texscottyd

Note to self: Do not let @Wintersdark work on my brakes… 😀 That’s quite a story about the reversed polarity brake lines. I had never thought about it, but I guess the behavior does make sense. That’s some Final Destination style mechanical mayhem going on; glad it all worked out ok for you!

Yeah, that’s an interesting design, isn’t it? The replacement kits come it two flavors: Those that retain the factory hard lines, and those that don’t. I’m pretty sure @dazzler24 could share some colorfully-worded opinion of his experience with a set that reuses the hard lines. I have the Galfer 5-line set on my FJ, and just cut the hard lines out & threw them in the trash. Much simpler process that way… Glad you’re (almost) done with the upgrade.

Nice setup, and serious lighting. I’m intrigued by the mix of white and amber lenses… what is the intent of that combination? Apologies if it’s a dumb question, but I very rarely ride at night anymore, and haven’t added any auxiliary lighting to my own bikes.

My garage is like Goldilocks and the Three Exhaust Systems: The FJ is too quiet (factory Yamaha), the XR is too loud (gorgeous but semi-offensive Termignoni), and the Speed Twin is just right (British Customs reverse megaphones with the factory catalyst still in the head pipes) I seem to the one of the last holdouts with stock exhaust on a Gen-1 FJ… 🤷‍♂️

Today was a truly special day! My father-in-law passed back in 2015, and we've been hanging onto his cremated remains so that they would be placed together with his wife after she died. That has unfortunately happened, and the memorial service & columbarium placement (you can look that up...) will be Friday. So today, Bill and I went for one last glorious ride… That old photo is Bill on his Velocette, from around 1950 in England. And the picture on the seawall is today at Surfside Beach, right where he taught his wife Brenda to drive when they first moved to the US back in 1964.

True, although I’m starting to think this ‘Motus MST’ tattoo wasn’t the smartest idea… 🤷‍♂️ Enjoy the new GS @maximo! I hope you truly bond with it.

Hi @Jayzonk - The handlebars are 1-1/8” at the clamping area, and taper down to 7/8” at the control ends. Pretty standard configuration (except for Harley-Davidson). Dead center on the handlebar clamping area works great for the phone mount on my FJ, and it should be almost identical on your GT. I use the RokForm mount instead of the QuadLock, but same net result:

@Andy Clap - As mentioned, it’s a theft deterrent, to restrict outside access to the release lever for the riders seat… Probably not necessary, but no reason to not keep it.

Indeed. It’s even weirder that now it seems perfectly normal…

Well that sucks, @phats22… sorry to hear. There’s a special place in hell for bike thieves. I don’t typically think of these as high theft risk bikes, but obviously yours was a target. Hopefully you can get it resolved fairly quickly & painlessly.

That honestly seems to be about where we are with the annual safety inspection in Texas. It has to be generally safe & sound (lights work, tires not bald) but otherwise doesn’t seem to be too invasive and over-regulated. Of course that may be more a matter of relaxed enforcement versus the letter of the law. @Heli ATP - Do you know how rigorous & strict the enforcement is in Pennsylvania? I’m wondering if it will pass if you show up in good faith, even if your blinkers technically aren’t DOT approved?

Number four looks waaaaaay out of sync… 🙄

You got me wondering… 😀 Technically, that is less than a day’s ride for me! My wife will verify that I’ve done more foolish things than this.

@Warchild - I feel strangely aroused by all that Ti & billet. It makes me want to pour a nice bourbon, and go to the ProBolt website unsupervised… 😳

Oh wow, that looks great! Mine is also in serious need of a cleaning… you’ve given me hope that it really can look good again.

Maybe I need to buy a set of Road 6s for the FJ, and save these Road 5s for my XR? All I need is a set of these special adapters… 😃

@ItsTracerTime - Is your Tracer a GT model with the factory bags? If memory serves, the lower saddlebag mounts are integrated into the passenger peg brackets on the Tracer GT… can somebody validate that one way or the other? The FJ had a whole different set of supplemental mounts and brackets to install the optional bags, so you would need to plan accordingly (if you use the bags). For what it’s worth, the back of my boot heels rest squarely against the passenger peg mounts on my 2015 FJ. Size 11 Alpine Star race boots, and my default foot position is with the balls of my feet square on the riders pegs. Foot room is tight on these bikes.

@kilo3 - I’m hardly a pro painter, but all my experience suggests you don’t want to shoot clear directly over that rough of a surface: You’ll end up with little craters everywhere… I don’t think ‘Pink Lunar Landscape’ is the look you’re going for. If you can knock it down without ripping all the glitter loose, I definitely would. If not, you might shoot a coat of clear, wet sand that smooth, and then shoot another topcoat of clear. Again, my paintwork is amateur at best, but good result are always about the prep work. Good luck! I dig it… 😀

I feel this on a deeply spiritual level. 😀 Non-issue on the FJ, where all I did was bolt the license plate directly to the stock rear fender… with the saddle bags always in place, it’s fine. But with my Speed Twin, I’ve realized that I’m more vain that I would like to admit: My back gets soaked if my neighbors have watered their yard, but it just looks soooooo much better than with the stock monstrosity of a rear fender appendage. Hey, it’s supposed to be fair weather bike only, right? 🤷‍♂️

Hmmm… now I’m questioning my choice. I also thought the 5 was only marginally better than the 4, so kind of assumed the 6 would be a similar ‘baby step’ forward. I’ll pay the extra money for ‘significantly better’ if that’s the case, but it looks like I’ll have to burn off another pair of 5s before taking that step.

Fun fact: Back in the glory days of amateur road racing, Michelin had a very generous contingency program to win on their tires. I got a lot of money back from Michelin, and it was paid out in the form of ‘Bib Bucks’ certificates.

For whatever it’s worth, I got 5,393 miles out of my last set of Road 5s, and 7,411 miles from the Pilot Road 4s before those. In both cases they were probably past the point of needing to be replaced… If I can get 5K+ miles from a sticky set of tires, I’m happy.

@dazzler24 - Oh, I like that… Definitely a different shade than the boring dark grey that came on the US model FJ. I was searching for wheel color ideas (to send to my powdercoat guy before mounting new tires), and came up with this CB650R wheel color I really liked: It looks like all I really need is a set of international OEM FJ wheels… 😀 (Sorry to sidetrack your ceramic exhaust coating thread…)

I think you’ll like them, Bret. I’ve run Pilot Road 4 (loved them), Road 5 (loved them a little more), and most recently Dunlop RoadSmart III (not a fan). I was planing to do the new Road 6 as the next set, but the $$$ is a bit eye-watering… for this price, another pair of Road 5s is an easy choice.

Is that the OEM wheel color with a rim tape stripe? It looks more of a bronze color than my stock grey FJ wheels…