Matt Placed 17th in the 2007 Iron Butt Rally

This is Part 1 in a three part story:  Part 1 or Part 2 or Part 3 of this drama.

One of my checklist items was to remount my Pelican case and start sorting out my handheld CB and antennae mount on a plate I had made.

I was pretty tickled with myself for the mounting plate, finding the recessed fasteners, and even powdercoated the plate for the original Pelican case farkle.

However, I spotted a problem. My rear subframe was cracked! So much for my fabrication skills.

So, I’ve been glumly thinking about the rear sub frame, priced a new one out as around $500, had a little trouble finding a welder, and generally bummed. The moment arm of the case caused too much flex for the cast aluminum to take and I had only put about 2000 miles on the rack.

I ran across Tobie Stevens that now has the FJR that is actually the 2003 bike pictured in the original article and told him about my dilemma. I made a bet that he had the same problem even though he has over 100,000 miles on the bike and pushed on the frame a bit and it seemed intact. He had an extra clamp installed and may have helped.

I also worried about Lisa’s ‘06 as it has a Pelican installed too. We couldn’t see them at the scene because they had fuel cells install, but Tobie e-mailed confirmation a couple of days later 2003 had some cracks, but happily Lisa’s ‘06 seemed intact.

Tobie’s cracks were pretty similar to mine.

But the extra clamp he had run down ran through the two round holes to reduce moment-arm flex had actually broken a chunk completely off the bike and another hairline crack.

Tobie calle a few days later and said not only did he find a welder to repair things and he had him weld in some reinforcements.

I’d have used the same welder, but he’s increasingly booked up over the Spring and couldn’t leave my bike for two days when I live 100 miles from home. So, I took my bike to a local guy and he was all gung-ho about fixing it and even gusseting it, but when I asked where I should park my bike he gave me a very blank look.

“……Park? I guess you could do that. You brought all your tools?”

“Yeah, the plastic pops off relatively easily and figure a wet towel under the tail will keep slag from burning things.”

…another blank look. “You’re not thinking of leaving the subframe on the bike are you? The high-frequency from the TIG welding could kill your electronics.”

…now I have a blank look. “But, my buddy Tobie did it.”

Suffice it to say that I rode the bike home and am rethinking my plan. With various ABS sensors and being in the IBR I just don’t want to risk it. It’s going to be a bunch of extra work, but there will be another article and pictures about about taking off my subframe.

I’m planning on starting this weekend after a RTE Saturday.
Meanwhile, I’ll rethink my bracket design and have some pretty good ideas using the existing rack as a mounting point. It holds on at 5 points instead of 3. New and improved design to follow.

Boneheaded….dumb….lucky….funny….Whew!

These are the terms that come to mind about 20 minutes ago.

After I buttoned the nose back up on the FJR last month I had noticed that the nose bounced around a bit more than I liked after moving the various ballasts around in them. I wasn’t overly alarmed until I rode home last night from the Desert Valley Powersports Grand Opening and hit a section of I-184 that had an uneven section of concrete.  I’m sure oncoming traffic thought I was a beady-eyed cop with wig-wags on or a slammed Honda with worn out shocks.
It was bad enough that I started playing scenarios in my mind that I had not gotten one or all four screws to the headlight reflector tight enough….or that my new choice of ballast placement was sub-optimal and I’d have to undo what I did. Demoralizing thoughts as the evening air of 65 degrees felt so good and signaled the beginning of the prime motocycling season.
Missing a bolt or a nut does happen from time to time and I had even had a mini-drama at work where I found a nut on the ground where I usually park my bike last week. I thought I recognized it as the tank pivot bolt nut and put it in my pocket. This is one of those that’s not totally critical, but I chastised myself for not cinching it down last month.

As I went to put it back on that evening it wasn’t the tank nut afterall.  It was happily torqued and my confidence was restored.  I chalked it up to being my buddy McCabe’s FZ-6 as it had what I’ve learned to be a Yamaha fastener patina…..or one of the other motorcycles at work. Whatever.  So it sat in a bin at home.

Back to the independent issue of the nose…..I grabbed hold of the whole assembly and flexed it up and down. What I noticed was more movement than I remembered last week. Hmmm. I knew there was a steel nose structure that held the nose to the frame.  Ugh.  Had I broken something?

Coincidentally I had changed to my clear windshied Friday evening so I looked down through it as I flexed the bike’s droopy snout and I could easily see that it was moving almost half an inch!

I rooted around in under the handlebars and find a nut was so loose that it had about three turns before it was going to fall off. I shouted the proverbial, “Aha!” The last 45,000 miles has either just loosened things up or maybe the increase nose weight had exacerbated things.   I whipped out the mini-socket, a 14mm socket, and went to town tightening up the  wayward nut.

Much less flex!

There’s a second companion bolt about 4 inches down that I can’t really photograph and couldn’t even really see. I felt around with my hand and in a split second the giant mystery of the extra nut was solved. There was no nut…I grabbed open thread. That nut I had found in the parking lot was this magic missing fastener and Yamaha had used the same nut as the tank.

Spinning the sucker back on I torqued it back down and breathed a big sigh of relief.  I wasn’t guilty of not retorquing a fastener…..just not keeping a closer eye on tightness of existing fasteners.

…..I cogitated a little more though unresolved.  I muttered to myself in my best Clint Eastwood voice, “Improvise, adapt and overcome.“  So, I took the nuts back off and Loctited them.

The bike is now ready to invade Greneda.

One of my Christmas presents to myself was the übercool and extremely functional Skyway Hydration System.

So cool I bought two!

The basic idea is to take a $3.69 Rubbermaid Victory (not a Coleman or Igloo as I painfull learned and own coolers I can’t use) of the 1/2 gallon variety from Target, put it on a powder-coated billet CNC machined alumnium base, wrap it in a custom sewn cordura insulating case, and pipe cool liquid goodness to your drying maw with a spiffy magnetic bite valve from Nalgene. The effect is to increase the cost of the orginal jug by a factor of about 25 to about a hundred bucks……but you look sinisterly cool while splurging.

Skyway is a fellow FJR owner and LD Rider that I had the priveledge of first meeting in a gas station in Tonopah, NV while riding the White Pine Fever event last August.

Well, “meet” is probably an overstatement. I think we made eye contact as we feverishly refilled our Camelbaks with water for another leg in the Nevada high desert. Our mouths were full of god-awful protein bars and the clock was ticking away it’s hours. We didn’t meet properly until about a day later when we ate grub decompressing from the ride.

I’m also not sure this event was the inspiration for his superbly executed sculpture of alloy and velcro, but I wish I had it instead of Cambelbak Uno percarioulsy perched and clipped to the top of my fuel cell. With two years of duty under its belt I had even wrapped it futily in extra layers of foam and duct tape hoping to keep the contents cooler longer. Sadly, the last 40 ounces of the 100 always seemed to be piss warm and required long right-hand sweepers to get down to the last 20 ounces. Suboptimal to be sure.

Ordered in early December I got the goods about two months later and opted for black cordura on a black base. Yeah, I know. Black gets hot, and it looks like I’m caving to the aesthetic gods, but dirt and road grim don’t show badly on black. It’s also a theme I’ve been adopting to deaccentuate the various LD bits of the bike….and also the powder coat color that my friend always has in his machine at the shop.

First order of business was a slight tweak. Either I couldn’t understand the ample instructions Skyway provided, jug strap oragami isn’t my strong suit, or my system occupies a portion of the time-space continuum that friction physics don’t apply. Whenever I tugged on the buckle below…it would come undone. Again, suboptimal.

Using my Jedi mind skills (insert Yoda hand-waving here) foresaw a future conversation yet to happen…I did. Myself and George Zelenz on August 22, 2007, 6:45 p.m. as we stumble across each other wading arm-pit deep high tide in the Pacific Ocean trying to get to the Battery Point Lighthouse.

(begin George Lucas and ILM special effects)

George: “Hey, that hydration kit on you bike looks pretty cool. 1/2 gallon enough for you? ……Damn this water is cold!”
Me: “Yeah, Skyway rocks doesn’t he? I went ahead and got two. I’ve got one full of icewater and the other is Gatorade. I’ve had a full gallon of icy goodness the past 494 miles since Winnemucca! ……we’re over halfway there. Low tide would have been a much better choice.”
George: “Two? I saw only one. Where’s the other? …….yeah, I can feel it shallowing up.”
Me: “What? Where’s the other?……………Oh Phuck! It must be somewhere between here and Winnemucca. ….you know the tide’s going to be higher on the way back.”
George: “That sucks dude! …..we’re across! Let’s go take a picture!”
Me: “It does suck. Maybe I’ll spot it on the ride back to St. Lous. …..By the way, where’s your Polaroid?”‘

(End visual effects sequence)

Fast forward to the present and I combed through my toolbox of goodies and figured I needed to add an $0.11 pop rivet to the equation. What could possibly go wrong? The future cloudy….it is.

All installed my only task is figuring out where to mount the magnetic ends. I’ll probably go under the seat, come out at the tank, and stick them on the tank bag. Again, the magnetic bite valves Skyway speced are just genius and means I get to chuck my janitor key chain retractor. Thanks Ian!!!!

Many hours and hours this weekend to get things back together, but I’m fairly happy with the placement of my high and low HID ballasts in the nose, the way they’re wired, and the new Skyway Hydration Systems are seriously pimp. More details later, but a picture of the bike back together and ready to ride to work later this morning.

One can never have enough coherent photons spewing out of the front of one’s motorcycle. The stock halogen H4 bulb producing 55 watts on low-beam and 60 watts on high beam for each bulb may be enough for commuting around well-lit suburban areas, but it sucks when wandering the rural landscapes of the mighty West…and downright dangerous when chugging through the deer-infested mountains of Eastern Oregon.

Hella FF50 - eBay Goodness at $40

I tried adding a set of Hella FF50 lights and they improved things substantially for the $40 investment. It felt like the high beams were improved by 1/2. Instead of 110 watts I was up to about 220 watts of light and ran for some months like that.

Upgraded GE Bulbs - Not Worth the Money

I tried some different bulbs that were the same wattage, but supposedly made a bit more light. Not much of an improvement.

HID Nirvanna - Hella FF200 Xenons Rock!

I scored a set of Hella FF200 Xenon Lights. They are true High Intensity Discharge (HID) lights. Don’t listen to the cheesy sellers of traditional halogen bulbs that claim HID or HID-like. These are the suckers in high-end Mercedes, don’t have a filament, and actually produce a high voltage arc that turns a chamber of salts into a plasma. They’re normally in the $600 to $700 range, but I scored a set off e-Bay for $315.

After a bunch of futzing around I was able to get the sizable ballast/igniters stuffed into the nose without making the tupperware bulge out.

The light output on these things is nothing less than absolutely phenomenal! The HID lights actually use less watts than a halogen bulb, but produce about 3 times as much. Combined with the sizable reflector I would be using 35 watts each for the high beams and 55 for the low beams. The shot below is about the equivalent of 470 watts for the consumption of 180 watts.

Gotta Have Some Boulevard Bling - HID Low Beam Conversion
Not to be content with things, my buddy announced a group buy for converting H4 bulbs over to true low beam HIDs. Wouldn’t work for folks wanting high and low, but since I had the elephant-ear sized FF200’s doing that duty….it sounded perfect. Perfect except where to stuff the additional set of ballasts and igniters?

In some haste I stuffed them in some spots I found, but not without interfering with the up and down motion of the windshield. …ummm….I have to admit I tried to not move the windshield at night as I didn’t like the idea of losing low beams while underway.

So, since I have the bike apart it’s time to do things right! About half the reason I tore the front end off was this issue. Warchild to the rescue once again with the HID light installation farkle.

My version looks like this:

With the nose fully off I think I convenientally found a new place to mount the FF200 igniter/ballast units that doesn’t interfere with the Tupperware.  These sizable units have been a thorny problem trying to find a nook or cranny to fit them.  And I have it lucky compared to the ‘06 and newer bikes where space is even a more rare commodity.

With some zip ties I can minimize the chance they interfere with the windshield and the high voltage leads are stressed like the former position.

Next installment:  I should have this thing buttoned back up and on the road!

I like black.

I wouldn’t say I’m obesesed with black like Johnny Cash, but when it comes to motorcycle farkling black is a good color choice for deaccentuating the more aggregious add-on farkles.

After receiving some of Motorcycle Larry’s Foot Peg Lowering Brackets I thought it might be a good time go over to my buddy John and powder-coat some pieces black.
First order of business was taking off the various parts. Yamaha used a combination of gnarly locttite and a turned up screwdriver to put screws on and I promptly stripped one of the screws. So this relatively small project turned into a bigger one with lots of side projects. I found an old impact driver I bought at a yard sale like 15 years ago and have never used. One small problem. The screw bit doesn’t fit into the receiver.

The it’s a matter of finding the right sockets and adapters.

Even though I spent 20 minutes sorting things out I figure I’ve used a tool I’ve never bothered using in my toolbox….and got my foot pegs disassembled.

With all the pegs disassembled I have a substantial pile of parts. I also note that I have a peg pad thoroughly worn and I’ll replace that with an unused one.

While I’ve got things torn apart and going to be adding several of Skyway’s Hydration Systems to my passenger pegs I should do those as well. Heck, why not do my highway pegs and brackets and that bolt on my clutch?

Having dry-fitted and done a bit of grinding on the pegs to make them work properly with the brackets I realize there are a some critical surfaces on the brackets that I don’t want to power coat. Talking to John he says aluminum tape (that I used in my Datel Mirror Farkle) works very well for masking and withstands the 400 degree heat used in melting the powder coat.

I also need to do a rounded masking job and learn yet a new use for the Craftsmen end wrench I’ve had for over 20 years.

It worked pretty well. Taking a lesson from Vince and the American Chopper shows I pulled out a razor blade and trimmed the piece.

Then it was off to John’s for powder coating…..in which I totally forgot to take my camera for powder coating….maybe next time. Suffice it to say my buddy John has some neat tools and expertise including a sand blaster, powder coating set, and a spare oven in his garage. He may not have an FJR, but has helped me and Warchild out a bunch including that whole valve-ticking diagnosis time and helping me build a race car in 2003.
The results were impressive. Note the non-coated areas. Also, missing a peg which John had to redo because of my novice powder coat hanging skills. Ack.

The assembled brake-side peg. Anybody notice what I forgot to powder coat?

The rear peg sans rubber pad….just waiting for Skyway to deliver my hydration systems.

The front highway pegs:

And the overall view….which is sort of under-stated and the point I think

The next question will be whether I like the peg lowering brackets or not.  I’m hopeful that extra inch will help a bit with my knees being so tall, but also don’t want to be scraping the pegs too much.  They may be items I use in the IBR only….which is fine.

Buying an FJR and getting the bug for LD riding has a downside when you live in a 60 year old house with a detached and uninsulated 1 car garage.

…..It makes you build a new 3 car garage with a house attached and then fill it with more gadgets.  Besides being moderately expensive it makes you want to be able to surf the Internet when you’re spending all the time in your garage.

Having a nice carpeted floor (leftover baby blue from Dad’s house), a heater, and access to FJRForum.com
means you can get stuff done.  And tonight I did the last major electrical upgrade by converting over the Magnum Blasters to a relay and 12 gauge wires.  Truth is I’ve probably been wearing out my horn switch with the 10 amps of juice and risked welding it shut.  Not anymore and I even fabricated a little bracket for the relay and attached it to the coolant reservoir.  It will be under the right, lower fairing when I’m finished.

Just for an evening ego boost I reinstalled the recently modified, upgraded, and resprung front shocks from GPSuspension.com.   Can’t test them yet, but I hope to soon!

I learned a tidbit the hard way over the weekend while trying to clean up the wiring of my Hella FF200 HID lights by using a different relay. Bosch relays usually have 4 terminals on them with various numbers like 30, 85, 86, 87, and it seemed one in my toolbox had a 5th terminal with and additional 87a.

So, I know that 87 is the hot lead to the thing you want to power up. I have two HID lights and this one relay in my drawer with an 87a on it. So I think it’s just an extra 87…..a convenience so I don’t have to try and stuff two 12 gauge wires into one connector.

Wrong! Seems 87a is a circuit that’s on when 87 is off….or in other words if you wire them both to a positive….you pop your 30 amp fuse with an audible “phump….” and an old-fashioned that makes you think the paparazzi are behind you. Not good…..especially when you do it thee different times before giving up for the weekend.
A little pep talk Monday with good ol’ Warchild made me see the error of my ways and I even went on to find a good website explaining relays.

A little trimming of wires Tuesday, a big yellow female crimp spade connector, some shrink tube later, and I’ve taken a step forward without any steps back!

Now it’s on to converting the horn to a relay, powder-coating new foot peg lowerers, and installing a new lighted Sigma I all got for Christmas.

There are some check marks on my list! I wouldn’t say a majority, but I’m making progress.

The list, however, looks like a contradiction of the bike. It’s a seriously depressing sight to barely be able to recognize a bike and even suckier to not be able to ride. Who in their right mind tears apart a $14K vehicle you have nearly 3 years of payments still left on to cut wires and totally tweak things?

It seemed like I’d take the bike down for a couple of weeks, but I have an ever-increasing laundry list of things to do to the bike.

I originally thought I would take it offline for a few weeks and try and get some major farkling, maintenance, wire clean-up, and other details finished.

One of my bugaboos is that it was difficult months ago to cram low-beam HID lights in the nose of the fairing without taking it all apart. Well, I decided to do it right and this is the ugliest picture of an FJR I’ve ever seen. It scares me a little actually as major chunks of structure are now sitting on my shelf across the garage.

A little closer and you see the ballasts which are fairly big and don’t conveniently fit in the smallish nooks and crannies of the FJR nose. Fortunately, the ‘05 and earlier have more space than the ‘06 and later FJRs. I’m going to have to take a close look at Warchild’s article on the subject.