Sunday, October 23, 2005

Heated Grips Kit Install

You know what is better than having friends that know how to do things? Having friends that know how to do things and are willing to show and help others. That’s my friend Peter, who on his day off rode with me up to the north suburbs to help me and my friend Rick install our heated grip kits on our ST3’s. What a nice guy. We got the kits from here: http://www.dual-star.com it’s the same kit I have on the 954RR.

The weather was a chilly, mid 40’s, cloudy. It started drizzling half way up to Rick’s house. The leaves on the trees were extra vibrant against the gray sky. The ride itself was not too bad, I wasn’t very cold, except for my hands. But soon that would change.

The great thing about this install was that Rick’s and my bike are identical. Peter did the install on Rick’s bike first, that was our ginny pig. That install took longer, since we had to figure out the best way to go about it. Mine was a quick install, a duplicate of Rick’s except he wanted his on/off switch on the left and I wanted mine in the middle, right under the instrument panel.

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Rick helped, I watched, Peter did more of the work. Three hours later we were done. The only delay was Rick lost one of those rubber screw backers from his wind screen somewhere and had to take the bike apart again. He never did find it and then remembered that he had some extra ones laying around somewhere.

On the way back Peter took the interstate to the city and I continued to the west suburbs. It was 4PM now and a bit colder. I was heading straight in to the dark clouds ahead and there was no question, I was about to get drenched. My grips were turned on high and my hands were toasty. I also has my Widder vest on. Then the rain started and accompanied me all the way home, but I was dry and warm, except for my gloves, since forgot to bring my rain gloves.

This was my first time riding in the rain with the ST3, and it handled pretty well. The only thing that was weird, when stopped with the engine running, I would have clouds of white steam floating up from the engine. The steam fogged up the inside of my wind screen while I sat at red lights. My other bikes never did that.

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