https://www.ebay.com/itm/2014-Honda-CB/1...ondition=4


Ok- who did this?


Wow.


I guess all I will say- there is no such thing as 'back pressure'.

Anybody that says so doesn't know what they are talking about.

Decades ago somebody misunderstood a too large exhaust running poorly and somehow came up with the 'back pressure' myth.

An engine is an air pump= the most efficient it can be to flow air the better.

The inverse- any resistance- whether in or out is BAD.

So 'back pressure' is bad.

The reason a big pipe or short open pipe looses power has nothing to do with 'back pressure' it has to due with pulse timing and scavenging. Both which affect and contribute to velocity.

My worst injury from my accident was my left leg.

My own fault as I had on decent, but relatively basic cheap boots that I was already thinking about upgrading for something more protective.

Here is what I had- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO8MnPQe_r4

Icon Reign.

Don't get me wrong- they were comfortable, waterproof, well built, ...but not tall enough, and soft enough that my foot / ankle still got pretty squished when the bike came down on my leg.


So looking around at all my options- with the top goal of as much safety I can get, and then quality, comfortable,

Ended up picking these- https://www.revzilla.com/motorcycle/sidi...-tex-boots

But bought them from overseas for about 25% less than Revzilla and no sales tax.

If I had them before, my leg would probably had less injury.

So it's been just over 2 years since my accident and I am just now about ready to get on the bike again.

My Dainese Cruiser jacket is very well built, very high end and versatile features... and only got a little scuffed up, still perfectly fine to use.

I decided however to buy a new jacket because I want a little more visibility than black, without having to put on a vest or wear a textile.

This became a thought when my wife was driving a few weeks ago and at an intersection was about to pull out when a kid on an all black bike, wearing completely all black jacket, helmet, gloves, pants 'appeared' at the last minute. Amazing how much he just blended into the asphalt background.

Not that lighter colors are a magic wand- I had a bright yellow helmet on last time.

But anyway.. this time I bought a white helmet, and decided to look around for jackets with red or white.

There seems to be plenty of womans leather jackets in red or white- not soo much for guys.

Dainese makes a textile adventure type jacket in all red..but I like leather.

My goals were- leather, shoulder, elbow, back protection, quality, light colors.

Just like my new helmet (Shoei Glamster) I ended up finding something I wanted overseas.

It's a little funky...but meets my criteria.









Description

Helstons has really hit it out of the park with the Tracker jacket. Reminiscent of 80s racer jackets with its powerful red, white and black colour scheme, the company have used full grain cowhide. In processing this premium leather, only the hair has been removed so the surface is natural and hasn’t been buffed to conceal imperfections. Only the finest quality hides make the cut for this category of leather. CE approved armour in the shoulders, elbows and back secure this jacket its CE Level A safety rating and the double layers of quilted leather at the impact zones (shoulder and elbows) add even more abrasion resistance. The leather will also mold to the shape of your body with time, but the accordion stretch leather panelling at the sides will help with movement right away. As with so many of their jackets, Helstons has added a hard to achieve seam-sealed membrane to the Tracker. Together with the inner thermal waistcoat that you can remove as temperatures dictate, this jacket is great at adapting to changeable riding conditions.

Red, white and black
Smooth full grain cowhide
1mm - 1.1mm thick
Removable inner body warmer with storage pockets
Seam-sealed waterproof membrane
5 outer pockets
2 zippered inner pockets
Stretch leather panels on sides
Collar and cuff snap fasteners
CE Level 2 shoulder and elbow armour included
CE Level 1 back armour included
CE Level A approved garment

I've been running the Michelin Road Pilot 3 for my rear tire for about a year and have been quite content. That being said, I've been filling it up to the OEM spec of 42 psi, I'm wondering if that's incorrect because it's a different sized tire. Thoughts or suggestions?

I've started a road report at ADV Rider about a [url=https://advrider.com/f/threads/can-i-still-camp-3-5-nights-central-oregon-and-rls.1464552/]Central Oregon trip on my 2007 KLR650 that I just finished.

Go there for write-up if interested, but here are photos of Day 1:


Detroit Lake:

Sisters:

Camp site, day 1

Dinner!


Just trying to test out some new camping gear, explore OR a bit.

So last time out riding in the rain, my very old, well used and trusted Frogg Togg rainsuit failed and left me with an embarassing looking wet spot in my jeans. Time for a new rainsuit.

So the research showed that Frogg Toggs were still well respected, and generally finished in second place in rain suit comparisons. The one that usually came out on top was the Tourmaster Defender 2. More expensive than the Frogg Toggs but I had some Revzilla cash sitting there not doing anything, so I applied that to the Tourmaster suit and it was like getting 25% off... in the end, about the same price as the FT's.

I'm a fan of Tourmaster gear, and have several of each ... Jackets, riding pants and gloves. They have always been good products for me and fairly priced.

Anyhow my rainsuit came in yesterday. Wow nice rain suit.

Today they were predicting rain to start about 10 am. So at 9 am I suited up including my new rainsuit and headed out. Got home a little bit ago, and I was completely dry. Of course the predicted rain never materialized lol.

Anyhow the suit was bright ( I ordered the high viz and black), comfortable with no binding anywhere. It was very windproof (cant vouch for waterproofness yet but I promise to report back once I get a chance to rain ride) . The collar is high and padded and comfortable. The wrists can be tightened with velcro. It has a 2 way zipper in front with a storm flap and velcro. The pants have elastic waist, removable suspenders, boot zippers with storm flap and velcro and removable stirrups.

I ordered my regular size large and it was a roomy large! Rather a bit too big than a bit too small though. Even with the boot zippers it would still be better to either remove your boots or at least sit down in order to put the pants on IMO. I don't think it's going to fold up as small as the Frogg Toggs though. Still deciding on whether to fold flat or roll for on the bike storage.

https://www.tourmaster.com/inc/sdetail/d...it/107/466

For some reason this made me laugh, it was a comment "hepcat harley" made on a diagnostic video about displaying fault codes on a kawasaki 1000;



It must have struck me at precisely the right way, priceless dry english humor

I just found this article and thought y’all might be interested in reading it.

https://www.rideapart.com/articles/44125...chain/amp/

I have used Givi trunks before and really like them. I had one I put 30K miles on a previous Honda Magna cruiser, and then removed that before selling it and installed it on my new daily driver, Suzuki Bandit 1250, where I put another 30K miles on the same unit. That previous Givi had a spring loaded electrical connection that permitted the trunk light to activate along with the bike brake light. It required tapping into the bike brake light circuit so they would both light up. That connector was built into the generic mounting bracket the case attached to. It would have gone farther, but some ditz backed into my parked Bandit knocking it over and damaging the unit. I recall it was a 45L (liter) unit.
I can tell you that once you become accustom to having that kind of storage capacity on your bike, you won't want to live without it. That sized trunk is large enough to swallow two full faced helmets, which is convenient if two up, to not have to carry those around. When solo, or commuting, that size will allow you to carry your laptop case, lunch, and rains. Both Magna and Bandit had after-market racks (Magna was an OEM) that the trunk mounted too.

So, I am a fan of the Italian made Givi’s from positive experience.
So, upon getting the CB, I wanted the same. So off to the internet. Turns out, and perhaps a function of the global economy now, scouring all the major retailers including Bike Bandit, Revzilla, J&P, etc., the cheapest price I could find was actually through Motostorm, an Italian retailer. So I placed the order through them. It shipped from Italy. Was concerned there might be customs or duty, but there were not. I did it in two orders (by mistake), first buying the trunk (GIVI V47NN TECH, $204.79), Givi chrome bike rack specific to the CB1100 (GIVI SR1118, $185.41), and the optional rack that attaches to the top of the trunk (GIVI-E159, $52.73). I mistakenly thought the trunk mounting bracket that attaches the trunk to the bike rack was included with the trunk. It was not. Including $33.13 shipping (from Italy), the total was only $475.95, which was much less than purchased from a US retailer. I crossed fingers on the customs and duty fees (to which there were none). That order was placed on 8/4 and arrived on 8/17 and 8/18 in two boxes via FedEx. Not bad!

It was then I discovered it did not have the mounting kit. Bummer! So back to Motostorm for that: Givi E251 Monokey plate ($ 40.36), and GIVI E134S (which was the optional backrest pad [$ 31.84] while I was there) and had to pay shipping again ($33.13). If I had the hindsight, then I could have ordered the mount (and maybe gotten the backrest “free”) not having to pay shipping twice. The second order was placed 8/18 and arrived 8/26 (yesterday! Now mounted!). That was a pretty quick turn-around that was not much more than some US stuff I recently ordered.

Back to it. So, to me, adding a trunk big enough to provide meaningful capacity, it is difficult to find something that looks great seamlessly. Especially on something like a retro inspired UJM. The Givi V47NN Tech (47 L with CF looking center accent) and nice looking “lights”, is about as good as you can get. It looks aerodynamic, though somewhat bulbous. To me, the goal is to add on the storage that doesn't really suck aesthetically, not trying to “improve” the looks. For certain it won’t. I notice some improvements over the old model, including a larger gasket to keep out the H2O. It should do that well as the gasket is much larger than the previous o-ring style gasket previously. The Monokey plate secured with four bolted brackets I endeavored to spread around the perimeter, driven by the underlying rack structure (where the tubes are).

BTW, the Givi rack itself was a decent quality unit. The chrome was well done and seems triple plated, and substantial. The welds were not the best looking, but fade into the chrome background, especially with the rack covering most of it on top, and the stock handholds hiding substantially the rest on the sides. You remove the existing handholds with turn signals attached, and for the ’13-14 CB, remove the existing handhold bolts that go through the bungee tie-downs, put it on the inside of that next to the subframe, and rebolt it back keeping the bungee tie downs (great!). It was a bit of a pain to get it in place without scratching with only two hands, but I liked the result. There was a whole other page for other years that has the installer doing a different procedure involving more supplied hardware (that was unused for my application). It was substantially cheaper than any price on the Honda OEM units I could find anywhere that was 50% more.



All Givi instructions are pictures only making them mediocre.

Mounting the rack was straightforward with a little jiggering to get it as straight as possible. I chose to have it sit back about 0.5” from being butt up against the rack riser (thinking to add some clearance for the backrest and preserve passenger room). The plate is a grate type structure, and you insert metal square plates with elongate slots (for adjustment) you thread bolts through that go past the chrome rack into the brackets and secured with locking nylon nuts. I snugged them well, but not too tight as the plate is plastic and I did not want it to distort or crack. It is actually a heavy weight thick ABS type plastic.


The rating of this case is 10Kg (22 lbs). That was about what the previous one I had was rated too, but I think there is some margin in there, and I have easily carried at least that without worry. I wouldn’t want to put 50 lbs in there, but less due to concern the rack/trunk would fail as you probably just don’t want that much weight cantilevered off the back of the bike that could impact handling.

I also previously said “lights”, because the 47NN looks like it has them, but they are only lenses with ports that will let out light IF you install the optional LEDs inside the trunk. But, the generic mount does not have that built in spring-loaded connector that transfers the brake circuit to the inside of the trunk. I elected to forgo trying to fit something other than the generic mounting plate, plus it was a pain to splice into the brake light harness previously.

With the plate in place on the rack, it installs easily. It inserts into two forward hooks, and then snaps into place with the aft lock. One key (spare included) can unlock the case with the push of the upper button to pop the lid, or pushing the lower button releases it from the mounting plate. Then you can bring it in (your hotel room) if you want to with all the contents inside, or pop it off if you don’t need it for some sporting riding where it is unneeded (or just to make the bike look better). It looks pretty good without the case attached.


Attaching the rack to the trunk lid was a pain. That rack is a well made anodized aluminum piece and bolts to the lid after you drill four holes. A paper template is provided. No instructions, only pictures. It says to remove a bunch of stuff there is no need to (reviewers on line commented as such and that was true). It was a pain because the provided template taped to the lid appears to not line up with the rack four short legs that angle inward making the holes look too closely spaced. What you have to realize, and this was my fault, it has spacers you insert under the feet that are canted inward, that then makes the template holes be about right. Not realizing this caused me to have to remove the rack 10 times to ream the holes just enough, and fight the fasteners from the inside of the lid to line up without cross-threading. Once finally secured, it looks great. I could see attaching a dry bag with a lightweight tent and bedroll to that lid rack to preserve cargo capacity inside. The backrest was an easy 5 minute affair using the template, but those two bolts had markings inside the base, where the trunk rack did not. It would have made the whole affair of attaching the optional lid rack much easier if they had done the simple same thing on the lid with drill hole markings on the inside for the rack. It would have also allowed slightly undersizing the holes such that the bolts threaded through the lid plastic for additional water resistance, though it should not be an issue given the rubber grommets included with the fastener stackup.






Overall, I like the result and am looking forward to getting years of use from it. Considering the heavy chrome rack of good quality, mounting plate, trunk, and optional top rack and backrest, it seems like a good value for around $550. And it is not fugly as far as bulbous cases go.

I have a 2016 HONDA CB1100 A-SA. Is this a Honda cb1100 Ex or something else ?
any help appreciated
Nik