motorcycles, technology, music, business

I’ve been sitting on a new Renthal 15 tooth front sprocket for my 2006 Yamaha FZ1 for a while now. I had been a bit reluctant to do it and also a bit reluctant to purchase the necessary tools for the job.

After the abrupt throttle roll, my biggest complaint about the 2006 FZ1 is that I rarely get into the “fun zone” of the rev range. These past two years I have been doing a lot of urban riding and while the FZ1 is very comfortable it can be a bit of a bore when not speeding through scenic sweepers.

I think I got tired of waiting. Last night I went to Sears and I purchased the tools for the job. I performed tasks in the following order:
- remove left pedal and gear shift assembly
- remove sprocket cover
- flatten sprocket lock washer
- remove front sprocket nut (I’ll go into a bit more detail later on this one)
- remove front chain guide
- loosen rear wheel axle
- move rear wheel adjusters in to create slack in drive chain
- remove stock sprocket

- insert new sprocket
- replace lock washer
- replace and tighten front sprocket nut to 100 foot pounds
- bend lock washer
- hand test chain and sprocket
- replace front chain guide
- adjust rear wheel to proper chain tension
- check wheel alignment
- tighten rear wheel axle to 50 foot pounds
- run engine in gear to check sprocket and chain behavior
- replace cover
- replace left pedal and gear shift assembly
- take a quick test ride

DONE!!!

The above is how it should have gone, and mostly did go. After adjusting the chain I noticed a loose section and a tight section. To remedy this I walked the chain down a tooth on the rear sprocket toward the tight section. I then proceeded with the rest of the list.

As for removing the front sprocket nut: For this I started the bike on the center stand and using an 18″ breaker bar and a 36mm socket tried to remove the nut. This quickly propelled the bike off of the center stand requiring me to catch it. Plan B: On the side stand, holding front break, repeat…. nothing. I then grabbed a fence post type bar and used it for additional leverage. Grabbing the bar about four feet off axis made it easy to smoothly loosen the nut.

Stay tuned for Part II – The Ride, coming soon.

Yesterday, my father-in-law went for a ride from Quincy to Arthur & Pat’s in Marshfield. (see route below, tracked on my Garmin 60CSx.)

It had been a while, since late last season, that we had gone on a ride together. He rides a Harley-Davidson Dyna Low Rider and likes to “meander”. We kept it slow and gentle. I was on my 2006 Yamaha FZ1 and kept it in 6th gear most of the time.

Which brings me to my first tangent. I drove my FZ1 in sixth gear on a ride where my average moving speed was 32 mph. I was able to comfortably drive at 25 mph in sixth gear. This brings me to my question. Why am I able to drive under 30 mph in sixth gear? I want sixth gear to be absolutely useless under 40 mph. If I had my druthers, I would change the sprockets on my FZ1 to make it more streetable, and then replace 6th gear with an 8th or 9th gear, a real overdrive. Gears 1 through 5 would be very useful and fun around town and also speeding around the twisties, and 6th gear would be an exaggerated overdrive for highway cruising.

Here are two videos recorded with a handlebar mounted Flip camera. Notice the different riding styles from video 1 to 2.


I don’t normally keep it in 1st gear through these turns but I was practicing my throttle roll on. The 2006 FZ1 has a very abrupt roll on which I am trying to ‘master’.

Thanks for reading and happy riding.

This is now the third day with my Garmin 60CSx. I like it, even though the interface is a bit cumbersome. The accuracy is great and the tracking and routing features are fun. In my last post my step-father commented about needing a detailed map to get the turn by turn directions. I hadn’t thought of this before. I didn’t realize that the included maps, labeled “Base Map”, would be so barren of data. I mean primarily only highways and other major roads.

That being said I looked into buying various Garmin produced maps. City Navigator NT is $108, after shipping from Garmin, you can get it cheaper from www.gpscity.com, and has received some bad reviews when compared to previous non-NT versions.
I am hesitant to buy a bad map product for that much money. According to GPScity the new Topo maps from Garmin have trail and road routing as well as topo maps. The TOPO NorthEast map is $138, after shipping from Garmin, again, cheaper at GPScity. I do not know how the routing is on these maps though. For example, can I have it only route using roads and disregard trails? Does it have all the roads that the City Navigator has? I have asked GPScity this just today and am awaiting a response.

While that debate has been going on inside myself, I went and found an unlocked North American detail map for my 60CSx. The routing on the unit seems to work well and has adequate visual and auditory cues. The routing of course is limited and is really only useful for single destination routes.

Since, the map that I currently have only works on the unit and not in the BaseCamp software I can not really route on my computer and send it to my unit. I have seen YouTube videos of people using Google Earth and following the roads by hand and then exporting that to their GPS. That is a pain. I hope to do a 500 mile trip this summer and I am not about to trace out 500 miles of twisty roads in Google Earth or any program for that matter.

I then came across this little API service which allows me to create a map on Google maps and export that route to a .gpx file. It works just like it said it would. It is not as good as I hope the Garmin maps will be though. For example, I used the third map from my previous post which was routed from town to town. The .gpx file then created six individual routes on my 60CSx. I then recreated the map with a single route (both the map and .gpx file can be found at the end of that previously mentioned previous post) and exported that.

This worked better and created a single route. In order to test this I created a local small route on Google maps and sent it to my 60CSx and went for a test ride. It worked but not that well. Thankfully I knew the area. Here are two photos that illustrate the main problem.

While it did work, after this test I fully intend to purchase a full map from GPScity that will allow me to use BaseCamp software to plan my routes, but am awaiting more information on which map to purchase.

Thanks for reading and ride happy.

Finally, my installation of two very basic yet important motorcycle accessories has come to completion. As you may remember from Part I and Part II, I have been working on installing a USB charger and grip heaters to my 2006 Yamaha FZ1.

This latest delay was caused by difficulties in acquiring an air compressor in order to remove my existing grips. I had attempted to purchase a certain Bostitch brand pancake compressor from CPO Bostitch via Amazon two separate times and both times CPO Bostitch could not “get the order into [their] system.”

Here are some photos of the finished product. You can see the USB charger in the first two and the wires (lowest) from the grip heaters in the last two.

[Show as slideshow]

I used the USB charger today and it was great to have my phone charging while in my pocket.