Posts
33
Joined
7/16/2013
Location
San Francisco, CA
US
I stumbled across this picture, DAM makes me wish I had joined the army once upon a time LOL sail the sea on an carrier, get flown out to the desert by helicopter to ride dirt bikes, sounds like WAY too much fun
O but they might shoot at you no thank you to that part LOL Is that an army issue motocross style helmet haha
The Shop
It has been converted to run on diesel. It has been painted with special paint and has had all reflectivematerial in the lights replaced.
They are heavy and slow stock. Can't imagine them being a lot better as a diesel.
They are stone reliable though.
Seen a guy on a sled tow a sled out of a canyon we thought no way. Very little drag. We ended up doing it with a blown YZ 450 timbersled a few years ago.
Im guessing they rely on electric start also?
Unfortunately I was never assigned one, but it was fun seeing them about. Generally they were Diesel powered KLR650's, though I believe there were some KLX's as well.
Slow as hell on the acceleration but they seemed to always keep going. Came across some of the training, seemed like some of them were not really riders, or maybe they had street bike experience, going through deep sand and staying in the saddle. Of course this lead to them going down in a slow speed get off lol.
Pit Row
Still don't get WHY? Sure 96 miles per gallon is impressive....but sounds like the performance is very bad.
In Dec of 1990 I deployed to South West Asia in support of Desert Storm, We deployed with a dozen or so of Combat Motorcycles. I served in a Headquarters and Service 1st Mar Regt, 1st Mar Div in the transportation logistics section. We used the combat motorcycles extensively, Scout Snipers, Communications and Convey Control along with Military Police Operations. Somewhere in my vast photo albums I have some pictures of Marines from my section navigating through the breach points and mine fields that were along the border of occupied Kuwait during the early hours of the ground offensive.
In 1992 I deployed with the 11th MEU BLT 1/4 ( China Marines) back the South West Asia on the USS Tarawa for a +/- 6 month deployment in support of Operation Desert Stay. Again we deployed with (4) combat motorcycles. (2) of the bikes were assigned to Scout Snipers section and the remaining were left in reserve if needed or would be cannibalized for parts if required. In our deployment stores we would take a BOM ( Bill of Material) of parts for these bikes, but in some cases we would not received all the parts before deploying, so the extra bikes were the parts supply. After several month of playing in the deserts in Saudi we boarded our ships and departed the Gulf region for Australia for exercises in Darwin. Things really didn't go as planed, our ARG was sailing for a small country on the Horn of Africa called Somalia.......This was a real word operation. Being deployed on the USS Tarawa it was the command ship, which contained a full support of Marine Corps air support. We had the Huey, CH-46, CH-53 Super Sea Stallion and AV8B Harrier. There was an urgent need for helo support in the Somalia area as the civil war was in the very early stages. The Mogadishu airport needed to be secured to allow for fixed wing planes could be flown in and drop off troops and supplies. The airport was controlled by rebels during the night and WE had control during the day. At night the runways would be mortared, then we would dispatch Marines in to try and fix the runways. Our fleet of CH53's were outfitted with internal and external fuel tanks to make the long trip from our current location to the air field. Sometime during our transit from the gulf region to the waters off Somalia we pickup some Air Force Combat Air Controllers. The mission was to helo insert the "flybozs" with our Combat Motorycles which would be used for setting up communications, inspecting the runways and security patrols in within the confines of the airport and runways. The "flyboyz" were already trained on the combat motorcycles. We received notice to get our best bikes and have them prepared for sustained operations. My motorcycle mechanic worked his tail off keeping those bikes up and running for about 10 days. Every morning at 0 dark thirty we would shuttle the bikes up to the hanger deck then onto the port side elevator for a trip to flight deck. We would push them into the belly of a CH-46 or CH53 with extra fuel for a days operations. The Scout Snipers and security forces would load up at the same time and fly into Mogadishu Airport. They would establish comm and security for fixed wing transport planes to land and depart from the airport. Once things settled down and follow on forces arrived in theater we departed the area and said down to Australia for training........of course we crossed the Equator so we had a good ole fashion "Shell Back" Ceremony!
No Wogs on this trip!
Sorry for the long winded story, I worked in and out of the CMC programs for several years, have plenty more experiences to share.
HDT - http://dieselmotorcycles.com/ were the primary folks that we worked with on this project.
http://dieselmotorcycles.com/history.html
Converting isn't cheap.
I remember seeing a discussion about it on one of the klr forums and I.think the kit is available for non military.consumers for somewhere around $8k.
The stealth goes away with it through. 2 things will get you shot at. Exhaust and cigarettes.
Post a reply to: Anyone in here a helicopter pilot? I bet you never thought about hauling dirt bikes for cargo LOL