wordsmith

Same here: I actually made up a little 'tool' from an ice-cream stick, as wide as the channel and with sandpaper-smoothed ends, and ran this with decent pressure at an angle along the tape after using the hair-dryer (in place of a heat-gun, which I don't have). Seems secure - time will tell.

Put me within reach of just a few square inches of scrap carbon-look vinyl sheet and I go berserk! Small note-books and other such things around the house have succumbed to my passion for carbon-ing any thing that doesn't move. When my doggie sees me roaming around with carbon in hand and a gleam in my eye he hides, thinking he'll be next! Stuck some onto the tiny rear hugger - all but invisible when re-installed onto the bike, but I know it's there! I'll go much faster now...

No need to apologise for being north of the equator - somebody has to be (and I was for 29 years)! E Bay Motorcycle parts and accessories - kbh_autoparts. Very quick delivery of about a week, nice product, inexpensive.

They would need to be 'wide, comfortable, and secure' at a likely cost to me of at least AUD$200 incl shipping and the necessary mounts! Thanks anyway - but I'm out of the foot-peg buying race for now!

I have been losing sleep over this problem of yours, betoney! Looking at my little screen, I wonder if you could cut a 1/4" wide slot (actually two) running fore-and-aft, say about 2" long, or even drill a reasonable-size hole, immediately over the little directional arrows on the indicator signals, to let you see them.

Pic please, nh.

ACHTUNG!!! Sitting in my garage and idly looking the the bike while planning the day's activities, I noticed that the left-hand side pillion foot-peg looked a bit 'wonky'. I touched it - and it fell off!!!☹️ The peg, ball-bearing and indent plate and spring, were all there, but the clevis pin was not - obviously it had fallen off during a recent ride. Happily, I never carry a pillion - but it brought to mind my concern about using circlips (actually e-clips) rather than split-pins when securing new rider foot-pegs a couple of weeks ago (this Thread covers it). It could have been oh so dangerous! I've ordered a new clevis pin + split-pin to be put on at the upcoming 1000km service, at a piratical cost of cost of $15.47, but I'm mighty glad I spotted it when I did. I immediately walked round the bike checking the other foot-pegs, all secured with split-pins through the clevis - all seem secure!

Just ordered the new clutch cable assembly to be fitted at the bike's first 1000km service in a week or two's time - cost is AUD $37.96. Better safe than sorry!

Good - but how much???

Thanks, tktplz and 2linby. One lives and learns on this most excellent forum! I've had window-tint put onto all the cars we've bought over the past twenty or so years - and indeed on some windows in our new house when it was built - but never having watched the procedure didn't realise it was the old 'soapy-water' trick! The OXFORD tape+ applicator kit seems to be available here only in orange - no good! So the decals approach is what I'll take, and they are on-way from Scotland. I look forward to using the soapy-water method!

Today I finally got around to fitting my small top-box onto the rear rack. I need to mount it there as if it's on the pillion seat, despite it having a very low profile, I cannot easily swing my leg over it when mounting and demounting - getting old and stiff! The top-box is an el cheapo at about AUD$40 IIRC, but still very useful: it's one of those PELICAN knock-offs, and came with the pick-and-pluck foam inserts, which are useful if one is carrying fragile stuff such as camera gear. Good chunky cam-style catches work well. The hinged lid-to-body join has a good tongue-and-groove interface and I can vouch that it is better than just shower-proof. This TREKA brand box has been on a number of earlier bikes (and needs a good clean!) and it holds my two-piece wet-weather suit, plus some other small bits and pieces. It has been on - among other bikes - a BMW GS, where it's sort-of rugged industrial style suited that bike, but it doesn't look out-of-place on the Tracer, IMHO. Internal size is 33cm x 23cm x 8cm including the lid (13" x 9" x 4"): capacity is about 6L.

Here's the E Bay link to these decals. The vendor has all known motorcycle brands covered, and for us - 'Tracer' - and I think I saw 'Tracer GT' there on an earlier search. I'm going, as shown above, with plain an' simple 'Yamaha'. It also occurs to me that these decals, being somewhat curved, would go very nicely on a helmet! There are many different colours including a couple of metallics. The kit comprises eight (8) decals, meaning two each side of each wheel - plenty! 8 x YAMAHA wheel rim decals - Choice of colour - yzf R6 R1 R125 MT09 MT10 MT07. If this link doesn't work, try rosko07.

The vendor has replied - see below - this is very helpful and I'll certainly use this technique when applying his decals. Yes, it is possible to use a little soapy water when applying the decals to move them around and into position. However it is very important to be very patient using this application technique. You have to ensure that you do not remove the application tape before the soapy application solution has fully dried and the decals are fully cured. This can take up to 24 hours to be sure. I hope this helps? And thank you for your order. If you have any problems or queries, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best regards, Ross.

If you think about it, this approach seems very counter-intuitive - soapy water + adhesive = But I've heard of this technique before... How long did it take for the adhesive to fully cure, betoney? I've e-mailed the vendor (in Scotland) of the decals I've just ordered asking him if his material is suited to this approach - I hope he says yes, for I'd like to get a better 'fit' and look than hitherto!! Cheers...

I'm not at all sure of my ability to put the tapes on 'free-hand', and I certainly don't want to buy the Oxford kit to find that their 'red' = pink or orange or whatever! The tape I've just put on is certainly close enough, but the Bagster seat that is on its way has red stitching, so I don't really want to introduce too many shades of red onto the bike! So I've decided to go another route and get some of the gold-coloured (to complement the front fork) wheel rim decals (as opposed to tape) - see pic below of the installation on an earlier Tracer. But next time I'll put them on rather more carefully!

On an earlier matte grey Tracer I put in some metallic (chrome) gold tape, to match the front 24 carat fork. Looked great!

As many here have done, I added a pin-stripe of coloured tape along the shadow-line under the tank. Visually it breaks-up the rather dark area there, and also seems to elongate the bike, unifying the red-painted tank and rear panels. The colour-match isn’t exact, but the tape - and indeed the bike's paintwork - is much less orange in colour than the pic below suggests: I’m happy with the effect. A 9.8 metre roll of 6mm tape cost me $9.30 delivered, with heaps left over for other applications…

Went to a nearby accessories shop, and they have the Oxford kit but only orange tape. Checking to see if red is available. But I'm not sure I want to proceed - I'm by no means poor but I do like value-for-money, and $23 or thereabouts for a short roll of tape and the tiny applicator-tool the size of my thumb seems like a lot! But in the mail today is a roll of nice red 6mm tape to put into the horizontal shadow-line under the tank, as many here have done - I'll do this later as it's far too hot to work in the garage right now..

Yeah, I can see how this would happen. Time for a new bike maybe?? 😏

I'll let you know - but strangely enough someone made an identical comment when I posted my first report of this little device on my last Tracer, well over 12 months ago!

The turn signal indicators are indeed at the very top of the display, and they are not something you want to become invisible! Doing the post-fabrication tuning I had to fold the 'lip' of the hood down to allow me to see them readily, but I can now do so. That's one reason why I put in the extra task of making-up the cardboard dummy prototype. The width of the upper part of the hood - on my model the overhang is about 6cm wide - and your height (eye-level measurement in relation to the hood) will definitely affect visibility. I'm 5'9.5" on a warm day: what are you, betoney?

I'm gonna buy a kit today - will let you know what choice seems to be available. I don't know if I want reflective, but the red colour must be compatible with the bike's Lava Red paint job. No oranges or pinks here, thanks!

Making and installing an anti-glare display-screen hood I don’t know whether it’s just me, but I often get a really fierce distracting reflective glare from the display screen (aka multi-function meter unit) of my 2015 Tracer – often it completely obscures the information for some time, depending on the orientation of the sun. (Those currently shivering in the northern hemisphere may care to look up ‘sun’ on Google). On my last Tracer I tried some anti-glare film (small pieces of special coated plastic used on phone and computer screens and the like), but they didn’t work too well for me. So I then made and fitted a little anti-glare screen-hood, which wasn’t too pretty but it worked. I’ve since seen commercial devices aimed at the same problem, advertised on EBay. So for this new bike it seemed a good idea to make another anti-glare hood. After a few critical measurements were taken I cut the desired shape out of some stiff cardboard, held together with hot-melt glue, to use as a template and allow fine-tuning of the piece. The hood was cut out from 0.3mm mm aluminium plate with tin-snips and bent as needed in the vice (vise). It’s secured at the vertical sides of the display screen and along the top with strong double-sided 3M tape – when bending it I left a slight extra clearance to its internal width to allow for the thickness of the tape on both sides of the vertical arms. A narrow lip sloping down towards the rider from the top of the hood helps to keep the display in the shade much of the time, yet doesn’t obscure my sight of the display screen. Once the hood was bent-up I applied some left-over carbon-look PVC sheet to the outside surfaces, which looks the part and blends nicely with nearby faux carbon elements around the front of the bike and the headlights. I stuck this on first so that I could wrap it around the edges of the aluminium hood and give a neat finish. The final task was simply to put the double-sided tape along each vertical arm of the display screen and along its top, to secure the hood. Since it’s under no stresses or carrying any load this simple approach works well. As – indeed – does the entire little job! Tick off another farkle! Pix below show the make-up of the hood as it progressed. Should anyone want to follow this lead I can post dimensions etc. here - no need to re-invent the wheel! LATER EDIT: added the gold MT-09 sticker on top of the hood, just because I had it! LATER LATER EDIT: as requested by a cuppla folks I've added to the pix below some dimensions of my little device. I strongly suggest making up a cardboard template first to guide dimensions and modifications you may wish to make yourself. On my installation I made the lhs vertical 'leg' a bit shorter than the rhs one so as to give easier access for gloved fingers to the reset press-button there on the display screen. Not to scale: dimensions are in cm.

Thank you very much, bugie - this sounds like the answer to a maiden's prayer! I can buy this kit locally for $22.95, might even be enough tape to put a stripe along the bodywork in the shadow-line under the tank! Bit worried about wasting alcohol in this way, though!

Cunning!