As someone who has been motorcycle-illiterate (What’s a cam chain, precious?) for an unsettlingly long time, I don’t have the vast knowledge and experience of some of the inmates here when it comes to bike mods and farkles. I have noticed, however, that some of the mods I’ve recently done on my tired-yet-still-somehow-alive DR650 have completely transformed the bike, while others did exactly nothing. And that, I suppose, is the difference between mods and farkles.

Then again,Mike maintains that farkles aren’t just bling– rather, they’re shiny but still useful add-ons. So perhaps this piece should simply be called Essential Bike Mods and Farkles vs Junk, but here we go nonetheless:

Carb and Suspension

The two biggest mods I’ve done in the last two years was getting a custom, adjustable TFX Suspension setup and a Mikuni Flatslide carb.

The suspension made my life much, much easier. What used to be hard work off-road is now significantly easier, and on pavement, even when loaded up to its eyeballs, the DR corners a lot better, and that loose, wobbly feeling in the front is gone (unless I forget to adjust the preload; this results in me spending a five miles thinking I’ve got a flat tire, then discovering I need to tune the suspension). The bike feels more balanced overall, and it forgives even more dumb mistakes when I’m too exhausted to think straight.

t的flatslide碳水化合物是最大的启示hem all. Fo the longest time, I’ve wanted more bite out of my throttle; I wanted, to put it in my own non-mechanical terms, to make my DR650 more KTM-ey. Most people told me this was mission impossible – after all, I won a tractor bike, not a KTM.

But the flatslide carb, tuned to perfection byStefan Hessler(the man is so obsessed with custom DR builds and rally racing he owns the original DR Big Gaston Rahier rode in Paris-Dakar), achieved just that. No, it hasn’t miraculously turned my plough mule into an elegant KTM racehorse, but the throttle response is now much, much better and the bike is a lot more aggressive on the trails. In fact, it took me a couple of days to get used to it – before, the bike would just sort of agree to move forward, but with resigned hesitation; now, the thing just jumps forward without me spurring it on.

Rims, Footpegs, and Levers

When I got the DR650 several years ago, it already came with Warp9 farkles like footpegs, levers, and rims. I have nothing to compare it to, but suffice to say that these things are virtually indestructible. After covering 3 continents, several rally races, and a multitude of crashes on and off the road, I haven’t managed to damage the rims or destroy the footpegs or the levers. Huzzah!

Useless Farkles

I’ve already shared some of myfun but senseless farkles in a previous post, so I won’t repeat them here; however, a few things I’ve tried over the years were completely useless. Self-cancelling turn signals, for example. They never quite worked like they were supposed to, and gave up the ghost a month into use. Not cool – but then, t was a very basic, Chinese – manufactured set, so perhaps that’s where I went wrong.

Next, I have virtually no crash protection apart from the skid plate. The thing is, the handlebars, kitted out with Barkbusters, usually protect the tank well enough, so I’m not sure encasing it in crash bars would make much of a difference. When I used to ride with a luggage rack, that sort of served as crash protection, too; now, this mission is delegated to Mosko’s soft panniers acting as cushions. Not ideal, especially when you tip over and crush a cooking pot or, worse yet, a can of chicken soup splits open inside the bag, but I can’t think of any crash protection solution that would work here.

Finally, it’s the roadbook holder. Don’t get me wrong, I love this thing, and whenever I do make it to a rally race, I can use it for roadbook navigation – which is excellent. Except, of course, I don’t do more than two rally races a year, which leaves me lugging the box around for the remaining 10 months turning my handlebar space into a post-zombie apocalypse junk yard. It takes a while to locate the ignition, and it’s not pretty. The roadbook holder does sometimes serve as a Post-It or a phone holder, though, so there’s that.

What are your most useful bike mods and most useless farkles? Share in the comments below!