Synthia the SpYder mods....Let the farkling begin !
Yeah named the SpYder - "Synthia". So, first round:
1) Spyderpops rockguard, there are paved roads throughout where I live except for an 800 foot stretch to access my property. So before I ever rode it, (trailered it home), I installed this, cheap insurance. BTW its a 10 mm socket/wrench to remove the nuts from the stock belt guard.
2) Quick disconnect pigtail for my trickle charger. Big believer in these, have had on previous two wheelers and really extends life of battery. Come home, open frunk and plug in. Easy-peasy.
3) Chrome LED license plate frame. THIS HAS TWO SETTINGS ONE FOR RUNNING LIGHTS AND ONE FOR BRAKE LIGHTS. Its too low IMO for brake lights but I wanted the brightness so wired the brake light side to the plate light. Much more visible. A high mount brake light will come in the future.
4) LED strip turn signals on mirrors. A four inch LED strip on the bottom of the mirror. Hard to see the green indicator during the day and at night gives additional visibility. Worse part of install was removing and re-installing the mirrors. I am going to fix that mickey mouse clip arrangement in the near future.
5) Right side mirror top post bracket broke and like a lot of others I was not pleased with how the mirrors are mounted. So...fabricated 3 clips, the top one is essentially vertical, the two on bottom are approx. 90 degrees.
Took some tweaking but mirror now slides over the top bracket and the bottom brackets are level with bottom of mirror trim. The tweaking allows the two bottom brackets to fit inside an existing slot in the mirror. I carefully drilled a small pilot hole (after measuring three times) through the black trim on the bottom of the mirror up through the bottom bracket. I then used a small self tapping screw with a large neoprene faced metal washer to secure the mirror.
Screw cannot be seen unless u bend down and look under the mirror and is nice and secure. Also - removed the 3 clip plates from the inside of the mirror that are no longer needed.
Perhaps not the most elegant solution but it works for me.
6) Bajarons sway bar- As many say, do it when you can take your time, I did not and was a bit frustrated. But it is on.
A couple of tips that may help others:
Removing the #23 bolt and #42 nut in order to remove the grill moulding, drove me nuts. Looking straight on as per the diagram in the instructions I could not see it, is actually covered . Finally saw it from underneath and removed a push pin to get a wrench on it better. The purple wrench shows the area in question and then the bolt exposed.
Removing the heim end links - takes a 13 mm wrench, actually two. Two ratchet end wrenches, if you have them would work much better than two open end or box end due to the space constraints.
Jacking it up to the required 20-22 inches is quite interesting...I lowered it back down onto blocks as soon as I could. I saw another members set up, if I had to do it again, I'd do the same, jack and put all three wheels on blocks, jack again, more blocks. The pic shows it stable, I had to raise it up another foot over what it shown to slid the bar out.
7) Rivco heel toe shifter. Well made, easy install but not thrilled with, might be better with floorboards. Have small feet and getting off peg to use heel shifter part is clumsy at best.
8) Drink holder. Had the holder from a previous bike, ordered the SpYder specific bracket and there ya go !