July 25th, 2008 ydant
I recently embarked on the installation of the SW-MOTECH Side Racks on my 2002 (1st generation) SV650n (naked). The installation is fairly straightforward, but I had some questions going into it, and I could not find any resources on the internet concerning the installation. The only installation booklet I could find is in German and is on the same Twisted Throttle product page.
The bags I chose were the Givi E360 bags. This was a hard choice as I didn’t want to choose a bag so small that it would be useless, but I also didn’t want to sacrifice width more than absolutely necessary.
The key questions I had going in were:
- How difficult is the process?
Not very. Future installations would take well under an hour.
- Is the stock plastic fender necessary?
Yes. See below.
- How much weight will I be adding to my bike when the bags are not mounted?
The brackets and bolts that remain on the bike weigh just under 4lbs.
- How much weight will I be adding to my bike when the bags are mounted?
All told, shipping weight was 40lbs. Not much of that was packing materials.
- How much width am I adding to my bike? How manageable will it be?
About 18″ from the widest points without bags (the foot pegs) to the widest point with bags.
- How much will this affect handling?
Still not sure. The bike seems more floaty now, but I didn’t adjust pre-load. I’ll have to evaluate this later.
If you have a 2nd generation SV650, then you can find a similar walkthrough on the SVRider forums.
The materials (minus the actual racks) are lined up first to make sure everything is present.
The brackets that come just for mounting the racks are very solid pieces of metal coated with a hard black paint. They feel very sturdy and are probably significantly stronger than the rest of the system. The failure will not come from these brackets.
The brackets included with the system:
- 2 top grab-rail mounts (straight black metal).
- 2 turn-signal relocation brackets (S shaped black metal)
- 1 license plate bracket (V-shaped black metal, connects bags to fender).
- 2 large rectangular metal brackets with three arms off of them - The bags mount to these.
- 2 passenger peg brackets (F shaped, mount to passenger foot pegs)
All necessary supporting hardware is included with the system. All of the nuts are metric sizes and all of the nuts use hex bits.
The mounting hardware for these brackets included with the system is:
- Grab rail hardware:
- 2 long bolts - these replace the stock grab rail bolts.
- 2 short spacers - these go under the brackets to keep them off of the fairing plastic.
- License plate bracket hardware:
- 2 long skinny bolts
- 4 washers
- 2 locking nuts
- Turn signal relocation hardware:
- 2 big bolts
- 2 big washers
- 2 big nuts
- 2 small bolts
- 2 small washers
- 2 small nuts
- Passenger foot peg bracket hardware:
- 2 bolts - these replace the stock bolts
The instructions included are
very unclear, unless you can read German. I can not.
I did manage to partially translate into English using Google Translate, but the results were non-spectacular.
Luckily, the steps are not very difficult, especially if you do not insist on trying to use the turn-signal relocation brackets on the passenger grab-rail (this took the most of my time before I realized my mistake).
Step 1 - Install Passenger Foot Peg Brackets
This part is the easiest by far.
1) Remove the two bolts holding the passenger foot peg.
2) Install bracket with replacement bolts (slightly longer than the stock ones) and washers. Proper order is <inside> > bolt > washer > bracket > bike > passenger peg > <outside>.
Be sure to use blue (removable) thread locker to make sure these bolts do not wiggle back out.
These are very obviously installed in one way only:
Both sides are exactly the same, excepting the muffler holding the right side in place.
Step 2 - Install the Grab-Rail Bracket
The passenger grab rail bracket is actually a lot easier to install than I originally thought. As I mentioned previously, I was trying to use the S shaped turn signal relocation bracket here, but you need to use the straight brackets. The diagrams provided by SW-MOTECH really could make this clearer.
Once you have the right parts and order, it’s just a matter of coordination of a bunch of parts that don’t want to line up properly.
The correct order of parts is:
> Bolt > Grab Rail > Bracket > Spacer > Rubber Grommet >
Use the long replacement bolts here.
Leave the bolts finger tight until you get the entire system mounted, as you may need to shift the brackets slightly.
Step 3 - License plate bracket
Unfortunately, the previous owner had chopped the bike’s fender to pieces for appearance reasons. It was necessary to order a new fender, as part of the rack’s support system involves the rear fender. There is a single bar which attaches to the license plate bracket portion of the fender. The installation here is straightforward - just unbolt the license plate, and then remove the license plate bracket. Install the long black metal bar behind the fender so that the final mounted installation is rear>license plate bracket>fender>side-rack bracket->inside. Be sure to use the replacement bolts, washers, and locking nuts. (The long skinny bolts).
I do not have the stock license plate bracket in these pictures, so the license plate is bolted directly to the bolts provided by SW-MOTECH.
Step 4 - Turn Signal Relocation
Not having the stock signals or stock fender, I didn’t need to do this step…
That means some left over parts:
(Stock bolts also “left over” pictured here as well)
Step 5 - Mount the Side Brackets
The final step is to mount the side-brackets on the mounting hardware. The long arm goes down and towards the front. The side-brackets always go on top or in front of the mounting tabs. The mounting screws thread through, with the small metal washers between the side-racks and the mounting tabs as so:
The first time you put the washers on, they will take a little force to get over the metal tabs.
You will need a screwdriver or coin to tighten the mounting screws.
Fully mounted:
Step 6 - SW-MOTECH to Givi Adapters
The Givi adapter kit is also straightforward, although the picture doesn’t quite match the actual hardware. Particularly, bolt holes aren’t labeled where they physically are:
The mounting hardware installed:
The key differences from the diagram involve the mounting of the rubber grommets. In the diagram they are shown as going into the far holes on the left and right sides - in reality they belong on the inside holes. Also, the plastic piece on the top should be mounted so that the notch is pointed downward.
Step 7 - Mount Luggage
The luggage mounts very easily. Make sure the key is unlocked, and slide the bottom part onto the two pegs. The top part clips right in with a light push.
The luggage are Givi E360 cases, also purchased from TwistedThrottle.com. Each case is supposed to hold 40L and can hold one large Shoei RF-1000 full sized helmet if you remove the document holder (which I see little use for anyway).
All Finished
Width Concerns
There’s no way around it, the E360 cases are wide. This definitely adds a lot of width to the bike, to the point I was initially concerned that it would be more of an annoyance than it helped. After a couple of days riding with the bike, I can safely say that the convenience factor is significant - and probably enough to overcome the extra width. An ideal situation would be to have support for a tail bag as well - and switch out the side racks for just one E360 on the tail when you don’t need all of the storage space.
In terms of hard numbers, here’s what I measured:
Stock bike at widest spot (foot pegs): 24″
Just the racks (no bags): 19″
E360 bags installed: 42″
So approximately 18″ extra width in the worst place possible - behind you. It’s a lot easier to evaluate if you’ll hit something if the front is wider.
Handling Concerns
As I mentioned at the top, the bike feels more floaty with these bags. I think that’s partly due to not adjusting the pre-load, which I will do and re-evaluate. The bike also seems more susceptible to cross winds, which makes plenty of sense (bigger surface area). There’s definitely more weight in the back (remember, 40lbs empty), so it’s much more prone to lifting the front wheel under hard acceleration. Otherwise, handling seems perfectly fine.
One huge benefit is I feel a lot less constricted than I did with the soft tail bag on the passenger seat. I can move around and the bag’s not constantly sliding into me. That’s a huge benefit for enjoying the ride.
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March 31st, 2008 ydant
This project is largely irrelevant, as the WMATA website now has a live Google Maps version of their rail map with the same exact information available. I did this long before they provided such a service and keep it around just because I found the project interesting when I did it.
Having access to GIS software well before Google Maps made public consumer mapping popular and prevalent, I got curious as to how closely the public maps provided by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) matched the physical layout of the tracks. Obviously the rail map provided by the service is fairly stylized. A full and clearer image of this map can be obtained by going to the WMATA Rail Map on their website. I’ve shrunk it here to hopefully fit under fair use and not get harassed for copyright infringement.
My first thought was that the outer stations seem to be a lot closer together than they are in actuality. I also wondered how much obfuscation was done for security reasons. The stations are all public knowledge, of course, but sometimes these things are hidden. The actual underground rail paths are still an unknown to me, of course, but I imagine those are public record as well.
I started by parsing out the addresses from the Station Listing on the website. Each station is in its own page and so I just pulled down all of the pages and parsed out the addresses. This gave me a listing of station “colors” and addresses.
Next I took the addresses and geocoded them using ESRI’s ArcMap product. ArcMap is a professional level GIS software package that offers data processing, mapping, and geocoding support. These days, the same functionality as I used ArcMap for could easily be found in free services available on the internet. Yahoo, for example, offers a free geocoding API that can easily be used to convert these addresses into real world coordinates. Google Maps, or OpenStreetMap are both free mapping interfaces.
Once I had geocoded all of the addresses I had a list of points that made up the station lines. With a little connecting (manually done, given the small number of points), I ended up with a vector map of the network.
Finally, I overlayed the vector data I had just generated on some base map data of the area that I had available from another project at work.
And, for reference, the map provided by WMATA follows.
This pretty much confirmed my suspicions. The WMATA map takes a lot of liberty with the Orange line (those stops west of Rosslyn are pretty far apart), but overall does try to give an indication of how far apart two stations on the same line are. It’s very difficult to produce an accurate map that is quickly legible and that also conveys the important information quickly. Most users of the metro system don’t care how far apart two stations are, so not as much emphasis is placed on preserving this information. All in all, I think they did a pretty good job.
I’m curious if the NYC subway preserves this information more effectively. Given the size of the railway railway transit system, the maps are larger and much more detailed, which allows for more accurate preservation of the true spatial information.
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June 17th, 2007 ydant
This is meant to serve as a simple step-by-step instruction for cutting the springs on an EX500
in order to change the spring rate and feel of the motorcycle’s handling. This is a poor excuse
for getting the proper springs, and is not an exact science. More expensive options will potentially
provide significantly better (and more predictable) handling due to the springs not necessarily having
linear response and being more accurately engineered. Also keep in mind that spring characteristics
change over use, so any calculations you make will be affected by your specific springs. Finally, the
spacers used in this example have the potential of failing, which could lead to disasterous results.
This was originally posted by me in this thread
on cutting ex500 springs. I wanted to compensate for the lack of good pictures available on the
topic. There is a wealth of information on this subject in that thread and in others on that
board, so be sure to read up on everything.
The original post follows.
I did this today. Drained out maybe 50ml of oil - which explains why I was bottoming out under moderate braking. There’s definite a difference (and, I think, an improvement). At the very least, I can lock up the front at 30mph without bottoming out - a huge improvement! The roads were too dark when I went for a test ride, so it was hard to really test the change out.For other people who can’t really visualize things, I took some pictures. Hopefully these help!
Necessary Parts / Tools
- fork oil - about 800ml, so get the liter bottle
- a gear puller for removing the plug
- a couple of feet of 3/4″ PVC pipe (you won’t use it all, but it’s best to have extra)
- something to cut the springs - I used a dremmel and a cutting wheel
- 6mm allen wrench to remove the handle bars
- 10mm socket/wrench to remove the drain plug (1st gen only)
Step 1 - Remove handlebars
Get rid of the two bolts pictured below. Pull the caps off first, of course.
Step 2 - Remove the cap on the shock
This is where the gear puller comes in handy. You could do this with a screw driver, but the gear puller is SO much easier. Thanks, FOG.
You’re pushing it down to get to the metal ring that holds the cap from popping out. Once the cap’s out of the way, remove the clip:
Step 3 - Remove the cap
Now that the clip’s out of the way, unscrew the puller. The spring will push the cap out:
Step 4 - Extract the spring
There’s a lot of it - 20.1875″ worth on my ‘93. The next generation has a bit shorter spring.
Step 5 - Remove the oil (drain, pour, or suck)
If you’re lucky enough to have a drain hole, use it. If not, follow FOG’s instructions (search) on putting your own drain plug in. Or suck the fluid out.
Step 6 - Cut the springs
Use the calculations from the thread on cutting ex500 springs (original spring length / new spring length X original spring rate = new spring rate) to figure out how much to cut. It’s easy enough to do again but hard to undo, so be conservative.
Step 7 - Cut the spacer
Again, read the rest of this thread (and the cutting spacers thread as well).
Step 8 - Refill with oil
Pour in the proper amount of oil. Read the rest of the thread and your service manual for the proper amounts.
Step 9 - Reassemble
Spring, washers, spacer, plug, and push it all back together. Put the clip back in.
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June 22nd, 2006 ydant
What follows is a general walkthrough/HOWTO for constructing a fiberglass subwoofer enclosure box that will nest within the spare tire well of a car. The car in question being a Subaru WRX Sport Wagon, although the principles will carry over to other cars equally well. Goals:
- Keep the spare tire
- Allow the spare to be accessed with little difficulty
- Sealed enclosure big enough for one 10″ subwoofer
- “stealth” install - shouldn’t be obvious from an initial glance
Step 1 - Create the Base
To support my fiberglassing efforts, I need to use the spare as a mold so that everything fits perfectly. Since I want the box to be flat across the top of the sub I use cardboard to make a platform. The entire tire is then taped with duct tape to ensure no resin leaks through. The frame was created out of 1″x2″ board. The 2″ was too tall, so the boards were shaved down partly. The goal was to have the top of these boards run level with the lip in the styrofoam.
Step 2 - Protect the Car
I doubt I need to stress this, but protect your car. You don’t need much, but cover the areas where the resin might go with plastic or SOMETHING. It will go everywhere. Oh year, wear old clothes and shoes. Long sleeves help. Latex gloves are a necessity - you will go through at least 20 doing just one box… Buy a cheap 3m mask - about $30.
Step 2b - Looseners
You want the glass to come out of the tire well, so line the tire well with aluminium foil. This will come out super easy. But you don’t want the foil to stick to the glass, so tape it down with painer’s masking tape (the blue stuff). You don’t want the glass to stick to the tape so spray it down real well with silicon spray (or some other lubricant). Believe me, this will give you decent results. Just aluminum foil will never come all off, even if you lube it.
Step 3 - Glass the Box
Just pictures of the glassed box. Fiberglass is easy to work with - tons of information on the net. Just search around. I did one layer up the sides - don’t skimp on the resin, as the fiberglass is held to the sides by ONLY the resin. Two layers everywhere else so it will hold its shape after you pull it out. The goal is to do as little glass work in the car as possible.
Step 4 - Remove the Glass and the Tire
If your work is stiff enough, take it all out of the car and let the car air out. Whew. What a nasty smell!
Step 5 - Clean your glass
Now’s the time to expose the fiberglass for what it truely is. IF NOT STIFF ENOUGH, ADD MORE LAYERS. Peel all of that foil and tape off! I used the 409 to cut through the silicon spray so it wouldn’t feel greasy. Whoops - looks like I didn’t cover the entire bottom. See the holes? Fixable, though - just put a piece of tape on one side and glass the other.
Step 6 - Finished Product and Strength
I followed up the original two layers of cloth with one more cloth layer and one layer of mat. I also used some remaining resin to coat the bottom part. I filled some of the cracks between the wood and glass with resin to help strengthen the bond. As you can see in the picture, it is very strong. Remember, the only thing holding the glass and wood together is the resin.
Step 7 - Measure the internal volume
Subwoofers work best if they have the right size box. So we need to measure to see how much we actually have. Water works best - the fiberglass is waterproof. If you get leaks, you need to seal them, or your sealed box isn’t. Other important measurements I didn’t do:
- Depth - for top mounting
- Clearance on top - don’t want the sub to hit the cover when it’s closed - may have to recess the speaker by building a lip inside the box lid…
I came up with two measurements:
Step 8 - Testing the fit
Now that it’s all together, test it to make sure it fits in the car. It does! Woo!
Step 9 - Paint
I got bored, so I painted the bottom with some spray I had lying around. I figured the yellow would help make up for the performance hit of the extra weight…
Step 10 - Redo the top
I eventually managed to purchase a driver for my subwoofer, and realized a fatal flaw in my design. The sub is taller than I ever imagined it would be. I had to work out some way to solve this problem without having to redo the entire box. Since the original design used a top of 1/2″ MDF, I realized I could gain 1/2″ of clearance by getting rid of the top. So I decided to replace the THICK MDF with THIN glass. The first step is to make a support for the driver. I did that by cutting a ring out of MDF and supporting it using dowels. I tried to make the top of the support level with the top of the frame of the box.
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As you can see, the dowels are enough to support the driver. With the extra support of the glass, there will be no support problems. I drilled 4 holes in the bottom of the box and screwed the dowels into the bottom to keep the whole thing from moving around. Glassing the top is simple - the only unusual part is making something to lay the glass on. Take some old t-shirts and stretch them across the top - tight. Staple, tape, or glue the shirt around the edges. Soak the shirt in resin and let it dry. When it dries it will be hard and ready for layers of glass.
Don’t bother glassing over the hole. Cut the hole and the edges between layers to keep buildup from getting too bad.
The End?
I finally got my driver and amp. Driver is the Infinity Perfect 10.1d. Amp is the Rockford Fosgate 3001 running @ 300W RMS @ 2Ohms over the two voice coils. Sound is exactly what I was looking for. Loud enough to feel inside the car, and barely noticable outside of the car. I usually run at about 3/4-1/2 power. I just wanted some bottom end in the system, and now I have it. I still need to finish up the box - clean it up a little bit and then cover it. System is installed in the semi-finished state.
Update (Sept, 2009)
I haven’t had this installed in my car for a few years (and I’ve sold the original car). The system was fine, but I had an amplifier stolen by a shop and I never bothered to replace it. I’ve been asked for finished pictures. I don’t have any of the sub in the car, but here are a couple of the sub out of the car. 
Please feel free to send me comments. subwoofer@ydant.com.
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August 1st, 2004 ydant
I hate maintaining my cats’ litter box, and so I turned to the Littermaid Automated Litterbox to solve my problems. Unfortunately, this box still has the unfortunate problem of needing to be attended to every couple of days. So, like any good hacker I went and hacked my cats’ litterbox.
The source product:
At $100 or so at the local pet store it seems like a lot of money, but it’s really worth it. I’ve used one through two sets of cats and for almost 2 years now. No problems whatsoever.
The only problem I have is with the crappy trays it comes with to collect t3h crap. They only hold about 2 days worth for my 2 cats, and are a pain in the ass to clean. Enter the mod bug. ;)
Take a simple organizer from Lowes ($10) and cut a hole out of it with the dremel:
Find a tub to fit inside the drawer and line with a trash bag:
Installed:
End result? A litter box that doesn’t have to be touched (except to add more fresh litter) for weeks on end. When it does come time to clean, just pull open the drawer, and grab the trash bag.
Daily maintenance is just a matter of adding some more litter as it the cats use it up.
It seems I wasn’t the only person to have this idea, as evidenced by this review of the LitterMaid on Amazon.com.
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