Bonneville America Forums Forums Technical Forums Performance Mods Finally getting to my 'winter' mods

With the GA '08 rally descending upon us rapidly I figured I'd better start on the maintenance/mods I've been planning for a while now. Hopefully I'll get them completed by May. Otherwise, I'll just have to take the 675 up to Dahlonega.

Here's my laundry list of things to do:
-rear brake pads
-new rear tire
-rear brake lights in the signal flashers (like Chy's)
-Big Bore
-Barnett clutch
-mount hard bags (like snekeptp's)
-get new tank and bags painted
-put Pingel in new tank
-clean everything I can

Here's a pic of day 1, I think I made a pretty good start.


Here's where I'm putting parts as I take them off.



Here's what 17000 miles will do to a Metzler. My new one will be the third rear tire I've put on this bike (34500 total so far) and you better believe it'll be another Metzler.


I hope I'll finish by May. I'm such a slowpoke when it comes to getting stuff done on my bike and I still need to get some more tools. Anyone wanna lend me the clutch tools if you have them?

Greg, what color is your 675? Oh, never mind I'll find out in May.

Yellow, of course. Triumph has decided to discontinue this color (as usual). I think it's because yellow is so fast that no one really gets a good chance to see the bike

I was comfortable in my thoughts concerning yutes and tire abuse. You have given me pause to consider. The yutes have nothing on you!

I guess you might as well change it while you are working on the bike, but that tire is still good for at least another 3 or 4 miles...

You were actually riding with that tire in that condition.?!

Ya gotta death wish?

It looks worse than it is. Granted, when you see tire cord that is a BAD thing but when I got home and started looking at it the black spot in the middle is where it hasn't reached the cord yet. Not sure how it wore off the sides first (tire pressure maybe). The worst part about this is that I first started noticing it when I was at Peaks of Otter on the BRP on my way home last October. I still had around 300 miles to go before I got to my driveway so I kept going. I thought about riding out to my dealer to have them replace it (30 miles) but it'll probably be a lot safer to just put it in the back of my truck and take it out there.

that tire is scary. There's got to be a joke here about too much straight-line riding or something about how they've got thousands of miles of twisties left in them or a harley bash or something.

What kind of bags are you planning to mount?

That tire definitely saw a lot of highway miles and not enough twisties. Maybe I need to move upstate a little bit so I can be closer to the mountains.

The bags I got off of fleabay for a ridiculously low price. They're off of a Sprint or Trophy (around '00 to '03) for about $160. There is absolutely nothing wrong except that I have to get locks for them and figure out how I'm going to mount them. They've seen a little use but have never been down.

nice bags indeed.

And when you are all done it will look like this



or , if you are more traditional it may look like this.

I'm kind of shooting for the bottom one, minus the windshield and beach bars of course.

Not that the pumpkin wasn't cool or anything, I know there were lots of people that had to do a double take when that thing rolled on by.

I might be flushed for saying this, but I really don't like hardbags on a motorcycle. and not backrests or windscreens either.

each to his own I guess.

I agree about the windshields and backrests, the only reason I have a sissy bar on there is to mount my travel bag and sleeping bag. The hard bags are going to be larger capacity replacements for my saddlebags and travel bag. When I'm closer to home they'll stay at home but for long trips they will definitely come in handy.

Quote:

---

I was at Peaks of Otter on the BRP on my way home last October

---

300 miles on that tire? I take it you slowed down on your way to Fancy Gap and tried to keep from getting run over on I-77? Hum. Seems like I was cursed with a yute front tire on the BRP last Sept at Little Switzerland. Beware the BRP it will eat your tires. For Future Reference, the Honda stealership in Lynchburg VA has metzlers. We are familiar with VA 43 eh? Although we didn't actually ride into Bedford to get gas we got it about 6 miles North in Kelso Mill.

I'm not even going to use tires anymore...I'm just wrapping the rims with duct tape

OK, boneheaded move number 1: remember to insert backlash retaining bolts before you remove the cams. Even though I've read Pat's instructions a few times I think I need to read them a few times more before I do anything else.

I was kinda, sorta hoping the 675 was coming to Georgia this May.

No biggie. Re-tension them. I do hope that you had the camshafts in the proper orientation before you removed them though! Doing the bb it won't much matter as you'll have the timing marks to use.

When you figure out how to mount those hard bags, let me know. I kinda hate soft bags, but if I could find a quick release set of hard bags, I'd be all over that.

I'm going to try to mount them on some EZ brackets. I'll have to shave some of the back off of the bags to get them closer to the bike but I'm going to do some work similar to snekeptp's and seal it up real good.