Someday, My Spring Will Come.

OK, so I’m sick and tired of winter. It seems every time I think things are getting better, Mother Nature dumps another coat of snow on us. At this rate, I’ll have to get studded snow tires for the bike if I want to get it out of hibernation any day soon. Yeah, I know: it’s only February. Maybe it’s just a bad bout of cabin fever.

Whatever, if I can’t ride it, at least I can fiddle with it. Starting this weekend I’m gonna start doing some prep work and little mods to the Silver Strom that I always mean to do during riding season, but never have the time because… well, I’m riding!

First off is the wiring. I’ve added some farkles on the bike over the years, and the wiring – although functional and safe – isn’t very elegant: inline fuses, oddly routed wires, etc. In short, it’s a mess. So I’ve ordered a new AP-1 auxiliary fuse panel from Centech, and once I get it there’ll be a stripshow in the garage (not me, the bike). Some of the wiring that has to be rerouted includes the heated grips, GPS (power and audio), satellite radio (ditto), aux. lights, and intercom. Judging by the small size of the fuse panel, everything should fit quite nicely in one of the under-seat compartments with room to spare.

Second is the intercom. It’s buggy. Seems every once in awhile the sound from my mic either gets cut off, or is replaced with a lovely crackling full volume static. The wonderful part is – I never notice it! My lovely wife, riding pillion, gets all the noise. Needless to say, she wants it fixed. As far as I can tell, it looks to simply be a loose connector. No biggie, right? Well, not exactly. It took me almost a month to get the schematics for the intercom from the manufacturer in Germany. Took me another few weeks to get some replacement connectors. Ack.

Finally, there’s the satellite radio. Ordered a kit from TSS-Radio that will allow me to use the Sirius plug-and-play receiver from the car and put it on the bike. Lovely!

Once that’s done, there’s a few mods I’ve been thinking about to make things a little more comfy for the missus. But that’s another story.