Hi, my name is Jim and I have a motorcycle problem

[jimf]

Yahoo! The H&B undertray showed up today from MotoMachines. It's less bash-guardish than I thought it would be, protecting the front well but open underneath, but reasonably beefy. I'm going to wait until after the first service before I put it on, might as well give the poor mechanic a break in terms of stuff I've added that he's going to have to remove.
 
I got a laugh at the german name for the part: "Bugspoiler".
 
Hopefully the mounts for the driving lights show up this week and I'll wire those up next weekend, all set for my mid-month four-day tour of northern New England.
 
The dealer doesn't seem to want to tell me when the luggage and mounts and heated grips are going to ship. I'm guessing that's a bad sign in terms of having them before I leave on the 14th.
 

[jimf]

Called the dealer about the luggage and Yamaha has pushed the ship date out from 4/24 to 5/21. So, no nice new luggage for me before my first long trip. Thanks Yamaha! Even beyond the fact that it's going to take (at least) two months to get them, how hard is it to predict your production? That's not rocket science.
 
The dealer says that Yamaha is always doing this to them for the higher-priced accessories. They complain that the dealers don't sell enough of it, but then when they try to buy it it's not available.
 
If it weren't for the fact that all the other luggage mounts are hella ugly I would just skip it and get something aftermarket. Same thing with the heated grips: I want the integration into the bike control system. It's easier to wait for those, though, since I already have heated gloves that work just fine.

[papifun]

jim.. I'm getting same deal.. was promised in two week, so i picked up bike and paid in full.. now i get the story mid to late june for heated grips and saddle bags.. the bags came in today but no mounting racks.. heated grips on BO too... damm.. I think Yamaha should give us free knapsacks as a SORRY gift.,.. pull some strings !!!
 
 

[thruster8999]

Yahoo! The H&B undertray showed up today from MotoMachines. It's less bash-guardish than I thought it would be, protecting the front well but open underneath, but reasonably beefy. I'm going to wait until after the first service before I put it on, might as well give the poor mechanic a break in terms of stuff I've added that he's going to have to remove. 
I got a laugh at the german name for the part: "Bugspoiler".
 
Hopefully the mounts for the driving lights show up this week and I'll wire those up next weekend, all set for my mid-month four-day tour of northern New England.
 
The dealer doesn't seem to want to tell me when the luggage and mounts and heated grips are going to ship. I'm guessing that's a bad sign in terms of having them before I leave on the 14th.

 
I feel the same way about the h&b guard. Not sure what it is going to protect. Maybe the exhaust but not the oil pan or oil drain plug. H&B could of added more protection underneath not sure why they didnt. Deciding weather or not to send it back. I think the sw motech protects alittle better underneath but not the exhaust. Guess there is a trade off. Whats ur take.

[jimf]

I feel the same way about the h&b guard. Not sure what it is going to protect. Maybe the exhaust but not the oil pan or oil drain plug. H&B could of added more protection underneath not sure why they didn't.

 
I'm ok with what it protects; just keeping rocks off of the oil filter and coolant reservoir is a win. I ought not to be bashing the bike against rocks anyway :-) and my real concern is dirt road riding, which I'm definitely doing more of with this bike.

[jimf]

The weekend jobs included picking up the FJ from its first service, installing the H&B undertray (aka "Bugspoiler"), and installing the Yamaha rear rack.
 
After the service the low-RPM throttle abruptness disappeared. No surging in STD mode anymore. Nice.
 
The English translation of the H&B undertray instructions was interesting, particularly the part where it didn't even mention that you had to remove the long bolt that holds the center stand on. Ok, it was fairly obvious just from how it fit, but I would have liked a mention and torque specs. Also, I would have liked a 5mm longer bolt -- the original is not really long enough with the added material of the undertray. It's close, it's short about one thread in the nut, and with generous loctite it shouldn't have any trouble, but I really would have liked to have a proper length bolt.
 
The rear rack on the Yamaha went on easily although Yamaha says the replacement bolts for the side case mounts should be torqued to 31Nm, or 23lb/ft. That is a problem because the new bolts only have a 5mm head, not really strong enough for that kind of torque; the original bolts were 6mm. Very odd. I rounded one of them out a little north of 20lb/ft. All the others got torqued to 20lb/ft instead.
 
I'm a little curious as to what the extra spacers that are now behind the luggage mounts are going to do to the fitment of the luggage once it and its lower mounts show up. It would be pretty annoying if I could have either the rack or the luggage, but not both.
 
Anyway, the bike is slowly assembling itself.

[wessie]

I'm a little curious as to what the extra spacers that are now behind the luggage mounts are going to do to the fitment of the luggage once it and its lower mounts show up. It would be pretty annoying if I could have either the rack or the luggage, but not both.
 
 

 
Givi supplied 4 extra spacers and longer bolts with their topbox rack to fit behind the pillion peg hangers. Shame the OE bolts are made of cheese, as stated in another thread. This moves the lower mounting points out to to be parallel with the upper mounts.
 
Yamaha does say, "do not use a top box when using side cases" so perhaps they don't want to supply parts that might encourage you to do so. Anyway, a couple of thick washers will achieve the same result.
 

[jimf]

I'm a little curious as to what the extra spacers that are now behind the luggage mounts are going to do to the fitment of the luggage once it and its lower mounts show up. It would be pretty annoying if I could have either the rack or the luggage, but not both. 
 

Givi supplied 4 extra spacers and longer bolts with their topbox rack to fit behind the pillion peg hangers. Shame the OE bolts are made of cheese, as stated in another thread. This moves the lower mounting points out to to be parallel with the upper mounts. 
Yamaha does say, "do not use a top box when using side cases" so perhaps they don't want to supply parts that might encourage you to do so. Anyway, a couple of thick washers will achieve the same result.

Well, the warning says it's due to the possibility of overloading, not that they don't both fit.  This is one of those things that the dealer really ought to have brought up, too, and didn't.  I don't actually want to use a top case plus side cases -- I just want the rack to have someplace to strap the tent to when I have a pillion. 
Anyway, thank you very much for the mention of using spacers.  I'm embarrassed to say that it never even occurred to me that this would be possible, and that's something I can easily get the hardware for.  I concur about the bolts being made of cheese; the heads aren't even strong enough to torque them to the value specified in the documentation.  For the moment I'm just going to leave the bolts on there because they're good enough, but if there's ever a hint of a need to do anything to the rack or panniers those bolts will get replaced by nice 6mm stainless hardware.
 
As an aside, this website has been insanely valuable, you know?  People here have consistently known more about what's going on with bike sales, accessory availability, and the recall than my dealer.  Plus what works or doesn't with the bike, which stock parts are lousy and what to do about it, real-world data on how to fix the bits that Yamaha didn't design so well, etc.  It's worth ten times the price of admission, at least! :-)

[jimf]

Well, the hard bags that were ordered on Apr-1 and originally backordered to Apr-24 and then later backordered to May-21 finally showed up sometime in the last couple of days. Two full months to deliver them.
 
Unfortunately the mounting brackets did not show up and are now listed as backordered to Jul-6.
 
The heated grips backorder has been extended to Jun-26. Since those are shared with other bikes it's not even like that can be blamed on it being a new model.
 
So: It'll be a minimum of three months to get the core touring accessories for the FJ, and I ordered them before the spring sales season really got underway.
 
That's horrible, Yamaha. Frustrating. A sign of completely incompetent supply chain management. And you complain to your dealers that they're not selling your accessories? That takes some gall when you can't even deliver what they do order. If it weren't for the fact that I really don't want my bike to look like a plumber's nightmare I would have given up weeks ago and bought Givi again.

[Guest lawrenceofsuburbia]

Well, the hard bags that were ordered on Apr-1 and originally backordered to Apr-24 and then later backordered to May-21 finally showed up sometime in the last couple of days. Two full months to deliver them. 
Unfortunately the mounting brackets did not show up and are now listed as backordered to Jul-6.
 
The heated grips backorder has been extended to Jun-26. Since those are shared with other bikes it's not even like that can be blamed on it being a new model.
 
So: It'll be a minimum of three months to get the core touring accessories for the FJ, and I ordered them before the spring sales season really got underway.
 
That's horrible, Yamaha. Frustrating. A sign of completely incompetent supply chain management. And you complain to your dealers that they're not selling your accessories? That takes some gall when you can't even deliver what they do order. If it weren't for the fact that I really don't want my bike to look like a plumber's nightmare I would have given up weeks ago and bought Givi again.

This non-availability of the mounting hardware, and the lengthy wait for the bags themselves, is rather weird - and from many posts here there are plenty of others voicing similar frustrations. Here is Oz we were fortunate enough to have the hard bags - and obviously all mounting hardware - included and fitted with the new bike, so clearly Yamaha have produced the goodies - it's just that they can't get them out to others.
This will rankle with many riders for a very long time, I'll bet - and will sour the relationship with and perception of the Yamaha brand.   Pity, for it's a good bike...
L of S
 

[jimf]

This non-availability of the mounting hardware, and the lengthy wait for the bags themselves, is rather weird - and from many posts here there are plenty of others voicing similar frustrations.

According to my dealer it's not weird. They have difficulty obtaining with almost every expensive option Yamaha sells. I don't know if the problem is that in the US fewer people buy such things, or if it's supply chain mismanagement, but whatever ... it's very frustrating.
 
On the plus side, I picked up the bags and they're really nice kit. If only I could use them....
 

[jimf]

This week's upgrades were lower luggage mounts so I can finally use the hard luggage and a RAM ball mounted on the SW-Motec crash bars so I can use a new Hero+.
 
I don't have pics of the Hero yet, but here's yet another pic of an FJ with luggage:
 

 
From the back:
 

 
Installation was really easy except for the crossbar.  I had installed the two mounts before attaching the crossbar because I thought I could just drop the crossbar in place after.  That turns out not to be possible because of the rear brake reservoir hose:
 
 

 
The crossbar has lugs on it and there's not enough space to push the hose out of the way enough to get the lug over the mounting bracket on the right side.  The trick is to loosely bolt on the crossbar on the right mounting leg before putting it on the bike.
 
I was worried about compatibility with the side cases and rear rack because of the extra spacers that have to be put in underneath the top rails when mounting the rack.  That was unfounded.  I'm pretty sure that it would be easier to get the luggage on and off without those spacers in there, it's a bit finicky, but there's enough tolerance in the system that it mounts up just fine.  I'm inordinately pleased about that, I really didn't want to have to lose the rack.
 
When I put on the rack I noticed that the bolts that came with the rack had 5mm allen heads, while the original upper luggage rail stock bolts were 6mm.  That's also true of the replacement bolts for the passenger pegs.  That seems odd, but ... whatever.
 
It will be very nice to be able to carry my toolkit and bad weather gear with me all the time on commutes.  It always sucks to ride in on a nice day in the mesh gear and then come out to rain for the ride home....

[jimf]

Oh, the other thing about the luggage lower rails is that Yamaha doesn't provide any kind of fixative for the rubber bumpers in-the-box. I used copious amounts of some random waterproof-glue-anything glue I happened to have sitting in a drawer (because I ran out of gorilla glue and have been too lazy to go get some more). Hopefully that works. I would not recommend using them without glue.
 

[jimf]

As promised, here are some pictures of the mount I set up for my new Hero+, hanging off SW-Motech crash bars.
 
I used this RAM kit:
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091KU5J6
 
That kit comes with two different U-bolt mounts plus a plastic platform for a pipe clamp mount and a ball mount for the Hero.  I originally thought I'd use the pipe clamp mount, but that would work better with a larger diameter tube and its plastic base is a bit clunky.
 
The smaller of the two U-bolts did not fit around the crash bars; it was close, but not quite.
 
So, I ended up using the larger U-bolt with the clamp insert and ball mount:
 

 

 
Technically the clamp insert is supposed to be for the smaller U-bolt, but it worked well here and gave more grip so the mount wouldn't move.
 
The kit came with a mid-size "double socket arm" which was exactly the right length to put the camera in front of the crash bar:
 
 

 

 
Obviously the kit had way more stuff than I actually needed.  If you tried hard you could probably get the specific parts for a little less money, although when I poked around a little bit with the RAM site it didn't seem like buying a la carte was going to save more than a couple of bucks, and you wouldn't get the extra bits that might be useful somewhere else.
 
One nice thing about this location is that I can easily run a USB wire from the camera up to the accessory socket -- providing unlimited power so I don't have to worry about the battery.
 
I haven't had time to actually record anything yet, alas.  Perhaps this weekend.

[deersSlayer]

As promised, here are some pictures of the mount I set up for my new Hero+, hanging off SW-Motech crash bars.

Excellent! We look forward to many videos posted on the forum.  8-)