Wintersdark

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.

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.

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.

Yep. I'd love it if someone actually found where the clunk comes from - I know for me I really don't think it's the headlamp adjuster rods (they're way too light to make the heavier clunk) but who knows. I fretted about it for quite a long time before just giving up and accepting it as normal.

36/42. I'm a big, heavy dude, and am pretty hard on the throttle basically all the time. I've never run the Road 5 GT's, mind you, just regular Road 5's.

It's funny. I never really appreciated the slipper on my Tracer, until I got my Tenere. I just adapted to the slipper clutch really fast while getting used to the whole New Bike Thing. But now I've got the Tenere, and have to rev match when downshifting and riding aggressively, I'm super out of practice and kind of bad at it again, and have had a couple hairy corners where I've screwed it up and kicked out the rear a bit. Slipper clutches are *awesome*.

Hah that's kind of the thing, though. I do ride in stupid cold, down to temps where it doesn't even matter which degrees you use, but even there I really don't have any need for a heated seat for warmth - my heated gear keeps me toasty, and the jacket liner extends down half way down my butt anyways. But... I keep going back to thinking about heated car seats. They're not really about being warm (though they're better than sitting on a cold seat for sure), they're about being stupidly comfortable and warm and fuzzy, regardless of how cold it is. I won't even buy a car without heated seats now. But, yeah. I could add a heating element to my stock seat, and it wouldn't cost much at all. ~$30ish. But... between ordering, wiring, pulling the seat apart and putting it together again, hopefully not screwing it up in the process (I have no experience with upholstery stuff)... It's a lot. I had an option to get the heated stock seat when I bought the bike, and I kind of wish I'd gone for it.

I ran through a set of T32's. They performed fine, where good in the rain, and lots cheaper than the Road 5's I normally run, but I found they wore quite badly, got much less mileage out of them than Road 5's as while tread depth wasn't used up, they squared off much faster on top (lots of long, straight roads to get to windy roads from here), and the sides cupped really badly. Probably my fault, really, just pushing them harder than they're really intended to be pushed. I'll go back to Road 5's, but the T32's are not a bad tire at all, and are a pretty good deal. The dual compound R5's resist squaring better, and their tread profile tends to hold up to really aggressive riding better. But, you pay for it: they're significantly more expensive. If you can get good mileage out of the T32's, they're a damn good buy.

I'm also in Calgary; I'm the guy you'll see riding through the winter, grey Tracer and white/red Tenere. It's funny, I had an MT07, traded it in for the Tracer. IMHO, the MT07 is more fun to scoot around on what with it's effortless power wheelies and such, but yeah on a longer trip the Tracer is much better. And much faster! What I really like about it is that while it's a "sport touring" bike for sure, it's not what you traditionally think of as a Sport Tourer. Usually, that's a ridiculously heavy, oversized, often bulbous sport bike. Like a FJR. The Tracer (and moreso the FJ) is much more sport and much less touring, and it does so carrying the majority of it's MT09 DNA. It's a great bike. And, pull off the bags, slap on a nice short summer windscreen, and it's a beastly looking naked bike. Hmmm. My Tracer has the color TFT, but my Tenere just has the stock display. I'm really, really liking that flipped display. Very tempting. I'm just really iffy about the installation

If you do try it, please do post about it. I've never used a heated seat on a bike, but have often thought about it given how awesome they are in cars. Could install a heater in the stock seat, but it's just never made it's way high enough in the priority list

Really good advice right here. God knows, I've gone through more than one pair of gloves I really liked that simply didn't exist anymore when time came to replace them. Shopping for gloves sucks so bad. Each store has a limited pool of gloves, and as a big-pawed-guy, will often not have gloves on hand in the correct size for me to even try, so I feel there's lots of good options that I simply never experience. But online buying is a crapshoot unless you know a specific glove/size combo that works well for you.

Yeah, model wise here there's a CA model and a non-CA model, but I'm thinking that's a California model vs. regular one, not Canada vs US - this is looking up via Yamaha's OEM parts finder. But they definitely could be Canada vs US models. With that said, there's definitely been software differences in the past between US and Canadian models even when the hardware is identical. Different fueling (likely to suit different environmental regulations), speed limit regulators in the US FJ's. Also, mine will engage cruise control with no upper limit on speed, but (I've heard) the US models have an upper limit for cruise control. Or maybe mine's just "broken"? I've had mine locked at 200kph. Eh, not an important question now, and well off topic, but just something I'm curious about. I've often wondered in these cases, when you replace the ECU, what does it come with? Anyways, thanks a bunch for your time and advice there. Even if the gronk is ultimately harmless (I feel it can only get worse, though, and it HAS gotten worse over the time I've owned the bike) it's a very unpleasant feeling and frankly I'd sooner spend the money (stupid, useless warranty) to try to get rid of it.

I'm starting to feel you've just got an unusually great dealer. I've gone through several, and they've *fought* about anything regarding warranty work tooth and nail, as if it's coming out of their pockets. Really frustrating. I mean, with this clutch thing, they where not willing to even consider if it's a warranty problem before doing $1800 of work (at my expense). If you've got a good dealer, then they're great, but honestly I feel the warranties are a profound waste of money (at least, for a very reliable Big Four bike) for the vast majority of people.

Ooooh, I really like the "where used" feature of onlinecycleparts! I've looked through the Yamaha parts websites, but no "where used" functions there. That's a super useful feature to see what's actually compatible with what. The three cushions you're referring to are Part #16 in the Clutch Kit as per here: https://www.onlinecycleparts.com/oemparts/a/yam/5b27c3cb87a8661118e9ffe6/clutch ? So I'd be looking for (my clutch has not been abused and I'm quite sure I don't need new plates, and the rest of the parts should be reusable): Primary Driven Gear Comp B7N-16150-00-00 Boss, Clutch B90-16371-00-00 Nut 90179-20010-00 x2 (a spare, and interestingly this is a new part vs. the original for my bike, a 90170-20011-00) Absorber 1TD-16178-00-00 x3 GASKET, CRANKCASE COVER 2 1RC-15461-00-00 x2 (another spare)

Can't speak to point 2, however, the first: Often, people think snowmobile gear is somehow different from MC gear. It's not. In fact, most snowmobile helmets have a motorcycle version which costs more, and is made of exactly the same parts and same safety ratings. Ironically, you can often get a snowmobile version of a motorcycle helmet with extra pads for less than the motorcycle helmet that is literally identical (down to individual part numbers) that comes with less stuff. Obviously, do your due diligence, but if you're looking for cold weather gear, there's a way better selection in the snowmobile sections of online stores.

I ordered directly from the creator. His email address is there, and he'll communicate in english. I just said up front that I wasn't sure of the google translate from his website, and asking him to send me a paypal invoice for the new version of the tire changer. He responded promptly, shipped inside a day, and I got it about a week later - very well packaged, I'll add. It's *extremely* solid and well put together, and while "Butler tire changer head" doesn't mean anything to me, it's WAY nicer to use than the NoMar tire change bar IMHO.

Yeah, the noise/vibration underway at low throttle settings is exactly what I'm really irritated by. But the fix also tends to fix the clutch out noise, no? It's not just noise there, there's significant vibration that is *not* normal to wet clutch bikes (to which I am very, very used to, and while this is my first CP3, I own a CP2 bike currently and previously owned another for 20k, and it never did anything like that). There's obviously a great deal of driveline play going on. My question is, how do you go about determining which parts you need and which are compatible? I mean, I assume if you can use the 2021 clutch on an FJ, then you definitely can on a Tracer, but lets assume you're local shop guys are completely useless and will only order specific part numbers you provide and there's no returns there, what parts do you order? Is there a single kit that's just the whole deal, or do you basically have to order everything on the page?