Warchild

Marc, can you take a few digital photos of your Superbrace installed and post them so we can see what you see? What you are describing is pretty much unheard of, but it would be useful to see the *exact* placement of your Superbrace, so that we might be able to better help you diagnose the problem. The correct placement of the Superbrace is fairly close to the top of the lower fork tubes (and were the plastic OEM fork protectors reside) in such a way that the Superbrace is *just* below the beveled portion at the top of the lower fork tube. Can you post a close up photo of your install? That would help immensely....

Pit Bull most definitely kicks ass. With the fork-converter, you can pull the entire front end off the bike and recondition forks, do streering head bearing servicing, etc.

Army of Darkness Racing is just so totally cool... :twisted: All black race-bikes: All black transport rigs: Pit tents maintain the color theme: And, of course, all black T-shirts (gotta get me one of these! :twisted: ) Hey, gals can got a AOD shirt, too... Lame-o web site you can score the tshirts: http://www.armyofdarkness.com/

Here is the Power Commander Map (M113-005) for the CBR1100XX specific to the Two Brothers Racing slip-ons, running a stock or aftermarket air filter: http://www.powercommander.com/maps/021100x...xx/m113-005.exe

Most definitely concur. If you have had your forks done by Dan Kyle, stick with his recommendations. On those monster-ass 48mm Soqi forks on the FJR, I went with 15wt Bel-Ray, and it made a pretty big improvement. (Though truthfully, just replacing that nasty-ass OEM water that Yamaha had in there from the factory with *any* new fork fluid would have made a big difference! :evil: )

Stay with the OEM fork seals. Trust me. Try some 20wt fork oil of your favorite brand. I like Bel-Ray and Silkolene, personally.

It gets worse.... this rider is only a moderately assertive rider, and he claims no burnouts on this tire; just a looooong tour that resulted in him having to limp home on these steel cords.... :shock:

Good luck with them, Pete.... told ya I didn't like them much. I sure as fuck wasn't going to lean that big Yammy over on tires I got *zero* confidence in.... Here's a FJR listmember's rear Continental "Heart Attack" after 4600 miles....

I routinely get about 1200-1500 more miles out of the Avons than I do the Pilot Roads. Last set of Avons on my FJR yielded about 9500 miles. Have about 6000 miles on the current set of Pilot Roads on my XX... I'll be lucky to squeeze another 2K out of them, if that.....

Tires are so very subjective; one man's crap is another man's treasure, yadda yadda... That having been said, in my opinion you have selected what I consider to be the finest two tires for the XX, particularly when considering preformance/grip versus treadlife. I rate the Avons #1 and the Pilot Roads #2. I have run both of these tires on both the XX and the FJR. The Avons have the better grip when dry, and are orders of magnitude better in the wet. Mind you, the Avons can be a bit more pricey, and the Pilot Roads is certainly no slouch by any means. But of these two... go with the Avons.

Unless they've been de-linked, every XX pilot uses the rear brak to some degree with every braking evolution.... even if they only squeeze the front brake lever.

Very, VERY unsual to not have accelerated wear on the left outer pad.... you really are lucky, Nik....

Here's my remote pre-load: Here is the remote reservoir that is affixed to the inner right rear fender cowling using two hefty zip-ties. I simply drilled two small holes (per zip tie) to hold the reservoir in place (obviously, the rear bodywork was removed to take this photo):

$235 buys it all!! Price includes shipping to anywhere in CONUS! These babies will light up the road for a third of a mile in front of you! Pencil-beam lens allows you to safely use these on divided highways without blinding oncoming cars. These lamps are AWESOME! If you do any driving at night, these are one of the best weapons to have in your deer-avoidance arsenal! Here's what you get: - Two PIAA 910 Driving Lamps with pencil-beamed clear lens. - Original PIAA wiring harness and relay - two 55-watt PIAA Xtreme White H7 bulbs - BLM-Accessories PIAA brackets custom-built for the Blackbird! Here's how they look from the from front: Close up of the PIAA brackets for the BLackbird: Interested? PM me for payment details... basically, the first dude that drops $235 in my PayPal account gets them!!!

This has gotta be an inside joke or something, 'cuz I dunno what y'all are referring to.... Pilot Roads have the least tendency to scallop, given their tread design.... :roll:

Zero Gravity "Sport-Touring" windscreen, extra dark smoke. And, yes, SEANG edging installed on it.

Hell, to be honest, I can't recall, but I remember what it was for the ST1100 dudes (did a GB for them, too): polished aluminum finish was $115.95 each, the Black-Anodized version is $20 more ($135.95 ea), HOWEVER, note that this *includes* the stainless steel fork protectors (a must have, IMO) The regular price for the ST1100 polished aluminum is $139.95, and add to that the $25 stainless steel fork proitectors, and thats $164.95 total. So that $115.95 Group Buy price represents a fairly hefty 30% savings.... which is pretty cool. :cool: I should know later today what they'll do for us on the XX....

I can, based upon lots of comments in the FJR community about this tire. Waste of money and treadlife. Use the standard Z6, if you must go with the Metzler. Trust me. Same for the Avons.

I have the SuperBrace on Night Train. It made a big difference in front end tracking, particularly during triple-digit sweepers. A BIG difference! I set up a Group Buy on these on these bad boyz for the FJR dudes last spring. If there is enough interest here, I can see if they are willing to hook us up. You can get them in polished aluminum, or in anodized black. As you can see below, I scored the polished aluminum version, but I wish I got the anodized black, which looks sweeeeeeet on the FJR. Whaddya y'all say? Want me to at least check on what they can do for a Group Buy price for us?

You are probably referring to the SilverStar bulb, and yes, it is a very, VERY good bulb. In fact, I am about to install one in the FJR. This bulb is getting some outstanding comments from the Endurance Riding community. Though it's not up to HID standards, obviously. There is no halogen that is going to compare with true HID. Still, the SilverStar is outstanding, at least an order of magnitude better than the stock 55-watt Stanley H7's. The Philips Vision Plus is also top shelf. An excellent bulb, every bit as good as the SilverStar. Some even like it better.

Concur. Though still take care not to overtighten these bolts...

You do not want to use a shielded HID bulb for an H7 refector housing like our Blackbirds. You used an UNshielded bulb, and let the reflector housing adjustments take care of the beam pattern. Related note: if your running an unshielded HID bulb in your high beam in the presence of other traffic, that is uncool.... basically, you're being socially irresponsible (er... more so than usual! :wink: :razz: ) and, truthfully, you're creating a safety hazard.

THESE ARE BULLSHIT TIRES!!!!!! AVOID!! AVOID!! AVOID!! AVOID!! The following is a lengthy Warchild Review of the new Continental "Road Attack" tires I just wrote up tonight for the FJR1300 forums. While this review was for the FJR1300, but I can't see it being any better on the XX. :evil: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: These tires are about as fücked up as a soup sandwich. Two thumbs down. Save your money. Background: Always keen to expand the range of possible FJR-worthy tires, I read (with some bemusement) some glowing reports of the new Continental "Road Attack" tires a couple of weeks ago. My experience with Continental motorcycle tires has always been poor, though admittedly, the last time I tried them was many years ago. Too, I know a lot of veteran Endurance Riders think the Conti's are generally crap tires, maybe one or two rungs above the Cheng Shin line of Chinese tires. However, these "Road Attacks" were suppose to be "new technology" from Germany, and it had a bunch of glowing marketing hype surrounding it (ex: www.conti-tyres.co.uk/con...attack.htm ), and they could be had for under $200 for the pair. So I thought, what the hell, I'll try 'em. Mounting the Conti's: Yesterday (Friday, 23 July), I go down to Sunnyside to mount the new tires on Timex, replacing badly worn BT-020s. When I literally picked up the tires from Guru Glen, the *first* thing that popped into my head was: "DAMN, this feels like some super-soft compound!". And I was right, they were extremely soft, softer than any tire I recall mounting before. Ever. After prying the stiff old rear Bridgestone off, I pretty much knew something was amiss when I was *easily* able to fit not only the entire lower bead of the tire on the rim using only *light* finger pressure, but I could almost - almost put the entire tire on without using tire irons or the Coats machine! Even more troubling were the sidewalls, which were NO WHERE NEAR as stiff as the Bridgestones, Avons, or Pilot Roads. This concerned me greatly, and as I was shortly about to discovered, I had good reason to be concerned. When I went to seat the bead of the tires (using compressed out without the valve core in place), there was none of the typical loud "POP" noise that usually accompanies seating the bead. The tire beads slipped over the rim as easy as pie. This sent more alarm bells ringing. I went to balance them, and this is one of the high points of the review: they front took but 5 grams, the rear only 15g. Pretty good. After reinstalling the wheels back on Timex, I realized I had left my good-quality air pressure gauge at home, so I found a crusty old pencil-style gauge in the bottom of my tool bag, aired them up to 42 psi front and rear, and took off to scrub them in for the 45-mile ride back to Tri-Cities. Scrub in: I didn't even go 2 blocks before I realized these tires were a HUGE mistake! The rear tire literally squirm from a firm yet routine launch from a red light! I was stunned at this. The front was equally bad under heavy braking; the front end was all over the place! I couldn't believe how bad this was! I actually pulled over and checked the tire/wheels carefully before getting on the interstate home. Finding nothing obviously wrong, I started bumming heavily. I got home with only two incidents: a trucker cut me off climbing a steep grade near Prosser, forcing me to squeeze firmly on the front brake. HOLY SHÏT, the front tire squirmed so bad, I though I was going to low-slide! The second incident was the reverse situation, where I had to step down to fourth and punch it to get out of some traffic, and the rear end actually moved around to an alarming degree I never experienced before. I was already kicking myself for wasting $200 bills on these chessy-ass Conti's. Full-on Road Test: Fast forward to this morning, Sat, 24 July. Today I had a 600-mile run around the Columbia Basin that included last minute activity at the Moscow University Inn for WFO-3, so before me 7AM departure, I checked the tire pressure and was surprised (and relieved!) to find that my crusty old pencil-gauge was WAY off the mark: both tires showed only 34psi! YEAH, maybe this was the reason for the crappy performance on the way home yesterday! Aired them up to 42 psi (accurately, this time), and hit the road to Moscow. Taking the Pasco-Kohlatus Highway (a pleasant mixture of plains, lots of sweepers and a number of good tighter curves), my confidence in the Road Attacks started to improve. They are pretty damn grippy after all, and soon I was leaning Timex over pretty well, though not with the same level of confidence as the Avons. The grip was not to that high level of performance, but I would say they were at least approaching the grip/performance level of the Pilot Roads. Maybe. Sadly, as the day wore on and got hotter, the problems started to show again. Once again, under *heavy* acceleration, and *hard* braking, I could feel the bike moving around to an alarming degree. To the Conti's credit, even though I was moving around all over, the tires never scared me like the day before, and after 300 or so miles, I was even able to start predicting when they would squirm and start dealing with it. I even took perverse fun in mimicking Ben Bostrom's style of braking down a long straightway, the way his World Superbike Ducati would weave and dance while he was braking hard in setting up for the next turn. I decided to hit Post Falls and Baudry Motorsports to drool over their three Aprilia Millie Factory bikes they have on their floor, then headed back to the Tri-Citiers. It was hot by the time I reach Washtucna, 105F according to the Datel air temp gauge. The Conti's were simply not up to the task. Both accelerating and braking, I could now get them to squirm at will, and while they never scared me on the way home, they sure didn't inspired any confidence. When I got home and started research WTF is the deal with the Road Attacks, I found out the reason why I can now safely NOT recommend this tire for the FJR1300 or any heavy sport-touring machine: the sidewalls of both the rear AND the front tires are identical - are you ready for this - BOTH tire sidewalls have ONE, SINGLE ply of nylon. That's it. Nothing else. Man, I just about blew a gasket! Fücking ONE PLY OF NYLON?!!!!! Damnation, no wonder the monster torque put out by the FJR makes this tire squirm! And no wonder I could just about mount the entire tire using fingers only! The sidewalls are paper-thin! The sidewalls of Bridgestone BT-020s and Michelin Pilot Roads, in comparison, contain two plies of polyester/nylon. Interestingly, the tread of the rear Road Attack has 3 plies (one steel, one nylon, one rayon) and is, in fact, made in Germany. Mine had a Dec, 03 build date. The front Road Attack has four (4) plies (2 Aramid, 2 nylon) and is made in Korea. Again, my front was a Dec '03 build. Bottom Line: I could see if you are an incredibly gentle rider and weight about 150 lbs, maybe you would like these Conti's. But if you are a big linebacker type and/or carry a lot of gear, OR, you are an assertive rider who performs hard accelerations and heavy braking as a routine, I WOULD NOT in any way, shape or form recommend these tires for the FJR1300 (edit: and the XX as well! ). I realize tires are extremely subjective; (one man's bullshit trash is another man's treasure chest, yadda, yadda), but those of you who know me and how I ride also know that I wouldn't bad-mouth tires unless it is absolutely warranted. Save your money. Avoid these bullshít crap tires.

Concur. The XX turns into something Purely Evil above 7K RPM. Use care until you are acclimated to the 'Bird at these engine speeds. Word.