What did you do to your twin today?

I've been making good the damage. They had tried to pry out the headlight and had buckled all three retaining rings. I have got them 95% back to round so the bike is usable on that score. I had to straighten the headlamp ears too. These thieves are so ham fisted. I have put my old bullet indicators back on, not strictly legal spacing but near enough for the tester to ignore. I just need to source an ignition lock from somewhere, I could rewire the olld one but the keyhole is a mess and invites another attempt withh a screwdriver. I am considering deleting the ignition lock but need to study the threads a bit more to get my head round the options. (I haven't aimed the headlig ht or the blinkers yet!)

Finally got my chain on and sorted. Given it had to clear the fat 170 tire, it took some sorting out with spacers and using 520 sprockets and chain but happy with the result and can now move on to other things.

I wanted to relocate the horn into a narrow space under the tank (Fiamm Freeway Blaster) so I sliced off half the horn's plastic trumpet, made a new flat surface piece from Carbon Fiber, added a second layer of CF to mold it all in place, painted the top and bottom
sections in 2 different colors/textures and added a custom fabbed bracket. Result!

Mike K. said:

I guess you would get something like a 3-position 4-pole rotary switch to mimic the actual operation of the stock key switch. It would be quite easy to install but why would you want this? People would be able to simply walk up to your bike, turn the switch and ride off.

Click to expand...

Yeah, people could walk up and steal it. I suppose I am too trusting.

A different idea, that I thought about before and maybe even posted somewhere, is the idea of disguising my key as a bolt. That is, cut off the shank of the key and somehow insert that into a chrome bolt head so that it was not obviously a key. I bet you a million bucks that Dazby could do that in his sleep.

Then I could simply leave the key in it with less worry that someone will spot my motorcycle with the key so obviously still in it? I suppose I could hide a spare key somewhere on the bike incase some mischievous person removed my fake-eroo for some crappy reason. If in a dicey area - (not here on Emerald Isle NC!) I could remove the key. AND in addition to that maybe I could have a little toggle switch somewhere that overrides the kill switch? And... maybe look into those new tracking devices?

I feel like not many people are out to steal this old bike of mine, it would be more trouble than it is worth. Also, I acknowledge that thieves are sometimes incredibly clever and determined. Which I guess is why new bikes have all this theft protection which... ends up being defeated anyway by determined criminals with white windowless vans and two refrigerator dollies and a ramp.

The thing for me is that over-worrying about thieves by having all these keys and locks for every dang thing drives me (drove me ... haha) nuts!.

Having chopped off my rear foot pegs to clean up my frame, I had to come up with a way to mount my exhaust. Easy route was a 2 into 1 (which I had always planned to do on this build) and the front section was a simple mount and bolt together proposition. The rear muffler however, needed something special, so I cut off the rear mount from the muffler, reshaped it and moved it 6 or so inches forward. I then made a spaced bracket (to cut down on heat transfer) that comes off the bottom of the foot peg outrigger (using rear brake master cylinder mounting bolts) to attach it, then hid most of it away with some carbon covers. I will be using a double heat shield system on this section of exhaust to mitigate any heat transfer issues with the master cylinder.

Put the battery on charge and dug out my old Almax chain. Canvas sleeve had rotted away so I made a new one from two legs of some old leggings sewn together! jeans would h
ave been even better.