Darth Bling

I don't know, it would be close. Must helmets nowadays come with a free helmet bag. That's really all you'd neet to protect your helmet while it's in the saddlebag. If you buy that new shark helmet, it will probably come with a free bag.

What?! :fing02: Stock is 17T on a 5th gen, not 16T. You've got down 2 on the front.

My bike is dead stable at 130+ mph with saddlebags and a top-box, not that I've ever gone that fast before. :lurk: The bag liners are a removeable bag you can use to quickly load and unload your saddlebags. They're actually very handy to have. I use mine all the time when I'm packing for a weekend trip. Here are what they look like:

Yes, get rid of that tire. It definitely looks like the cords inside the tire are broken.

90° valve stems work just fine, if you get the correct ones. Here's what veefer800cancuuk uses: http://www.motowheels.com/italian/myProduc...;categoryID=405 And, here's a link to Oyama's thread about 90° valve stems: http://www.vfrdiscussion.com/forum/index.p...st&p=474019

You gain about one to two MPG with a larger front sprocket. With stock gearing, the 6th gen will do about 70 mph at 5000 rpms (your speedometer reads about 7% high). With the +1 front sprocket change, you'll be turning 4700 rpms at 70 mph.

It all depends on your right wrist. For example, I've gotten 9000 miles out of a pair of Diablo Stradas, but Baileyrock only got 2500 miles or so out of a set. If your easy on the throttle, don't accelerate hard, and never go more than 5 over the speed limit when slabbing down the highway, then yes it's quite reasonable. You three best bets for tire life are probably going to be the Metzler Z6, Diablo Strada, and the Pilot Road 2. They are offer good traction, but they should last 8k miles or more if you're easy on the throttle and don't slab down the highway at high rates of speed. Personally, I'd take the Stradas over the Z6s (I've ran both and I like the Stradas better). I've heard bad things about the original Pilot Roads. They do last a while, but they apparently have poor feedback and lack decent grip. The new Pilot Roads 2 are supposed to be pretty awesome though. I've heard good things about them. I've just purchased a set of Pilot Roads 2, so I'm going to see how many miles I can put on these things. I'm expected at least 9000, maybe even 10,000 miles out of them.

Have you looked in the owner's manual? I'm pretty sure it's in there. :blink:

Ha ha ha. I was just over at Tim's place this evening visiting and I made some off hand comment that he should machine the clamps out of magnesium.

Put the short ones up front and the long ones in back. :fing02: Longer velocity stacks help with higher rpms, shorter velocity stacks help with lower rpms. That's why Yamaha has that variable velocity stock system on the R1 that makes the stacks taller at higher rpms. On your VFR, it's probably won't make enough of the difference if you mix the stacks up.

to all the Forcefield posts. I have the TPro Forcefield back protector as well and I highly recommended it. Super comfy and seems to breath well enough on hot days. I also wear the TPro RaceLite Chest Protector too. :biggrin:

Obligatory....

So wiring wise - was it a snip it and reverse it job? MD No. All Jes did was replace the radiator fan with one from the VTR. The wiring stays the same.

He's going to end up with my boot in his door. :goofy: Of course, that's right after I make him crap his pants with my super loud air horns. :biggrin: On a serious note: I personally don't think lane positioning would of helped here. Either the cager is paying attention and will see you, or the cager isn't paying attention and is going to cut you off. Giving that they missed their turn and are in the wrong lane leads me to believe that they’re not paying attention and will cut you off anyways. Our duty as motorcyclists is to anticipate this stupid behaviour. Sure, we can minimize the risk we take with better gear, better visibility, better lane positioning, but ultimately somebody somewhere is going to not see us. We need to be as attentive as possible and look for these idiots and avoid them. It's best to pretend that we're invisible and that everybody else is out trying to kill us. JM2¢.

Yup, 33 dB are the quiestest you can find. And, the dB scale is logarithmic, so 33 dB NRR earplugs will actually blocks twice as much sound energy as 30 dB NRR earplugs. I've got some custom molded earplugs and they are comfy. I think they're rated 30 dB. I had some disposable 33 dB NRR plugs and they were so quiet. But, he's on the beach. His head should bounce nicely on the soft sand.... :goofy:

Member JoeW on the forum can get you Honda parts. His prices are just as good as Service Honda's... FWIW

That wouldn't work. If you flip the fan over, the blades are still at the same angle and will continue to push air into the engine compartment. All you would accomplish is making the fan less efficient, which may actually be a good thing especially at low speeds... :rolleyes:

Excellent post Jes. I'm going to have to have to perform this swap myself. :fing02: I've found that the VFR's cooling system works very well when you're stopped. But, if you're riding around between 10-20 mph, the radiator fan loses all of its efficiency since it has to push against the wind. But, once you get up to highway speeds, the wind easily overpowers the fan and the bike cools down. When I was in Billings, MT last summer, I was putting around town at about 15 mph. It was about 95°F out and I was currently running water with waterwetter (good stuff!). Well, my bike overheated, bad. I was seeing temperatures over 250°F and my VFR was puking radiator fluid everywhere. When I got on the interstate to head back to my hotel room, the temperature of the bike was hovering around 238°F as I was running an easy 85 mph. I refilled the bike later than night after it cooled down and i had lost 1/2 of my radiator fluid. There were a bunch of Goldwings there too and their bike's have the same stupid radiator setup that the VFR has too, and they were all having overheating problems just like me. Stupid Honda....

I'm pretty sure the 18T sprocket won't fit. I've currently got a 17T Honda OEM sprocket on upfront and it's a very tight fit. There's not much room left for any more teeth in there. The 17T sprocket is actually kind of nice. It almost corrects the error in your speedometer (you only read 1 mph high now). Acceleration and power aren't a problem. I have no problem reaching 120 mph at all (had to test it out just once with the new front sprocket), but after that it seems to top out a bit so you do seem to lose some top-end. This is okay since with the stock sprocket up front, the bike flattens out around 125-130 or so. (Sure it'll hit 145 stock, but it takes a while to get there once you hit 125). Fuel mileage wise, I think I may have picked up a MPG or two, I'm not really sure yet. I still need to put some more miles on to really tell if my actually fuel consumption is better or not. I have reasons to believe that it may have gotten better under normal loads, but under heavier loads (riding into the wind or zipping down the highway at 75 mph) it may be worse. :unsure: Again, more testing and miles required. Around town riding seems to be much nicer now with the larger sprocket. The sprocket has seems to smooth out power delivery and you can really feel the V4 torque pull you around now. As far as power wheelies are concern, I know they're possible with the 17T front sprocket if you have hard saddlebags and a top-box on the bike. All in all, I really like the change and I'll probably keep it. I really love how the speedo is right on now. The odometer of course is now reading 5.8% lower than it should.... ... you know, that's interesting. There were a few gas stops there where I figured that I had lost a MPG or two when I was out riding. But, if I correct for the odometer error now, I actually picked up milegae. Cool! I'm glad I just figured that out. Yup, I'm definitely going to keep this set up now. :biggrin:

Or, find a CBR1100xx owner and swap handlebars. Those Blackbird guys love our stock VFR handlebars since they act as helibars for them.

Sounds like the Garman Zumo 500 would fit the bill nicely. It's has bluetooth and plays MP3s. https://buy.garmin.com/shop/shop.do?pID=8583

It is very easy to see through, I do not know if I would want to do a long highway ride but for around town it is fun and when you hear the kids yell "It's Spiderman Mom" then I know why I did it. But yes more for show. Do you have red leathers too? Need to see pictures! :fing02: You're bike reminds me of the Melandri Spiderman-themed MotoGP bike:

Depends on if you have a US or Canadian/Euro bike...I think the Canadian and Euro's had silver from '03 onwards, the '02's were definitely black. USA and Canada didn't get silver wheels until 2004 (red only, asphalt still had black wheels). All USA/Canada bikes from 2005 to 2008 have silver wheels (except the 2007 anniversity model). In Europe, all VFRs from 2004 to 2008 have silver wheels. Also, the 2001 VFR in Europe had silver wheels too.

While most of the seams are on the outside, the seams on the finger tips are on the inside on the Icons. I just checked my Merc gloves (I've got two sets of them) and mine are that way. But with that said, I don't find the seams to be bothersome at all.