Woohooo! They're finally done!
After a lot of screaming and breaking myself, then taking a weekend to enjoy the company of abehusky (thanks for coming out to see us, Abe, we had a great time visiting with you!) and then more screaming and breaking myself, the luggage is finally on the Fazer. I threw in a cut with a lot of photos and descriptions of why things didn't go as planned. All in all I think the givi trekker cases came out looking pretty slick on the yammy:)
Long hauls here we come!
So, the initial problems with mounting everything aren't even evident in the photos. The real problems were givi's absolute lack of any respectable directions whatsoever, and some poor machining practices on the mounting hardware. A new mount point on the sub-frame needed to be created, which was accomplished by the simple task of inserting wedge-expanding plugs into the hollow tube subframe. Unfortunately, the screws don't turn very freely inside of the plugs. The plugs needed to be pounded into the subframe with a hammer, and then the screws wouldn't turn freely enough inside of the plugs to draw the plugs in... so the whole assembly would just spin freely and not tighten. This required some innovation to get everything to set properly.Immediately, upon looking at the rest of the mounting hardware, I knew there was going to be a problem. This is a photo of the successfully mounted brackets:
The item of note in this photo is the black metal band coming down around the near side of the exhaust. It became apparent that the mounting kit for the Fazer was in fact specifically designed for an OEM fazer. Nowhere was there mention that aftermarket exhausts or a fender eliminator kit (both of which had been applied to my bike when I bought it used) rendered the mounting kit more or less useless and unmountable. It turned out that 2 out of 3 anchor points for the side racks are dependent on having the stock exhaust and fender. Not to be daunted, I loosened the slip-ons, rotated them 90 degrees inward, and crammed the mounting brackets on them anyway. I ended up having to run a bolt through the bottom of the brackets to simulate where they were supposed to attach to the fender as well. This ended up rotating the brackets just such that the cases, when pressed into place, would press against the tie-down bars on the back seat about 1mm before actually clicking into place. So additionally, i had to put washers in with the kit's spacers to press out where the pannier mounts to the bracket so the cases would even attach. All that done though, the exhaust actually looks a little better than it did when I bought the bike, and now the cases fit:D Now all I need is somewhere to go:X :D
Long hauls here we come!
So, the initial problems with mounting everything aren't even evident in the photos. The real problems were givi's absolute lack of any respectable directions whatsoever, and some poor machining practices on the mounting hardware. A new mount point on the sub-frame needed to be created, which was accomplished by the simple task of inserting wedge-expanding plugs into the hollow tube subframe. Unfortunately, the screws don't turn very freely inside of the plugs. The plugs needed to be pounded into the subframe with a hammer, and then the screws wouldn't turn freely enough inside of the plugs to draw the plugs in... so the whole assembly would just spin freely and not tighten. This required some innovation to get everything to set properly.Immediately, upon looking at the rest of the mounting hardware, I knew there was going to be a problem. This is a photo of the successfully mounted brackets:
The item of note in this photo is the black metal band coming down around the near side of the exhaust. It became apparent that the mounting kit for the Fazer was in fact specifically designed for an OEM fazer. Nowhere was there mention that aftermarket exhausts or a fender eliminator kit (both of which had been applied to my bike when I bought it used) rendered the mounting kit more or less useless and unmountable. It turned out that 2 out of 3 anchor points for the side racks are dependent on having the stock exhaust and fender. Not to be daunted, I loosened the slip-ons, rotated them 90 degrees inward, and crammed the mounting brackets on them anyway. I ended up having to run a bolt through the bottom of the brackets to simulate where they were supposed to attach to the fender as well. This ended up rotating the brackets just such that the cases, when pressed into place, would press against the tie-down bars on the back seat about 1mm before actually clicking into place. So additionally, i had to put washers in with the kit's spacers to press out where the pannier mounts to the bracket so the cases would even attach. All that done though, the exhaust actually looks a little better than it did when I bought the bike, and now the cases fit:D Now all I need is somewhere to go:X :D