A few weeks back I found a 2015 Bonneville SE for sale, with 96 miles on it. The bike was located in Arizona. Im in Los Angeles. The asking price $5500, which was more than a deal; practically a steal. So I immediately jumped into a truck, drove out and picked up the bike. I walked away paying only $5k, which is crazy!
This is my second triumph. My first was a 2012 Triumph Thruxton that I customized a bit- mostly bolt on parts but also gutted the bits between the side covers and opened it up to make it look like a vintage bike. I documented that build and if you're interested it can be found here: https://www.triumphrat.net/club-cafe/232627-2012-thruxton-i-just-cant-help-myself.html
That Thruxton was great and in the time I owned it, LIFE happened; I broke my foot; got really sick that ended up in a few surgeries; moved 4 times; hurt my lower back; etc etc. Needless to say the bike had very low miles on it and with the pain in my back I ended up selling it. I wasn't done riding by any means and had been searching for the perfect bonneville. It took 13 months to find it, but here it is in all its stock glory!
I have some plans for this bike because the way it sits, doesnt really work for me. So I ordered a ton of parts.
I bought most of the parts from Lossa Engineering. The exhaust from British Customs. Ordered the Handlebars from eBay. Got some parts from cognito moto. The seat is from Wilder Factory. And a few odds and ends from other sites.
Thankfully the parts arrived around the same time my appointment with the DMV was to take place. So right after I was able to get my bike registered in CA I went straight home and started pulling the bike apart.
Plans for the bike:
- gut air box
-new handlebars
-motogadget speedo
-new brake and indicator lights
-move regulator
-bobbed fender
-new grips
-new mirror
-new suspension front and rear
-iron cobra battery tray
-new seat
-new pegs
-new headlight
good thing i got the bike so cheap. practically buying a second bike in all the NEW parts...
Pic of the seat? What seat did you go with? I've tried Burton, Thruxton Gel, cheapo from overseas and still searching for the perfect combo of looks and comfort.
Before we get into the HEAVY stuff lets do a quick comparison on seats...
Now there's many options when it comes to seats the motivations behind which seat an individual picks. For me my motivation is purely aesthetic.
Years back I was contacted through this forum by a guy named Wilder. He asked to see my thruxton in person because he wanted to see if his model for a new
seat design would a fit a Thruxton with the mods I had done. Fast forward a number of years and Wilder has his own company called Wilder Factory and hes making some
really awesome parts. I hit him up and he hooked me up with a seat. I think he offers the best looking seats on the market. Now what they dont have in padding they make up in looks.
In all my research the seat by Wilder Factory is the only one that has a truly slim profile. It's the only one that truly hugs the frame of the bonneville and doesnt have a huge lump in the front where it contacts the tank.
Im very happy with this seat, though it doesnt have much padding but thats ok with me because my longest ride probably no more than 45 minutes and as stiff as my bike is now with the new suspension, I am not sure a soft seat would make that much of a difference...
The front end of this bike is way to bulky for me so Im opting for a smaller 5 3/5" Bates mounted headlight. This means I need to move the regulator, ignition and horn.
With the stock headlight gone and regulator unplugged, the bates mount can get installed:
I ended up buying the motone regulator mount:
Which as we all know puts the regulator in the horn's factory position:
Regulator installed:
And for the horn, I ended up finding a tab under the tank that i cold bolt the horn to. It's still plenty loud in the new hidden location:
So as I mentioned, I opted for a smaller 5 3/4" bates style headlight. This is much smaller than the stock headlight. I bought mine from low brow customs I believe. And ended up buying a LED conversion bulb from cognitomoto because I have found in my experience that these bulbs are very dull.
The LED bulb is pretty legit quality:
And swaps in real easily:
Now this is a terrible photo of the LED bulb working. But please believe me when I say that I am truly impressed by this bulb. Normally when I ride, I always have the brights on. This bulb is so bright, that I am keeping it on normal, even at night. It's very very bright and well worth the cost for the upgrade.
I found this stone guard on eBay. It was a horrible experience trying to mount it to the headlight. But I got it done. However, the experience was so terrible that I forgot to take a photo of it installed...
Things are definitely shifting around and as a result of losing the stock headlight and ears, I had to remount my ignition. There are some pretty standard options that mount the ignition on the left or right of the front down tube of the frame. These mounts are cool but I wanted something different. One night, during one of my typical moments of insomnia, I came across a company called BAAK Motorcyclettes. They offer a crazy ignition mount which puts it right about the throttle body. Their photos weren't very clear but I ordered one up anyways because the idea of having the ignition in this location seemed pretty cool.
What you get in the package is a very sturdy mount that bolts to the frame, above throttle body, and an extension wire harness. In order to move the ignition to this new location, you need to pull the stock wire harness back towards the rear of the bike. As a result, you need an extension for the wires that lead up the headlight, which is provided in this mount kit...
Ignition mount parts posing with the headlight:
Wire extension:
Baak Mount close up:
Baak Mount with ignition:
Baak Mount installed:
Bakk Mount installed with ignition:
Bakk Mount with ignition and tank and seat back on:
This is a super clean sturdy mount and I love the location of the ignition now. I love how its abnormal. Even some friends of mine who own triumphs went ahead and ordered the same mount after seeing mine. It's super cool and gives the bike a vintage feel....
Personally I hate the way the side covers look. I find it to be an easy solution to stuff the guts of a motorcycle under the seat and then make it look nice with a side cover. Not to mention the performance boost that occurs once you remove the stock air filter and get the bike breathing right. At the time when I bought my Thruxton, I had only seen one bike on the forum that had gutted underneath the seat. I did the same to my thruxton and made a bunch of parts to get the look I wanted. I even trimmed the back of the seat and stuck my lithium ion battery underneath the rear cowl. Well during the years that past from when I first did this to now, there are a lot of new options for parts for Triumphs, which is great because it makes life easy. hahaha
Because I like to have my cake and eat it too, I found a seat tray offered by Iron Cobra, which allows you to gut underneath the seat but still keep things tidy. It offers a location to mount a lithium ion battery, which is helpful for this style bike as I don't have a rear cowl to hide the battery under. I ended up buying the full kit which comes with a anti gravity battery and an extended cable for the starter. It even came with a mont for the rear brake reservoir.
Life is easy indeed....
Boo - sided covers - gross:
What lies beneath:
So there's no really easy way to remove the factory air box. Just unbolt everything and remove as much as you can that you aren't keeping. In the end I ended up removing the rear tire which I was trying to avoid. It's not avoidable and once the tire was out of place, the factory airbox slid right out. The Iron Cobra tray mounts into place using stock mounts already on the frame. Weave the wires, fuse block, starter solenoid and other misc parts and youre good to go...
Dont forget to unbolt this sensor from the factory airbox and plug back in to its proper mate:
Heres an image of the provided rear brake reservoir mount. I ended up mounting a new reservoir too:
Comparison of the factory stater cable and the one that comes with Iron Cobra:
New cable going in:
NOT A GREAT PHOTO but it gives a sense of the space created once the factory air box is gutted:
The kit also comes with new k and n air filters:
this kit was pricey but it gave me the look I wanted with a very limited amount of effort. Living that easy life ....
Since we are talking about the rear of the bike let me mention what else was done in this general area....
I ended up doing the side stand kill switch delete. Theres lots of literature on this forum that covers this mod so I wont really go into it other than its pretty simple to do:
Plugged back in:
Im a huge fan of minimalism and love when my motorcycles appear to not have the boring stuff, when in actuality they do. (Like I said before I love to have my cake and eat it too). With that said Im always on the hunt for the brightest led turn indicator and brake lights. I have used a few different variations in the past. But in the past few years, the development of these technologies have really gone the distance....
For the turn indicators, I ended up purchasing the m-blaze units by moto gadget:
The quality is incredible:
And very bright:
I came up with a few mounting options but since these suckers are so small and so bright I figured I would mount them directly to the Iron Cobra seat tray:
Mounting holes drilled:
Installed:
So these things are plenty bright. I love how they disappear due to my mounting location. Are they legal? I have no idea but I will tell you one thing, when i hit my turn signal, my entire rear end lights up amber. There's no mistaking which way im turning...
When I was gathering parts for this bike, I found two sets up lights that I thought would work well as brake lights. The first set was from Revival Motorcycles which are led lights that come in amber or red. I contacted them, thinking that they might fit in the rear of my frame ends. Turns out they do not. However, Lossa Engineering offered a set that are designed to fit in the end frame.
So I ordered them:
My first impression is that they dont look as good as the ones from Revival. However they fact that they are a direct fit is what sold me on these.
Remove the frame end plugs:
Drill an exit hole in your frame (both sides):
Feed wires through:
and insert lights in the frame ends:
I should mention that I soldered in a dual filament into each of these lights so that I could run them as running lights/brake lights.
I should also mention that after I installed them I was not impressed by their brightness.
I should also mention that after a few weeks, one of the lights stopped working but during this time, it was always in the back of my mind that another driver was going to rear-end me
because they couldn't see my brake lights. This had me concerned, so despite using these lights, I continued my search for the perfect brake light...
I fine license plates to be really bulky. I bought the LP mount by British Customs and thought about different mounting options:
At the end of my bike is probably the most legal (but so ugly):
Under the seat pan? Not with that angle:
In the end, I bent the table of this LP mount so that it would allow the license plate to fall in line with the down tube of the rear of the bike's frame. From the side, there's no license plate. but from behind, the license plate can be seen....sort of...
Since I am most likely playing with fire based on how Ive mounted my license plate, I decided to try to make it as visible as possible. I found this LP frame that has integrated white led lights that illuminate the license plate:
I drilled some holes and wired it up no problem:
If and when I get pulled over, it wont be for not having my license plate illuminated. This frame is plenty bright.
For the rear I went with hagon shocks rate for my size. I bought them because of their price and performance. I also ended up purchasing rear shocks -10mm of the ones meant for a thruxton. They are longer than the factory shocks and stick the bike of the bike up a little - the exact look I wanted (stock on left / hagon on right):
And I dressed them up with the shock bolt dress up kit:
Before:
After:
For the front suspension, I did the progressive fork spring upgrade. Its pretty easy to do. My fork oil was at the correct level and looked good:
Check out my spring remover tool (MICKEY MOUSE FOR SURE):
I ended up also using a norman hyde sterling dampener. since my bike is an SE, i had to get one specific for the SE's.
Turns out the SE's have a different front rake compared to t100 and the forks are a little wider spaced apart compared to a t100. Why Triumph decided on this is beyond me. My guess is they needed a wider set up to fit those hideous mag wheels...
Im modeling my bike build after a motocross/dirtbike/enduro/brat thing and I found these cool bars on eBay. That are 7/8s stainless steel and I love how the motocross bar has a slight curve:
For my mirror, Im using a bar mount by Oberon:
And for the grips i found these rad Tommaselli reissues in root beer color:
Im very happy with the set up, though I am used to having a little narrower of a distance between the grips. I would love to shave an inch off of both ends of the handlebars, however based on the bends and the massive factory controls, I don't have any room to space. Maybe if i upgrade the controls i could squeeze out some space. But the more I ride it the more I get used to it. Ive only hit one mirror while splitting lanes...it was my first and most likely not my last.
When i first bought my thruxton the m tri unit by moto gadget had not been invented yet. At the time, a good friend of mine bought a t100 and wanted to put an after market speedo on. To make a very long story short, I ended up splitting the case of the stock speedo and pig tailing wires from the stock speedo circuit board to the after market speedo. This worked for a good 4 years. And then one day when he was on a road trip in the salt flats his bike died. I knew instantly what the issues was. I explained to have his mechanic replace my work with the m tri unit. They didnt and couldn't get his bike back on the road. At this point my friend left his bike in utah or wherever and flew home. Three months later they installed the m tri unit and the bike fired right up...
For my bike i bought the motogadget chronoclassic and m tri unit. Everything about this speedo is quality. There are so many settings and you can even set the odometer to reflect the miles that are on the bike at the time if installing the new speedo. Installation of the speedo was a breeze. The m tri unit was sort of a pain and its comes with very cheap wire connections which many people on this forum have complained about. I was not impressed by the m tri unit. But it does the job! No more circuit boards and pigtails for me!
Speedo with mounting cup:
Look at those precisely machined mounting holes:
Speedo mounting tab:
Speedo installed:
OH! I should mention i bought the tachometer version that has digital speedo...
M Tri Unit:
You are meant to shove this piece into every fitting before inserting the proper wire. It sucks:
Follow the manual and insert wires with proper correlating numbers. One to go many to follow:
The most dissappointing part of the m tri unit
Or you can be like me and switch the order of three of the wires and when you plug the m tri unit, the bikes fires up but the speedo doesnt work...Then walk away from the bike after a minutes and then it dawns on you that maybe your dyslexia confused the installation. Sure enough you find your mistake, correct things, and it all works like its supposed to - plug-n-play!
I came across the Dirt Tracker TT exhaust offered by British Customs. However they would not let me buy it due to the ever increasingly strict emission laws here in CA. So I contacted a friend out of state and had him order the exhaust for me, which he then sent back to me after they arrived at his place. Please keep in mind I live about 35 min north of British Customs...
The exhaust is very nice and I love the turn out before the rear wheel:
THESE PIPES ARE LOUD. Im not sure if in my older age I have become sensitive, as I have always had loud bikes. Or if its where the turn out is. But these pipes seem the loudest ive ever had. Ive thought about inserting some sort of small baffle to help...or maybe ill just grow a pair and deal with it...
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