Mirror extenders came today!

They were in the mailbox when I got home. So I went ahead and put them on the Weestrom, and then tried adjusting the windshield again to a good place. Better. But still not perfect. There is more room for the mirrors, but the biggest problem now is that when I turn the handlebars lock to lock, the handguards hit on the "ears" of the windshield if I tilt it back further. Still, I can tilt it back further than I had it when I didn't have the mirror relocation widgets, so I'll see tomorrow how well it works in its new position. If all else fails, I can always fiddle more with the location of the handlebars (adjustability, what a joy!) and even modify the windshield itself to cut off some of its "ears" if necessary. It's just a big friggin' piece of Lexan, after all, perfectly cuttable by half a dozen tools in my toolbox...

-- Badtux the Wrenching Penguin

My first ride with the new windshield

On Monday, I needed to go to Costco for some noodles. I drove the Jeep to work. On Tuesday, I needed to take the Jeep to the tire place to get my tires rotated and balanced (free lifetime rotation and balancing at America's Tire/ Discount Tire if you buy your tires there!). On Wednesday I just plain overslept and drove the Jeep because you can just jump in the thing and get to work on it.

So today I got to ride the new windshield and... meh. We'll have to see what happens once my mirror extenders come in and I can get the mirrors out of the way so I can tilt it back further, but so far, it doesn't seem to be much better than the stock windshield. At least it's not too tall, which was Gordon's fear -- the way I had it adjusted put the top of the windshield basically at the bottom of my visor. I've adjusted it a little taller for the ride home, we'll see if that's any better, but I don't think it'll be "right" until I can tilt it back further towards me, which I can't do until I move the mirrors out of the way. Alas, I forgot my camera, so couldn't get a picture of the bike w/windshield installed on it today... oh well!

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Windshield came in!

Yeppers, the World's Ugliest Windshield came in for the 'Strom. I tried to install it on my V-Strom, but my V-Strom has a Madstad windshield bracket, not the OEM one, and has bar risers. The bar risers raise the mirrors up to the point where they miss the cut-out in the windshield and hit the plastic instead. So I adjusted the windshield forward and the bars back towards me (remember, I have those funky Rox adjustable risers on my bike), but I think the real solution is to move my mirrors out of the way. Like with these mirror extenders, which would also move the turbulence from the mirrors away from me and also make it easier to see what is behind me rather than having a nice view of my shoulder.

Funny how this works. All I wanted was a better windshield, and now I'm doing all this other stuff? WTF? Heh. These beasts always seem to work like that...

So anyhow, I'll test the windshield tomorrow, assuming it's not raining. My trip to the Mojave Desert on the V-Strom showed that the windshield was one of the two weaknesses left in the bike -- the other one being lack of a throttle lock or cruise control, which resulted in my right hand getting somewhat tired. Hopefully I'll get this all sorted out soon and have the bike really dialed in. It's close -- really close. But not there yet.

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Heated grips for the Weestrom...

They're coming along. I finally found the heated grip connector that everybody was telling me about. It's a small connector just dangling in mid-air behind the radiator immediately below the lower throttle cable. I had to pull all the $%@!#@ plastics off, *and* loosen up the radiator so I could tilt it out of the way a little to make room to get back there, in order to plug in my heated grip cable from Eastern Beaver into the thing. I then loosened up the cable clamp that the wires and throttle and clutch cables go through and ran it through there and to the Rick's Shelf from whence I could hook up the grip heaters. This stock cable connects to the signals circuit, which means that my turn signals might work slower with the grip heaters on. Oh well!

I am using the el-cheapo Symtec motorcycle grip heaters with the round (not toggle) switch. It goes well into the Rick's Shelf that I bought previously for the Wee-strom. So right now my status is that I've put the heated grips on, but I need to hook up the electrical circuit before I can put everything back together. Hopefully I'll be able to do that tomorrow night, so I can get to commuting on the Suzuki V-Strom 650 again!

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Adding an electrical socket

One of the things I wanted for the Nightstrom was a way to pump up the tires using a small electric pump. See, it's always wise to air down your tires if you're going to ride down a gravel road, it makes your tires ride smoother, gives you more traction because they can conform to the rough road rather than just the tips of the rocks hitting your rubber, and it keeps the sharp rocks from slicing your tires up because your tires deform instead of slicing. But then once you hit pavement again you have to air your tires back up. Given that the tires on my V-Strom 650 want to be pumped up to 40PSI, doing that with a hand pump is a PITA.

Another thing I wanted was a socket on the side that I could power a heated vest with. A Powerlet socket seemed just the thing for both, since it had positive retention for a heated vest jack, but there is an adaptor to plug a cigarette-lighter-driven airpump into it. So I headed off to Easter Beaver and got the V-Strom rear electrical outlet kit. And here it is:

The first thing I did was put the bracket on. Here is the bracket(note: click on any picture to embiggen): The bracket fits behind the footpeg mount. There is also a washer/spacer (in the little baggie with the fuses in the first photo) that goes under the other footpeg mount bolt to space it out equally. The bolts were locked on with threadlocker, as is usual for this bike (Suzuki apparently got tired of bolts rattling loose so threadlocks *everything*), but unlike some bolts I didn't need to pull out the butane torch and heat these up to get'em out, the threadlock compound let loose fairly easily. So:

1. Loosen both footpeg mount bolts by about the thickness of the bracket
2. Take out the upper footpeg mount bolt (the one where the bracket goes).
3. Clean the old dried-up threadlocker compound off with a brass wire brush
4. Put fresh new blue threadlocker on it.
5. Slide the bracket in, and then put the bolt back in through mount and hole in bracket and tighten it until just barely snugged.
6. Take out the lower footpeg mount bolt, wirebrush it, and re-threadlock it.
7. Slide the spacer back behind the lower footpeg mount until you can see through it to the threads in the frame.
8. Tighten the lower footpeg mount bolt until snug, tighten the upper footpeg mount bolt until tight, then lower footpeg mount bolt until tight.

So here is the result:

And now that the bracket is installed, now I put the socket through the hole in the bracket, with the spacers, washers, and nuts in the order specified on a sheet of paper inside the little baggie. Once the socket was tight in the bracket, I inserted the rubber boot over the end of the wires, and then shoved the connector ends into the empty socket where they belonged, and plugged in the connectors to connect it to the wire to be run to the fuse panel. Then I ran all the wires up behind the side panel to the vicinity of the battery. Here is where we are at this stage:

Now, I have an auxiliary fuse panel, previously installed (sorry that I never finished talking about that, but I'm not quite satisfied with my installation yet, oh well!). So now it was time to hook the wires up. Always pull the main fuse to whatever fuse panel you're working with, or if there is no main fuse, disconnect the ground wire from the battery. In this case, I pulled my 30 amp main fuse for the auxiliary panel, then ran the new wires to the auxiliary panel, cut them to length, stripped, and inserted into the connectors on the fuse panel. Here is the result, before I put the cover back on the auxiliary panel. The new wire is the one hooked to the 15A circuit, which is a permanently-on circuit (this being a Centech AP2, where the first three circuits are switched and the two nearest the front are permanently-on). I hooked it to a permanently-on circuit because I don't want to have to start the bike to pump up the tires. Before I put the cover back on the Centech, I temporarily replaced the 30A main fuse, and tested the socket by, err, plugging the Powerlet-to-cigarette-lighter adaptor in then the air pump, and turning on the air pump. It worked! So then I took the 30A fuse back out, and put the cover back on the Centech. Here is the final result: The new wires go through the grommet into the underseat compartment, and you can see the empty main fuse holder towards the left of the photo near the negative pole of the battery. Behind that is the relay for the Centech AP2 so that the first three circuits will be on only when the ignition is on, this was another Eastern Beaver kit, it plug-and-plays once you find room for it, no cutting of the OEM wiring harness required. The three fuse holders immediately to the right of the relay (as we look at this photo) used to be spaced along the backside of the battery compartment on three molded-in pegs, but I cut the pegs off and shoved them over to the side to make room for the Centech relay.

And anyhow, that's the end of the story. Hopefully I'll get back to providing a tutorial on electrical work, but it's hard work, and I've been very busy recently due to a project at work. If you have any questions, just ask!

Thanks,
- Badtux the Electrifyin' Penguin