Wintersdark

Worst MC seat I've ever had, hands down. Terrible.

hah yeah, I hear this. I honestly never once gave any thought to a motorcycle's seat before I got my 2018 MT07. Every bike before that, going back decades, never thought about the seat at all. Now, to be fair, the MT07's seat is kind of awful, just a board, and for the years immediately prior to that I wasn't on any rides over an hour at a time, but I feel it's much more a problem with getting old than seats in general. The Tracer seat isn't particularly bad (particularly with the slope mod); and it's much more comfortable than a lot of bikes these days... But yeah, these days, I get 2, 2 and a half hours at *max* before I've got to rest and stretch. I don't think any amount of seat replacing is really going to change that. That said, it doesn't much matter anyways because my bladder wouldn't let me go much longer anyways.

Huh. I always assumed pinlok lenses worked in the same way a dual lens does: just two lenses, with a sealed air gap between them to insulate the inner lens. With dual lenses, there's no particularly hydrophillic nature to the inside (no more than any visor), just the insulation allowing the inner lens to be nice and toasty and thus not fog.

Yup. Gotta be VERY careful of the stuff you put on the inside of the lens. I've wrecked a couple over the years using stuff like glasses/screen cleaner. Ultimately best to just clean with water and a microfiber, at least inside.

Yup. Pinlock, or just straight up dual lens, will keep you clear and fog free down to below freezing. They will eventually fog and ice if not heated too, but only well below temps people usually ride in. They're awesome in rain and such too. When I helmet shop, now, I always make sure they either come with pinlock, or have dual lens shields available. For *any* helmet, not just a winter one. It's really nice to have a collection of helmets, none of which ever fog.

I've been eyeballing an ABBA Skylift myself. The things are awesome. Tons of money, though, pretty tough to justify... but soooooo cool. https://abbastandsusa.com/product-detail.asp?item=sky-lift&pid=44 Really, though, the superbike stand with front lift is good enough for all reasonable purposes. I'd just love to not have to bend over/kneel anymore; what with shot knees and all. And being able to have your bike standing in wheelie position and able to be wheeled around that way would be very cool.... but more than twice the price.

Mine is not smooth unless it's accelerating. When you're on the throttle it's very smooth, but idling it's decidedly not. REALLY not if you've got it in neutral with the clutch engaged. The booster plug went a long way to correcting that, but it's being swapped out for exhaust & flash which should have roughly the same ends. Good helping of @bwringer's Gronk when holding steady minimal throttle. I'd go so far as to say this: The Tracer 900 is not a fun bike to ride around slowly, at least not stock. It's shaky, noisy, and jerky. I've had way worse, of course, but there's a cross section of issues that while either they don't affect everyone equally or people are not equally sensitive to, but they're very common. Rattling when in neutral and clutch engaged, roughness at low-rpm/minimal throttle, a very klunky front end when going over bumps, a fairly twitchy throttle in general, and a constant feeling of it really wanting more throttle if you're not currently accelerating. There's multiple sources here. The clutch basket is one, fueling is another, the decel injector cut a third. Maybe more, too. On the other hand, it is *super* fun to take out on twisty roads or highways. Once you get it going, it's much happier. Fixing the fueling is simply with a booster plug, or a flash to fix it and the injector cutoff. Hopefully the new clutch basket will correct the rest.

Likewise both of my bikes running Tutoro oilers just use a tube with zip ties and double sided tape. The pvc hose from the tutoro has a metal wire inside it for the last ~5" or so, and this can be bent into whatever shape you want to lead from where it leaves your swingarm to the sprocket.

Mine does it as well. Not always, but I find it's most common if I warm the bike up on a cold morning, and then kill it accidentally by leaving the kickstand down, then restart it quickly, it idles super rough for 10-20 seconds or until I give it some throttle. Once I've started riding it smooths right out. It's always done this, but it's been such a specific and infrequent circumstance I've never cared.

That is definitely weird, because the 2018+ Tracer's service manual very clearly says 35-45mm. They were making assumptions based on the earlier bikes' manuals.

Yeah, dunno why the FJ's recommended chain slack is so incredibly low. The old MT09 service manual says the same thing, and it's very, very strange. I've never seen a bike with a recommended slack below 1" before, and the FJ/MT09 service manual lists 1" as the absolute maximum and a target of less than half an inch.

I have this as well - basically when shifting from under load to engine brake, or engine brake and back to load, there's (sometimes) a noticable clunk. Definitely not a chain slack issue, though; slack is good and a really loose chain feels a lot different. I've long suspected the dampers in the clutch basket as the source for this, as it's mostly felt on the right footpeg. I'm going to be swapping out that part this winter, so I'll find out if that fixes it. I'd like to look at the APS, too, but I'm reluctant to create problems by monkeying with stuff I don't really know about.

This is kind of the problem. They actually draw 1500 watts, so you can't run two simultaneously on one (regular 15A) circuit. You'd need multiple circuits to your garage to do that. I've got one of these, and it's a great little heater with the advantage that it's never a fire hazard, but it doesn't come anywhere near getting my garage (insulated, but not really well) above freezing in the winter unless I run it 24/7 and that costs a fortune. A really strong option, however, are the diesel heaters: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/324874228892 Edit: I'm not specifically recommending that model; there's lots; I just pulled that up quick to show what I'm talking about. These put out an absolutely shocking amount of heat and are very fuel efficient. You can route the exhaust out a window with a bit of ingenuity and a piece of plywood, in the same way you do so for a portable AC unit. My brother in law set one up in his garage and it's an order of magnitude cheaper to run (even given our low electricity costs) and will get his garage from -20C to +20C in 15 minutes. You won't be disappointed. I really can't overstate how incredibly effective these are for keeping your hands warm, comfortable, and dry. They're awesome, and I wish I bought mine years ago. They're so good, I'm seriously considering buying a second pair so I don't have to keep moving mine between bikes, even though it's like a 1 minute job and two strips of velcro to move them. There's just no case where it's below 5C where I don't want them on a bike.

I like the Sand gloves a lot - I ended up with the Mosca gloves, but I really, really liked the Sand gloves (and, in fact, own a Revit Sand 4 jacket). Mostly in that they're well protected but very flexible. However, I found their touch screen feature to be - like most gloves - pretty terrible. YMMV, I dunno if how little luck I have with "touchscreen compatible" gloves is just something about me, or that they're all junk. That's actually what stopped me from buying them when I was looking at them, but that was before I found Glove Tacts. Once I found the Glove Tacts, I went back for them but they no longer had my size in stock, so I ended up with the Revit Mosca H2O's instead.

Aaaah, tires. Everyone has their own strongly held opinions about tires. Personally... I never run tires down to wear bars. Not because I feel you shouldn't, but because I've never had a set of tires last to the wear bars without aggressive acceleration and braking causing terrifically bad scalloping that destroys ride quality long before I run right out of tread. I've not found a good solution here short of not pushing my bikes so hard, and, well, that's not going to happen. Further, I swap to winter tires every fall, and summer tires every spring, so I've traditionally been very reluctant to pay someone to put old tires on my bike that I'll just need to replace in a couple months. Now I've got my own mounting machine, however, that'll likely change. If this wasn't the case? I'd run them to the wear bars, or until close enough to the wear bars before a longer trip. Sure, you can get more mileage out of them - particularly if you're not riding in rain - so long as you've got rubber all around you should have decent grip on dry pavement. But I REALLY don't want to have to change tires mid-trip, and I'm not so strapped for cash that I need to run risks on my tires. YMMV, of course, but I do dumb things on my bikes, and I'd rather not die because I tried to squeeze a couple extra miles out of a tire. If you're not doing dumb things, not pushing tires hard, I'm sure they'd be fine. After all, all so many people I've known wear tires down to seeing metal and they don't seem to be crashing left and right. As @betoneysaid above, I'd REALLY love to get a second set of rims, but I've not found an opportunity to do that yet. I'd need to find a set here in Canada, with rotors and sensor wheels, and I'm still unsure exactly which rims are actually compatible. Shipping wheels from the US would be insanely expensive. I would LOVE to be able to just swap out rims to run a new set of tires for a trip, then put the old ones back on to run them out afterwards, without a huge hassle actually spooning tires on and off. Or summer and winter tires, etc. [hr] (edit: Hey, when did my wonderful Horizontal Rule bbcode stop working?) Date codes lead to people having ridiculous notions like that "tires should be replaced once they're five years old" meme which is entirely unsupported by tire manufacturers themselves. Specifics vary, but according to Dunlop, Michelin, Continental, Bridgestone, and Avon, the *shortest* tire life any mention (Avon) is 7 years. Dunlop, for example, allows 5 years of shelf life where the tire can still be sold as a new tire, and 10 years from the manufactured date code where they will still honor their warranty. I should note, that's up to 10 years in service, too, but realistically that's unlikely to happen. Michelin warranties for 6 years from date of purchase, only looking at the date code if there is no proof of purchase. If curious, I looked this up recently after Ari Henning's video, and got the manufacturer recommendations for each of these, and have links for all of them. Overall, the industry standard is 10 years from manufactured date as a maximum, but with tires being monitored for flat spots, rot, cracking, etc from 5 years on. I feel this has to be a conservative judgement if anything, as it's in the tire manufacturers best interest for you to replace tires earlier rather than later. @bwringer is definitely correct though that environment is king. Tires stored out of direct sunlight in an at least reasonably temperature controlled environment will last a very long time, while tires inflated on a bike just sitting in the sun and weather but not run are going to be garbage in short order. Which is where date codes become kind of problematic. I wouldn't hesitate at all to mount and run a "new" 7 year old tire that's just sat on a shelf in a warehouse, but the tires mounted on that old non-running "project bike" I picked up are gonna be replaced before I do anything other than just short test runs around the block.