Henno Van Bergeijk, from Holland, realized his dream of finishing the grueling Dakar rally. I copied this from a couple of posts on Adventurerider.com's Dakar postings by PeeBee:
1/12/2006
#215, Henno on the XT500 has been labeled 'hero of the event' by A.S.O., the organisers. He's champion of time penalties (13:06:00 total) and takes the last place at over 67 hours from the lead.
He has been seen taking a shower at the home of a kind Malinese family and enjoying some supper with them as well. He's also reported to sleep every now and then on liaison stretches, by the side of the road. "I would really enjoy this, if I wasn't so exhausted".
He arrived at the bivouac of last monday's stage on tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. His electricity only works from 4000 rpm and up, so his tripmaster and road book do not work most of the time. Worse: his tripmaster resets to zero every time the electricity stops working, so it's pretty hard for him to find his way in the dark, with no idea where he is on the roadbook. Can you imagine, driving alone at night, with hardly any or no light, in the African desert? And seeing all those abandoned cars and bikes from the day's stage? He met with the sweep truck a lot of times, and he's not loading onto it. They respect his effort and tell him directions if he needs 'm. Let's go do a round of at the pink lake, shall we?
1/5/2006
For those whose take a technical interest: most of the technical build up of Henno's XT was done by Kedo in Germany (www.kedo.com for photos). They mounted a flatslide carb, a hot cam, a Supertrapp and a SR500 cilinder head, since that has a larger cooling surface and a 2 mm larger intake valve. Plus an oil cooler and some other goodies. Henno took the bike to compete in a rally in Morocco for testing purposes last november and guess what? He went back to a stock carb, stock cam and an exhaust 'that won't blow in your face when you're pushing your bike over the top of a dune'. By foot, that is.
Henno told me that the main reason he has spend so much time on an XT is that it will get you out of any situation, as long as the engine runs. Just because of the torque at low revs. And this unique XT character had disappeared with all those mods.
So his XT is not even old, it's almost stock too, engine wise. And the character has returned to stock too.
1/12/2006
#215, Henno on the XT500 has been labeled 'hero of the event' by A.S.O., the organisers. He's champion of time penalties (13:06:00 total) and takes the last place at over 67 hours from the lead.
He has been seen taking a shower at the home of a kind Malinese family and enjoying some supper with them as well. He's also reported to sleep every now and then on liaison stretches, by the side of the road. "I would really enjoy this, if I wasn't so exhausted".
He arrived at the bivouac of last monday's stage on tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m. His electricity only works from 4000 rpm and up, so his tripmaster and road book do not work most of the time. Worse: his tripmaster resets to zero every time the electricity stops working, so it's pretty hard for him to find his way in the dark, with no idea where he is on the roadbook. Can you imagine, driving alone at night, with hardly any or no light, in the African desert? And seeing all those abandoned cars and bikes from the day's stage? He met with the sweep truck a lot of times, and he's not loading onto it. They respect his effort and tell him directions if he needs 'm. Let's go do a round of at the pink lake, shall we?
1/5/2006
For those whose take a technical interest: most of the technical build up of Henno's XT was done by Kedo in Germany (www.kedo.com for photos). They mounted a flatslide carb, a hot cam, a Supertrapp and a SR500 cilinder head, since that has a larger cooling surface and a 2 mm larger intake valve. Plus an oil cooler and some other goodies. Henno took the bike to compete in a rally in Morocco for testing purposes last november and guess what? He went back to a stock carb, stock cam and an exhaust 'that won't blow in your face when you're pushing your bike over the top of a dune'. By foot, that is.
Henno told me that the main reason he has spend so much time on an XT is that it will get you out of any situation, as long as the engine runs. Just because of the torque at low revs. And this unique XT character had disappeared with all those mods.
So his XT is not even old, it's almost stock too, engine wise. And the character has returned to stock too.
