Wings over Houston in Houston Texas
Oct 20, 2011 Photography, Transportation
This past weekend was the Wings over Houston air show in Houston Texas. Here are two of my favorite shots of the weekend. Will post a few more photos at a later date.
Red Bull helicopter doing flips
P-40K Warhawk
Tags: Air Show, Airplane, Houston, Photography, Texas, Wings over Houston
Alpinestars SMX Plus 2011 model review
Sep 11, 2011 Transportation
This year I added a pair of riding boots to my riding gear collection. I decided on getting the Alpinestars SMX Plus 2011 model and I picked them up from RidersDiscount.com. They are located in Holland Michigan so I was able to stop by their shop to pickup and try on the boots before buying. My first trip up I was caught in traffic and was 10 minutes late to picking up the boots. One of their programmers was still there and was able to let me try the boots on but they didn’t fit right. My normal shoe size was too big and I needed the next size smaller. I left the boots there and emailed back saying that I needed the smaller size. After having a family emergency I had to come back through Holland 3 days later so I was able to stop by during business hours and pick up the new size. They fit great and I was a happy camper. I will do business with them again in the future for sure.
The Alpinestars SMX Plus 2011 model boots are really nice. They are the first boot I have ever owned and I feel comfortable in them. I almost ride exclusively in these boots now as I have been riding with as much gear on as possible. I even wear them just for my 5 minute drive to work in the morning. Until recently I had no complaints or problems with the boots, they were rock solid. Just a few weeks ago I broke an eyelet on the inner boot system on the left foot. Below the first image is a eyelet that is not broken, the second image is of a broken eyelet even after repair. (Click for larger image)
I was really bummed, especially after spending so much money on the boots. I called Alpinestars up right away and told them what just happened and asked what they could do for me. They kindly sent me next day UPS shipping label and I sent the boot back. I finally got the boot back after about 2 weeks of being out for repair. Today was the first day that I wore the boot for a ride. I put the boot on and was trying not to pull hard on the laces at all and right away the eyelet breaks again. The same eyelet that was “repaired” was broken on the first lace up. Needless to say I am not to happy. Tomorrow when Alpinestars is open again I will be calling them and seeing what they can do for me. I expected so much more from them and they are failing to deliver so far. I am starting to question if I want to get new riding pants/jacket from them if this is the way their products last. Here are a few more pictures of the boots.
Update: (10-20-2011)
I have gotten my boots back a little while ago from their second trip to get repaired for the same problem. I am still taking it easy with the laces trying to make sure they do not break. I have been on several rides with them since they have come back and everything seems to be good so far. Unfortunately it has been rather cold and raining a lot here so not as much riding as I would like. Will update more if necessary.
Tags: Alpinestars, boots, broken, Motorcycle, review
New motorcycle gear
May 7, 2011 Transportation
It has been a while since I last posted anything here. I have been rather involved with playing Battlefield Bad Company 2 lately. Just before winter I picked up some new gear to work on the motorcycle. Since the local bike shop charges way to much to change tires on my motorcycle I decided that it seemed like something I could undertake myself. I purchased some Pit Bull stands, both rear swing arm stand (spooled) and the front triple tree stand with the matching peg for my bike. When I received them they were packed to withstand a almost any abuse during shipping.
I also picked up a Cycle Hill Tire Changer. It was also well packaged.
I did not want to mount this to the floor. Thankfully the previous owners of my home left some desk table top pieces of wood in the shed. Drilled a few holes through it and bolted it to the end of the board. Since that seemed like it would move way to much when trying to remove the tire from the rim I backed the front tire of my truck over the opposite end of the board. Rock solid and never moved when working with it. Best part was that I could move the tire changer anywhere I wanted since it is not permanent.
The tires that I changed to were the Michelin Power Road 2 for front and rear. After putting a few hundred miles on them since installing them I have been rather pleased. No issues with them.
The last piece of gear I picked up for the bike was a set of Tech Spec C3 tank grips. No more sliding forward due to no grip on the tank for me. I would get this again for future bikes. Easy to put on and can be removed with little effort. Best of all when I ordered the product it was not even released on their website yet. A few questions later on the phone with them I had their new product on it’s way to me with free shipping. Great company to work with.
The thing that I really like about all three of these items.They are ALL made in the USA.
Tags: Cycle Hill, Motorcycle, Pit-Bull, Stands, SV650, TechSpec
Auxillary power source on my SV650S
Oct 11, 2010 Transportation
With the temperatures starting to get colder here in Northern Indiana I decided that I wanted to get some heated hand grips for my SV650s. In order to run these in an appropriate way I wanted to have an auxiliary electronics setup so power would only be on when the key is turned on. An example of this in a car would be the power circuit that connects your car stereo as it only runs when the key is turned. Doing some research I found a website talking about Distribution Block / Power Relay setup. I don’t want to repeat all of the information posted there as they did a good job of creating diagrams and giving great detail of their setup. I decided to follow most of this guide except put my own twist to things. My shopping list is as follows:
- 12V 30A automotive relay
- In-line fuse with 15A fuse
- Quick connects to splice into the tail light line
- 18 gauge wire
- Female spade crimp on ends (I had a package of these around the house)
- Shrink tube
- Hopkins 48175 24 In 4-Flat Vehical and Trailer Connector Kit x2
- Industrial strength Velcro
- Twin cigarette lighter adapter connection
- Solder (I had this laying around the house)
- In-line fuse holder that holds the 8A fuse that was in the cigarette lighter adapter
My tools list:
- Allen wrenches to remove driver seat
- Soldering iron
- Wire cutters / strippers
- Phillips head screwdriver
- Craftsman multimeter
- Matches and a candle – I did not have a hair dryer or heat gun to shrink the heat shrink tubing. Be careful with this method as to not burn your shrink tube/wires.
In the Canyon Chasers article they used a Dual-Row barrier block with a jumper kit to make all of their connections to. I originally thought about doing this and bought the parts to do so but ended up returning them. When you look at these barrier blocks you will notice one thing. All of the exposed metal contacts of the screw heads. I did not want to risk any kind of metal piece making contact with all of these connections which is why I chose the trailer connector kit. This trailer connector kit provides two great features. The first is that the connections are protected and not going to make contact with anything in the bike. These connections can also withstand the outside elements as they are made for trailers and we all know people don’t just haul trailers on sunny days. The second feature I liked about these is the fact that if I wanted to change things up in the future I just had to unplug the connection. No tools necessary except for removing the seat. Only downside to these connections (which could be looked at as a plus) is that they are on the difficult side to disconnect the male and female sides. I won’t have to worry about things bouncing apart while riding but sure makes it a pain to switch out devices. Thankfully I won’t have to switch out electronics on the male end very often if ever after install.
When I started to install all of the parts I found under the seat a plastic “post” that I could easily Velcro the relay to so it would not be floating around inside the bike.
After a bit of cutting, stripping, soldering and heat shrinking I ended up with this “wiring harness”.
In hind sight I would have made one change to this setup. One of my cousins made a mention to me that I should have heat shrink tubed the wires coming from the trailer connector to where they are soldered to each of the black and red wires. This would have cleaned things up a bit to make things look a little better. However I am still pleased with how it turned out and it could have been worse. I will mention that I made the white and yellow connections the ground and the brown and green the hot wires. This was so that the one male pin on the female trailer connections would be exposed and not cause any problems if there was nothing plugged into these connections. All that is missing from this is the wire that connects to a power source that is only on when the key is turned on. In this case I chose the rear license plate light to tap into.
After a little bit of fiddling with the wires trying to get them the way I wanted everything was installed.
I pulled out my trusty Craftsman multimeter and checked to make sure my wiring was working the way it should.
I did not take any pictures of the wiring harness that I made that connects the cigarette lighters into the bike but there is one under both the rider and passengers seats. A picture of the placement of the rear adapter is shown below.
I did test this and plugged my cell phone to make sure that it would charge. I would like to make a mention to remember when removing the ends off of the cigarette lighter adapter that you remember/mark which is the center pin connection wires and which is the outside cylinder connection. Since this is DC current it is important to remember that.
Now in the future when my heated grips get here I can run the wires for that and solder them to the male ends of the trailer connectors and be plug and play. No need to modify the base relay setup. This is why it was a good idea to make as neat as possible this original wiring as you won’t have to hack apart the wiring to add/remove things. Just plug/unplug the items and you are good to go! Hope this helps somebody else decide to tackle a project like this. This whole project only took a few hours to complete.
Tags: DIY, Electrical, Motorcycle, SV650
Trip up the Blue Star Highway in Michigan
Jun 2, 2010 Photography, Transportation
Back on May 22 I took a nice trip up the Blue Star Highway in Michigan. The section I was riding was from Hagar Shore Rd (Exit 7 on US 31/196) north of Benton Harbor to Glenn Michigan. I just had to stop and take a few shots with the Canon 7D I was carrying in my backpack. As you can tell from the photos it was kind of foggy and it was a bit chilly but a great escape for a ride.
Tags: Canon 7D, Google Map, Michigan, Photography, Suzuki, SV650
Need to do this more often!
May 20, 2010 Transportation
How can you not enjoy this? Sunny, warm, beach, motorcycles and not a care in the world!
Interesting thing is that this is the same place I parked my truck and walked out a few years ago to take this shot 50 to 100 yards off shore in February:
My new ride – 07 Suzuki SV650s
Apr 18, 2010 Transportation
Last week I purchased my first motorcycle. I am rather excited to get out and start riding. It has been an interesting learning experience learning how to ride. I have never ridden a motorcycle before or driven anything with a manual transmission. After a short while of practicing in my yard in the soft grass I finally started to get the hang of it. I am glad that I started to learn how to ride in the grass as I have already dropped it doing 5-10mph in my yard. Nice thing about that was it did no damage to the bike. I have read that most people in the first 5 months of owning a motorcycle drop their bike at least once. Let’s just hope that my spill in the grass was my once. 
The bike is a 2007 Suzuki SV650s with 4,488 miles I bought used from a guy up in Holland Michigan off of Craigslist. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the new bike.
Here is the surprise I found while doing some work on the bike before I get plates on it.
Tags: Motorcycle, Suzuki, SV650
