It seems the lure of a T-plane triple is irresistible...Colin has joined me bagging himself a Tiger to replace his orange bike. In his case it's the 900 Rally pro in a nice green/black/white and it sure looks good in the flesh.
But it's new and needs running in, so we had to go for a ride. As it is his gravel bike, you probably won't see it running with my Tiger roadie very often so we thought that for the first ride would should actually do that and get a couple of pics of the two tigers.
When Colin left home the weather was nice but by the time he got here the wind had got up a bit and there was even some moisture in the air - time for a pre-ride coffee then.
Finally getting underway, we headed out up the valley and got stuck into enjoying the delicious Pohangina Valley. As we'd had a bit of weather lately, we had to keep a pretty good eye out for debris on the road and other winter hazards.
Keeping an eye out for hawks was a reasonably good idea too as I had a really close call with one who was struggling for lift - it was close enough to smell the possum on his breath I tell ya. Should have had the camera on - I'm pretty sure it would have filled the screen.
Cruising around the loop I was looking for a place for a photo op so we popped into Rangiwahia for a minute to snap the Tiggers.
From Rangi, we made our way through towards Mangaweka before carrying on up to Taihape on more great back roads. Just one small herd of cattle to squeeze past and the odd interesting site along the way.
I nabbed a bit of footage of the ride but the GoPro played up a bit again. Stopping and starting recording all by itself and also not recording video but recording sound (over a frozen image) a few times. Frustrating.
As you can see from the video, the weather had definitely improved and it was really nice in Taihape where we stopped for a fairly average lunch.
After lunch we fuelled up before catching up with Glen and all his projects and heading back homewards.
On the way back we turned off SH1 just before Ohingaiti to dodge more winter related wreckage through to Pemberton, then Kimbolton before checking to see if my folks had any coffee. Thank goodness, they did.
Caffeinated up, Colin went one way while I went another to get home after a nice little ride on our fantastic felines.
Having a flash set of Denali's on the T7 seemed a bit risky with the sort of riding I do on it so I started looking at how I might swap them over to the Tiger.
Well, I'm no electrician and the Tiger has a Canbus system that you can't just go chopping into. But, there is a solution. An outfit in South Africa makes a dohickey called a ezCan and Denail also sell these with under the Denali Cansmart moniker.
A quick look at NZ (and Oz) retailers and they all seem to advertise Denali stuff but don't seem to stock it (and their prices are eye-watering). I did a net search and discovered abikething.com and a ton of really helpful videos by the owner including the below one where he kitted out a new Tiger with all the bells and whistles:
His prices were also a lot cheaper (still not a cheap farkle) and he had stock. A couple of clicks and about a week or so later a box turned up. Some cheap Ali-express mounts also turned up around the same time so that was handy 😉
I'd bought the Deanli branded unit as the wiring leads that come with it plug directly into Denali stuff. And this is where I hit a problem. My Denali's are reasonably old and come with a 2 pin plug whereas the new ones (and the Cansmart loom) come with 3 pin plugs, bummer.
A few emails and I was back in business. I just had to cut into the super nice Denali lead and wire on a 2 pin plug. Routing the cables was pretty easy with some of the plastic removed and then it was ready to hook up the laptop to the Cansmart and tell it what it was plugged into it and how I wanted it to work.
The Cansmart uses the bikes OEM switchgear
This ended up being child's play with the only issue being a laptop falling off the bike onto the concrete floor...it seems to be working though...
The video shows most of the trickery that all works from the bike's standard switch gear, but here's a list of how I've set it up (the software allows you to play with lots of things and the Cansmart has 4 outputs for 4 devices/sets of devices):
the Denali's are not active automatically (good for WOF time), but a button press turns them on
with the bike's lights on dip and the Denali's active, the Denali's come on at about 30% brightness (adding a second set of DRL's) and the headlight is actually brighter
hitting high-beam gives maximum output
flicking an indicator on turns the Denali's off to ensure that the indicators are visible. I could have actually wired the lights independently rather than as a set and then only the light on the same side of the bike would go out when the indicator was switched on. I opted for simpler wiring.
hitting the hazards alternates between spots and indicators - should be fairly obvious...
flicking the high beam 3 times (actually tricky on the Tiger) causes the lights to flash
Hitting the horn makes the lights flash
Pretty cool, shame about the video:
You may have also noticed another farkle in the shape of a decent horn. The Cansmart is setup to control Denail Soundbomb horns too. These are made of gold too. So, I found a knock-off on Temu and ordered another, different mount from Ali-express (after watching the first video in this post I had a fair idea what I needed).
I wonder how long it will last there?
A bolt just asking to be trimmed...
The hardest part was getting the horn in place and being able to tighten mounts etc. I had to try a few different ways but finally got it in and secured. Routing the wiring was easy and then all I had to do was connect the laptop (no dropping this time) and tell the Cansmart that it had a horn connected. Done, time to film that video...
Oh, and I couldn't ignore the T7...
These are cheapies like on the S10. They're damn good though and I won't cry as much if I break one...
Only issue is that they are not hooked up to go on/off with the high beam which is what I need. The T7 has a weird system where the high beam trigger wire only put's out something like 0.9v. This isn't enough to drive the relay (well, that's what I think the issue is) and apparently if you tap it and use it for the trigger then you can even damage the electrical system - I'm not too keen on that.
There is however a way to do it which I am cautiously investigating.
Strangely enough, if you ride motorcycles, they tend to destroy tyres and the the Tiger appears to be no exception. Over the last few rides the front had definitely been starting to look a wee bit sad and a trip to Raglan and back on slippery and sometimes frosty roads finally toasted the tyre. In fact, I've probably never ridden on a tyre in worse condition which is definitely not my style.
Try not to look at those lines showing beneath the rubber...
This is why it felt a little weird...
Anyway, i'm still getting over a cold so no riding today, but I did manage to muster up the energy to swap the front out for a new Michelin Anakee Road - I would have gone for a normal old Road 4 or 6 but apparently not for a Tiger rim.
Oh look, the fat one looks just like the skinny one!
The job went pretty easily. To get the front wheel off only required dropping one caliper off and then the wheel shimmied right out.
Even the tyre swop went reasonably quickly - I'm finally starting to get the knack I guess. No blood either! The trickiest bit was seating the bead but plenty of soapy water, sitting on the tyre and no valve in the stem soon sorted it.
The rear is still looking pretty good, I thinking at least 2-3k so could even do the October NI800 if I don't ride the bike too much in between...
