severdog

Bill- Ya really need your aux fuse panel to be relay-switched. Then you can pull the datel sense lead from there, and the voltage drop will be negligible. I wouldn't recommend running the datel all the time. Even though it's not much of a draw, it's ANOTHER draw, and it'll discharge your battery over time when you least expect it. Guaranteed. $5 of parts, swing on down and I'll do it for you.

Ain't it a relief. Now you don't have to sit there and be paranoid, listening for the fan every time you're in traffic. Sux about your bodywork.

I've had troubles staying with a low carb diet. So I thought the best way was to raise the metabolism and get some cardio into the daily routine. So I went out and got one of these: Adjustable suspension on the front forks, and on the seat tube. 24 gears. Of course, I've already got my Sigma Sport BC800 and my GPS attached. I have a ~5 mile route into the office...put my work clothes in a backpack, and shower when I get in the office. The route offers a fair amount of uphill climbs on the way in, about a 30 minute ride. Riding home is cake, mostly downhill and hit 30 mph yesterday. Haven't lost much weight this week but I can feel the burn in the legs. Anyone else do this?

How do you control the sag? Tube spacers on the springs? I have never done dick with any of the suspensions on my bikes other than change fork fluid. Have a lot to learn here.....fortunately sounds like most of you know your shit.

Concur. The "load" controls the time constant of the blinker rate. A lower load speeds up the time constant. Clean your bulb sockets and ensure that there's no corrosion.

This problem is a little tougher than you'd think. There are TWO possible causes for your problem: 1) R/R is bad, doesn't put out enough voltage 2) your stator is bad, some of the windings have fused together so it's not putting out enough 3 phase AC voltage to allow your regulator to do its job. Sometimes....and this is the worst....there can be a combination problem involving both major components: * R/R dies, pulling too much current to ground....which * overheats the windings on your stator, fusing them if you replace your R/R and you still have low voltage, it's stator time. Anyone have any pros/cons on the ELECTREX stators? They're supposed to provide ~15% higher ampacity.

It could be as simple as a dead battery. But you're correct in that the R/R can stop "regulating", and send 18V onto the positive wiring bus. This has less of an effect than you'd think....all it really does is send light bulbs to an earlier grave, and boil the battery electrolyte. I am not aware of any problem with Honda R/Rs expanding and grounding out to the frame. Sounds like a typical Italian engineering problem....but I'll bet that it looks good doing so. Let us know what the diagnosis is/was.

OK, that tells me that it wasn't a total frag job.....the fuse blew somewhere near it's rating. It would have shown a lot more carnage if it was a direct short to ground. I believe that their diagnosis, while fundamentally and logically sound, is INCORRECT. As Warchild pointed out earlier, very little current is pulled from the "switch" PIAA wire; it's only purpose is to grab enough current to actuate the LED in the switch, and to power the relay coil. Maybe 100 mA at most (one tenth of one ampere). But it's a simple conclusion, kind of like finding a dead body with a gun in its hand, a hole in its head, and concluding that it was suicide....without checking prints on the gun. So your dealer probably exchanged high fives all around and got rotator cuff problems slapping themselves on their backs. The first thing I would do (after cleaning up your wiring) would be to put an ammeter in series with your fan, and run it until it it turned on. These motors do destroy themselves on occasion, and if the bearings are not loose there'd be a shiteload of startup current....this may have indeed created the chain of events that you experienced. That's my guess, based on your description of the fuse, that it was NOT a ground short. But I would still check out that wiring and aux fuse it. When you pick up the bike from the dealer, idle it in the parking lot until you complete at least 3-4 fan cycles. It would suck to have that happen on the way home again. Hope this helps, bro.

Damn, Bill, I wrote too fast last night. Must have been tired. With the small "cartridge" fuses popular in consumer electronic equipment, the fused element is located inside a sealed glass tube. You've seen them. If the current through the fuse *just* exceeds the limit, then you'll see a small break in the center of the element. If the load circuit has a massive short and grossly exceeds the fuse's ratings, then you'll see a shiny metallic "splat" on the inside. What this means, is that if I see a fuse open up with the "small" break, then I can safely assume that it was a transient current spike and will replace the fuse....maybe with a slo-blo fuse this time as long as it's not protecting sensitive electronics. But I forgot that we're dealing with those little colored automotive blade fuses. (duh) I don't think that they'll display the same symptoms when they SPLAT. But the same principle applies....the closer to the rating that the current exceeds it, then the smaller the break will be. Can you take a dig picture?

Bill- so the dealer just topped off the coolant and called it a fix? Could they reproduce your original problem of overheating? Carlos and Warchild both have valid points, some more pertinent than others to your situation. Here's what I would do: * if you haven't done so already, set up a switched fuse block...power the fuse block from a relay that gets its sense voltage from the main fuse block. * power the PIAA switch line from a ~5A fuse on this aux fuse block. Yes, this is way overkill vs. just powering it from a switched tap like you did....but Carlos is correct in that the fan wiring was at the hairy edge of capacity before you vamped some strands from the wire.... * look at replacing that fan wiring with something with a smaller wire gauge number (uh, fatter wire). You're not looking to save weight at this point, you're looking to correct the problem. Losing strands in the fan wire won't cause the fuse to blow; an additional voltage drop in series will actually LOWER the current supplied to the fan. Your number one problem is overheating, so let's focus on that first. * any chance you have a voltmeter on that bird? Be nice to know what your system voltage is when you crank in your accessories. I'm lucky enough to use a Garmin GPS III+ for this, built-in voltmeter. * I would concur that a fuse blowing has a lot more to do with possible wires melting to ground or being pinched to ground somewhere. I'd like to look at that fuse to see how violent the fuse went. It'll tell you a lot about what kind of load the fuse took before it committed suicide. If all else fails, I'm three hours south of you. Swing by and we'll find some answers.

If you want to save a couple of bucks, and get the "polished silver" look.... Remove your stock bar end weights, and mount it on a 2" piece of all-thread. Chuck this assembly into a drill press, and start sanding. Start with 100 grit wet (while it's spinning, dammit!) and work your way up to 800 grit wet. Now use some rubbing compound on a towel. By this point you should have a brilliant polished bar end. Spray it with some clearcoat so that it doesn't tarnish. done.

California Sport Touring, $17.55. Direct order site: http://www.casporttouring.com/store/mercha...tegory_Code=NEP This vendor is a good guy (Kim Leong), is/was a night shift policeman who is running this storefront during the day. Owns a couple of Honda bikes, is doing well. In general, I haven't seen his prices beat as he builds his customer base.

Followed Carlos' instructions and the NEP lock works better than any vista cruise lock I've installed on previous bikes. The NEP looks like a flimsy piece of shit, but pretty is as pretty does, Forrest Gump.

check this thread out: http://www.cbr1100xx.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=347 near the bottom of the thread there is a discussion on the exact part numbers, and where to order them from.

Couldn't agree more. Recently rode an FJR1300, and just about locked up the rear brake with very little pressure. Front brake was OK. Every Honda that I've been on has a "dead" rear brake, requiring a decent amount of pressure to get it to do something, and a LOT of pressure to get it to lock. You might think this was done on purpose.... But my front binders are great on the XX. It stops RIGHT NOW without drama. If I was a StarBoyz wannabe or did track days I'd probably feel differently. But these are the best brakes I've used, in my limited experience.

Halfway through the VFR Bar mod. Instructions posted at the top of this thread were spot-on. I've raised the bars on the tubes to give as much "lift" as possible; I had to fine-tune the clutch side to prevent the clutch handle from hitting the left mirror at full right lock. No similar problems with the brake handle, just a little nervous about the taut brake line. Probably will replace with +1" line over the offseason. Bar end weights were a bitch to remove; all that WD-40 that I had stocked up waiting to use on my chain solved that. I was able to salvage the old clips just fine. Tonight I attach the Dual-Star grip heaters, and new Pro-Grips. Black and Yellow, of course, in honor of our fallen bud. This has been mentioned before, but the "lift" and "back" isn't what I thought it would be. Doesn't really appear to be all that different from just raising the stock clips on the fork tubes. Then again, we're talking inch increments here.

Overheatin' Gents: Years ago I had an Isuzu Trooper that randomly overheated. (It turned out to be a leak in the head gasket) I spent a lot of time troubleshooting that problem, changing thermostats, etc. If you're totally fucking stumped, here's what I would try: * Can you find someone to test your coolant? If there are any gasket leaks, any shop can find this by checking the coolant to see if there are any traces of combustion byproducts (hydrocarbons) in the coolant. * You need to verify that your water pump is doing its job. When I did this with the Trooper, I disconnected the upper radiator hose from the radiator, and routed that loose end to a 5 gallon bucket. I opened up the radiator cap and laid a trickling garden hose in there. Start engine and let it warm up. When the thermostat opens, it'll start by burping coolant out at first, then will turn into a steady flow. Keep the garden hose flowing to match the level of coolant pumped out of the block. You should get a steady flow of water OUT of the block, past the thermostat, and it should be fairly warm but not boiling......you don't have a closed system. If everything checks out, I would examine the 5 gallon "waste" bucket for any residue or foreign matter, indicating that a seal or gasket has let loose. ***disclaimer: I have done this on a Trooper, not a Bird....but I don't see why it couldn't work as well. Also, flush that tap water out of there as soon as possible after the "pump" test. These two checks should tell you whether or not the basic cooling system is working. Hope this helps.

I would run it after the 600 mile change. Synthetic oil by itself isn't any more "slippery" than dyno oil, preventing the rings from seating....the only reason that I would wait until after 600 miles is purely for economic reasons, since it costs more than dino oils.

I just got my VFR bars from Ron Ayers. That, and DualStar grip heaters. Looking forward to doing this mod.

This is pretty normal practice, your situation is different due to your polished rims. I don't see why they can't use clip-on weights. They probably don't stock them due to most folks not caring. Now if you took them to a HARDLEY dealership, no problem!

dude.....did you push your pistons back into the caliper after you removed the old pads? You should *not* be able to insert new brake pads without doing so.

http://www.superblackbird.com/aux_mod.cfm only one I've seen, but there are others.

Alpha- Thanks for the advice. Please keep in mind that my riding style is WAY tame compared to yours, and will likely remain so after all of the carnage that I've read about this week. I have not done the shim mod. I find the XX to be much easier handling than any of the previous touring pigs that I've ridden. If you could only do the front...or the rear....suspension upgrade, which would you do? Or is this an "all or nothing" upgrade? thanks.....

I'm trying to come up to speed on this topic and could use some advice. Given: the stock suspension on the XX pretty much sucks, and is causing my "hobby-horse" ride. So The Solution Is: replace the rear shock, and have new Racetech mods fitted up front. So my Questions are: 1) Which should I do first? Rear shock or Front Fork upgrade? 2) Rear shock looks to be ~$800 for an Ohlins. Rear shock using the "Carlos CBR900" method would probably be about $250 when all is said and done. Would a reworked/resprung 900 shock offer the same "ride" as the Ohlins? Thanks fo' yo' hep.

Robert- I'm no PC genius, but a couple of thoughts come to mind: * First, never change two things at once on your bike at the same time, unless it's unavoidable. You create dilemmas exactly like this....is it the plugs, or the PC? Change one thing at a time, get a feeling for the baseline, see if anything has changed, and then move to your next operation. Be disciplined. * Second....now this is just my experience and years speaking, but I rarely see plugs *cause* a problem.....they do, however, show symptoms of problems. An example is that a rich-running cylinder will have a sooty plug. So I don't think it's your plugs. I put a set of ST1100 plugs in my bird this winter, as I had no replacements on hand....and the bird ran exactly the same. So I feel that your issue is your map. Hope this helps.