What have you tinkered with today?

[admin]

Originally Posted by garynortheast

That looks useful John. Got a link?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/126228290...mis&media=COPY

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[admin]

My wife bought me a subscription to Bike magazine for Christmas. I got a free set of Oxford heated grips which I was on two minds to fit. I'd rather fit OEM grips but the price difference is huge. Anyhow I've just found that the Oxford grips would foul the tank on full right lock. The Grips are now on eBay.

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[admin]

Just fitted a set of heated grips to the Transalp. I went for the OEM version as it integrates better with the bike and is a simple plug and play installation. Fitting was a faff though due to crampt access and fiddly connectors.
They look well made, slim and get very hot. I've not had heated grips before so a bit of a luxury.

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[Craig380]

I've always argued myself out of heated grips / gloves because while I do ride in winter, I don't feel I ride often enough to merit the cost of them ... but if I did have them, I'd probably use them from September through to May

[glang]

Certainly no worry about energy consumption as better off having the heat in your hands than in our reg/rectifiers!

[SV650rules]

@glang A couple of years after I got my SV650 AL7 in 2016 I fitted an electrex world RR851 'series' regulator ( I had fitted LED headlight bulb and obviously they take a lot less power than the stock filament bulb )- it ran over 30 degrees C cooler than the stock Suzuki mosfet unit ( 70deg C vs 38deg C measure on a 30deg C ambient day ) and the voltage is a lot more stable across rev range ( I wired in a digital voltmeter attached to handlebars ). There was a slight difference with plugs, but they supply a fused 'direct to battery' loom as standard with the series RR which is much better than using the bike loom anyway. For the other plug ( 3 yellow wires to stator ) the plug would mate but not lock into place, so a single cable tie keeps it together, and has done for years. Electrex promised to update the connectors in future, and would have modified mine but I was happy to keep it. You need about 10mm longer allen bolts because heatsink is slightly thicker in area of mounting lugs. The beauty of the 'series' unit is it only allows the power that is needed through, so instead of fully loading the stator coil all the time and wasting a lot of power as heat, it allows the coils to loaf along most of the time, which should hopefully prevent the normal motorbike problem of 'fried stator coils and burnt out connectors '...

[glang]

[admin]

Originally Posted by Craig380

I've always argued myself out of heated grips / gloves because while I do ride in winter, I don't feel I ride often enough to merit the cost of them ... but if I did have them, I'd probably use them from September through to May

I've always thought they were unnecessary as I'm a fair weather rider these days. What changed my mind was a post by a southern Californian rider who used them. He said it allowed him to ride in the winter with summer gloves. The other issue is that the wide high bars of the TA means that my hands get colder than they did on the VFR.
So hopefully I'll be able to ride in Spring and Autumn without resorting to the oven gloves.

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[SV650rules]

The 'water absorbing ethanol contaminated fuel' we get these days had been in SV since October, and although I use petrol stability preservative ( StaBil ) I thought a good idea to get my Sealey vacuum sucker out ( used for doing oil changes on our cars via the dipstick hole, also used to get fork fluid out on bikes regularly and cleanly without taking forks off, just get the bike on ABBA stand ). I poked the tube down into lowest point of SV tank and sucked about a litre out each side hopefully any water would sink to the lowest point in tank. Will use drained fuel in lawnmower. Will never know if sucking fuel out did any good, but it only took 10 minutes anyway.

[admin]

Originally Posted by SV650rules

The 'water absorbing ethanol contaminated fuel' we get these days had been in SV since October, and although I use petrol stability preservative ( StaBil ) I thought a good idea to get my Sealey vacuum sucker out ( used for doing oil changes on our cars via the dipstick hole, also used to get fork fluid out on bikes regularly and cleanly without taking forks off, just get the bike on ABBA stand ). I poked the tube down into lowest point of SV tank and sucked about a litre out each side hopefully any water would sink to the lowest point in tank. Will use drained fuel in lawnmower. Will never know if sucking fuel out did any good, but it only took 10 minutes anyway.

Better to be safe than sorry as they say.

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