So one of the things I have learned over the years is that if you are going to put in long days in the saddle you better have a comfy saddle. So after watching my buddy on one of our trips move about a lot and tell me how the seat was not so comfortable I decided the first thing I should do is invest in a good comfy seat. My wife had within the past year had Renazco build her a seat for her BMW X-country which she seems to like a lot so I figured I would give them a try. I kept it simple with black material and orange stitching and also had them lower it by 1 inch as SXC's are known for being tall bikes and I am not particularly tall at 5' 10". I also had them put gripper material on the sides so I would have something to hang onto when things get rough. It took quite some time to get it done as it seems that Renazco always has a several month backlog, but I finally got it back and it looks pretty damn good and seems to be comfortable. Since I haven't ridden the bike much I will have to provide more feedback later as I get it broken in.
So even though I have had the bike for a little while I have put few miles on it as I am in the process of getting it ready to ride the Rockies and the some of the Western states. I picked it up from a friend of mine who had moved and just wanted to get rid of it since he had other bike to ride. Since then he picked up a super nice Husqvarna TC 449 which he uses to ride the tougher stuff out West. The funny part is I am going to ship the bike to his house in Colorado and ride with him...reunited! :-) I am in the process of going through the bike from front to back and head to toe and replacing or repairing anything which may give me problems. My concern is that since it will be so far away I won't have the luxury of working on it in the detail I normally would so when it leaves it needs to be right.....maybe damn near perfect especially since my plan is to just show up and ride.
I have done a few other things to the bike since picking it up but this is the first documentation of mods so far. So one of the more important things is how am I going to carry my stuff. I kicked around many different ways such as a Giant Loop but I decided against it as I never had any luck waterproofing it, but it did hold water well. I considered hard bags but I decided against it for this bike as it just seemed like a waste of funds. So what I finally did decide to do was use the Wolfman soft bags that I use on my DRZ which have served me pretty well. They were a little weird at first with all the straps needed for closure and securing them to the bike but I quickly mastered that on a 10 day trip. They are easy to get into and pretty easy to remove from the bike when you want to take them into a hotel or something. Now the question became on how to mount them....do I make a rack for the bike since I picked up some hoops from the guy who used to make racks for Wolfman, he has since retired, or just buy a set? Well the question answered itself one day when a guy had a brand new Touratech pannier rack for sale and it was $100.00 cheaper than buying from Touratech. SOLD and done! Now I just need to install them which seems relatively simple other than I recently had ankle surgery to repair a torn ligament and as my surgeon said "shredded" tendon. I finally completed the install tonight after working on it for two weeks just a little at a time or I really should say tolerate since surgery. I even installed a Touratech luggage rack extension while I was at it so that my dry bag would have some place to sit. I think I can safely say for their being so few bolts it sure was a pain to get them all to line up, can you say frustrating....I sure can! Everything is now on and Loctited in place so that the mighty single cylinder motorcycle doesn't shake the bolts out. |