Monday, Oct 6 2014 [524 miles]
While the tank is off the bike for maintenance I decided to add the bar risers that arrived in the mail today. These risers give me about 30mm of lift. My arm position when sitting on the bike after the installing the risers felt good. I’ll know more after a test ride.
Riders view of risers
Risers
Not much to see. You can’t visually tell they are there from the riders position. I took the second picture to show how much rise there is. One elecrical cable going to the left grip needed a bit of slack. Slack was provided by loosing on cable tie. Every other control seems OK. Again, I’ll know more after a test ride.
Installation was a bitch. I shouldn’t have beeen, but it was. When I removed the stock risers the mounting screws didn’t look that great. I think they were torqued by a gorilla. I discovered that on the top screws when I added the tach mounting plate. The bottom were almost as bad.
I installed the risers and started torqing the mounting screws. It did not feel good. I decided to remove the screws and see what was going on. Too late! The screws had already started to gall in the handlbar holder. Damn.
I cleaned the threads of the screws – some contained bits of aluminum. I ran a tap down all four mounting holes to clean the threads. Three of the four holes cleaned up OK (but not great). The fourth took lots of work.
When done I used blue loctite on the mounting screws and reinstalled the bars and risers. They are probably OK — or the handlbars might fall off the bike in a crash that they would otherwise survive. I’m going to order new handlebar holders to be safe. Oh Boy.. I’ll get to remove and install the risers at least one more time.
Sunday, Oct 26 2014 [832 miles]
Replacement handlebar holders
The replacement handlebar holders I ordered arrived this week. I don’t know when I’ll get them mounted. No hurry.