Safety wire to lock down the grip

Predator 2k is good. Lmk if you wanna sell the 35

Predator 2k works for warmers. Lmk if you wanna sell the 35. Too heavy of an oil may cause issues if you ever hit curbing. Kind of the point of emulators is have some high and low speed damping. Dont worry bout the exhaust melting the warmers. Singed at most :p

Of course man. You set me on the right track with the bar orientation, brake master reservoir, and clutch cable. I was super stumped about that clutch cable. The Vortex clutch lever feels really, really nice. Maybe I should have gone for a foldable one but I'm pretty happy with it for now. I held off on doing a brake lever since I'll probably (not this year) look into upgrading to a radial front brake master. There's just too many other things that I want to address first, and I feel pretty good on the brakes now with braided lines and Vesrah RJLs I'll do some research about the shift brace. I've literally never heard of one. I do feel like this bike upshifts harder than it's supposed to. My DL650 is like butter and this one is just.. not. I'm finding myself having to preload it sometimes. That may be down to the shift star or hopefully nothing worse internally. Idk much about transmissions. I do think I was overfilling my oil which was making things worse. Fender hole oval out--brilliant. Even 5mm more clearance seems like it'd give me a lot easier time getting that warmer on and off. It's a tight fit up front. Damper rods were drilled and filled when I bought it, yep. I plan to do more racing 100%. That one day was so much damn fun. I was nervous as shit with everything surrounding it, but once through turn 1 it just turned awesome. In like 8 track days and 2 riding classes, I dropped my time about 5 seconds from ~1:33 to 1:28. The second morning practice of the race day I was in the 1:24s, and I ran in the 1:24s at least one lap each race. So in 1 race day, I matched the time drop from all the track days. I may have literally had more open full out laps (no traffic) on that one day than all track days combined as well. Shit's expensive though, jesus. And I just realized I need to get a MyLaps transponder as well. Glad I didn't pick one up last year since CCS just switched this year. I'll put together the video from my first race day at some point... I just only took footage of my last race which I made my one only big error on (clipped foot on ground) and just went into survival mode. It's tough to even watch the video because I can see exactly how many places I can improve. It's way more obvious on image-stabilized video from the couch than it is in person though.

@@Mad8vCycles I didn't end up buying the Predator 3500W, if that's what you're referring to. I went there with the intention of buying it, but held off. If you happened to notice the little death machine in the video though... I *did* pick up a Predator 212cc engine I'm putting into my brother's minibike for xmas. Our plan is to have my 6'5" buddy ride it at Flat Out Friday where the Milwaukee Bucks play in February. He doesn't really know how to ride 2 wheels. There's a joke class that's "Pull Start Bikes Only", and we think it'd be hilarious as long as he doesn't die. If those bastards would ever get back to us about registration I'd start buying tickets!

This one recently got a "new" 1999 motor. I need to rebuild the transmission on the bike in this video since it won't shift right. May have also picked up another 1999 race bike this morning... Heh

Just feeling how much different your bike felt when I sat on it (and knowing how quick you are) verified that comfort and setup is likely going to be much more rewarding than any engine/intake/exhaust mods I could do. I just rewatched the footage from the last race in August and I'm getting absolutely walked by a KTM 390--a bike with more than 20 less hp. And I can see exactly where it's happening, but it's a whole lot different when you're on the bike vs. when you're watching an image-stabilized recording. I wish I would have taken footage from the first two races of that day--especially the rookie race. One of these days I'll finish the "my first race weekend" videos. Yea I'm ready to see you out there on your new Yamaha rocket ship! If you need somebody to hand out posters MA weekend, you just holler 😛

Haha thanks man I'll definitely have you on the list of people to help. Also, if you are in the market for a 2000w generator I'd highly recommend the Wen or Champion one. Also you'll be fine for the warmers, I ran the same warmers in my first gen. My exhaust was a little smaller but you shouldn't have an issue at all. Excited for all your upgrades like I said man. Looking forward to riding some together next season 🤙🤙.

@@Ryhno411 Yea, a 2000W or 2500W would be nice to have. Both those options you sent were less expensive than I was expecting--that's awesome. Maybe I just was overestimating how much generators cost. I'll do some more research to figure out if I'm best off getting a 2500W for a little more capacity. Might be useful in the event of a power outage at my house. My aquarium would appreciate having a backup in place which makes justifying buying a generator a little easier.

@@matttriestodothings ryan is a freak of nature dont listen to him :p just follow him as long as you can

@@Mad8vCycles The easiest way to follow him is by putting on tennis shoes and going up on the tower where you can see half the track as a spectator.

I'm pretty sure you're usually the one right behind me yelling "JUMP!" 😛

"Just cause someone jumps..ima take a running start"

Thanks Bill. I'm liking it so far. The bike has been great. Made it thru my first race season in one piece. Now I've gotta work on going faster, hah.

Hah, I had cleaned the tank previously trying to find out how deep the scratches were that the tether from my Helite Airbag clip were leaving. I keep forgetting that I want to get a center tank grip there. The whole bike with stock fairings was pretty immaculate until I took a tumble at road America last year. I love some of those fun color combos with Yamaha. The bright colors against black frame. They've got some awesome teal and yellows. The coils and hopefully everything else (mechanically) should hopefully be good to go on the VF. just have to figure out what to do with the painting of the tank and fairings. It should be a really awesome looking machine if I can manage not to screw that up too much.

I need to get a thing of Aqua Net (I think that's what it's called) hair spray for this purpose. When my grandpa and I used to build potato guns, that sticky stuff worked better than gasoline hah. The issue I was having with the grips I think has to do with the plastic ends on the woodcraft clipon bars. I even tried with WD40 just to see if I could slip the things on and I couldn't. I ended up using a combination of air compressor and rubber mallet. ... now that I think of it, I bet I could have just installed the grips from the other side really easily before even mounting the bars. I didn't even consider that. 100% will get some hair spray and try that next time, thanks Jonah. Hopefully I'll get to do an STT session at Autobahn this year. I've never been to that track before.

@@matttriestodothings Sure thing. Autobahn is definitely another fun track in the Midwest.

@@jonaht72 CCS has their first race weekend there in April. It's gonna be like 40°F. I've never run there. I want to do a full rookie season. I'm trying to figure out if it's smart to do the autobahn weekend there. Was hoping maybe STT had a track day there before but that's just so early in the season so I imagine it's not profitable to run one then and their first weekend is later in May. Oh well. Got some time to think on it.

@@matttriestodothings Good luck with whatever you decide and especially your rookie season. I’m aiming to get my race license this year and possibly race with CCS so maybe I can get a tow some day.

@@jonaht72 Oh trust me I'm not gonna be in front of anybody. I'd definitely recommend doing the Learning Curves course and getting your license tho. I dropped as much time in the first two 15 min practice sessions at Blackhawk as I had in the previous 8 track days for the year. And it's just a cool experience. I say go for it!

It's missing one though. I was jealous of your DrippinWet logo this year. I should hopefully have a bird-related one on the bike next time you see me 😁

@@matttriestodothings hahaha! Nice!!!! Do it

@@JPRATT537 I talked to Chris tonight about it on the phone. Let him know I'm in no rush since... snow. But seeing yours on your bike I just kept thinking, damn, that's pretty cool! Probably adds some hp too I'm sure.

@@matttriestodothings are you having him make your number plays too?

@@JPRATT537 number plates? You don't think they look good already?! Kidding. Yes, that's what I originally emailed him about trying to source. I also filled the email with a bunch of angry Canadian Gooses asking if that might be a good starting point for a logo, lol.

Oh yea. Strong like bull. 😅

Hah. Bill Burr is from the east coast, a super successful comedian, and knows how to fly a helicopter. I'm from the midwest and still learning how to ride a motorcycle. I'm definitely not Bill Burr.

I'm curious--what would different pre-load adjusters do for me? I did cut the existing spacers down by about 7mm this summer because I had to have the preload adjusters completely out to get the static sag right.

@@matttriestodothings See if Dave Moss has info in what to do for these. I actually messaged him about my MT07 and he spent several messages with me tailoring my front shock setup beyond his youtube videos to where I wanted it and it was solid.

@@AICD1999 I've watched his videos relevant to the SV650--there's only so much that can be done with traditional damper rod forks and emulators. What types of recommendations did he have for your Yamaha? I think I can dial in the fork oil weight (just need new crush washers to get here). The remaining variables that I'm going to struggle with because I just can't tell the difference on minor changes are: fork pre-load, emulator pre-load, and fork oil height. Since those latter two are influenced by the oil's viscosity, I probably need to have that resolved first.

@@matttriestodothings So we just talked about being more precise with the technical aspects . I went up in the fork oil weight, added a good preload adjuster, and talked about the spacer modification. What we came up with was adding the volume of the spacer cut back into the forks in the oil. I actually added about 70% of the spacer volume back. Then adjust the sag with the preload in neutral position so I could add and subtract as I saw fit. I had no front end issues after that.

lol. My competition is corroded bolts and pawgs with onlyfans accounts. I already know how I stack up against them.