Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Yamaha XT350 update...

Here is my reliable steed, I was working on it today, doing a little repair work and making improvements along the way.
I lubed the chain, this is important on a bike that uses a 426 sized chain like the 350 does. It will stretch and ruin sprockets in a hurry if you abuse it and try to ride it like a sport bike. But it quite servicable if ridden with a moderate amount of sense.
I also hope I cured another issue today. Time will tell on it. The front brake would start dragging randomly and could cause an accident. So I took the caliper off a parts bike and changed it to try and get a handle on the situation.

 Next on the list I worked the pannier bags, I'm still not exactly happy with the lay of the bags om the little XT, but they're on there and should be functional.
They have enough room for a weeks travel if you decide to get out of the rat race of every day life.

After all thats what an Adventure Bike is all about, go see places that you normally couldn't and explore places that you would typically need a four wheel drive to get there if possible then, the bike can get down that game path you always wanted to follow if you have the gonads to go there.

Next on the todo list was work on the fairing, its nothing more than an Acerbis headlight shell that I cut the number plate off of and attached it to the stock headlight shell for the added wind deflection. It also serves as a shield for my GPS that is mounted behind it.

I simply mounted it with some metal screws through the plastic and it seems to work quite well for the purpose intended.
Here is my improvised GPS mount.
Its a ram cradle, attached to a piece of a bark buster, that is in turn attached simple U shaped bracket I fabbed up from some scrap I found in the shop.

A little about the GPS I use, its a Lowrance XOG, it is discontinued and you might find one someplace on closeout for around $100. It has the functionality of a handheld unit, as in trails, bread crumbs etc, with the added features of an Automotive routing GPS. It was considered a Crossover device, and such devices have since failed due to a lack of popularity. I guess you would say the soccer mom won out and the whole world only wants to be told where to go instead of learning to use a full featured device for all the wonders it can provide.

1 comment:

  1. Terry, Can you tell me what Acerbis headlight shell you used for your fairing?

    ReplyDelete