| Author | Message | ||
     Mikemax |
Did my first mod on my 12Ss yesterday. Stopped at Vallejo HD/Buell on my way to Roseville and Auburn as they are known as Buell recers/supporters around the Bay Area. Well they were certainly helpful and even the counter girl conversed about Buells but I saw no new ones and the parts section was about 3' X 4' on a wall above HD jackets. Buell is gonna die if even the better dealers stock almost zip. To get back on track, I picked up some traction grips (they didn't have any gels, or any others) and some bar end mirrors to address two of the biggest shortcomings on my bike fresh from the factory. Next stop, my uncle's in Sacramento, I decided to try the mirrors and realized that they came with rubber expansion mounting, guaranteed to shake in my opinion. As he has a machine shop, we made a pair of metal expansion mounts to go into the bars. Sweet... no shaking and these mirrors are raised slightly so I get an unobstructed view to the sides and behind from both mirrors now (I tried my friend's bike with the bicycle style highly used by Badwebbers and found that I'd either have to have x-ray vision to see through my wrist to the mirror or take my hand off the grip each time I wanted to look back). So I ride off to Auburn able to see behind me for the first time and suddenly realize that both the (stock) brake and clutch levers won't pull all the way because they hit the mirror mounts (regardless of the mod or not). And these were sold to me as part of the few parts stocked for Buells! (People on the S3 threads are complaining about Triumph parts but I can't say Buell is any better so far...) Any way, with my mod, I was able to slide them out about 1/2" and all is fine (see pics) so now I'm pretty happy with the first modification done to my Lightning. Next evolution will be a mount like I made with just a tapped hole so I can use any of the umpteen short stemmed HD mirrors I can get at any dealer because these lack any real style (see pics again). And maybe with a replaceable Delrin slider on the end to protect the mirrors and levers just in case.   |
