So I've been playing around with doodling little pictures of bikes and - particularly - bikes with extra fuel tanks. In particular, an AJP PR3 with extra fuel tanks. It was a bit difficult, me not being a great drawer and all, but CAD software was just too difficult to use.

I decided to see if I could do it in Google Sketchup. Turned out not too bad at all:



The key thing about realising an ambition is being able to visualise the ambition. If you can see it, smell it and taste it, then you'll get it. So I can now start to visualise it, play around with the images. The Missus will have opinions on the colour, she's good that way.

The bike that we're building to take to Dakar is a prototype. We start with a AJP PR3 MX - complete with golden Marzocchi forks and motocross-sized wheels. We replace the engine with a 260cc engine based on the Honda XR (about 35 horse power). We upgrade the front forks so that we can put a 21" front wheel in there, and we use the swingarm from a AJP PR4 so that we can put a 19" rear wheel in there. We put stronger springs in the clutch - it's easy to cook the clutch on a 4-stroke.

The fuel tanks are posing the biggest problem, since it's not clear if we can get ones off the shelf that will fit exactly. Luckily, the guys next door to AJP - a workshop called Reef Graphics - make carbon fibre moulded panels and parts for customising cars, and they reckon they will be able to help with the fuel tanks. There's no need for extra pumps, since the fuel flows by gravity, and the AJP already has the tank under the seat - nice and low.

We upgrade the stator (spinny thing that produces electricity) to make sure we can power the navigation equipment, and we add a cockpit shield - like the front of an Africa Twin. Again, this is most likely coming from Reef Graphics.

The mandatory 3 litres of water is housed in a fake exhaust on the left-hand side of the bike. This will need guarding in case of crashing, and we're looking on the bike for suitable mounting points for the braces. The toolbox is housed in a little box under the bash plate.

It is very exciting being involved in building a Dakar-capable bike. A lot of the engineering decisions that you just take for granted have to be rethought about and reconsidered. The oil cooler for instance - we think that the existing oil cooler will be meaty enough to cool the 2600 engine, but we may need to add a slightly bigger one.

Every decision is a trade-off. A larger oil-cooler means that the left-hand fuel tank needs to be slightly smaller. If the left-hand tank is smaller, then the right-hand tank also needs to be smaller - otherwise the bike will be unbalanced.

But, like all engineering challenges, there are a couple of over-arching principles that we must stick to:

• The finished bike must not weigh more than 110kg;
  
  
• It must have a minimum range of 200 miles;
  
  
• It must have a minimum of 35 horse power, and a top speed of 85mph

The first of these is obvious, as is the second to an extent. The reason for the top speed requirement is to make sure that I can make up average times on the long liasons of a rally. Strangely enough, it is the liasons that will be the challenge for the little bike - she'll just skip through the special sections.

And then, of course, there's the colour. The Missus will have opinions on this. The colour is ultimately down to her. Watch her send me to Dakar decked out in Penelope-Pitstop-Pink.

A number of years ago, I had to do a spot of jiggery-pokery on piece of new-fangled technology called a web site. A huge mobile phone company - let's call them "Toad-a-Phone" - was going through a spot of re-branding. They had some very very specific requirements about what shade of red their website was to have on it. Me, being useless with colour, brought it home and started working on it in the spare room. The Missus, being brilliant with colour, was the one who actually jigged it into shape and put the site live. Multi-billion-pound mobile phone company, their website was put live from a spare room by a heavily-pregnant Missus with a cup of tea in one hand.

Yesterday, I contacted Tripy about their electronic roadbook - remember the one? Given what AJP are planning about roadbook and navigation training, I wanted to know if we could get a unit to evaluate for a few days. This will allow us to see if they will do the job for helping teach people roadbook navigation. Are they easy to use? Intuitive? That kind of stuff.

I got a response back today from Chris Cook - the Tripy dealer in the UK who also runs The Best Rides website - choc full of brilliant rides to do on a motorbike. It occured to me that typing "Best Rides" into Google would probably produce some interesting results.

Anyway, what Chris is going to do is let us have a Tripy RoadMaster unit - and a laptop - for two weeks to see if they will do what we need them to do. Not only that, he'll be at the other end of a phone any time we need any help or have any questions. Two weeks should be enough for us to figure out whether they're what we need or not.

Martin is out on the trail today with the organiser of Enduro Africa - discussing the training requirements for the people going on this year's event. It's quite a challenge - taking several hundred people through Africa off-road on dirt bikes - and the organisers are keen to make sure that they keep injuries and dramas to a minimum. The purpose of the event is to deliver bikes to health workers in remote parts of Africa, and they will then use the bikes as their means of transport to visit patients in very remote and desolate areas. Part of your entry fee includes the cost of the bike - this is your donation to the charity if you like.

Obviously, if people - or bikes - get damaged then it can turn into a total nightmare for everybody involved, so the organisers have insisted that this years participants get some offroad training in - which is why they contacted AJP.

The training requirements for teaching people to be able to ride long distances for 2 weeks is different from training them in how to ride enduro, and there's been a lot of thought about the best things to teach them and the best way to do it. It will be a thoroughly pleasant experience too - the people who are coming already love bikes, and have already kind of established their "nice" credentials by doing something like Enduro Africa for charity. It will be a lot of fun.

There's an awful lot going on right now. We aim to have the bike out there racing by the end of May, without the additional fuel tanks. Will such a small bike make it through such a long race? We'll find out.

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