Wintersdark

Not as far as I know. Should be exactly as 2019 & 2020.

Yeah, I've put a couple thousand kms on mine now and am very pleased with it. I actually unhooked it for a group ride just to really compare back, and was kind of unprepared for what a difference it made. It got reconnected immediately afterwards and is staying permanently. I notice it a lot more when I'm riding with others, as then I ride like a normal person instead of like an asshole - I mean, it doesn't really matter how it is at very low speed if you're never at low speed! Also: for me, it makes absolutely no difference in average fuel economy. While it's using more fuel at idle/partial throttle, that's only a small part of your riding and where the amount your adding 6-8% to is very small to start with. I guess it's also under WOT acceleration from a start, but that's somewhere you don't care about economy and also by necessity brief as you get to speed really fast. Also #2: unexpected (but I guess shouldn't have been) the engine runs a fair bit cooler.

Yeah, realistically you're limited to about an inch of loose snow on the roads if you want to ride normally, beyond that the best you can do is get a dirt bike with big knobbly tires and play - but even that is pretty floppy. It's not particularly different then cars though, once you've got any significant amount of snow on the roads, it's a mess. Cold, frost, light snow, packed down snow and slush though are all workable. For sure it matters where you are though. Wet heavy winters (such as in Ontario here in Canada) are much harder to deal with as you just get too much snow. One big problem with large-snow-volume areas even if the roads are well plowed is melt+freeze ice. Here, it's dry, so melting snow evaporates and doesn't make significantly more ice. There's frost everywhere and wet pavement that freezes, but those are ok. What's not ok is puddles with some depth freezing. Unlike the frozen wet pavement, that's smooth ice, and that doesn't care what tires you're running. To my knowledge, there aren't MC tires with retracted studs, and while spiked tires work great on ice, they're obviously not ideal on pavement.

Those Givi guards show as USD$189+93 shipping ($282) for me (CDN$384), vs. the other guards on ebay for CDN$300 shipped. Ebay.com has em for USD$225 shipped to the US.

It is! Get the right gear and tires, you get good traction and you're nice and warm instantly. Ironically I'm warmer on my bike than in my Jeep, as it'll also be freezing cold but while the heater works fine, it's got to heat the air, then the steering wheel+interior - it takes a good amount of time to actually warm up. My gear starts out inside (and thus is warm), and is up to temp within seconds of starting the bike. I actually tend to wear the heated liner even when I'm driving (threw together an adapter for the Jeep's 12v plug) as it's so much better. It's really simple and easy. Bit of an expense initially (~$200 of gear, and a second set of tires) but then you can ride when it's freezing cold as if it was a warm spring day.

In all honesty, I'd far rather ride in temps way below freezing than anything above body temp. Mostly because once you get into those (for F) triple digit temps, the air doesn't cool you anymore, and there's no good personal cooling options. In -25C, I just bump my heated gear up to full and despite wearing a summer textile jacket, sweatshirt and heated liner I'm still toasty warm and not even bulky. It's what stops my road trips from going much further south of the border.

Yeah. Cold, frost and light snow aren't a problem with the right tires, but wet winter conditions are different. It's extremely difficult to keep yourself dry, and if you're not dry, you're not going to be warm, and that just wrecks stuff. Fortunately for me, winter is bitingly cold here and as such is significantly drier. I'm from Vancouver Island in BC, and while I rode year round there too, it sucked a lot more despite being 20C warmer and virtually never icy or snowy. Riding in rain that's just above freezing is horrible. And even if you've actually found legitimately good rain gear, yeah, you're still constantly wiping at your visor and having trouble seeing, etc. It's just not good. I dislike riding when anything is falling from the sky, really. I'll ride in rain, but only if I need to (going to work, coming home from a trip, etc) never for fun. Same with snow: If it's actively snowing, the impacts on visibility are a problem.

Yes. The mounting points are the engine + control mounts, which haven't changed.

This is why I love shopping online in the UK. I get way faster shipping than US based shops (and cheaper too), and even faster shipping than Canadian shops. These are pretty nice - kind of half the Givi/Kappa bars, but covering the useful stuff vs. the SW-Motech bars which leave the vulnerable lower engine bitties vulnerable. A nice lower profile option for those not into the bigger bars. Edit: Cheaper too!

Hah yeah, it's not so bad once you do it a few times and get used to how fiddly it is, but it's a ridiculous amount of work for a mostly-naked bike. My favourite part is the long, thinner black panels below the tank, that are held on by a screw, a slotty clip thing, a pin, and *bloody velcro* because 3 different kinds of fastener points just wasn't enough.

I experimented with this a lot. Wobble stops if you add another set of washers under the seat. It'll wobble if it's balancing a bit on that front pin, but if you pad up the bracket, wobble stops completely.

The F6b version is really sweeeeeet, too. There's some 4-5 guys with them in one of my local groups, and they're very impressive machines. So comfortable, so much power, and surprisingly great handling.

Much better design.

I'd use a dremel and a grinding bit. I decided against doing that unless mine works it's way loose again, as since tightening it it's been ok - I don't want to risk damaging it when I don't need too. If it does work it's way loose though I'll do it and document.

I'm contemplating cutting off the top cap on that nut and replacing it with a normal nut. I'm 99% sure it's the top of the bolt shaft that's peened out to keep the mirror tight (so that nut can't wiggle/vibrate/rotate loose) but that's not very helpful if they've not sufficiently tightened that nut in the first place. I'd rather just hit it with loctite and tighten it down to where I want it.

@mingo To tighten the mirror, you take off the black cap and tighten the nut inside. You'll need a thin 10mm socket to do it. Only tighten it a tiny bit, like 1/8th of a turn, and be careful - don't want what happened to @TheBigG happening to you I've had this Floppy Mirror Syndrome on both the new Yamaha's I've owned (both with the same types of mirrors) and an 1/8th of a turn on that nut has fixed both.

I pretty much ride exclusively in A mode, but can't say I've noticed any vibration changes between modes - mine's pretty buzzy all the time. It's just more eager in A mode.

I've seen you say this before. Do the FJ's change to a default setting (std I assume?) when you turn them on? I know with the Tracer, it just starts at whatever mode you where in when you turned it off.

I'm so stoked for Colorado. That was supposed to be my solo trip this year, but 2020 happened. Next year, though - next year!

Hah half the bike's I've owned have been shaft drive, and I'm not gonna lie, I love them. They come at a cost, but in practice IMHO they're simply *better*. Sure, you lose a bit of power you could have potentially had, but as it's not an option it's not like you'll ever ride it with a chain and this never know With that said, I *highly* recommend getting an auto oiler. I've put 8000 miles on mine now, and haven't cleaned or lubed the chain since... And it's always clean and freshly lubed. Totally worthwhile. You still need to adjust for slack, but that's way less frequently an issue vs. normal clean and lube stuff, particularly if you ride a lot.

Yup, need to be in a low gear, because your apex is at max lean and at low speed and incline, so you need to throttle out pretty hard to stand the bike up again. Can't counterbalance in unless you're going real tame. I love them, though, it's one of those things that's not really hard to do at all, but makes you feel like an absolute badass when you get it.

Fun adventures in electronics! As I've talked about before, I love my electronics. But having to plug my phone into a 12v->USB adapter like a bloody peasant is annoying, and it presents waterproofing issues for foul weather. Sadly, like said bloody peasant, the plague has left budgets very thin. RAM has wireless charging mounts, but they're absolutely ridiculously expensive. But hey, wireless chargers are really cheap, and I already have an X-Grip mount with a raised "RAM MOUNTS" logo sticker on it... Enter the ebay wireless charger getup ($5): 1Pc 10W Qi fast charging wireless charger PCBA circuit board with dual 2 coil_ha | eBay Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for... I ordered two. I thought at first the dual coil would work better, but it doesn't - not really. Testing showed it just made it work in more positions, but that's not really relevant for use in a RAM mount where it's always in exactly the same position - I get better results just having a single coil in the right position. So... I removed both coils by clumsily smashing the PCB with my soldering iron, and added a huge length of 18 guage wire from the PCB (where one of the coils was connected) to the coil. The coils are glued onto a adhesive backed graphite sheet (Why? I don't know) so I pulled off one coil, and cut the sheet back to be just a couple mm bigger around then the coil. I addressed waterproofing (if that's even a problem here, I have no idea to be honest) I drizzled some two-part clear resin epoxy over the coil and surface of the graphite. Gives it a nice, smooth, shiny surface that's fairly grippy (just like the old RAM MOUNTS sticker!), and at least makes me feel better about waterproofness. Glued it in place of the old sticker, crammed everything in behind the windshield, tied a USB charger into the switched power in there, and bam! My old X-Grip now has wireless charging. Fast charging, in fact! Yeah, it's a bit off center - kind of low. This is because due to button placement on the phone, I need to have it a bit low in the mount, and this spot got me the best charging results. I'm pretty happy with it - powered when the bike is on, so any time my phone is in the mount, it's charging, no more cables!

The Booster Plug only impacts open-loop, because it changes the air temperature reported to the ECU. Once the ECU is in closed-loop mode, it's adjusts fueling based on the O2 sensor (assuming you've not disabled it) instead, so the Booster Plug has no impact whatsoever on closed-loop fueling.

With the groups I ride with, this is the normal way to go: Estimated corner speed is twice whatever is posted. It works surprisingly well. You can do more, but 2x posted is pretty easy even for a very mixed group. My experience has kind of been the opposite of yours in the US at least, anyways. There's this winding road up the mountains on north side of Lewiston, here: Google Maps Idaho Those 15mph switchbacks are not easy to do at 30mph. Silly fun road to ride, though, scraped all kinds of hard parts getting up here: but on the other hand, the 35+ mph corners are pretty trivial.

It can, but you'd be better off simply adding idle and low rpm fuel to the flash itself IMHO. Just have them run it 6% richer on idle/minimal throttle and call it a day. You COULD use the BoosterPlug, but without the O2 sensor running you'd be running 6% richer all the time instead of just at idle/low rpm. That'll make a significant impact on fuel economy, and may cause problems if the flash I'd already so what rich. In short, if you're flashing your ECU, you're better off getting a flash that does everything you want rather than mixing and matching more hacky solutions. The BoosterPlug guys are in Denmark, iirc! But yeah, was the same for me, I think 4 days, free shipping, Denmark to Canada. I've been on a few longer rides with mine, and I'm really falling in love. It's SO MUCH NICER in a group when riding slowly. So much more settled and tame, *and* more bite when you yank on the throttle. Ok, simple explanation: Gasoline burns best at a specific air fuel mixture, and with fuel injection it's the ECU's primary job to add the correct amount of fuel to the amount of oxygen being sucked into the cylinders. This is quite fiddly, as temperature and air pressure have a substantial impact on how much oxygen is pulled in per intake. In open loop mode, the ECU decides how much fuel to use by looking at the fuel map(a grid of throttle positions vs rpm), then adding more/less fuel fuel for temperature and air pressure (cold air is denser, for example, so you need more fuel). And that's it, fuel map + situation modifiers. The ECU does *not* know how rich or lean it's running though, just that it's doing what it's supposed to for the current situation. The bike runs like this at idle, under partial throttle, and under hard acceleration. In contrast, once you're at more steady speeds, cruising, under throttle, the bike moves to closed loop mode. It looks at the fuel map (big grid of throttle position vs rpm), adds fuel, then looks at what the O2 sensor says. It uses the output from the O2 sensor to determine how the engine is running, (air fuel mixture wise) and adds or removes fuel to subsequent injections to get it where it wants the air fuel mixture to be. This method results in "optimal" performance and fuel economy while cruising. It's disabled in some flashes however to force the bike to run to the fuel maps rather than ignoring them once in closed loop mode. The problem is (in my experience) most flashes can't change the target Air Fuel Mixture, so if it goes into closed loop mode, it's fueling as per the manufacturer's settings which are heavily influenced by environmental regulations and thus kind of lean, to burn cleaner. It can't use the O2 sensor under changing conditions (sudden acceleration, idle, etc) because there's a lag time between fuel injection and results from the O2 sensor.