Recent content by bigborer

Safest would probably be to "depin"- remove the pins from the plug, there's plenty youtube videos for that, and then short through the plug. Never done this though. What I've actually done before is carefully stick some cheap Chinese (thin) multimeter probes behind the wires. There are also...

Where did you short the pins? 1) At the kickstand plug or 2) at the wire loom harness plug that gets into the ECU? If you didn't already, try 2) as if the wire is broken somewhere along the way from the switch to the ECU doing 1) will have no effect. If 2) is still unsuccessful that indeed...

Check the ECU pins for oxidation

There are 2 types of mounts with Givi- monokey and monolock, check google images for differences- they are not the same. Many other brands have compatibility with one of the Givi mounts. With Shad I can't confirm, but I can say that they have at least 2 different plate sizes- I've found out...

First time cooking a Tomahawk. Should have used the offset smoker, but was too lazy to pull it outside.

Likely they made the front and rear lights on the GP as small as possible as to mimic "race fairings" from a distance. But thanks a lot for the droid pic... now I can't unsee it either :(

Some years ago I wanted to upgrade to the FZ1. Long story short I gave up after I found out that many claim the range is at least 20% lower (smaller tank + bigger engine), and instead upgraded the suspension and brakes on the FZ6. Today, the only Yamaha I'd really upgrade to would be an XSR900...

Does this count?

The FZ1 will have lower range as it has both higher fuel consumption and lower tank capacity. And liter bikes suck at slow city riding during the summer, your legs will cook. Wanted to buy a FZ1 GT and extend it's tank a few years ago but gave up as my FZ6 was already sorted out (R6 fork and...

Coolant flush and maybe a new radiator cap.

Loose is better than tight (up to a point) on engines that don't really rev that much. There is a risk of having the valves bounce around and wreak havoc, and the more rpm the higher the risk. At the very least, there will be accelerated wear as the cam lobes will smash into the valve buckets...

Almost anything is rebuildable. You can do the drill and valve on most standard and non rebuildable emulsion shocks. But is it worth the trouble?

Old gaskets come off quickly with a small window scraper and (for extreme cases only) some paint stripper solution.

Few riders or drivers actually understand what a late apex is (or even that it matters what trajectory you take through a turn), and most people don't take early apexes because they try to get a "race line", but because they see the turn and their little hamster brain tells them "watch out! the...

Not sure if this was mentioned beforehand (too lazy to read all replies) but I'd bet that the previous owner tightened the crap out of the 5 clutch basket screws, elongating and weakening those threaded tubes, which then lasted... until they didn't.