21 Oct 2010
Posted by Dave under Dave's Thoughts
Today was a beautiful fall day in southern Alberta; just the type of day made for playing hooky from work and heading to the mountains on the motorbikes. Sadly, we couldn’t quite pull that off, but did at least take the scenic route home after work was done. Brenda & I had both taken our motorbikes to work today – the kids had a professional day off of school and Steven was game to hold the fort for the day.
24 Apr 2010
Posted by Dave under Mr. FixIt
With a switched distribution block wired in as described in Part 1 of this write up, the heated grips can be added. This is a little more involved and requires a bit of patience to pull off the grips, run the wires, replace the grips,check for clearance, drill a hole (!) in the dash and make the hookup to the power distribution block. The good news is that since the power is already done and tested this step is mostly a mechanical exercise.
Continue Reading »
14 Apr 2010
Posted by Dave under Mr. FixIt
The best thing since sliced bread.
After years of procrastinating I finally (at Brenda’s prompting) purchased and installed heated grips on both of our motorcycles – last June! Then I continued the trend by procrastinating on posting this write up. As a reward for mentioning to Sean just how much more pleasant cool/cold weather riding is when you have warm hands, Sean has prompted me to describe how I did it. So here’s the skinny.
I decided to use Symtec Motorcycle Grip Heaters that are installed underneath the stock grips. In my research over a couple of years, I’d sort of settled on these as the simplest to install and the most cost effective grip heaters available. I ordered them in from the US when I couldn’t find a local supplier. Continue Reading »
04 Mar 2010
Posted by Dave under Dave's Thoughts,Mobile Blogpost (iphone)
After the “big game” on Sunday (You remember that, don’t you? Olympics? Hockey? Gold for Canada? …anyone?), I was doing a few chores in the garage as it was just a beautiful warm, sunny day for the end of February. I got to thinking about whether my motorbike would start after the 4 month cold soak.
So I wandered over with the key, just to see – sure enough, it started first try. Nice to have fuel injection! While it warmed up, I checked that enough of the ice was gone from our side street to get to the main drag. Yep! So I grabbed my gear and headed out for my first ride of the year – also the first time I’ve ever ridden in the month of February.
It wasn’t a long ride, about an 18km loop, but I did get out!
