Winter Mods

At work yesterday, two regular connmuters "unveiled" their winter mods
to their bikes. (I.E., they rode their bikes to work and parked them
in the reserved m/c spaces, where all of us riders could see them.)

One guy, with a HD Road King, had had 18-inch wheels and low profile
radial tires installed. I've seen this done in lots of magazines, but

That mod is usually done with wire wheels. Are you sure they're radials?

Uh, no. Maybe I'll take a closer look next time!

The owner of the local tyre shoppe usually tries to talk people out of the 18 on the rear as:

1. Nobody can see the rear wheel on a bagger.
2. The smaller tire cuts in to your load carrying capacity.

this was perhaps the first bike I'd seen close-up that had this mod.
Frankly, the look of those tall wheels and low profile tires on a
retrostyle bike like the Road King is kind of visually jarring to my
eye. Takes some getting used to, I suppose. I have no idea what
effect it has on the bike's handling, since I don't know if the
overall tire circumference and wheel/tire weight are dramatically
changed or not.

The other bike is a Yamaha YZF R-1, and it now sports polished wheels,
swingarm, and rider and passenger foot controls. It looks totally

Passenger foot controls?

The hangars for the passenger pegs, iirc.

The only winter mod I did to my Harley was a geared cam drive system
(instead of the stock chains). No visual diffrence at all from
*outside* the bike though!

I'm having cam gears put on right now. How much noise do you notice?

Wild, man. You're a wild man. You're doing wild modifications to
your bike. Please, please, don't hurt yourself on that wildly
modified motorcycle!

Thank ya, Tim. I'll try to comply.

Yes. For the ejection seat! :-)

"bling!"

Meanwhile, I had my front fender painted over the winter!

I cleaned the bugs off my headlight.

Actually I did a bit more, but mostly on the maintenance and repair
side than mods.

You sir are a trend setter! All I did was rake the sheepskin cover on my seat.
;^)