What did you do to your FJ-tracer-gt today?

[Trambo]

My $8 E-Bay pegs showed up today. I'll slip these on tomorrow & try 'em out.

[jimf]

Installed a Kaoko throttle lock, even though I have Yamaha heated grips.  I describe the installation here:
 
 
http://fj-09.org/post/39477
 
 

[wordsmith]

The second chapter of the [strong]Cree installation[/strong] took place, the mounting bracket having been fitted a day or so ago [em](see earlier post),[/em] that task taking much longer than it should have. I was running out of time and had to postpone a planned meet-up with fellow Forum member suncoaster: next time!
 
So onto the wiring. Normally when I look at wiring diagrams my knees turn to jelly and my brain to sawdust, and the wiring harness was, at first glance, a nightmare [em](see pic),[/em] but the on-line installation schematic and video on AdvTech’s website were a blessing.
 
They made it [em]just[/em] possible for this electronologically-illiterate biker to have the LEDs up and running once I’d figured it all out, but some written instructions would have been useful. Again, it took too long.
 
There was lot of excess wire, but I bought some simple-to-use crimp joiners, cut the two main lengths of harness in two, and joined up the wires to appropriate lengths. The slight excess remaining after the installation I taped up and placed into the front part of the plastic tray, under the seat. The relay was bolted into the tray side-wall too, a good place for it. All in all, the sparse under-seat space doesn’t seem to have been compromised too much [em](see pic).
[/em]
I didn’t intend to use the LED-illuminated switch that came with the kit, but then decided I would, just to ensure that everything worked, so a trial bracket was made and installed in the recess just in front of the tank [em](see pic).[/em] I’ll re-do a neater and better one soon. 
 
A tricky part of the proceedings was finding a route for the two main sets of cable from the rear relay to the front Crees, and for the wires to the switch, all out of harm’s way as far as hot engine components are concerned, but happily I didn’t have to remove body panels and found ways to wiggle the wires through, securing them with zip-ties where necessary.
 
So with everything wired-up, I murmured a quiet prayer or two, did a bit of a rain-dance, said [em]‘let there be lig[/em]ht’, turned on the ignition, and – [em]lo[/em] – there was light, in fact two impressive lights [em](see pic).[/em] And everything else still worked too – Skene rear LEDs, brake lights, the lot. Very pleasing as I have never tackled a job like this on a bike before, being somewhat scared of blowing things up.
 
I just might relocate the lights outboard a little more, and rather higher up with their brackets underneath for neatness, but that can wait for a rainy day.
 
All-up I spent AUD$163 on the entire kit – the AdvTech parts and the two Cree LEDs. A large part of the AdvTech purchase was made up of exorbitant postage charges, but what can one do?
 
Although AdvTech does sell a complete kit – LEDs (rather chunky-looking square 'flood-lights' according to their website, but no doubt very effective) + wiring harness + mounting ‘light-bar’ bracket – I chose to buy my LEDs on-line from a Korean source that I’d used before, at a cost of a mere $32 a pair.
 
Nicely-made and finished, their streamlined cylindrical style complements the bike quite well, I think, but it’s the added safety element that’s the main thing.
 
Only two more farkles remain outstanding, one being a pair of a mirror risers/ extenders that are now well overdue, having been ordered on April 1st, and the Bagster seat, eta late May.
Based on my experiences with AdvTech, and with the slight [em]caveat[/em] from my earlier post about the bracket being justa bit too close for comfort to the forward part of the adjacent fairing, I'd not hesitate to recommend AdvTech's products, backed-up by excellent on-line installation guides.
 
[em]Wordsmith (’39 model) - Brisbane, Queensland, Australia[/em][em]
[/em][em]http://i.imgur.com/nrwbKiu.jpg[/em][em]http://i.imgur.com/CnpMQ4L.jpg[/em][em]http://i.imgur.com/oHIinqQ.jpg[/em][em]http://i.imgur.com/H4I6vIxr.jpg[/em][em]
[/em]
 
 

[jimf]

The second chapter of the [strong]Cree installation[/strong] took place ... 
Nicely-made and finished, their streamlined cylindrical style complements the bike quite well, I think, but it’s the added safety element that’s the main thing.

 
I believe these are the same Cree LEDs that I'm using. I've been pretty pleased by them, even independent of the very low cost, but one thing to be aware of is that there have been failures where the mounting bracket attaches to the main light. It uses a tab/slot arrangement with a small bolt that holds it together and the manufacturing tolerances are pretty poor. One one of mine (but not the others) it wasn't possible to get a snug fit, which can lead to early fatigue failure.
 
I believe if you look around on this site you'll find photos of a case where the junction failed, the metal of the slots tearing away. In that particular case the lights had been mounted on the fork lowers, ie they were unsuspended and subject to some pretty heavy shocks as a result. I'm sure that had a lot to do with the premature failure, and the way you and I mounted them would be far less stressful, but the poor tolerances didn't give me the warm fuzzies.
 
To give me greater peace of mind I coated everything with a good dollop of epoxy before I bolted the two pieces together. That completely solved the poor fit and should add a bunch of structural strength. It seems like cheap insurance.
 
I've heard that the LEDs themselves have a high failure rate, although that seems luck-of-the-draw -- some people have them fail almost immediately, others have used them for a year or more without issue. I haven't done more than fair-weather commuting on mine, and they won't see their first tour for another couple of weeks, but so far so good. I bought two pair not realizing just how inexpensive they were, so I have spares. :-)
 
I was going for light in the corners, not conspicuity, and thusly aimed they work quite well. Certainly it's hard to complain about the bang for the buck, two pair plus brackets to mount them to the crash bars was about US$100 total.
 
Here's a link to my setup, which was mostly a clone of another I found here:
 
http://fj-09.org/post/26977
 
(Hmm. Moving to a new server appears to have busticated the photo links. I'll see if I can fix that.)

[Buggy Nate]

Another day, another package in the mail, another job.   The OE rider’s foot-pegs on the Tracer resemble a medieval weapon of war (or torture), being heavily and aggressively studded on the top surface. OK for those who feel a need to stand up on the pegs: I don’t, and as my left ankle is a bit ‘lazy’ that lhs peg does tend to catch a little on my boot when moving it around to change gear.
 
  
 
[em]Wordsmith (’39 model) – Brisbane, Queensland, Australia[/em]
http://i.imgur.com/DeTwkbU.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/LdahcSJ.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/T8OMtfJ.jpg

I bet it is the silly returns spring's hook catching your boot, mine was giving me the shits until i grabbed it and twisted it 180 so the hook pointed down instead of up. It was digging in to my soul and locking my foot to the peg..
Intereseting behavior for when you want to put your foot down at traffic lights!

[OutlanderBC]

Today I did this...
 
 

 
 
Cruise control installed, Took about 6 hours to get it all done and back together, took my time of course, only had one issue with the brown-wire-pin not being inserted all the way into the clear-controller-plug, but once that was fixed it was all quick and easy to finish up. Its all working perfectly and yes, "it is Awesome"
 
 

 
 
 
 
Also got my RAM mount installed behind the cluster.
 
 

[wordsmith]

The second chapter of the [strong]Cree installation[/strong] took place ... 
Nicely-made and finished, their streamlined cylindrical style complements the bike quite well, I think, but it’s the added safety element that’s the main thing.

I believe these are the same Cree LEDs that I'm using. I've been pretty pleased by them, even independent of the very low cost, but one thing to be aware of is that there have been failures where the mounting bracket attaches to the main light. It uses a tab/slot arrangement with a small bolt that holds it together and the manufacturing tolerances are pretty poor. One one of mine (but not the others) it wasn't possible to get a snug fit, which can lead to early fatigue failure. 

Thank for this caution, jimf.   I noticed that the fine gauge screw going into the body of the LED was not overly long, so like you I added a dash of epoxy - as indeed I had done earlier on my BMW, which used the identical lights without problems.   Those screws could/ should be a couple of mm longer. Added later. I recall that I also drilled out a little more depth under the head of the screw (in the 'tab' part), no more than about 5mm, to allow the tiny screw to bed further into its thread.   Done carefully, there's plenty of 'meat' there, and the metal is soft enough.  Then some Araldite on the screw threads. 
[em]W[/em]
 
 

[wordsmith]

Made up and installed a better, neater bracket holding the LED switch for my new Crees. Covered it with genuine imitation carbon (vinyl sheet), not that I want anybody to think it's real, just that I had some left over. I've covered everything suitable in the house with this [em]faux[/em] carbon sheet, including the dog!
[em]Wordsmith[/em]
[em]http://i.imgur.com/n63JTvn.jpg[/em][em]http://i.imgur.com/Q9eODHe.jpg[/em]

[jimf]

It uses a tab/slot arrangement with a small bolt that holds it together and the manufacturing tolerances are pretty poor ... which can lead to early fatigue failure. 

... like you I added a dash of epoxy - as indeed I had done earlier on my BMW, which used the identical lights without problems.   Those screws could/ should be a couple of mm longer. 
Added later. I recall that I also drilled out a little more depth under the head of the screw (in the 'tab' part), no more than about 5mm, to allow the tiny screw to bed further into its thread.   Done carefully, there's plenty of 'meat' there, and the metal is soft enough.  Then some Araldite on the screw threads. 

Huh, it never even occurred to me to drill it out more; that would likely have solved my snugness problem on the one unit.  I had been afraid of using much in the way of torque on that bolt just because the metal was so obviously soft/weak, they were obviously going to be easy to strip.  I may well do that if I have to swap in one of my backups at some point, so thanks for the tip. 
I'm glad to hear that you had already done the epoxy trick.  Great minds thinking alike and all that. :-)
 
I had never before heard of Araldite, I had to look that one up.  I use loctite as a matter of course on any bolt on the motorcycle, but in this case where I was epoxying the junction together anyway I just smothered the bolt in epoxy too.

[jimf]

The OE rider’s foot-pegs on the Tracer resemble a medieval weapon of war (or torture) .... 
I'm also not sure about the fact that the new hinge-pins are secured with a spring circlip each: I couldn't imagine a more lethal thing happening than a foot-peg dropping off at almost any velocity!   I'll keep a very close eye on these...
 
 

I don't find the FJ's pegs so much like torture instruments, but the original pegs are unbelievably slippery when wet. If the bike is fully loaded I use the peg to climb on, and in the rain that becomes absolutely impossible, I just slip off. (Ho boy did I look like a complete idiot in THAT parking lot.) 
My solution -- sitting in a bag of parts right now because I ran out of motorcycle wrenching time last weekend -- is going to be a set of Super Tenere pegs.  I really like their design, which has a steel bear-trap metal part with a rubber insert.  Stand up on them and your boots hit the bear-trap teeth for excellent traction, but rest your feet lightly and they float on the rubber bits.
 
I was actually looking for a pin plus circlip to use for this, as you used.  I wouldn't worry about the circlip, I've had at least one motorcycle whose pegs were held on that way (the Daytona, I think); it should be just fine.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to find the pins at my local hardware store (they had zillions of circlips but nothing to circlip them to, go figure) so I opted for clevis pins, which are secured with cotter pins.  They had lots of those.
 
As a backup, if I decide the cotter pins are too intrusive or rust too easily or look too ugly or whatever, I bought some bolts and nylock nuts.
 
The only problem with the Tenere pegs (besides that they're a bit expensive, $84 from BikeBandit for the pair with the rubber inserts IIRC) is that the peg is 24mm wide at the hinge point and the FJ's mounts are 21 or maybe 22mm, so I'll have to grind them down slightly.
 
It's all a small price to pay to never slip off the damn things again.

[wordsmith]

More often than not on a short day-ride I don’t need a large top-box, and even my 28L scooter-intended box looks a bit overwhelming at times, though it’s perfect for a weekend away when the hard panniers would be too much.
 
Looking for something much smaller, I found and quickly bought – for $10 – a small plastic tool box. I’ve discarded the interior upper tray, and secured the box to the bike’s rear rack (for the 28L top-box) where it fits perfectly between the upper parts of the pillion handles.
 
Installing was done by simply putting two short bolts (head down) upwards through the rack and securing them to it with a Nyloc nut each to stop them dropping off under vibration [em](been there, done that!)
[/em]
The bolts then pass through the bottom of the box and are each secured internally by two decent-sized wing/ butterfly nuts on a flat washer and a spring-washer. Hand-tight is tight enough to firmly hold the tool-box in place, but no tools are required to remove it quickly in under thirty seconds when I'll need to replace it with the larger top-box.
 
Capacity is (guesstimate) close to 4L. It comfortably carries all I need for a day’s outing – cell phone; camera (I dislike carrying these in my pockets in case of an 'off'); a small note book and pen; a pair of thin summer-weight gloves in the lid; and importantly a puncture-repair kit with several CO2 cylinders.   There’s no room under the seat for this, of course, and I like to carry it at all times even though I have Roadside Assist cover. In its small nylon case this repair kit takes up about 20% of the box leaving still plenty of room for the other items noted, and still abit to spare.
 
Not the prettiest piece of luggage, though it looks better and smaller in scale and in the flesh than in the pix at only 12" x 6" x 6" (30cm x 15cm x 15cm), but it will be very useful.
 
[em]Wordsmith (’39 model) – Brisbane, Queensland, Australia[/em] http://i.imgur.com/jSuYnFi.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Luybi8I.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/vdhsCeX.jpg 
 

[builderbob]

Installed my new Sargent seat!
 

 

[builderbob]

Installed my new Sargent seat!

Looks very nice and premium-like...and the comfort verdict is...?

Firmer than the Seat Concepts I had.  Haven't ridden on it yet.  I expect it will be as acceptable as other Sargent seats I've had.

[kiwicanuck]

Looks very nice and premium-like...and the comfort verdict is...?

Haven't ridden on it yet.  

WHAT....get out there now and clock up a long ride and report back. We are all waiting for verdict. (PS: wish it was on my bike, my finger is on the buy button) 

[wordsmith]

Fitted the just-arrived [strong]mirror risers/ extenders[/strong], which I had on my previous Tracer – and very useful indeed. Took exactly a month to arrive after the vendor notified me they had been shipped – I blame the postal services in Hong Kong (origin), Taiwan and Singapore (in transit), Australia. This is the longest I’ve ever waited for an international purchase to arrive.
 
They were packed in a small matchbox-sized acetate box with a piece of foam separating the two risers to stop them knocking against each other in transit – a nice touch.
 
Beautifully-finished in glossy black, with good large chunky bolts, and very easy installation once the trick of dealing with both left-hand and right-hand threads is mastered.
 
They are a bit different to the type that inserts an extension piece into the OE stems, as they each comprise a ‘foot’ that moves the stems both upwards and outwards. Whether better or not, I don’t know – but the lhs foot has to be angled forwards a little instead of aligning transversely across the bike, in order to clear the 'select' switch on top of the lhs switchgear. Not a problem on my previous Tracer, and still allows plenty of adjustment.
 
Now to join the refrain of [em]“I can see clearly now the road behind instead of my elbows/ shoulders/ etc”.
[/em]
From E Bay vendor M-Store Factory – AUD$32. [strong] Highly recommended.
[/strong]
I have yet to install a pair of adjustable-span/ extendable levers, and will get the dealer to do that at first service shortly, but that apart the only important outstanding enhancement now is probably – [em]no[/em] – [strong]definitely[/strong] the most important one, the new Bagster seat.   I ordered it from the Australian distributor three weeks ago with a lead-time of five to six weeks advised from France. Heard just yesterday that it has been shipped, and may be only seven to ten days from arrival in Oz, subject to Customs clearance, so fingers crossed it should be with me within the estimated time-frame.
 
[em]Wordsmith (’39 model) – Brisbane, Queensland, Australia[/em]
http://i.imgur.com/GftFCII.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/aTcwcMn.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/yPKYN66.jpg