I had the shop check my wheel balance and also give the bike a quick inspection since a friend and I are planning a long weekend (departing on Wednesday, get back Saturday night) up to the part of east TN we are from (Tri-cities - he's from Gray, TN and I'm from Elizabethton.) That was earlier this week. The back was ok but they balanced the front wheel and that took care of the annoying vibration I was getting at highway speed. Being my first bike I just thought it was normal riding a "smallish-for-speed" V-twin at highway speed until several other V-Star 650 owners told me it wasn't so I had the balance checked. It used to start becoming noticeable in the 50s, annoying in the 60s, and by 70-75 I couldn't read road signs until I was right on top of them. After the balance I took her up to 85 and the problem is gone. It's smoother at 85 by far than it used to be at 70.
Then this weekend I installed a Trucklite LED headlight. This is the same one Kuryakyn sells as their Phase 7 for $299, but is $160 from Amazon. I LOVE this thing! It has a brighter "hot streak" - not exactly a spot - right in the middle of the pattern which I can see might not be ideal for use in trucks and Jeeps where a lot of these are, but on a bike it shines right where the wheel will go without evasive maneuvers. It's such a huge step up from the stock halogen it's almost unbelievable. The low beam is probably 60 - 70% better (doesn't shine farther out without realigning but is wide, brighter, and cooler color temperature) and the high beam - holy midnight sun Batman!
Then today my friend I'm doing the ride with came over and we installed an under body LED light kit, like the one he has on his Vulcan 2000. It looks cool, but way more important anyone who doesn't see you with these things on is asleep at the wheel. The thing has an astounding number of selectable colors (via a tiny fob sized remote) not all of which are legal everywhere. It has several blue for example, which isn't legal anywhere that I'm aware of. My bike is red and looks good with the red setting, which is legal here in Georgia as long as it's not flashing, but not legal, flashing or not, up in TN where we are going. My friend's Vulcan is blue and silver so he can't use blue and settled on green, which is legal everywhere, or everywhere we checked anyway (the southeast where we'll ride.) There are also various flashing and fading modes.
After we finally got it done we rode to a near by great Mexican restaurant and I bought him dinner for his help.
Oh BTW - on the left side we did mount an LED strip to the gas tank. We didn't want to, but spent a half hour trying to figure out how to get some mounted reasonably close to that area so it looked somewhat symmetrical with the other side. There just isn't. On the other side we have them around the fixed part of the breather but there's nothing equivalent on the left. So removing the tank for work will require snipping two zip ties and unplugging that one, then plugging it back in and re-zip tying to replace.
No way I could post all the photos I've take, which still isn't all the colors, but here's his bike and mine parked in the parking lot, both on green. (I am not too close to the van behind, that's a camera illusion, I was well inside the white line. I pulled in first and got over to leave him room.)
Some more photos of my bike in my driveway tonight with green and red activated, and with new headlight on, though it just doesn't do it justice just shining against my house like that.
Oh, I may reverse the bags finally, since these lights really mean the reflector patches I have on the backs of them are, if not redundant, at least not doing so much. I can put smaller patches on the new "front." Yes, I know they look backwards right now. Long story.
