jthayer09

What I call my "40/40 rule" for me: above 40F, less than 40% chance of rain. Then I got heated gloves, mid 30's and sunny is a joy after being stuck inside for a few weeks. I have a heated jacket liner too, but honestly my 60g Primaloft gold insulated jacket is just as effective as a mid-layer and significantly more comfortable to wear. Exceptions to the rule are snow and slush, that'll put me back in the cage. Winds above 20mph can be exhausting too if I know I'm going to be riding a route without windbreaks.

As stated elsewhere in the thread: the axle keeps the wheel aligned to the axle, that's it. It doesn't guarantee true alignment of the forks to the wheel, or the handlebars to the wheel As you have stated: the forks can still move rotationally as there is enough slop to do so. Issue is that if everything's torqued down it is one body that moves together (you turn your handle bars, which turns your forks, which turns your wheel) that makes up the front-end. Unless you loosen things to move independently of each other they will continue to move as one system. If @Yamajank's handlebars are not aligned with the wheel then either the steering head nut needs to be loosened or the front axle needs to be loosened so the wheel and handlebars can move independently of each other so they can dial them back in. Just loosening pinch bolts for the forks isn't going to let him move his handlebars or wheel independently from the rest of the front end. If you are correct and the triple trees are twisted, the only way they're gonna move back into alignment is if that 110Nm nut pressing them together is loosened. It's highly unlikely the triple tree clamps got twisted when they're held together with the steering neck stem through the frame of the bike and torqued together with the steering head nut (110Nm) on top of 2 steering bearing rings (52Nm and 18Nm). I don't think a tip over has enough force to twist the triple trees, and he'd be seeing other issues first like notchy steering from shot bearings, jittery ride from uneven suspension due to the twist, or at minimum shaking handlebars; but apparently the bike rides fine. @Yamajank are you sure you don't have a bent fork? Or... this may sound dumb, but are you sure the handlebar holders didn't get rotated a bit separate from the rest of the front-end? If the handlebar holders got rotated together to throw off your handlebars there are just nuts on the bottom of the triple tree you can loosen up and move them back in alignment.

The set I bought came with a bottle of the liquid and a spray bottle you can use. When I'm putting a coat on for the winter I cover the tires and brakes with garbage bags and spray big sections. Then I spray some onto a rag to apply in smaller areas or get up and under specific metal bits that the spray didn't hit like back side of foot pegs & subframe. DO NOT GET IT ON YOUR TIRES OR BRAKES. Stuff is super slick even in small residue amounts.

Fluid film is what people put on their plows around here but like you said: thick and sticky, it picks up tons of crud. ACF-50 was formulated for the aviation industry and I find that it's the superior product for bikes too. Easy to apply in various ways, thin so it gets into crevices, not too sticky so it doesn't pick up crud as you ride, and fairly easy to wash off in the summer if that's your thing.

Slap some ACF-50 on the bike and get out there! You're right though, I can't believe how much salt brine is still left in some of the counties I've ridden through these past few weeks.

+1 for the HJC RPHA 70 ST here too, 4-years with it this coming April. I also agree (in my experience) that after a certain price point you're paying for luxury, comfort, and optical technology; rather than a more safe helmet. You either meet SNELL/ECE for the track, or you don't. Apparently the successor is the RPHA 71, and it seems like a downgrade by many reviews? I hate the proprietary comms cutout many vendors are doing now, and in the case of the RPHA 71 the extra cutout is another hole that lets in wind noise through, on top of being less friendly to 3rd party communication sets. LS2's new line of helmets look fantastic and the prices are right. Challenger GT looks competitive to the RPHA ST line. The Citation II is super light and under $300; pinlock insert included. Also, for those of you in the USA: like most motorcycle accessories I've found it's much cheaper to by from an EU vendor and just wait the week for it to ship to the USA. Just a quick search shows USA vendor TheVisorshop.com has it priced at $821.80 which matches @dazzler24's conversion from AUD in his picture above. Motostorm.it saves almost $200 if you don't mind waiting on the shipping:

This is basic physics: you applied a force greater than the tension of the system holding your front end in alignment, so it became unaligned. Now, unless you can somehow recreate that force in direct opposition we are suggesting you to relieve the tension by loosening the parts holding your front end in alignment so that you can use a smaller force (less effort) to correct the issue. Your axle holds the forks to the wheel, you need to loosen it so you can realign everything, then tighten it back up. Honestly you should loosen everything down there that connects the forks to the wheels like fender and caliper bolts.

Just growing pains within the fan-base. It took years of cars putting up faster lap and strip times for people to finally accept DCTs. The computer is always going to shift perfectly; and if you want or need to manage the RPMs there's nothing wrong with paddle shifters (or buttons/triggers on a motorcycle). If someone entered a partnership and put VW DCTs in a motorcycle I'd put a deposit down immediately; I'm actually a bit surprised Harley Davidson hasn't tried to rekindle their relationship with Porsche and make a DCT for their bikes. Anecdotally, my step-father is finding it harder to operate the heavy clutch on his 1998 Heritage Softail Classic as he gets older, and that is another drop in the bucket in considering giving up riding.

You replaced the fuel pump and injectors rather than just reinstall the OEM gas cap designed for the bike? I bet your keyless fuel cap is messing with the tank pressure, since the problem started the day you installed it: Come on now 🙄 Put the OEM cap back on. If the problem still persists you have blockage in the vent lines or the fuel lines.

I disagree that it would improve visibility. I'd argue the opposite in fact: they're high-up vertically and are designed to illuminate outwards on both sides of the bike; they don't illuminate the road in front of you and you'd just blind oncoming drivers if they were always on. For reference, in the service manual the cornering light is the beam circled here: Point f is your center reference point/line. Line e is your low beam, line g is the inner line you line up your cornering beam to according to the manual. Hopefully you see how having your cornering lights on all the time would be a serious problem. However, adjustment is vertical; maybe you could bring the cornering light down closer to line f and possibly not blind everyone, but I haven't actually tried myself to find the maximum adjustment on the cornering lights. If you find the factory single bulb lacking (which I did) adjust the beam upwards using the adjuster. I believe I have mine up 4-turns from how it came from the dealer and it's a significant improvement without blinding oncoming traffic. If you're absolutely dead set on trying to always have your cornering lights on. It looks like you could just disconnect Cornering Light Control Unit (CLCU) coupler, find the power/main line and splice that into the Headlight Assembly Coupler's main line.

Let's assume your bike started with 3.4 quarts; if you drained all of it and replace the filter you are at zero. You replenished with 3 quarts, then removed .25qt. You're not "missing" .65qt; quarts because you never put in that much. You only put in 3 quarts out of 3.4qt total capacity, then drained it to 2.75 out of 3.40qts BUT! You say that your sight glass was overfilled with the 3qts you put in. That would indicate you never went down to zero from the first drain: there was still oil left in your oil pan, engine internals, crevices, etc. There's lot of places for oil to stick and hide; all of that settles back down over time. If you're not going to let it drain overnight, and tip the bike every-which-way to get every last drop out don't assume you're back down to zero, that's where your .65qts went. Going by the sight glass is the right thing to do, otherwise you're just overthinking it 😎

You're not crazy, I've posted on here before the CP3 engine seems to shift better and runs smoother on semi-synthetic oil according to my hands and butt. My dealership mechanic also swears by it; when the dealership employee is telling you to buy cheaper semi-synthetic oil from Amazon rather than the full synthetic marked up on their shelf it's something to consider.

Fairly certain any reputable tuner is going to remove all throttle restrictions. Vcyclenut mentions specifically removing the restrictions on gears 1-3 and leaving gear 4 stock: There are also images of the throttle tables if you're interested in looking at those.

"Display name" login broke at some point; use your email address instead and it should work as expected.

The only explanation for this that I could possibly think of: back when Gore-Tex's original patent for ePTFE was still active, that patent prevented other manufacturers from creating their own waterproof ePTFE membrane unless they bought Gore-Tex equipment & materials, paid for the license, and put a Gore-Tex label on the final product. Waterproof gear at the time that wasn't made from ePTFE would have relied on DWR (Durable Water Repellent, like Nikwax) coating that wears off over time. It's possible the heat from motorcycle grips accelerated this wear, that's really the only feasible way you'd lose waterproofing due to heat. Gore-Tex's patent expired in 1998, and today all waterproof motorcycle gear is waterproofed with an ePTFE membrane manufactured in-house or by a third party, there will be no issues with heated grips. Not sure what brands you're buying but any of the big 3 EU brands have solid in-house membranes that haven't failed on me yet over 5+ years since owning: Rev'it, Dainese, and Alpinestars. I also have some gear in other brands that use Hipora as the membrane and that has held up. For bulky heated gloves/winter gloves there are pairs that don't have insulation in the palm and underside of the fingers so the dexterity is still there and you actually feel your heated grips better; maybe that is worth looking into?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote, but the issue is that the left-hand side of the handlebar has less heat because the heat from the grip gets absorbed by the cold metal of the handlebar; which is why we're recommending users insulate the handlebar with tape before installing a heated grip. You're saying this is intentional because the left needs more heat?

I don't know about the '18-20 model year Tracers, but on my '21GT Yamaha definitely fixed the heating issue of the left grip from factory. I do remember it being horrible on the '15 in that the handlebar was just a giant heatsink, barely any warmth to my hand. I was quite upset with myself for letting the dealer do that installation rather than just taking a Saturday and knocking it out on my own and insulating that left side properly.

Good news: the GX+ trim comes with side cases standard which is the only trim to be sold in the U.S. for now.

Great value at $18,499 too with the full suite of electronics and luggage; auto leveling suspension is so nice when fully loaded, have tried that feature out on my buddy's Super Duke 1290 it's one of those things where you think "eh whatever" until you have it. Only missing a center-stand and heated grips. I do wish there was a base model without the electronic suspension for around $14K but I guess that's the slot that the GT fills. I really the attention to small details like how they designed the exhaust to be one continuous line with the engine bellypan/fairing, and the Shadow Green is really slick: The entire new Suzuki lineup for 2024 looks really good, definitely upped their fit and finish across the board. GSX 8S/8R, GSX S1000/GT/GX all look great.

3000mi update with some cold weather riding. These things are meaty, they're very slowly showing wear: I did forget to mention in my initial post that they have a lot of rubber on them, so much so that I had to remove my rear Givi guard to mount the tire - notice its absence from the photos 😅 A VFR forum user got 14,000mi out of their set. They took wear photos at 3K, 5K, 8K, and 10K if anyone is interested: https://www.vfrdiscussion.com/index.php?/forums/topic/110057-kenda-km1-153-tire-set/ My thoughts: They're good in the wet, caught in two rain storms and they're nothing special. Just on par with every other sport touring tire that isn't the Michelin PR series. They seem to warm up quickly, I can start getting aggressive less than a mile away from my home. As mentioned previously definitely a softer compound and a lot of it to extend the lifespan. I have noticed that they greatly like lower PSI. I played around with pressures and found anything above 38PSI in the rear starts to get a bit squirrely as the contact patch becomes tiny due to the V shape of the tire; braking really suffers, it is easy to slide out the rear when the roads are cold it's almost like off-roading on a dirt bike. 36PSI is good with trunk and saddle bags but 34PSI rear for hooning around is *chef's kiss*. No issues outside of minding over inflation due to tire profile/shape. Speculation as to why these tires are cheap: someone else's old molds/expired patent + compound you're already making and own the materials for + facilities you own (Taiwan and Columbus, OH) = minimal cost to bring products to market. That's just my hypothesis as someone with a career in supply chain/logistics in the CPG industry. I think someone on the CBR forums did some track days with these tires with good results (after some suspension tuning from Dave Moss) but I'll have to find that post again.

indeed, I'm pretty sure we've already had this discussion on this forum (or maybe the FZ09 forum). It's marketing BS is what it is, BMW even had to walk back their claims of a "no maintenance chain" to "low maintenance". https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/bmws-maintenance-free-m-endurance-chain-put-to-the-test So you still have to adjust to keep slack in spec. Whether it's worth the 100%+ up-charge on a standard DID chain will be up to the rider, but if I'm down there doing the slack I may as well do the clean and lube too. Do you know for a fact your friend checks his bike and keeps it to manual spec? Or just says it's legit because he doesn't know any better: "bike runs so everything is good" mentality.

My .02 on the Rotella T6 because I love the stuff. However, I haven't put it in the 2021 T9GT yet for a few reasons which I will get into. T6 is cheap and great for winter, has high zinc content which leaves the engine clean. However as one poster pointed out it is a little bit more clunky when shifting compared to normal synthetic motorcycle oils. I've also found it to be kind of fragile/thin, in that it shears down a weight after a few thousand miles and you can definitely feel the difference when it happens. T6 5W-40 is a synthetic class 3 oil and doesn't come from PAO; it is only able to be called "synthetic" for marketing purposes, and it does not carry a very good shear stability rating in many applications. This is fine for winter riding but shearing down from 40W to 30W is not what you want in the hot season. I'm not bashing T6, it has gone in every bike of mine for the winter season for as long as I remember. However there has been some mumbling on forums about T6 damaging catalytic converters that seem to have only gotten worse since motorcycles are now on Euro 5. Admittedly most of this seems like speculation or anecdotal evidence from usage of Rotella in gasoline cars, but it is worth thinking about as EURO 5 bikes start saturating the market and we get into EURO 6. As for why it hasn't gone into the my '21 T9 is less about the shortcomings of Rotella pointed out above and more to do with my local Family Farm & Home selling Mag1 full synthetic 10w-40 for $7/Quart. Mag1 comes with the JASO MA2 stamp on the bottle and is on the monthly published list of approved oils from the certifying organization. If I still had a EURO 4 or older bike I'd dump T6 into it every winter without a second thought.

Rode to the dealer this morning to have the tech look at the bike to see what was going on. He plugged in my ECU to have a look, and his explanation makes sense and I'm sorted out now. According to the tech: When a dealer flashes the ECU with an Yamaha updated map it replaces the old fuel map. Which I think we all know and makes sense. However, what I didn't consider and what was explained to me is that it also resets any adaptations/learning the ECU has done through the narrow band O2 sensor. In my case I have a full Akrapovic system, so by doing the Yamaha recall I got flashed a fuel map which is designed for stock exhaust, and then had any prior ECU fueling adaptations/learning wiped. So my bike obviously ran like crap compared to someone with a stock exhaust who would have a proper base fuel map to start with after the recall ECU flash. According to the tech the solution is to let the bike heat cycle at various ambient temperatures so the ECU can build a proper fuel map off of the O2 sensor, then turn it off. He also stated to tell everyone I know as he believes this is applicable to not only Yamaha, but any Euro 5 bike and newer. Sure enough, we let the bike idle until the fans started spinning then waited another minute and turned off the bike. We talked some more and had me sign the recall paperwork. He advised to do another heat cycle either at night or in the morning so the ECU can learn some more when the ambient temp is cooler and drier; combined with some more variable riding ECU should figure it out, verbatim he said "just play with it". When I rode home the idle seemed proper with no hesitation on launch and the deceleration hiccups are mostly gone. Completely different bike than what I rode an hour earlier to the shop. Of course he also stated an ECU tune specifically for the exhaust is the end goal and the best solution; I gotta find some downtime and send mine off to Vcyclenut. Funnily enough, the tech also brought up the undesirable clutch behavior that has been mentioned by a few in this forum. He says he's found that the 2021+ CP3 bikes should ignore the manual spec for measuring at the lever end with 5mm-10mm of free-play. He stated to measure at the clutch perch for free-play of 3mm, or two sandwiched US pennies. We made this adjustment at the shop and it definitely feels better to me.

I'm glad that you mentioned after the flash your bike rides better because I thought I was going crazy. I got mine back this past week and have put roughly 150mi on it and it rides worse. Noticeable surge on decel, and I had one startup where the engine stalled when I opened the throttle to start moving... which is what this current recall is supposed to fix. It's so bad that I'm sure the dealer flashed the wrong file into my ECU, definitely taking it back.

I'll echo what everyone is saying here: Had roughly 30K miles on my 2015' FJ09 and never had any noticeable oil consumption. Now at just over 7K miles on my 2021 T9GT and no noticeable oil consumption. Are you sure the dealer didn't fill to the lower line at 4K and you never noticed it until you looked again at 7xxx? -OR- There's also the possibility that they didn't put enough oil in for an oil + filter change. Did they also replace the oil filter? With an oil + filter change the oil level will be inaccurate until first startup, which at that point the oil gets distributed through the engine and filter. There will always be some oil that sits in the filter, this will cause the oil level to be lower at the sight glass after you let the bike settle until you top it off to the correct amount. The oil level would've looked properly topped off at first glance. Then first startup and subsequent rides would've brought the oil level lower as the filter now holds some of the oil, and you'd need to top off to get back to the upper line. Just my ideas. You said stated that you have No smoking or visible leaks. Oil doesn't just disappear that fast without an easy to see symptom. In this case the obvious answer is that someone made a mistake.