Wintersdark

2 hours ago, angusmcoz said:

and have also changed the bag mounts to remove the passenger foot pegs. I like to shift my feet to where I'm on the balls of my feet on the pegs and the factory bags mounts would not let me do this comfortably.

Ooooh I missed this earlier.  Did you buy those somewhere, or make them?  I'd love to do that too - I plan on sometimes having a passenger, but on long trips it's just me and those passenger pegs push my heels out when I'm on the balls of my feet.  

Would love to be able to just pull them off when not needed, so I can get more foot room.

Also a big guy, so I just swing a leg over it.  I can comfortably flat foot it on the center stand though, so...

5 hours ago, johnmark101 said:

Many riders have gone with a shorter screen to get their head into clean air.  I am 6'1" and that is what worked for me.

I'm 6'4", and just keep mine in the lower position and it's fine.  Mind you, I also have very minimal windshield experience, and was never bothered by wind even on long road trips on bikes without a windshield.   

Just with mine in the upper position air is very turbulent around my head if I'm not tucking down and riding aggressively.

Definitely a subjective thing though.

Maybe US?  Or maybe just older fj09's?  My GT isn't speed limited... but it also has a 2" longer swingarm, too.

47 minutes ago, betoney said:

I'm still more curious as to WHY that happened just by disconnecting the battery??  It shouldn't trip a CEL.

There's some low-voltage situations that can cause that, but they should reset.  I can't remember the specifics of it, but I know it happened with my MT07 a couple times.  Not just disconnecting, though, I think you need to disconnect it *while* the ignition is on?  Or have it (power, that is) flicker off and on quickly while the ignition is on.  Makes the ECU pixies angry.  But as I said that should clear once you drive it a bit.  

Basically, you're triggering the "battery voltage is too low; check your charging system" alarm.  It should NOT be triggered by normal battery disconnects, though, the ECU needs to think the voltage is low, not gone.

The Tracer is a great machine, and (as can be expected here on a Tracer forum) I'd strongly recommend a GT if you're interested in the features, mostly because it's a pretty good deal and cheaper just to get it all stock.... Particularly as you'll never get a base Tracer as spiffy as the GT is.

IMHO, the real strength of the Tracer GT is in the value proposition.  You get *so much more* for your money than elsewhere... And there's not really any cheaply cut corners.  It's just a damn good bike at a really reasonable price.

Shopping for 2019's new is pretty ideal too.  I got mine in November, at a huge discount because the 2020's where coming in.  Ended up paying iirc $11500 (Canadian Pesos, mind you, not USD) AND had them throw in the first service free.

6 hours ago, DGuy said:

where would this code appear? somewhere on the bikes display?

CEL indicator is a yellow LED on the dash.

55 minutes ago, DGuy said:

No access to the Menu...the wheel/button gets no response which I find strange.

 

 

That's normal.  When the CEL is lit it won't let you access the menu (that is, on the TFT Tracer 900 GT dash). I went down that route when I ran the bike on the center stand.  Don't do that, by the way, it really pisses of the TCS and ECU.  The TCS will reset and work again, but you're stuck with a CEL and no menu access.  I ended up needing to have mine reset at a shop as o don't yet have an adapter and I needed into the menu to adjust heated grips settings.

6 hours ago, betoney said:

Love the photos... is the 2nd photo of @Wintersdark commuting to work? 😲

I've had that happen, actually.  It sucked, a lot more than you may think.  Interestingly it wasn't winter, and was a nice sunny day when I left.  Started raining really hard, then the temp dropped 12C in an hour and a half, turned to snow and started freezing the slush.  All the water kicked up off the road onto me and my bike would freeze pretty much instantly.  It was on my MT07, so no handgaurds or windshield.

By the time I got home, my gloves where so frozen I couldn't take my hands off the controls, and had no feeling anymore.  Soak+freeze is baaaad.  Front of my jacket was a frozen sheet of ice, no feeling below my knees and my boots+pants where frozen together.  

Won't do that again.  Man, the unbelievable pain as I started to warm up and got feeli g back in my hands and feet.  Jesus.

Nothing at all like riding in -30c.  Waaaaay worse.

3 hours ago, chesterburnet said:

I can buy tires, remove my wheels, get them mounted and back on the bike within the same day. A 2nd set of wheels still takes the same amount of time to remove them, have them mounted and then reinstall on the bike. Except for people that put on 8 - 10 K miles annually, it gets done maybe once a year, excepting of course if you get sport touring tires that last 10 - 12 K which would make it every year and a half. You're not doing pits stops. It's still the exact same amount of work. You're riding skills are so refined that you need to go back and forth between sport and touring tires? For that I need to tie up money and space? I would use that money to buy suspension, heated grips, exhaust, cool mirrors, flash my ECU, different pegs, spools, better windscreen, sliders, custom seat, luggage, tank bag, luggage rack, wheel stripe decals, new rear set, better levers, track day, strobe tail light, led signals, carbon fiber body panels, tidy tail, cruise control, self cancelling turn signals, high performance brake pads, rear wheel adjusters, helmet lock, different handlebars, a common sense consultant.................... or I have a set of wheels sitting in my garage waiting for my annual tire change.  

Here in Canada anyways, having a shop remount my wheels is $100+.  Yes, I could pull em, have the wheels changed, and reinstall them in a day - swapping wheels is very fast, and a shop can remount much faster than I can.  

I ride 15k+ per year.  That's a good set of touring tires.  I'm fond of Road 5's personally, and they're good enough for my summer riding.  However, I ride year round.  I have winter tires, so I need to swap tires twice a year *minimum* because if I run my winters above around 7c I'll burn through them extremely fast, while running the road 5's in -20c is pretty damn sketchy.  So, assuming changing tires twice a year that's $200/yr in cost.  

Now, yeah, buying a new set of OEM wheels for my Tracer is prohibitively expensive, but if I could find a low cost pair of say used MT09 wheels (assuming they're physically compatible) for say 300-400cdn?  That's two years of changes, and allows me to swap tires types quickly and easily.  I'd even go with marked up (if straight of course) wheels for the winters because they don't need to be pretty. 

So, yeah, that's the thread.  Hoping to find some cheap enough that it's practical.

9 hours ago, betoney said:

If it wasn't so expensive, I would like to do the same thing.  Many times I have used a set of tires to within  the last 1,000-1,500 miles of  their life and had an upcoming road trip coming in a week or so.  Once I have swapped a tire, I don't want to swap an old tire back on just to use the last 1,000 miles of tread, it would be nice to simply swap wheels when the need comes, or have one set of wheels with sport tires and one set with S/T tires.

Exactly.  I mean, I get most people aren't going to be into the winter tire thing, but even with normal summer riding, I'd like to be able to have some high mileage touring tires and some sport tires.  Changing tires yourself is *hard* work, extremely labour intensive, and paying someone else to do it (at least here) starts at about $100 for both, with the wheels off the bike.  Makes it kinda prohibitive to swap tires just for a given ride... And is why I never have pure sport tires, though I'd love to give them a go.  

May be at at idle the bike is at 12v (ish) and at 4k+ RPMs your more at 14.4v?  

Just now, chesterburnet said:

I t seems pretty ridiculous.

What does?  Getting a second set of wheels to swap back and forth?

1 hour ago, BBB said:

IIRC the engine had to running and in gear. Presumably to reduce the electrical load at idle.

Pretty sure just running.  I warm up my bike before leaving for work in the morning and the grips are warm when I leave.

On 1/10/2020 at 9:03 PM, tinkerfreak said:

It's nice to know what other people have done to their bikes and to know what is available on the market, but, only you can determine what you find objectionable or needing upgrade on your machine and taking care of those issues first, then you can look at the other farkles as your wallet permits. Go out ride it for a few months and take it from there as farkling is highly addictive and tends to have a brutal effect on your bank account. I really shouldn't be the one giving advise here because I am the poster child for farkling!

Something I like about this bike I've found is there's far fewer "must have" bits.  Most bikes have a laundry list of things that need fixing from the factory.  Most of the stuff is random cosmetic farkles, which is a nice change from some other bikes I've owned. Particularly with the GT, there's so little stuff even to add.

Those look awesome, but absurdly expensive.  I'd love to get a good deal on a set, but at almost $300cdn that's insane.

Lucky find!

Definitely not a lot of changes to be made.  I came from an MT07 myself, and while I loved it (but hated it's seat), I spent a lot of money on all the random add-ons.  It's nice to have a Tracer 900 GT that already has... Well, everything.

On 10/3/2018 at 8:42 AM, betoney said:

 I have to say, I personally HATE the new colors.   
The dull gray with a bright red side shroud looks like a terrible mis-match.  I agree with @David that the bag lids need to be black.
 
 

hah yeah, I got the dull gray with bright pearl white side shrouds, and hate the stock colors too.   Just saved so much money getting this colorway instead of the black and blue.  I've already done the shrouds to matte black which helps *enormously*, the bright mismatched shrouds just looks bad.  I'd *love* that new red, though.

Roadtecs are pretty popular in the same line as Road 5's.  I got 15,000kms on my last set of Road 5's (9300 miles) and they were still off the wear bars, but getting pretty close.  Curiously, the front wore just as fast as the rear.  

14 minutes ago, BBB said:

Only Tracer/FJ09 use exactly the same wheel according to parts directories, but that probably only refers to that specific design of spokes etc. There may be other bikes that use a compatible wheel, but I don’t know how you’d find out.

I bet the MT09 would fit, and there are plenty of those around.

Yeah, I'm wondering if that's the case.  FJ09/Tracers here are *extremely* uncommon bikes, but there's a decent amount of MT09 wheels kicking about (presumably when people upgrade to carbon fiber wheels?  Or just trash their bikes?  Who knows) ... But they're not cheap, so I'm fairly reluctant to spend that much to find out they don't fit.  

A new set of wheels is painfully spendy, particularly for something that's ultimately just a labour saving thing. 

I'd like to get a used set of compatible wheels so I don't need to change rubber twice every year and instead can just swap the whole tire and wheel assembly.  How can I tell which bikes use the same wheels?  Is there any easy way to figure that out?

Anyone have a good source for an inexpensive set?   

1 hour ago, betoney said:

Those numbers are really impressive considering stock FZ07 hp/tq is around 65/45 and flashed is about 70/50 according to 2WDW.

That much quick revving power in a smaller hooligan machine will be a hoot to ride.  I hope you have decent suspension to keep all of that power under control.  😎👍

I can only imagine.  My tuned MT07 was a bloody riot, this things pushing almost twice the power.   I'd LOVE to give that a whirl.

1 minute ago, Dodgy Knees said:

Totally agree with these personalizing idea's.  Whilst on the subject,  had my now black side panels off today,  just to neaten up previous work. This time though,  didn't bother removing indicators, so no need to remove  inner cover. Mucho easio. 

Masked off round badge and indicator.  Hang panel from garage roof using inner cover bolt holes and spray away. My edges and lower inside bit were not up to standard. 🙁

Still using matt black rubber spray. K2. 

If I was an overpaid sportsman I'd probably have one black and one gold. 😉

That's what I was thinking while I was remounting them.... Could really easily mask the indicators and spray away.  I was thinking afterwards that the plastidip style coating is probably going to last a bit longer and be easier to repair than vinyl there.  At least for me, riding in all weather, those panels get a lot of abuse and the leading super-tight corner looks like a prime failure point for the vinyl.  Will see how they hold up, though.

As much as I'm really looking forward to the blue, I found the look just with the white gone HUGELY improves the overall look of the bike.  The extra color, only on those two small panels, really just doesn't work well.  Once they match the plastics on the front and under the tank, the bike looks much, much better. 

22 minutes ago, betoney said:

That should look awesome when finished, good luck with the process.  I really like creative projects when owners personalize their bikes and make them unique.  👍

I'm pretty sure it'll look sweet - the blue in particular is gorgeous in person, the "metallic" flake in the vinyl is bits of reflective stuff so rather than just being a bit sparkly in the sun, it's really luminous when in direct light.  

I've never wrapped anything before this, but it seemed a good way to go.  I don't have to commit to it like I would with paint (just peels right off if you want) and it's WAY easier to get a great finish, while actually protecting the stock paint. 

I do think though, if I where to do it again, I'd still wrap the body of the bike,but those side panels I'd plastidip.  The curves and corners of the side panels are REALLY hard to wrap.

15 minutes ago, mingo said:

 @Wintersdark  What was the original color of your panniers? Nice job! I'd like to wrap mine with the same blue of my wheels, so close to that. 

Grey.  It's the "Nimbus grey" color scheme, so grey and white with red accents.  The accent decals are all gone now, and the white side panels are already black.  

I'd love to get a set of blue wheels too. A second set of wheels would be great for swapping between summer and winter tires too vs having to dismount/remount wheels twice a year, and it'd tie stuff together nicely.  Going to get some blue reflective tape for the existing black rims.