In the third part of out TRX700XX Project we start with the goal of being ready for this 700 to take on the gruelling Australasian Safari. With the short races for the season behind us (The Thumbpump 300 and Finke) it was time to turn the focus to setting this big girl up as a proper long distance rally racer which, as you can imagine, takes a lot of custom work on top of the regular prep.

Fuel Systems

First in line for our rally prep was to increase the fuel range again, Safari requires a 300km range which meant adding another 23 litres on top of the 18 already available from the IMS tank and also a change to regular fillers from the IMS dry break system. The descision was made to go with forward mounted tanks which goes away from our previous rear tank philosophy but it made it worked out much better for the overall balance on the quad with the tanks mounted over the front of the nerfbars. Leigh Giblin was responsible for the tanks final design, quickly turning our concept into a prototype then on to the final product in a matter of days with only minor modifications to the chassis needed to mount the tanks and make them easily removable. The tanks themselves are made from aluminium sheet with  all the fittings neccecary to plumb them into the fuel system welded in, the tanks are then mounted into a cro-moly steel cradle and strapped down. All the fittings used to plumb the tanks were all Speedflow fittings with mini dry breaks in line to make it easy to remove the tanks in the event of a fuel pump failure. Because of where the mounts ended up for the tank cradle the radiator shrouds needed to be cut down quite significantly and the ignition switch also needed to re-locate.

Navigation

With the tanks built they were then tested, full of water, at a club enduro event in SA as a shakedown while more development work was carried out with a 2nd 700XX. Having the second quad made life a little easier to get things sorted out by not having to drive to Warrnambool every time we needed to build something. The next step was to create a bracket to hold all the nav gear, the road book holder, trip computer and also a dash panel for all the idiot lights and also the switches for the igtition, indicators, horn and fuel pump. The bracket was mouted from the upper front shock mounts and also the front fuel tank mounts and was a challenging shape to say the least, although we did make life easier by grafting on a road book holder bracket from Smittys Kato 300 that he rode Condo on this year, once the bracket was in place the design process for the rallye screen could begin, taking a mould from a standard front guard which was then cut to fit around the nav tower and the upright screen surface then moulded in with the new guard to form a protective screen all the way to the top of the nav tower, complete with a little lip to deflect the air flow over the riders head. The screen was made from carbon fibre and mounted directly to the standard mount for the stock front guard (we modified the mounts slightly whist on Safari to incluce an upper mount from the top of the nav tower.).

Power Up

We had hoped to go with a Staintune exhaust system for this years Safari quad, fibreglass packed alloy mufflers just don't cut the mustard out there unless you want to re-pack one every 2 days or take a box of spare ones, but Staintune we not interested in developing a pipe at this time so a couple of second hand Staintune's from a similar capacty model were rounded up and modified to fit the 700XX header. After some teething problems with our tuned engine at Finke the option was taken to go back to a standard piston/cam configuration but to get some head work done and the throttle body modified, the end result being that the top end HP has dropped a few points but the torque curve has remained. There have also been some changes with the Vortex X10 ECU to allow for easier cold starting and better throttle response. To this end Richard from Vortex has been very helpful to us, supplying a change over ECU for us as changes were made to the fuel and ignition maps on our quest to get the big 700 tuned.

Bits and Pieces

So with the big stuff out of the way... as part of the requirements for Safari all the quad have to have working indicators, head lights, tail/brake lights,  dust light, horn and to top it off at least one mirror (a fold away enduro mirror was what we used this year), which ususally ends up missing after the first or second day. Whilst wiring up all of this we also wired up a small electric fuel pump and plumbed in the extra tanks for the pump to be able to transfer the fuel up to the main tank which then fed the EFI fuel pump the regular way, with the addition of a small inline fuel filter. All the fuel tank breather were then linked together and run to a breather filter up behind the screen.

To aid in some sort of rider comfort over the 4000+ km event a Quad Tech desert seat foam and cover were fitted and the steering stem had a cut and shut job with 2 inches being added in to give a more comfortable standing postion. On top of the steering stem the Fasst Flexx bars from the first part of the project were removed to make way for a new set of Precision Race Produsct Shock & Vibe Clamps which, because of thier design, meant a change back to a regular style handle bar so a set of Pro Taper ATV Race bend bars were fitted in thier place. The Shock & Vibe clamps, offering a similar effect to the Flexx, but with a better feel of control for Smitty. Once again we opted to run Tyre Balls as a flat preventative. The tyre balls were fitted up inside Kenda's latest offering in the Kutter XC which has only recently been released in a size to fit the 700XX's 11 inch rear wheel. Dan from Xibit images also chipped in at the last minute with a custom graphics kit to spice the look of the TRX up .

All in all the Honda has been a great quad to deveop for this kind of racing and proved itself over the course of the event to have been the right choice for Paul this year by taking the win at this years Australasian Safari comfortably and giving us a great base to build next years Rallye special from, with the aim being that hopfully a few other riders might like to have the same thing set up for them.

Thanks to the Contributors to the Project: Honda Australia, Barry Francis Motorcycles Honda, Hardiman ATV, Quad Squad, Vortex Ignitions, Cernics, Austraco, Hustler ATV, Quad Wreckers Australia, LGM Race Products, Powerflow Engineering, Legend Quads, Carlisle Tyres, Xibit Images

Very Simple Image Gallery:
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