Review: Forcefield Back Protector

Hello.

Whilst in SM today Em was after a back protector. Ian took Em away to get one whilst I was chatting to Billy, but then I headed up to check them out myself. Ian was fitting one to Em’s Halvarson jacket and having already had one in my RST Electric, I fancied getting one for my Furygan. They were around £25 so I thought, why not.

I showed Ian my jacket and he sorted me out with the 001. I thought it was going to be a pain to get in to my jacket as the opening is tiny, but for some reason the insert went straight in (i had to bend the edges inwards first though) It was a perfect fit and that was that! £25 well spent.

Ian showed me a demo of his balls, which were 2 rubber balls. One was a large ball made of the stuff that most back protectors are made of, and the other one, a small ball, was made from the Forcefield stuff. He was saying that the foam used was an impact foam, which transmits the blow through the foam. To demonstrate this he asked me to hold them a foot off the desk and drop them together. What happened next was amazing. The large ball bounced about 3-4 times before coming to rest on the desk. The forcefield ball, when I dropped it, never bounced. It was as if it was made of lead. It just went “thud” on the desk. I tried it loads of times and I just couldn’t get my head around why the wee ball didn’t even bounce once! Amazing, and a really good demo to show you how much load spreading the foamy stuff does.

So anyway,

Here are some pics:

 

So there you go, it’s totally invisible when it’s inside the jacket and when my body heats up the foam molds to my body, which is ace. Well worth the £25!

Next up, a review of the range topping AGV GP-Tech helmet.

 

Thanks for looking folks!
Gordon

HID and Stuck

Hello everyone.

My bike is fixed! HOORAY! After Suzuki replaced the wiring loom it fired up first time, so that seemed to be the problem. It was covered under warranty too so I didn’t have to worry about footing the bill. On the flipside though my rear tyre is “completely illegal” and is getting replaced this Wednesday with a new one, and will cost £119 odds.

Upon getting the call that my bike was fixed I was desperate to get it back as I have been doing the bus thing. It’s not that bad now actually because the buses here have free wifi! I would get on the bus around 7:30am and get the iPod touch out and start reading the news, surfing the web, listening to music. It was nice to be able to relax on the way in to work (although you did get the dodgy driving and kangaroo braking which ruined the otherwise sleepy journey)

I was fed up of the 6:20am rise as I usually wake up around 7:45am when I have the bike, so it was pretty tough. Plus the fact that if I need to do stay later it means having to re-arrange a collection from the park ‘n ride, which can be inconvenient for everyone else. So the long and short of it was I was desperate to get my wheels back.

The ride back from the garage was funny. Not haha, but weird. The bike seemed really difficult to lean, and perhaps it was subliminal considering the phrase “completely illegal” was used about my squared off rear. But I got home and the HID light was really cool!

But then on Saturday the HID stuck on low beam and the solenoid wouldn’t change it to full beam. At least it was on though, but it was annoying. This was later on in the evening during a trip with Em because it was a nice night.

Today Em and I went to Scott Murray’s because I wanted to get some wheel stripes. I saw some boys on the forum had them and it looks great! So we left to go there, anticipating a call from Blair as today’s weather was nothing short of glorious. The HID rig was working this morning, after I washed my bike. It only seemed to stay working for a wee while though, and then stuck on full whack for the rest of the day (but I didn’t realise this until I got home! OOPS! I wondered why all the signs were really bright! HA)

We chatted to the boys and I bought a new back protector, which I will review after this post.

After a quick chat we were off again and headed to Blairs, and then over to St. Andrews for a ride/chips. The bike felt really good today for some reason and was smooth, gears, throttle and brakes were all silky. It must have been the weather/new helmet which added to the “I’m alive” feeling.

Once we got to St.A we headed to the back of the Old Course where the dunes are and stopped for 10 minutes. It was getting colder, but we thought it was just the breeze from the sea. A boy on a Buell, the exact same as mine drove past and I was a hater. He also was wearing the RST Electric jacket and draggin jeans, the exact same setup I had when I had the Buell. It was like I was watching me riding past. Really bizarre.

We fancied some chips so headed along the high street, but couldn’t see anywhere. Then Blair mentioned Anstruther and it’s famous chip shop and Em made an executive decision before Blair had even finished his sentence. We fuelled up and headed out, on some brilliant roads!

Once in Anstruther Em and Kirsty joined the ridiculous queue to the chip shop, some locals swearing under their breath, annoyed that the pavement was taken up with hungry punters. Blair and I stood outside for 45 minutes, watching the endless circuit of boy racers going up and down the high street. It was getting really cold and I had my Furygan/Hardas combo on, so was starting to get quite cold. The fish and chips arrived, with Kirsty saying another local jumped the queue. We ate, (delicious) and the left rickety tick. The ride back home was glorious, with the roads sweeping and fast, the sun low in the sky offering a warm breeze through open visors and the sound of two GSR’s in unison. It couldn’t get any better, and it didn’t as I started to get really tired and sore. The GSR seems to have a hard area on the seat, just before the tank. Basically where you like to sit. This means that after a days solid riding, it’s sore bums all round. I didn’t care though.

So that was my weekend! It was brilliant to get out with the 4 us on the bikes and the weather was simply glorious. It was meant to be raining as well! Pah, weathermen.

My bike is over the 4k barrier, time for the 2nd service.

Thanks for reading!

Gordon

Site Update - New Photo Gallery!

Hello all.

Still no updates on the bike, but it’s today that it should be back up on the stand and getting fixed, so tomorrow (my day off! HOORAY!) I can update you as to the progress of the bike.

But aside from that, I stumbled across something which I have been looking for since I started this website, and that’s a photo gallery! I wanted one that I could update easily, look smart with wee thumbnails and be customisable. I trawled the web back in 2006 for one and couldn’t find any that were decent. I looked again in 2007 and I think the stumbling block was that I wanted to integrate it directly in to the website, which wasn’t really possible as the company that runs this blog service, WordPress, don’t allow Flash. So I gave up again and resorted to linking to various pages with images on it. Very laborious and not very easy to access.

BUT FEAR NOT, for the other day when surfing Motorsickle, I noticed they had a gallery that was powered by a place called Flash Nifties and it was everything that I wanted. I thought that I had to buy it, but at $40 it wasn’t too much, but then I noticed that they give a free version, with the only drawback being that they place a small [?] in the top right of the gallery to advertise their website. So feck it, I got the free one and tried it, and what a revalation! It’s superb, all you do is upload the folder to your server and start adding folders in to the Content main folder. The folders then become the headings for the gallery and it automatically creates everything else, the thumbnails, the animations etc. It can also be completely customised so you can change the colours, the sizes of everything, the timings for the animations!! It’s brilliant.

So to check it out for yourself, head on over to the official YamYam Photo Gallery.

Thanks for looking folks!

Gordon

Updates Updates.

Hello everyone.

So the last time I wrote I had fitted my brand spankers HID rig, busted up my motorcycle and been left stranded in the middle of a village somewhere.

Well things haven’t improved at all really…

My bike went in Saturday and was told they wouldn’t really look at it until Monday at least. So when Monday came, I phoned them at 9am sharpie. In the call I mentioned a thing called a fuel pump relay, which upon reading the GSR forum, seemed to a problem for a few people, and the results were the same as mine, bikey no startey.

So they said aye fair enough, I will print out the mechanics sheet and he will either get it on the stand today or Wednesday. Ok fair nough.

Went on to the forum Monday night and some of the boyos were saying that it could be the HID rig interfering with the immobiliser, since some of the cheaper HID units (i.e. mine) aren’t magnetically shielded which could result in EMP leakage.

Back on the phone Tuesday @ 9am (I now had to get the bus to work, which meant getting up at 6:30am to hitch a ride with my Dad to the bus park ‘n ride. I usually got to work around 8:10am…

Menioned the HID rig to them and they said they will print out another mechanics sheet and that the mechanic had it on his bench already, having done some work Monday afternoon.

Great. So I left it at that until Thursday, when I called again. The bloke said that they couldn’t find the problem, even after stripping the bike back to the frame, and using the demonstrator GSR as a parts bin. So they would continue along their diagnostics plan and hopefully something will be found. He did say that the HID rig was the first thing to come off, so it wasn’t that. And because it wasn’t anything I had done to it, it would almost certainly be a warranty job. Brill.

So as my bike lay dead in the garage, I forged on without it. But not before getting a bug from work and spending Thursday boking and feeling exhausted.

I had been full chat at work and come Thursday night, I was ready to implode. Then the bus journey home was the deal clincher. I was at the stage of saying to the bus driver, let me off right now, but I managed to hold it in until I got home.

Well. My. Word. It all hit off when I took the first steps through my door. It was b-line to the toilet and as you can imagine, wasn’t pretty in any shape or form. I spent the rest of Thursday night/Friday morning in and out of the toilet. Friday saw a decrease in sickness and increase in the other end and this continued in to the weekend, and now sitting here on Sunday, I am having 5 minute stints at writing this as I am constantly running to the toilet for some fireworks. I am fed up with this.

I got a final call on Friday, whilst lying in bed from the garage to say they hadn’t solved the problem by the end of their diagnostics so called Suzuki who asked them to order a new wiring loom and another part which I forgot the name of. This would be delivered by Tuesday (hopefully) but to save any complications, they said Wednesday, with the bike booked in for a Thursday fix. This could still leave the problem unsolved mind you. So I am stuck for another week without a bike. SUPERB!

I feel like crap.

I have had some news back about RST but I will go in to detail about that another time. I also received my trousers that ripped back, but instead of it being my old ones, I got a brand new set! So thanks for that RST, well chuffed!

 

Hopefully by next week I will be ok, but going by what’s going on with my body at the minute, I can’t see it happening.

Thanks for reading guys, YY is now pushing the 11,500 mark and I am absolutely ecstatic about it.

Gordon

Mod: HID Motorcycle Light

You thought that was it for tonight! AHA, you were wrong!

Dad just returned with the camera, so instead of moping about my bike, I’ll show you how to wreck yours as well! Muhahaha.

 

Picture review is about to start, if you don’t want to know how to possibly break your motorcycle, then look away now. If you do want to know how to fit a super cool HID rig to your motorcycle, then read on.

Step 1: Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

If you want to know how to render your bike useless within the first 5 minutes, then don’t bother thinking about what you are doing before hand, just go for it. However I like to keep my stuff nice, so when I do decide to modify it, I weigh up the situation first, then prepare for it completely.

To prepare for fitting a HID rig to your motorcycle, you first need to buy a HID rig. I got this one off of the eBay for £30 all in. Now I never ever buy anything from Japan/Hong Kong, but one of the guys on the forum bought one and said there’s nothing to worry about, so I thought, hey, it’s only £30…

This is it:

This is a H4-3 rig, and can be found HERE

Within the box you get the Bulb, the Ballast (The transformer basically), the loom incl. control box and some adapter rings. Oh and some zip ties.

The HID bulb. I have to say I was a WEE bit disappointed with the built quality and the shutter that covers part of the bulb was a bit squint.
 

The Ballast.

These are the LED’s that I got to replace my previous efforts, one of which has started to strobe, so I was going along with a flashing white light on the front of my bike…not good! I have a 12 LED array and a 6 LED array, the 12 made it on the YamYam bike and the 6 went on Blair’s.

The 12 and the 6, BEEFCAKE.

 

Step 2: Prepare some more (the bike)

The bike is the place that you are going to be doing all the modifications to, so it is best if you get the bike in the optimum state to be in for the mod to run smoothly. It may sound anal, but there’s nothing worse than saying “lets go!!” only to find that you have to unscrew 4 panels and unbolt 6 bolts. Speaking of which, before you even start on the bike, it’s a good practice to get the tools that you need for the job ready. I mentioned it when I did the handlebar mod and it still stands. You don’t want to be looking for the right allen key half way through the job.

I thought I would be a bit different this time and go for a testosterone induced manly man work area, with manly things like wrenches and oil…well…sort of.

Yes. That is an ironing board.

 

The GSR with the seat, side panels, immobiliser unit, indicator pods, headlight assembly and tank off/unbolted.

The ignition and tank bolts

The bulb was the first to be fitted, since it’s the most important bit of the kit. I had to modify the rubber seal slightly as the rear end of the bulb is massive compared to the stock bulb. The boy on the forum decided to cut around the bulb and silicone it up with a bottle top to waterproof it. Instead of this approach, I cut the rubber seal enough to stretch it over the bulb but remain tight enough to create a seal, which worked fine.

Tracing the cables around the air filter, making sure that it doesn’t get snagged by the tank rubber mounts, one of which is at the far right of the photo. Always double and triple check that no wires are getting caught up in anything. You don’t want them to split and short on the frame or short and turn the light off when you are in the middle of the countryside…

The control box. You have 4 cables coming out of this. 1goes to the bulb, 1 goes to the battery, 1 goes to the ballast and 1 goes to the original headlight connector. I tried to get these cables are smooth and untangled as possible. I then zip tied them to various hard points along the frame to keep them in tight, remembering to keep them out of the way of the tank’s rubber mounts.

Finding a place to fit the ballast was the hardest part of this mod. I spent a good 30 minutes trying different positions and trying to retrofit the indicator pods to find if they would squeeze in.

In the end I tried putting the tank down to see if there was any space left and found there was a nice wee gap underneath the front of the petrol tank, which allowed it to sit snugly in there with the sticky back foam offering a little grip to keep it in place whilst I fit everything back together again.

This was everything in place, wired to the battery and all ready to go. I didn’t turn the bulb on yet, I wanted Dad to be there incase something went wrong.

“Ready? 1…2…3…BZZZZ PING OOOOOOOOOOO” It works!!! I don’t know if you have seen the Audi R8 advert? The “The slowest car we’ve built” advert? Well when the main lights come on it sort of flashes and then warms up, it’s really smart? Well that’s what these bad boys do! OOO. It’s a superb blue/white light, more blue than white I would say.

The LED’s work great with this colour of light!

Looks ace eh!

So there you go!

It was a pretty easy mod to do, with a few brain power moments that you need, but all you really do is plug the bulb in, mod the rubber seal (if you have one) trace the cables and wire them to the battery. No problems…

I’ll let you know about the FI warning once I phone the garage tomorrow.

Hope this has been an easy “tutorial” to follow.

Thanks again

Gordon