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Published: October 2nd 2010
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09-24-10
I left the house as the sun was coming up over the lake in my back yard. The seat to my new V-Strom was still damp with the morning due and I was excited. Less than twelve hours earlier I had
Big Boy Motorcycles installed new Shinko 705 dual purpose tires on the bike and was anxious to get them scuffed in.
I headed toward the cost on Hwy. 378 to once again pull my bike into Jeff’s Garage for some serious wrenching done by myself and friends. The three hour ride too Myrtle Beach, SC was uneventful and a little boring. It had been a while since I had ridden without my XM radio or my GPS and my helmet was unusually quite. The ride to the beach was easy and you would think that getting to Jeff’s would be just as easy. But all my other visits had been assisted by my GPS and this time the GPS was in the rear box waiting to be installed.
Needless to say, I got lost and after thirty minutes of riding around with too much pride to ask for directions. I finally decided to give Jim and Jeff a
call. I was close and it only took a few minutes for me to arrive. Luckily they saved me a few power rings (donuts) so I would have the energy to make it through the day.
Once I stripped off the hard bags and side plastic we were able to get to work. The first thing we installed was the ram mounts so we could decide were the XM radio and GPS were going to be located. Then Jeff and I ran the wiring to a great self that we located under the seat. Jim then took the time to install the fuse block. Things were really starting to shape up and we decide to get some lunch.
Lunch was a great sub from
Firehouse Subs. I got the Hook and Ladder. I can actually say that I was really impressed. The sub was much better than the Subway’s I usually eat back home. After lunch we headed back to Jeff’s to hook everything up.
I did not realize that Jim and Jeff had evening plans and that my running late (getting lost) had set us behind schedule. As we were wiring the XM radio up the transformer
sparked and blew out the power supply. I ran to Wal-mart in hopes of finding a replacement with negative results. So we were unable to run power to the radio. Then when we were running the audio for the GPS to the Mix-it II and we found that the audio cable was too short to make it to the location the Mix-it had been mounted. Jeff found an older cable from some unknown device and we hooked it up, hoping for the best. I decided to also mount my MP3 player next to the XM radio and move the audio cable back and forth between them as needed.
Unfortunately, we ran out of time before we could test everything out. I new everything that was hooked up to power would turn on but that was about it. I helped clean up the tools before we all left to go home or to our prior engagements.
As I fired up the bike and inserted the ear buds in my ears I knew things were not right. I could hear engine noise, very loudly, over the music coming from my MP3 player and when I tested the volume on the
GPS I could not hear anything. I knew that I would still have work to do when I got home. I decided to plug the ear buds directly into the GPS and I could hear it fine.
Thanks to the directions from the GPS I made it home without getting lost.
Now I will be spending the next week or so trying to locate all the parts I need to complete this upgrade to the V-Strom.
Total Miles Ridden = 331
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Tot: 0.364s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 21; qc: 132; dbt: 0.1412s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb
John Tubb
non-member comment
Looking Good!
The cockpit is looking like a serious rally bike Alex! Engine noise is pretty common problem, you might try wrapping the mix-it in tin foil. I know it sounds crazy but you need to either shield it or move it farther away from the alternator.