We petrolheads love our motorcycles, we really do. We all have that “one” bike that sparked our strong bond with these overly engineered hunks of metal. Our love for these machines sometimes surpasses the human connections we have made, they get us through tough times and help us enjoy the good times—’throttle therapy’, as I like to call it. Mine was my dad’s 2003 Honda Africa Twin XRV750 RD07, a road-going mirror image of the legend that ruled the stages of the Pairs-Dakar Rally.
It’s crazy to think that a simple low-compression 743 cc V-Twin powered motorcycle pushing out just under 60 hp and weighing in at 230 kg could rule the desert, but it did. Yes, the real Dakar bikes were stripped down, tuned up and had proper suspension with massive ground clearance, but they weren’t all that groundbreaking compared to the road-going models. What Honda had in their back pocket at the beginning of their Dakar success was a more powerful and roomier motorcycle compared to the competition, but in its later years when the rest caught up, Honda proved that its reliable package could also win races.
Honda’s trusty RD07 has been in our family since 2005 when a farmer decided to trade in his XR500R for the new at the time XRV750. He soon found out that it was too heavy to be given farm duties and put his ego aside for someone else to give the XRV750 a proper adventurer’s life. So at two years old my dad picked up the bike with 3,000 km on the clock from Honda Wing Menlyn and went adventuring the very next day from Pretoria to our home in Knysna, hitting every back road he could find.
Now 21 years later, the Africa Twin has gone on countless adventures across the country, helped my teenage self pass my motorbike license, got me to my first year of college and my first year at ZA Bikers and now the Africa Twin has passed the 100,000 km mark. Like us humans, as we age we become more health conscious and have to take preventative measures to stop all the bad habits that we formed as youngsters to live a longer and healthier life. The same has to be done with our motorcycles, as tolerances decrease and as high mileage sets in mechanical fatigue.
Luckily for us Honda built a bulletproof motor for this era of Africa Twin, forums show owners reliably getting over 200,000 km and high mileage champions hitting over 500,000 km with preventative maintenance done out of mechanical sympathy rather than out of failure. It’s fair to say that the XRV750 fits into the same ‘hard-as-nails’ category as Chuck Noris and the Nokia 3310.
However, our Africa Twin has since been retired from daily use, and now barely gets ridden. This is where problems start to creep in, so to give the old girl a prolonged life and to keep the fuel system and carburettors unclogged we’ve been using Motul’s Boost and Clean.
I’m no stranger to using Motul Boost and Clean, for the past few years I’ve used the product in my 1994 Aprilia RS250 2-stroke and I’ve noticed a significant improvement in starting the bike and out of the blocks performance. This is what led me to want to use the product on the Honda. The Aprilia has always had more attention and plenty of money thrown at it over the years, but the Honda hasn’t had any money thrown at it, not even a valve clearance.
So, what does this bottle of Boost and Clean do? This stuff is like Popeye’s spinach, it boosts the octane rating of the petrol and helps clean carburettors, injectors, valves, transfer ports and combustion chambers. In the Honda’s case where it’s laid up on its centre stand and simply not used for a while, Boost and Clean prevents fuel residue build-up, which can lead to all sorts of problems when you come to start it after a few months.
Boost and Clean also works on modern fuel-injected motorcycles and both two-stroke and four-stroke.
How much should you use? Motul recommends you put in a bottle every two full tanks of fuel. It doesn’t matter how many litres your tank holds: Motul states that a 200 ml bottle is good for 20 litres but no harm will come to your engine if you put a whole bottle into a 12-litre tank. Of course, you have to work out for yourself if it is worth adding to the cost of filling up by adding a bottle every second time but apart from the short-term benefits of enhanced performance, what has to be remembered is the long-term benefits of keeping your fuel system in good order.
My reason for using Motul’s Boost and Clean has nothing to do with enhancing performance, but rather to keep and maintain the original performance going into the future. It is definitely a product I now use almost religiously and it’s a product that I can highly recommend to anyone who has an older motorcycle or one that stays in storage for months on end.
In my opinion, if you have a motorcycle in your life that you care about and don’t get to ride ever so often, give it the attention it deserves with Motul Boost and Clean.
You can find Motul Boost and Clean at any dealer who stocks Motul products.
