheel turned a little and eventually scrubbed off enough speed to let me get it to turn without slowing too much and beaching it. Once I figured out the knife edge speed where I was fast enough to keep from digging into the sand but slow enough to be able to steer an upright bike, I was able to ride. First time for me riding on this kind of stuff. I didn't go down at all or even get close. But it was not confidence inspiring.
After riding the 4 miles out and back on the gravel on our return trip, once I hit the pavement I felt like riding wheelies. Man the world was better on asphalt!
All the way home on 1431 a pair of AC Cobras (replicas fo sho) were behind me and I kept thinking we were holding them up but they never passed even when we pulled into the slow vehicle lane, so I guess they were mature enough to not try to wrap their show cars around some cedar tree showing off. They followed all the way from Marble Falls to Cedar Park.
Anyway, we made two fuel stops, one on the way out just as we left Cedar Park and one on the way back as soon as we got on 71 from Llano and the TUX got just over 60mpg on the 2nd stop, and my math says the GS500 got right at 59mpg for the same route. Amazing with the 14t front sprocket and 114 miles of mostly 55mph running at 5K rpm in the top gear through hills and turns. Of course it could be refueling error. But if anything I overfilled it.
This was a wonderful ride and we really enjoyed it. I think my dad would enjoy it a lot more if the TUX had another 10 hp. His DR200SE has a little more power but it also has Shinko 705s on it like mine and I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff once you get to the gravel. Likewise, I have less than 1000 miles on my 705s so I am not considering changing them, and I am not sure there's a good tire choice that would be a whole lot better in the sandy gravel without giving up too much on the 200 miles of twisty pavement, especially considering my tire size requirements. More practice is probably my best plan.
I am sure I will repeat this trip many times since it's a lovely ride and we have a good halfway point. The GS works fine as long as I can avoid that deeper sandy gravel. Around home gravel is limestone and it does just fine on that but the granite is very different. I've done the GS over regular dirt and grass and limestone gravel and it's much better, but the sandy gravel exposed its biggest weakness. But it worked and I was happy. I'll totally do it again and maybe next time have more time to just go explore some of those gravel roads, there are miles and miles of them in the area. With a whole day to commit to it, a more leisurely ride with more stops like in Kingsland or maybe lunch in Marble Falls in both directions would make for a more enjoyable day, because frankly 1+ hours without a stop on my GS is a bit of a bother. And I am learning that 4 hours of saddle time is about all I can take before it becomes a chore, regardless of the bike.
Oh, and one final piece of good news, I fixed the internet problem, so mission accomplished.
That's the little Renegade just off of the driveway at my parents' little place outside Castell.
Back story: my parents have owned some acreage with an antique doublewide on it in Llano county near Castell for nearly three decades. It remains a rarely-visited remote getaway, lately because there was no internet access. So for Christmas, we (the fam) put an outdoor LTE access point up on a 30 ft. pole on the property to give them internet access and make it at least reasonable to go spend time up at their place. Well, a couple of weeks ago they went up to check on the place and told me "the internet isn't working". So yesterday my dad and I decided to go out there so I could diagnose the problem, and took advantage of the gorgeous weather to ride our motorcycles out there.
They are at the end of about 4 miles of that pink granite gravel/hardpack/sand road that is common to Llano county roads off Llano CR105. I wanted to test my ADV-converted GS500 "Renegade" on the gravel roads out there ever since doing the work on it. My dad chose his scramblerized TU250X, which notably has Shinko 244 tires on it.
The route was 1431 all the way from Cedar Park through Marble Falls to Kingsland, left on 3404 that turns into CR307 past the river, jog to Llano on 71/16, then up FM152 from the middle of downtown Llano to Castell. We stopped at Castell for a soft drink then backtracked to CR105 and took it until the pavement ran out and then on to the other CRs and unmarked gravel roads to their little place on Hickory Creek near House Mountain. Coming home was the reverse.
I've been out to their place hundreds of times but usually we have gone all the way down 29 to get there, or when I lived in Austin briefly, I would come down 71 and take 2323 in. This is the first time I'd taken this route, and boy was it worth the 10 minute time penalty. Of course 1431 is a great motorcycle road and we took nearly the full distance of it. CR307 from Kingsland was lovely, but too bumpy for my Triumph so I am really glad I was on the Suzuki. 71 was a little unpleasant (more in a minute), but CR152 is a fabulous motorcycle road, almost destination worthy. This is a route I am going to have to repeat many times. Fantastic.
OK, so the ride. FM1431 of course is mostly 55 and 60 mph 2-lane hilly road past Lago Vista, which is no problem for my GS500 which eats up these backroads like it was made for them. But my dad's little TU250X was running flat out half the time and this made the hills a bit of a challenge, especially those coming out of a turn where he was basically unable to really accelerate and get back up to speed. The knobby tires did surprisingly well on the windy pavement. But the little 250 was looking for more most of the ride on 1431. But it was lovely once we got past Smithwick and 1431 slowed down and turned to 4 lanes so the irritated drivers on our tail could pass. As usual I love riding through Kingsland, and the route out of Kingsland was glorious and the little bikes loved it. 71 on the other hand exposed the worst of the 250's lack of power, since there were a couple of 2-mile long stretches of 2-lane at 70mph speed limit that was over 10mph above the TUX's max speed. But we pulled through and then the rest of the ride through Llano and out to Castell was marvelous.
The GS500 was ideally suited for this whole route all the way to Castell and beyond. It was cranky to start up, making me think the choke is just plain old not working, and there was still some oil coming mostly from the left fork even though I replaced the seal recently, but I think the fork oil level is high. Still some fuel leaking from the left carb even after the rebuild. Freaking bike is nearly 30 years old, I guess I had better just get used to it leaking a bit. Anyway, it ate up all of this variable surface asphalt and was the ideal bike for the ride. Funny how twice the displacement and 3x the power made it a lot more capable than the TUX.
Things really changed once the pavement ran out. These Llano Co. dirt roads are graded to a granite and limestone base with decades of that Llano river "gravel" packed on them, making for a hard pack variably washboard surface with a thin layer of loose fine gravel turning to sand on top and the same piled deep in corners. The TUX with its knobbies rolled through this like it was nothing. The lack of power was no impediment when we were going under 30mph. But the GS was not happy. My Shinko 705s are certainly better than straight up street tires on this surface, but they are not knobbies, not even close. As long as we were going in a straight line, regardless of bumps, and I kept it to 30mph in about 4th or 5th gear so the revs were low and I didn't risk a throttle twich that would spin the rear wheel, things were pretty much fine. I had to ride it like a gigantic overweight dirt bike, letting it slip around a bit and trusting it would not go down, and it didn't. But a couple of big 90 degree turns had 4" of that fine gravel / sand on them and this was a rather serious problem for the GS. First one I came too I was going too fast before I realized that I couldn't lean into the turn and get it to turn, but was too fast to turn without leaning and I nearly went off the road. It plowed with the front wheel turned a little and eventually scrubbed off enough speed to let me get it to turn without slowing too much and beaching it. Once I figured out the knife edge speed where I was fast enough to keep from digging into the sand but slow enough to be able to steer an upright bike, I was able to ride. First time for me riding on this kind of stuff. I didn't go down at all or even get close. But it was not confidence inspiring.
After riding the 4 miles out and back on the gravel on our return trip, once I hit the pavement I felt like riding wheelies. Man the world was better on asphalt!
All the way home on 1431 a pair of AC Cobras (replicas fo sho) were behind me and I kept thinking we were holding them up but they never passed even when we pulled into the slow vehicle lane, so I guess they were mature enough to not try to wrap their show cars around some cedar tree showing off. They followed all the way from Marble Falls to Cedar Park.
Anyway, we made two fuel stops, one on the way out just as we left Cedar Park and one on the way back as soon as we got on 71 from Llano and the TUX got just over 60mpg on the 2nd stop, and my math says the GS500 got right at 59mpg for the same route. Amazing with the 14t front sprocket and 114 miles of mostly 55mph running at 5K rpm in the top gear through hills and turns. Of course it could be refueling error. But if anything I overfilled it.
This was a wonderful ride and we really enjoyed it. I think my dad would enjoy it a lot more if the TUX had another 10 hp. His DR200SE has a little more power but it also has Shinko 705s on it like mine and I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff once you get to the gravel. Likewise, I have less than 1000 miles on my 705s so I am not considering changing them, and I am not sure there's a good tire choice that would be a whole lot better in the sandy gravel without giving up too much on the 200 miles of twisty pavement, especially considering my tire size requirements. More practice is probably my best plan.
I am sure I will repeat this trip many times since it's a lovely ride and we have a good halfway point. The GS works fine as long as I can avoid that deeper sandy gravel. Around home gravel is limestone and it does just fine on that but the granite is very different. I've done the GS over regular dirt and grass and limestone gravel and it's much better, but the sandy gravel exposed its biggest weakness. But it worked and I was happy. I'll totally do it again and maybe next time have more time to just go explore some of those gravel roads, there are miles and miles of them in the area. With a whole day to commit to it, a more leisurely ride with more stops like in Kingsland or maybe lunch in Marble Falls in both directions would make for a more enjoyable day, because frankly 1+ hours without a stop on my GS is a bit of a bother. And I am learning that 4 hours of saddle time is about all I can take before it becomes a chore, regardless of the bike.
Oh, and one final piece of good news, I fixed the internet problem, so mission accomplished.