RUST magazine: RUST #44

DAKAR | CRAIG KEYWORTH
THE CONTROL TOWER
Perhaps the most fundamental part of
the ‘look’ of a rally bike is the navigation
tower. This one’s a beauty. An arcing
flow of stunningly hand laid carbon
fibre, with a pair of LED lights and
finished with a clear, almost run of the
mill Perspex clear shroud. It mounts to
the headstock via some pretty healthy
size M12s and houses my road book
– a bespoke item – and the rather
low tech standard idiot light bulbs for
fuel, ignition, lights and oil pressure
warning. To the top of the tower
is a space designed around ERTF’s
repeaters, and I’ve gone for the pretty
pro set up of dual speedocap multi
repeaters, which I can scroll through for
COG (heading), ODO, speed, waypoint
numbers etc – all info it repeats, in
larger letters for viewing ‘at pace’, from
the handlebar mounted UNIK 2 rally
controller, which has GPS, but doesn’t
tell me any of it, instead I interpret the
paper road book, old school style.
TO SAUDI…
And there it is, hopefully
around about mid January,
this one will have just over
8,000km on that odo and it’ll
have transitioned from an
amazing piece of machinery
parked in my workshop,
to my Dakar bike, which
I’ll never sell. It needs to
be ridden though. It’s no
ornament this...
JB: You can follow Craig’s
progress online as we’ll post
daily updates through our
website and social media
throughout the rally
www.rustsports.com 39