Cherryriver

Maybe my only regret with my 5th is that when I got it, I replaced the tires with something other than my usual Michelin Road 5s: I gave the Pirelli Angel GT IIs a try since I liked how they fixed the slow, heavy steering of my ZRX1100. At 8000 miles, I'm not quite as enthused. They worked very well but now they are getting slightly hinky in the feel due to some mild cupping. I am sure that, based on prior experience, Michelins would not have done so. I voted with the wallet- when a 6th gen '03 came along, it immediately got the Road 5s. I would say the very slightly slower steering is a small price to pay for the much longer life and excellent rain performance. Not that the Angels were bad in that regard, but I feel the Road 5s are just a bit better in the wet. Along the same lines, my FJR1300 has Road 5 GTs, and honestly, there's no other tire for that bike. And my friend the local dealer service guy agrees, nothing else lasts as well. The ones on my bike are well past 10,000 miles and have life left. On that heavy, front-end-loaded tire-eater of a bike, that's really good. Now I see Michelin has the Road 6 going. The 5th gen VFR will see a set of those before summer is out.

My 5th has the Moto CNC bar adapters. For bars, I am a repeat user of the long-discontinued Heli Multi-Tour Sport handlebars, an adjustable pipe bar set that can drive one crazy trying to get everything perfectly symmetrical. Once you do, you can do any angle or location you want. Most people use ordinary 7/8" pipe bars with this Moto CNC adapters, and it's really easy. There are miles of extra wires for the handlebar switches under the instruments and the brake and clutch hoses were no problem to relocate, needed in my case as I raised the grip positions a good deal. This was the third time I use Moto CNC adapters (ZX-9R, 6th gen VFR) and couldn't be happier. In the photo, you can see that in my particular case, the wide horizontal Heli base bar necessitated adding 30mm risers to clear the fork adjusters. With ordinary pipe bars, that won't happen and is not defect in the adapters. It's a quirk of the Heli design.

A running gag in our household is that the Missus has a Sargent butt and I have a Corbin one. That's mostly true, too. I have had Corbins on many bikes, and almost all, not all, have been right for me. The one on my ZX1100E (GPZ) was good for lots of 600 mile days and went 830 once. Yes, there was a lot of fore-aft room and movement. Which I much preferred. In traffic, scoot up, on the road, scoot back. Then among the Corbins I got one for my FJR1300 and dang, that didn't work. Looked great, looked right, sat right when in the garage. Two hours on the road and nope, that wasn't it. Wound up with a Seat Concepts thing on that bike that's pretty good. And then again, my 5th gen VFR came with a very nice Sargent that does right nice by my lights. My only complaint would be, you guessed it, not enough fore-aft space to move around. I'm not big, 5-9, 215, and it's a little bit cramped for space overall. Yet, I like it quite a bit and before the winter closed in, I ran a 600 mile day on 1/3 Interstate, 2/3 two-laners and it did fine. It's a keeper. But I can't forget how the Sargents the wife had on her Ninja 650 and NC700X practically kept me off those bikes. So there. I hope that's clear enough and helps.

While not directly to the issue in the original post, I would like to comment with an alert on the return valve problem mentioned above. A couple of summers ago we found a crashed Ducati ST2 at a low price in the town north of ours. We grabbed our trailer and headed over to take a look. The left side bodywork was trashed. The lady doing the selling was the wife of the owner. Brembo master cylinders apparently commonly have this return valve problem. So, when the brake is applied, pressure in the system increases but can't decrease and release the pistons. The owner had put the battery back in the bike after a winter rest and gone for a test ride down the residential street. No gear. In two and a half blocks later, the front brakes unexpectedly locked up solid and threw the owner onto his head. Months in the hospital and more months in rehab, he survived, barely. I bought the bike, test-rode it with a trace of disbelief, and sure enough, locko-the-brakeo, and down it went. I was okay apart from wounded pride and a bump on the knee, but I had to walk back home to get a wrench to open the bleed valve to release the brake enough to roll the bike. I considered rebuilding the master, but a new one seemed much safer, and that was what was done. As for the whole bike, I miraculously found a body set on Ebay with opposite-side damage for only $450 shipped- from Italy! The bike went back together fine and I enjoyed riding it for a while before selling it to move on to the next project.

For what it's worth, during some fairly extensive exchanges with Jack Fleming of Roadstercycle, he pretty much insisted I go with the 847 series-type for my '03. I had already changed all the lamps to LEDs excepting the high beams. He says that shunt-type regulators will suffer with being too lightly loaded and so the series type is needed. That makes sense enough to me, so I purchased and installed his 847 "Superkit". So far I've only managed 300 miles with it- it is winter, after all- but the voltmeter on the panel is pretty much locked on 14.4-14.6. That sounded a touch high to me but Mr. Fleming says it's fine that way. The bike keeps running, so there's that.

I will endorse the DID VX-series X-ring chains, if longevity is a desired trait. The current model they sell is the VX3, I believe. That's what I installed on my 5th gen VFR when I got it last spring. An earlier version that I installed on my ZX1100E after the OEM chain started kinking at 48,000 miles ( 77,000km) lasted until I sold the bike with 106,000 miles (170,000km). That's 58,000 miles. The DID was still just in spec on the link-length check, had no kinks and was running smoothly over the OEM sprockets. I'd never changed the sprockets since they never showed signs of bad wear. Nor did I ever clean the chain, excepting once when it collected a lot of mud during a gravel road episode. I've never had an O- or X-ring chain that I owned from new go less than 40,000 miles (64,000km). If I had a "secret", it would be an application of PJ-1 Blue Label every 300-500 miles. And keep an eye on the adjustment, although in the case of the ZX, it rarely needed adjustment between rear tire changes when I would be getting only 7,000 miles out of those things. The Michelin Road 5 was still off in the future. Good chains are much cheaper in the long run.