Norm's Iron Butt Page

This page is devoted to my preparation for and experiences participating in the Iron Butt Association activities. I became VERY interested in long distance riding after hearing Ron Ayres speak at one of our Lone Star BMW Riders socials in May , 1998, a month before he started out on what ultimately became a Guinness record for riding through all of the lower 48 states and then became the first person to set a record for 49 states on a motorcycle. Ron's endurance riding can be explored at http://www.ronayres.com.

The Iron Butt Association can be found at http://www.ironbutt.com The Iron Butt page will take you to a lot of interesting links, including other members' web pages.

This page has two focii. One is around setup, both the bike and me. It is called Wrenching. This will also include repair/maintenance topics on the K-bike as I learn them that may not be covered elsewhere. The second focus is the riding itself. It is called Riding . I am finding that, by writing articles on my various rides, it helps me remember the ride. Hopefully, others can gleen some info from the rides that will help them in their quest to do this LD thing. An additional topic I have added is documenting how I use a GPS for long distance rally planning and executing. It may not be the best authority since I have not really done that well (no top 10 finishes) in any of them.

I received the following from a fellow rider characterizing an Aries bike rider. It fits me to a "t", so I thought I might include it here. It explains, to some degree why I like endurance riding...

"As I'm sure you are well aware, we Aries folk are natural-born leaders, which of course, in the realm of MC riding translates to wanting to be at the head of the pack ! We do get lost quite often, since we just don't have the patience to stop and read a map, tend to disregard signs and hate to follow the advice of others, but we still manage to get there first anyway. Riding a motorcycle is a natural expression of the free-wheeling spirit of an Aries. We blaze the trail and leave the clean-up for the followers."

At the end of a two week vacation I found myself in Durango CO, with the next destination home. I had been introduced to the Long Distance Riding community and sport by Ron Ayers and saw this as an opportunity to complete the minimum ride to qualify for the Iron Butt Association. While the ride to Dallas is not quite 1000 miles, by going to Farmington NM, over to Taos, down through Santa Fe to I-40 then over to Oklahoma City and finally into Plano I stretched it to 1000+ miles. After this ride, I realized I needed a different bike to get serious about this version of the sport of motorcycling so I got my current bike, a 1994 BMW K1100LT. After several mods to this bike, I got serious about LD riding and the following happened.

My first multi-day rally was the inaugural BUTT LITE 5000 in 1999, 5000 miles in 5 days. This rally was held the first week of July 1999 and is half a Butt (the big Iron Butt Rally held on odd years). In this competition I finished 19th. My ride report is here.

In 2000 I participated in BUTT LITE II. Here is my writeup for your reading pleasure. It is a fairly lengthy report but there was so much going on in seven days. It is intended to be an article on how I felt and dealt with the mental challenges of an multi-day endurance ride. After the insight into the pysche of the ride itself, here is an article on the strategy I used, where it failed me and what I would do next time. Finally, here is my take on technology - GPS, mapping programs etc. Also, here is a picture of the bike and me in Baton Rouge. I was just coming back from a run to Radio Shack for RF coils so help fix a CB problem. This last picture is in Fargo. Voni Glaves took this one.

A Bun Burner Gold is at least 1500 miles in 24 hours. The organizers of this rally were bound and determine to set two records, the most people completing a BBG in one ride and the longest BBG. Hence the 1609 miles.

This is classified an extreme ride by the Iron Butt Association. It entails visiting all 49 states and proving it with a time and date stamped sales receipt showing the city and state. The ride must be completed in 10 days or less. While this ride can be completed at any time, Ron Ayres set up an annual gathering to celebrate his world record ride back in 1998. The first "coordinated" ride, terminating in Hyder Alaska on the anniversary weekend of Ron's ride. Bill Thweatt and I decided we just had to participate so here is a writeup on our ride.

After completing the 48+ ride and having Bill move to Australia for two years, I just couldn't get my heart into this rally. However, once in the first leg, I got in the "groove" and rode what I thought to be a good, conservative first leg. When I went to be scored at the first checkpoint, I found I was short one page of the handouts at the start. This zeroed out what would have been a 10th place ride to that point. This took the wind out of my sails and I never recovered. I did finish but way down in 35th place. One of these days, I may do a writeup, but for now, this will have to suffice.

Here is an abbreviated version of my installation. I know there are several others out there and I referenced them in "engineering" mine. Credits will be given in the final version which should follow in a couple weeks.

Credits go to Mark Reis for coming up with the improved bracket design on Ron Ayres' bike and to Randell Hendricks for periodic technical consultation.

After much experimentation, I have a combination of auxillary lights that work well for me. They were especially beneficial on the 2000 Waltz since so much of that ride was non-interstate, run at a pretty good clip at night in a pitch black New Mexico and west Texas.

By modifying the wiring harness with simple cut, splice and tap you can have your normal headlights function in the first position and your driving lights in the second.

On the side of the road with an electrical problem is no time to realize you don't know which relay is which. Here is a diagram of the relay box under the seat showing which relay is which. Print two copies, one for your electrical diagrams book and one you can tape to the inside of the relay box lid.

Here is my solution to mounting the V1 on my K11/LT. The shelf is an adaptation of a design Mark Reis came up with. I used aluminum instead of plastic so it would not suffer fatigue cracking. The case is made of 3/32" thick plastic used in windows.

Installing the HID headlight system on a single headlight bulb BMW needs a modification. Without it, your high beam indicator will be on all the time. Aslo, if you have driving lights on a BMW that are hooked up to come on with your high beams, without this modification.

After laboring over how to do this and finding out each install is a bit different, here is how I did mine....

For under $25 you can try in-ear speakers or have a backup set to your custom made specials.

Finally, after years (and LOTS of $$) of experimentation, I have my communications set up the way I want it....

A way to get your in-ear speakers to work through your communications "kinky" chord that connects your helmet to your comm system