My 5th Gen: Mods, Upgrades, Progress and Pictures.

Hi. I have the modding bug, and I figured I'd make one thread to post all of my pictures of mods and enhancements as I go. I'll have more photos later and some before/afters, but let's start with just the here and now.



Here she is a couple nights ago. The road kit I made and painted beginning of last month. I finished the accent lighting a couple weeks back, and did an HID bi-xenon kit yesterday which I'll show in later pictures. Soon I'll be wrapping the exhaust and adding rim tape to help hide the scratches in the paint. Eventually the cowl will be re-painted.

 

:thumbsup:
op2:

 

I've been thinking about lighting on mine as well.

Is that a first aid kit on the red bike???

 

It's a roadside emergency and tool kit, custom painted in red with the white cross. I wanted something super compact that I could secure to the saddle bag bracket when I wasn't using the hard bags (they're huge, and prevent lane sharing). It's got some first aid stuff, a special jumper cable that hooks into my battery lead, flares, high visibility vest, insurance papers, and some hand tools in it.

As for lighting, the kit I have on my bike is called ElectroPods. It's halfway decent, but super expensive for what you get, and kinda a pain to install (they come in pairs, and you'll need to splice multiple kits together.)

I would probably recommend the XK Glow kit I used on my last bike over it. I paid half as much for the same number of lights, a wireless remote module with different pulsing/flashing patterns, better mounting hardware, wiring harnesses to put them all together, and they were smaller and easier to mount and conceal, while being just as bright if not brighter. The one downside being that if you lose the remote, you need to replace both the remote and receiver unit to use them (I had to do this once.)

 

I thought something that increased brightness with RPM would be really cool. Kind of simulate the engine producing a glow. Probably in the 'too difficult' category, but neat.

Thanks for the information.

David

 

Should be doable with a magnetic sensor and an arduino board or something, pick up RPM off the stator... the wiring and programming is a little out of my league though.

 

As a member of the National Ski Patrol, I give the red cross saddlebags a huge thumbs up. Now, if I can only convince my patrol director to let me put snowmobile tracks on the back of an XR650 for our mountain patrol duty, then I can have an excuse to have one of those cool saddlebags.


But they look cool on the VFR also.

 

Great lights on that Harley too!

 

That was cold.

 

Just because some harleydood turned his engine sideways, I am hard to fool.

My next project is to install four of these Shimano bottle generators on my bike, Add about 40' of LED Christmas lights and really attract attention by having more shit strapped on a perfectly good motorcycle than the next guy.

 

Okay, so did some more work today, and took the opportunity to take some more pictures.

The old toggle switch the previous owner had instaleld for the heated hand grips (which I don't have anymore) had been repurposed to control the LEDs.
It burned out, in part because it wasn't properly weather-sealed, and in part because the previous owner had melted it a bit soldering wires directly to the terminals.


I replaced it with a double-sealed on-off switch. The 12v accessory socket pictured next to it was added for charging my phone/sena/camera as needed.


This tank bra is as old as the bike, but a little ArmorAll cleans it up amazingly well.


I can't recommend this RAM mount system enough, so I won't try. It holds my phone (which doubles as GPS) securely, and bolts on to the clutch fluid reservior bracket.


A low-light view of the front end LED illumination.


Bi-Xenon HIDs, with the integrated reflector. On this model, the reflector is passive, and the bulb is solenoid-activated. I preferred my old active reflector ones I had for the last bike, but these get the job done.


Side view with proper lighting shows off the red lattice of the painted radiator covers. That was a job and a half, but the results look great IMO.


For my next project, I'm thinking of mounting a red LIN3 flasher in this space here, and a TailBlazer brake light modulator to give me some extra eye-grabbing power when braking in traffic. This mod is still on the drawing board stage, but I'll certainly be doing something to that effect eventually.


Since people showed interest in it, here's the 'first aid kit.' It's a standard clear plastic first aid kit set I picked up from Target. I emptied it out, sanded it down, painted it with Sunrise Red Rustoleum, then stenciled the cross on to the cover with a paper stencil and white rustoleum, and added a coat of clear sealant to help preserve and protect the paint.
The straps holding it in place are just velcro straps looped around the H&B hard case mounting bracket in the most secure manner I could manage. It actually holds it extremely securely, and I've never had to re-secure it once I got the method down.
Inside the kit is the basic first-aid stuff, with some of the less useful and more bulky pieces replaced with stuff better suited to roadside aid: flares, jumpers, compression bandages, liquid skin, etc.