I haven’t been keeping track, but I’m pretty sure today was the fifth morning this week that I had to broom snow off the the truck. Still, it’s April and there’s no way this can keep up much longer. Summer will come! To stay busy while waiting for better weather I’ve decided to work on the Suzuki to get it ready for the 2009 touring season.
The Suzuki V-Strom is one seriously top heavy machine. It seems that just about everyone ends up dropping the bike eventually, so to prepare for that day I’m installing crash bars which should protect the bike’s fairings from scratches and cracks if I end up dropping it at a gas station or in my garage. The crash bars should give the bike a more rugged and customised look too. If I want, the bars will also provide a nice place to install forward-mounted highway pegs so I can stretch out on the long rides.
So, to the installation. Here’s the bike in my garage before the crash bar installation.
The large, bulbous, blue plastic piece at the front of the bike with the words V-Strom on it is the fairing, and that’s what I’m trying to protect with the crash bars. If the bike were to fall on its side, or worse, slide on its side, the bodywork would be ruined. We’re going to fix that little problem!
It’s a good time to mention that every mechanical project follows two rules that you cannot avoid and you might as well emotionally prepare for before working on a machine. They are:
1. You will hit a point in the project where you’re completely stuck and you will seriously wonder if you will ever finish the thing.
2. Despite careful preparation, you will install something too early and realize that you have to back up and rip the thing apart again.
I like to gather all the tools I might need for a project before starting. It’s nice to have everything within reach and to have the right tools for the job. In the past I’ve always used hand tools to work on motorcycles but I’ve acquired a new weapon. It’s a Dewalt 18 volt impact driver that I acquired from my work at eReplacementParts.com. It should be able to handle every bolt and screw involved in the project. This could end up being the first time I don’t have to turn a screwdriver by hand! Behold the weapon in its first deployment:
And this is the impact driver with its supporting group of drivers, sockets, and wrenches:
Since it’s still freezing in the garage today I have one last tool that is completely indespensible for this project. It’s my trusty heat dish:
With everything assembled it’s time to start the actual project itself. The crash bars are Italian made Givi bars that I purchased online from Twisted Throttle here. Givi products are top notch (and demand top dollar) but I insist on that brand for my Suzuki accessories. Despite their upsides, one downside to Givi is their directions, which are primarily in Italian and are cryptic at best. The direction sheet basically amounts to a bad black and white photo of the installed product with a couple of arrows on it. This is real do-it-yourself stuff here. The other downside is this cocoon-like monstrosity here:
Maybe it’s better for shipping from Europe to have all the parts shrink wrapped in very thick plastic but it’s a real pain to open. That knife sticking out of the plastic is my KA-BAR and it’s the best way I’ve discovered to unwrap these things. You just start hacking away and eventually you’re left with this:
That’s two crash bars and a hardware pack. And the knife.
Okay, this is all looking pretty straightforward. In order to install the bars I have to take off the bike’s seat and remove a couple of minor plastic housing covers. The stripped bike looks like this:
Those yellow arrows I added are the bolts that the crash bar will be mounted on. All you have to do is remove the bolts, stick the crashbar onto those holes, and put longer bolts in the same places. That’s it!
I installed the proper hex wrench insert into my Dewalt impact driver and proceeded to “remove” the bolts. Except that instead of the bolts coming out nicely, the impact driver gave a few of tat-tat-tat impacts and the first bolt did not budge at all. I figured that maybe that one bolt was a little tenacious so I tried it on another bolt. Same thing. No movement. At first I figured that the impact driver just needed to stop being wussy so I gave a bolt a good tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat. Nothing. Fine. TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT. Still nothing. Clearly we were dealing with some very tight bolts. Actually, they were TREMENDOUSLY tight bolts.
I ditched the impact driver and picked up a hand drive hex wrench. I twisted hard on that bolt, causing the wrench to bend in a very unnerving way, and still nothing. After a minute of this I was getting a lovely bruise in my palm from pushing on the wrench and I put on work gloves to try to help. No change. Then I decided to forget my hands and push on the wrench with my foot by basically standing on the end of it. Here’s a video:
At this stage I reached the first rule of mechanical work that I discussed earlier. I was totally stuck and I had no idea how I could loosen thole bolts. The project was in serious jeopardy. Oh yeah, and I had to loosen four of them. The solution had to not only work but be repeatable. I sat on the concrete floor thinking and stewing for a while until my eyes fell on something in the garage. One of the previous tenants had left some weightlifting equipment in the garage, and there I saw very lovely and long steel bar. I could slide the bar over the end of the hex wrench and turn the wrench using the long bar as a lever arm. There was no way the bolts could fight that kind of leverage! Here’s a video of the weightlifting bar in action on the bolt:
It worked beautifully. With the bar on the hex wrench I had plenty of power to turn those bolts. After breaking the first bolt loose and finding that the bolt was still very tight I knew then what I was up against: Loctite. When I finally removed the first bolt it was Loctite sure enough, gobs of it, slathered all over the entire threaded section of the bolt. These bolts secure the engine, with all its vibration, to the motorcycle frame so it makes sense that Suzuki would be extra careful and use Loctite. I don’t have any Loctite at my house but you can be sure I’ll buy some and apply it to those bolts before heading out on a long ride.
From here things were smooth. The impact driver, back in service after being temporarily taken off the job, drove each new bolt home with a reassuring ratcheting. Once I had installed the crash bars on both sides of the motorcycle and the end was in sight, the second rule of machine work came into play. Without realizing it, I had installed the bars without the vital connector between them here:
Sure enough, I had no choice but to uninstall half the project, slide the tiny little connector between the bars, and reinstall. Silly error. But once that final correction was made the installation was perfect, both in quality and in appearance. Here’s a photo of the bike with the crash bar successfully installed:
All things considered, today was a great motorcycle day. The only thing that could have made it better was actually riding the motorcycle. April is here and truly warm weather is only just a couple weeks away. I’ll be riding soon!