We have two Honda NX650 Dominators, Paul's is a 1990 and Andy's a 1993.

These are the bikes before modifications, Paul's (on the right) had the Acerbis 23 litre fuel tank on when I bought it. I subsequently fitted one to Andy's bike and made several other modifications to both bikes to equip them for the trip, see below.


Modifications - Zen and the art of rack-making...
New ! Full details on building those jerry-can racks <click here>

There are two commodities which you really don't want to run out of in the outback, water and petrol. This presents a problem for the unsupported bike expedition. I estimated that with the big tanks holding 23 litres, a 10 litre jerry-can of petrol each would give us up to 500 kms range. (that's 15 kms/p/l) I get a bit twitchy if I'm looking at a route with 400 or more kms between fuel - we need plenty in reserve for unplanned detours...

Likewise, 10 litres of water each is a safe two days worth (N.B. that's a Wintertime estimate), and anyway the symmetrical weight distribution was irresistable.

The only way to carry these volumes was to design and build racks to carry the jerry-cans.
I decided to make up metal racks either side of the rear of each bike to hold the two necessary jerry cans. I made them from flat steel plate, angle brackets and aluminium strips.

I chose to bolt it all together, rather than have them welded as they were then repairable on the road. Trial and error, an awful lot of hours and plenty of blood spilled on the garage floor eventually saw both bikes equipped with solid, quickly detachable racks.

They were heavily padded with foam pipe-lagging. The jerry-cans were held in place with nylon webbing straps and padlocked to the racks.