Seaking

Somewhere lies the tutorial on how to change out the bearings where you 'suspend' the front fairing unit so that you don't have to disconnect everything (this is where most people get frustrated with trying to get it all together again). Unbolting the fairing frame, and pulling it all away from the bike as it hangs from the sky hook.. You gain just enough room to get access to get the job done, and saves you a lot of time and effort. Haven't been able to find that tutorial but it's out there, with pics and descriptions..

Something to take into consideration with LED lights is if they cause interference with your radio.. Earlier units caused a lot of interference, while the ones I got from Customdynamics do not.. expensive but at least they work well.. solid! Best of luck, looking forward to see if these work out for you. Cheers

Had purchased from them before, not bad, but when items start failing prematurely, and the customer service disapears, it's time to move onto another company. Nice concept products, but cheaply manufactured... not all of them.. to be fair and honest, I would say its a hit and miss with the products. Just ONE consumer's opinion, others may vary who had better luck. Their LED headlight looks interesting at that price but the fan is something that might be of an issue with heat and rain.. ?

Another item added to the winter care list... Thanks for the heads up!

I have a pair of black ceramic coated Rineharts that I sometimes toss on my Midnight for when I wanna make noise.. (not very odten) Have to agree, black exhaust would look good from front to back on this bike.. Taking the heat shields off and wrapping the pipes in black wrap?

Nice! looks a lot heavier than the ones I have on mine.. Hmmmm

One thing to remember is not to pull up on the handle bars by the end of iso grips if you're moving the bike.. on one side (or both?) the handlebar tube doesn't quite go all the way to the end, thereby that's usually where and how they break.. I broke on the VStar but never on the RSV.. Great grips.. and since it's usually cooler up here, most people wear gloves when they ride anyway so the bare hand annoyances shouldn't be a concern for you. I have stiletto weights on my iso grips and throttle boss.. nice combo.. I think you will enjoy them. (bike gets parked for the season on 31 Dec and out again 01 Jan..

But it won't snow within those 10 minutes..

If I may, try this bounce test with the plastic cover removed from the top of the tank so that the steering can go all the way to the stops, and see if it bounces back. Additionally, if you're able to raise the bike on a solid jack and can do the push pull test on the front wheel to see if you can feel any knocking, it may give you a better indication for looseness.

This is common with most Japanese made bikes, as much as 8 to 10% higher speed reading on the clock than what you're actually doing.. So at least you know that when you're cruising down the Trans Can at 120 kph on the clock you'll never get pulled over for speeding I use my GPS for speed monitoring as the speedo on it is easier to visually located than looking down on the bike's speedo. I had in the past installed a Speedo Healer to calibrate the speedometer on the bike but removed it when I realized it was under reading the distance by a noticeable marging of around 7%. For me, an accurate ODO was more important than an accurate speedo, especially since I used the GPS for speed monitoring..

Similar to this one? http://www.diamondraccessories.com/yamaha/proddisplay.php?name=15%60%60%20Slimline%20LED%20Lightbar

At tire change time, does the product ooze out all over the place like the green slime stuff (thereby really pee'ing off the mechanic) or does it actually stick to the inside of the tire as they show in their video samplers?

The differences in ride and handling are subtle but noticeable.. Don't expect a huge change, but I do like the feel of the ride with the stuff in the tires..

I recently put some Ride-on tire sealant and balancer in my new tires a few weeks after they were installed and would like to share my impressions of the product.. If you're familiar with the product but weren't sure whether or not to use it, I hope this might help you with your decision making process. Ride-on is a gel like product that sticks to the inside of your tire (unlike the green stuff that tire changers hate), and will provide not only puncture protection but also balancing of your tires, somewhat akin to how Dyna Beads work.. not overly expensive and easy to apply. When you ride your bike for the first time after application, the product adheres to the inside of the contact patch of your tires and isn't supposed to cascade down or smear around when the bike is at rest for a while. Having suffered a couple of punctures in the past, I decided to try this stuff out. Wondering if it would do all that it claims. On the initial ride, the differences are very subtle but noticeable enough to make it worth my while to use it. The road vibrations are softened a bit, the bumps feel softer.. I like to keep my tires at a higher pressure which means I usually feel every little crack and ripple in the road.. but now those same irregularities in the road feel rather muffled.. Almost like the tires were 10 psi low on pressure, but handles and turns like before.. feels like the tires have a softer compound to them. Though there is only 10 onces of the product in each tires, the front feels like it tracks better on straight highways due to the albeit light weight adding to the centrifugal force that keeps the wheel straight and true. Road noise from the E3 tires is a lot quieter as well.. Even on new E3 tires, you sometimes hear that hum in slight turns.. now it doesn't seem to be there anymore, though time will tell when the tires wear dowm some more. Softer road feel, slightly better tracking, quieter tires, reduced hand buzz, and puncture protection.. I typically get between 32 and 38,000 miles on my E3's (last set replaced at 36,000 miles), I'm wondering if the Ride-on will increase / decrease tire life.. Below is the link to their product page with vid samples of what it does etc. For our bikes, you need to purchase three bottles to get enough product for the proper application. http://www.ride-on.com/motorcycle-formula-mot.html I was curious enough to try the stuff and see what it does.. we'll see how it goes for the next 30,000 miles or so.. So far so good, I'm rather impressed with it.. My tires also tend to hold their pressures a lot better, the rear tire would always drop a few PSI overnight requiring top ups each ride day.. now it's holding rock steady since I put the stuff in.. (either it's the product doing that or my having removed and re-inserted the valve stem) As with everything else, YMMV Cheers

Good point.. you can only do the tap fix for so long before changing / re-greasing is required.. When I had mine replaced by the shop, I had new bearings installed, but I honestly think they didn't preload the bearings on installation, as the nut required a lot of tightening not long afterwards.. (not sure if this applies to this application, but preloading the torque, by applying a bit more torque to the nut, then loosening it off and re-torquing to the proper specs permits the bearings to seat properly in place and prevents them from loosening out later on when road steering force is imposed on them over time..) Since I had 'tapped' the nuts tighter, the steering has been rock solid, and the bearing checks (pulling pushing on front wheel while bike is hoisted) shows no movement after 20,000 or so miles after having them done..

No way! I actually had to go check this one for myself as I almost did that once, never crossing my mind that it would actually lock without the key inserted.. Ya learn something new every day here.. Thanks!

A while back I queried about a bad starting symptom on my 2006 RSV (120,00 miles) and resolved the issue as being due to a lot of crud having built up on the starting switch contact points (thumb switch).. It would allow just enough current to go through but not enough to pass through to finish the start sequence.. I had taken it apart last winter and cleaned it off and never saw the problem again this summer until recently. I took it all apart once again a couple of weeks ago and sure enough, more crud (looks like corrosion) on the contact between the thumb button contact and the innards parts held by two screws.. Cleaned those off again, all worked great for a couple of weeks but the problem is back.. I'm thinking the contact points aren't square faced anymore thereby not making full contact and allowing crud to build up each time I hit the starter button.. I'm thinking it's time to replace these parts, but am unable to find any part numbers to order.. Anyone know where might be a good place to hunt for these numbers? Thanks in advance..

The verdict is in and it's a weird one.. The residue dust that is accumalating on the inside of my headlight bucket is caused by a microscopic defect in the HID bulb itself, allowing sodium particles to eject from the bulb and adhere to the inside surfaces.. The substance is on a spot on the bulb sealing the defect, but when the light is on, it ejects this substance outward as it builds up from the inside, creeping out through the defect.. hence why the bulb is still working.. so strange. Luckily, the bulb is under warranty and is being replaced by the manufacturer. They'd never seen anything like this before.. but they didn't hesitate to replace it. So if you see your headlight lens developing a whitish haze on it, take it apart and look at the HID bulb, there might be a white spot on it, and this is the cause and effect.. So that brings this story to an end.

Getting ready for my next winter project.. Looking for a headlight bucket for 2nd Gen RSV.. lens doesn't need to be intact. If you happen to have one taking up space on the shelves, drop me an email, please. Thanks in advance. Cheers

Look for something called "P" clamps.. they make them in various sizes and thicknesses, perfect for this type of installation. They look like straps of metal bent in shape to look like the letter P when looked on sideways. The round part of the P wraps around the crash bars while the tail end of the P is where the lights mount on to clamp to press the halves together etc

If you disconnect the battery, the trip ODO and radio presets change. Last year I ran into some issues when starting the bike where I'd press the starter button and sometimes get this 'false start', the engine would half crank over and felt like it jammed up against the compression.. when ever it did this, the radio and trip ODO would reset.. On the next press of the starter button, the bike would turn over normally and start.. Turned out to be dirty contacts on the starter button itself..

Does your radio presets also disapear? Trip odo, clock and radio presets would reset when you disconnect the battery, so this might help lead you in one direction if such is the case..

Attached is an image of a crow's foot wrench (socket end), tyically used to get a better grip of a nut with a tube running through, like in hydraulic systems. You attach an extension bar to the crow's foot, and at the end of it, your torque wrench at a 90' angle to get the proper torque value placement. A trick to tapping the two lock nuts (poor man's method where you don't need to remove the whole fairing assembly) is to tap the lower locknut until everything is tight enough so you don't have any movement in your forks with the bike off the ground and proper bounce in the bars (there are tech articles on how to do this in the forum), then you tap the top lock nut tight to lock everything in.. Though both nuts are attached by the locking tab between them, if you don't tap tight the top nut, it's not seated against the lower nut thereby allowing the lower nut to loosen maybe just enough to re-introduce the looseness..

It's possible, heavy rains during the summer, high humidity, might have something to do with it.. but not sure if this had a factor into creating that thick dusty residue inside the bucket though.. Its almost as if it was like white soot from the light itself, really odd. Once I get back to riding again, I'll see if the residue builds up again..(rain again..)

Has anyone seen this before? I have an HID installed on the 2006 RSV and it's rock solid, powerful and bright.. well it used to be.. I recently noticed how the LED headlight on my other bike was soooo much brighter.. way brighter. I had then noticed that the inside of my RSV headlight was 'hazy'.. as if there was a pale white wash of paint on the inside of the glass.. Huh, wait a tick.. It was thicker on the top half of the glass than the lower half.. I took the headlight bucket apart and had a close look. Swabbing the inside of the glass with a soft lint free shop cloth pulled out a thick white powdery residue.. dusty like.. Closer inspection showed it covering the reflective surface of the bucket as well.. No wonder the light was looking dimmer.. what the huh? A gently scrubbing and cleaning of the inside of the headlight bucket and drying it out completely brought the reflective surface back and inside of the glass bright and shiny again.. and now the light output is highly increased.. as it was 2 years ago when I first installed the HID. Tonight I have to go out and re-aim the headlight as I had been adjusting it to project the light further out but not realizing how hazed the interior of the light bucket was, it wasn't doing anything.. I had since noticed this same hazing on other bikes, with and without HID, glass and plastic lenses.. I sent a note off to the manufacturer to see what they might have to say about this.. curious.. Can't honestly say if this happened over a long period of time or in a short period of time..