It has begun...

Yes, with a new bike in the shed the farkling bug has hit hard and there has been quite some progress...

One of the first things I ordered was a bottom ring for the tank so it could accept my SW-Motec tank-bag.

Before fitting it I did another little job to tidy things up...

And then the mount went on like child's play...

Works!

Then another old farkle was added to the front brake reservoir so that the GoPro has somewhere to park.

This was all prior to the BRRBT ride and since then things have got a whole lot more serious.  One of my priorities was to fit my PC-8 fuse-box and get all my electrical goodies sorted.  This necessitated some nudity...

Whoops wrong side but at least I found the radiator...

All sorts of stuff that you don't want to be mess with...

Before tearing into this little (yeah, right) job I consulted the web and the place where other S10 owners located their PC-8's was as in the picture below:

I had a good look at this and was a little concerned that water might find it's way into the unit as the fairing is designed to funnel air into this area and I figured that it'd probably funnel water under certain circumstances.  Probably not the best idea...I parked this job while I waited for Dad to pop over and take a squizz and carried on with the next job.

I decided to add a bash pad to the bike not because I intend to be crossing logs or bouncing off boulders but because the oil filter looked like it was a little vulnerable poking out the front of the donk.  I chose a Givi unit as it was readily available here in NZ and as a bonus, a lot cheaper than the Yamaha or Touratech options.  Fitting was fairly straight forward but Givi could perhaps make their product slightly easier to fit with some more clever design eg nuts welded to the back of items to make it easier to fit the bolts.

Not long after finishing this Dad turned up and wondered why I was adding weight to the bike as opposed to removing it...

We then set to work finding the ideal location for the PC-8.  We ended up sacrificing the toolkit (which only holds a handful of basic tools) and then fitted the PC-8 after wiring in the accessories.  One thing I did was remove the heated grips from the battery and run them off the PC-8 so that they were on a switched circuit to prevent a flat battery if accidentally left on.  As I still don't have a GPS mount (dramas here), any spare wiring was run up the inside of the fairing and tied up to await the final installation.  We also tested a few of the accessories to make sure everything was working before putting the Ten's clothes back on.

The final job of the weekend was to add even more protection in the form of crash bars.  once again Givi items were chosen.  Some pretty serious wrestling was required here but I got there in the end.

Bling!

Ready for action now...

...but more farkles to come...