Well, I'm back in good ol Afghanistan with my baby parked until next spring.
I was able to get some riding in but not nearly as much as I wanted due to rain and honey doos.
What riding I was able to get in showed me how much power the ol girl had and how she needed some work done to her...not that she was running rough but the fact that I only made it on average 110 miles before I hit reserve most of the time. I also noticed that she smelled a little rich. Before anyone can ask....no, I did not pull the plugs to check as I did not have very much time with her.
What I was able to do is get some upgrades done...but not as many as I wanted.
1) Accessory Power block installed. This was easy to do and fairly quick. I ended up mounting it in the top of the plastice battery cover toward the back with enough slack that I could easily acccess everything by lifting the cover up. I ran out of time to take pics of this.
2) BigBF quads done. These were fairly easy with me still trying to figure out if I installed them correctly on the cross member. I guess I will find out when I install the centerstand next trip. (Yes, this is the BigBF quads with the bend for the centerstand.)
3) Kuryakyn passenger pegs
4) Kuryakyn driver pegs
5) Kuryakyn shifter mod, I like the looks of this after it was finished
6) Zumo 660. I love the Zumo but have found a strange bug that causes it to shut down when trying to pair with bluetooth sometimes. This has happened about 20% of the time when first starting out. I have found that if I start the bike and let it pair with the phone, then turn the J&M HS-BLU277 headset on that it will typically not have a problem.
Yes, the Zumo is still having some routing issues but I found that if you add a couple of extra points in your route that it will not change your route on you during import.
Let me start by saying that listening to MP3's via bluetooth between the J&M headset and the Zumo at first SUCKED!!! I also had a very bad hum in the headset. After putting up with this for a couple of days I read the instructions on the headset and realized I was turning the intercom volume to max and that is why the music was so low and I had a bad hum and hiss. Once I operated the headset like it was intended it sounded great and phone calls are nice and clear on both ends as well.
Here is the bike after the upgrades, sorry for the bad pics as I was running out the door to catch my plane and snapped these pics.
One question I have is of the lights on my light bar. I had a rock hit one of them and chip it pretty bad. Anyone know where to get a replacement at?
The last thing I will mention before I end this is my HD buddy. This is the first chance he and I have had to ride since I bought the valk and he started right off by saying, "Not bad for a rice burner." As some friendly banter I mentioned back, "Same for your bean burner." He quickly started into the typical made in USA stuff which was promplty stopped when I asked him to look at the stamp just forward of my right shin. When he saw Made in USA he quickly puffed and said, "SO! Mine has that too." Funniest thing was, after searching for 15 minutes while I laughed he quit and said, "I know it's there somewhere."
Great guy and will ride with him anyday, but it shows how brainwashed HD people can be by the marketing.
