JDChico89

MISTAKES WERE MADE: PART III After days of letting the Goo-Gone work its magic and endless prying <slash> slicing my fingers and banging up my knuckles, I began to sense something else was at work. Perhaps there was some type of locking mechanism heretofore undiscovered in my many manful-strainings. I tapped around, trying to hear some reverberation that would tell me right where the pieces clicked together. The problem was that after years of being around explosions, gunfire, and teenagers, my hearing is not as good as it once was. Tapping on one area of the plastic sounded pretty much like tapping on any other part. I had momentary delusions of going to the courthouse or airport and coming up with a super-complicated <slash> totally-believable reason for them to run it through their x-ray machine, so I could see what was holding me back. Two things were wrong with this idea. 1) I can’t lie very well, and 2) The idea wasn’t very good to start with. So, with x-rays out of the picture, there was only one option left. DRILL BABY, DRILL!!! Note: The pictured part doesn’t keep anything together. I advise you don’t cut the plastic away, just to make sure.

@maximothis is a MUCH worse idea than painting my KLR tan!!! Its now two times in the last two weeks we've run into each other. We must be destined for a ride!

MISTAKES WERE MADE: PART II Note: Just so you know, this is not exactly what you would call a, “How to…” Somehow, when I made the epically-fabulous decision to drill out all the rivets of my mostly-functional pannier, I assumed it would be a matter of simply popping out the inner plastic liner, rivet the innards back together, then zim-zam, we’re back in business! I’m a handy fellow. I dabble in polymer holsters and other such creatives. How hard could this be? The answer, my friends, is hard. Like, stupid-hard. Like, it took me almost a week to figure this thing out, hard. For all intents and purposes, the rivets were out, and the inner plastic liner should have simply slid out. Perhaps there was some type of adhesive between the two layers. An easier fix couldn’t have been more obvious! POUR GALLONS OF GOO-GONE DOWN INSIDE! It didn’t work…

Ohhhhhhh @nhchris. If only the universe wasn't such a cruel mistress, she would have given me the requisite patience to look before I leapt...

I’m new to the FJ-09 world and bring you my no-holds-barred approach to screwing things up. This series will bring you tremendous feelings of confusion, outrage, disgust, wonderment, and hopefully in the end lifelong satisfaction. When this wife-defying fear-fest is over, you will peer deep into the depths of something Yamaha DEFINITELY doesn’t want you to see!!! (probably) After many years of being without a bike, I recently purchased a 2015 FJ-09. It’s been a massive joy to ride and gets me to work WAY faster, now that I can ride in the carpool lane. The only problem I could find, was that the top latch of the right pannier (side case for those who don’t call them pannier’s), would not fully close. For most, this would be a nuisance at best, but for those of us, like me, whose O.C.D. has A.D.D., it was simply unacceptable! So, after a quick perusal of the visible mechanisms, the answer couldn’t be any simpler. DRILL OUT ALL THE RIVETS!!! And that's where it all began...